Early January we drove around 10 hours (incl. breaks) the about 600 miles down to Sanibel Island. The island "for the reclusive millionaire" was our hope for nice weather -- also this was our first trip with a family of five. Through VRBO we found a great appartment for the week.


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The island is fantastic, no buildings higher than a (three-story) palm tree, no traffic lights, and no neon signs. The Ding Darling wildlife refuge was a great option (birds and few alligators). We enjoyed riding bike (with trailer), great rental options exist on the island. It is popular with german tourists (who usually visit for the day) so, while seashelling, it felt like being on the baltic sea. (On the toll booth for entering the island there was specifically a german sign asking not to use the leftmost lane reserved for the sun pass)
The weather was disappointing (this was the week setting all sorts of temperature records with fruit trees in danger of freezing) but it was overall a very exciting week.

Pictures here

I had to look this up first but this quickly was picked up by Benni (who was cheering for the Saints like me; opposed to the girls who liked the blue uniforms + the horseshoe symbol of the Colts better).
Great game, great show, great commercials. Who maintains stats like: "For the 13th time in a row, the NFC team has won the coin toss!". I thought setting up that kind of database would dramatically improve the attractiveness of other sports, too.



Part of my game plan was creation of a "seven layer dip" -- 4000 calories (no, we did not finish it in one sitting) which turned out to be "yummy".

And finally, the commercials I liked or remembered best.

1. Google (Parisian Love). Must have costed $200 :-)


2. Coke Sleepwalker. So, Atlanta was in the Superbowl, kind of.


3. Dodge Man's last stand. The charger.


4. Bud Light Not too picky.


5. Hyundai It's tough to take orders when you're Brett Favre.

What a weekend that was. It started innocently enough with fast feed Tennis (although I could tell that this was the first drill for me this year) and the kids' Music class on Saturday. The Schach-Bundesligawas on, with two remarkable aspects for me:
1. My team (SF Berlin) did very poor. First, we conceded a 4:4 draw against local rival Tegel, lost 0:8 versus the league-topping team of Baden-Baden (against all odds as discussed here), and rounded off the weekend with an equally disappointing 4:4 against Heidelberg. The 0:8 made me believe that the pre-announced pairings must normally benefit the stronger team: The weaker team would usually be more motivated to prepare against several opponents. The weaker team has more ways to find out the whereabouts of the players of the stronger team (e.g., "X" is still playing in that tournament and will not be available for the team), so the stronger team benefits more from knowing the pairings. The weaker player will typically have less opening lines to choose from, creating a stationary target for the favorite. The better player more easily will sidestep enemy preparation (that actually being a more important part of the chess pro's skill set).
2. The sensational 4:4 draw of Erfurt vs. Werder Bremen. Clearly, the defensive MVP was Thomas Casper who held a deceivingly simple endgame hours after everyone else had finished. Insiders know that this was just the right guy for that job...

As for the afternoon: "If line 38 is 125.100 or less and you did not provide housing to a Midwestern displaced individual, multiply 3.650 by the number in line 6d. Otherwise, see page 37."

After a long silence I can only bring forward as an excuse that our family has a new member since Oct 7, 2009 (Incidentally, this being the 60th anniversary of my non-existent home country, the German Democratic Republic)



Emma was born in Southern Regional Medical Center in Riverdale, GA.
Emma Georgia is equally sweet as her older siblings and we don't want to miss her. It also gave us an option to compare getting a child in the US versus Germany. I will not easily criticize the german health system anymore since just the minority of many surprises during that discovery process here have pleasant. But of course, overall and as a net result everything went perfectly fine.

On our way to a country fair we discovered Dresden, GA. Unincorporated. I have been told that every crossroad gets a name, not sure if there ever lived someone.


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Plus here are more Dresden references in Atlanta (Dresden Drive, Dresden Park, Dresden Elementary etc).

For comparison, here is the original:


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Yes -- Project Pitchfork actually made it to Atlanta! My last concert with them was in Dresden (Germany! not GA) in late 2005 or early 2006. And -- it was actually great:
The openers (Voodoo Velkro) and especially Deviant UK (a positively crazy lead singer) were good, too. Project Pitchfork took the stage around 10.30 pm. IN contrast to Germany, you could easily go the first row. In total, there were around 100 people in the club (Masquerade, think of Strasse E in Dresden) which matched the music also quite well. The new album (Dream Tiresias) was on sale for just 15$ -- cheaper than Germany. They played at least 90 min, more like 120 min. Mostly their greatest hits, all the classic stuff starting with KNKA covering all early albums (including plus some new titles. This was great, presumably they concentrated on their proven winners -- can you expect that Atlanta knows their albums? Turns out that they knew, big surprise really -- the front row knew all their songs. They did not really talk to the audience (except for "Hello Atlanta" and "thank you", appearing a bit timid here. Overall, it was a fantastic performance, for sure winning them some new fans (you don't see many chinese or black Pitchfork fans in Germany, do you) here.

Now for something extraordinary. My grandfather Heinrich Otto Ludwig Borriss would turn 100 years on September 10, 2009.

Thanks to him I got to play with pocket calculators and later even with a Commodore 64. We discussed the 8 queens problem and travelled in 1982 to Moscow and St. Petersburg -- by train. He impressed me quite a bit and I much admire him.

There will be an colloquium at Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University Greifswald on Sep 10 and Sep 11. More pictures of Heinrich Borriss here.

We were looking for a quick and painless getaway. We went to the Florida panhandle, near Destin, Fl:


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This is one of the closest destinations to reach from Atlanta, but still a 5+ hour drive. We avoided the peak season (it justed ended, and is determined by school schedule of the states Florida, Alabama, Luisiana and Georgia (I think)). I booked through VRBO since these days we enjoy a bit extra of room and a full kitchen when going with the kids. Our area (near the crab trap) was nice since there were no highrises. We got the second floor of a villa between a lake and a beach. We truly enjoyed the view every morning anew -- great to have your coffee watching the waves roll in. Kids loved the beach (Hannah) and the pool (Benni). Mid-August was still hot and humid. Similar to Peachtree City people are using golf cars and work out (run or bike) a lot. In terms of food we also liked the famed McGuire irish pub.

Pictures are to be found here.

Peachtree City, GA is back into the CNN Money list of best places to live in the US -- 2009 it is ranked No 8.

I thought one thing missing here would be the the type of music I came to like in Dresden. Turns out that two of my favorites are coming to Atlanta!

VNV Nation -- July 23 (masquerade)
Project Pitchfork -- Sep 13 (masquerade)

Great news.

Back from DC and NYC. Long car trip (1900 miles total), this was our route:



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All pictures here.

Florida is next door. Well, it is about 800 km to Orlando and significantly more to Miami, Everglades and the keys. Still, it is our favorite place for short trips. Looking back at a number of trips (including earlier ones without kids) now I conclude the following:

1. Disney: Kitschy? Yes, very much so. Expensive? Kind of, too. Still, I would not want to miss the memory of Hannah greeting her fairytale idols (Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty in particular). If you are around, you must go to Disney. Even for adults it is fun, with some planning you get a lot for your buck, I think.

2. Beaches: I never liked the beaches I knew on the Atlantic Coast (Miami Beach for example). On the Gulf coast, beaches can be great. I tried Sanibel/Captiva (shell collectors, not sure about swimming); St. Pete and Clearwater (crowded, but quite good and of course good infrastructure). The panhandle (Ft. Walton Beach, Pensacola) had great soft white sand -- good to visit when it is too hot in main Florida. Sarasota (Siesta Key) was overall most impressive (infrastructure, not crowded, very nice beach). If you look for a bit of everything - Siesta Key would be the place I would like to visit again.

3. Culture and Sights: Everglades and Keys are most impressive. St. Augustine is a very pleasing change to the european eye, but at the same time not that special when coming from Europe. Engineers, IT geeks, school boys and the like probably must see Cape Canaveral.

I like the concept of the flexible tennis league. Players are grouped geographically and skillwise. Three seasons per year plus playoffs for the best 256 players. It was immensly satisfying to barely reach the playoffs (I play 3.0 this year which means I hit every other shot and have as many double faults as aces). On that occasion, in the third and final set I had a match point (4:5 games, 30:40 points) against me. It was just great to hit an ace just then and go on to win the decider 7:5 (2:6, 6:3, 7:5).

On the other hand, in the second round of the playoffs I learned that it is not advisable to look ahead to the 3rd round opponent too early. Completely unfocused, the low point of my young career was a straight 2-set loss (3:6, 2:6). Embarassing. I will be back.

From professional support of a commercial product of a well-respected software vendor:

"I discussed this with our Development Group. They have indicated that they have not seen a problem such as this before, as most clients bounce the web server daily or weekly."

I will not disclose the identity to protect the guilty, but could not help sharing the information that in 2009 there is a need to restart web servers (this relates to some web app on tomcat really) on a daily basis. Go figure.

Sitting by the fireplace, watching Superbowl XLIII I cannot help noticing that this really a super sunday, sportswise. It started with a tremendous final match of the Australian Open (Nadal beating Federer in 5 sets, after he survived Fernando Verdasco in the longest game in Australian Open history so far). As often these days, we got up early thanks to Benni and watched the fourth and fifth set. This was then followed by watching the live transmissions of major chess events: Wijk an Zee (where unfortunately Lenier Dominguez did not continue his run to win the event) and the german chess Bundesliga (where after a long drought SF Berlin scored another win). In between the atlantan weather was nice enough to allow taking up some tennis activities again. Benjamin and Hannah had their workout too:
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Back to the superbowl (Steelers leading 20:7)