Follow up the previous journal:

First off, thanks for the helpful comments. Purse had everything in it, driver's license, insurance cards, credit cards, library cards, gym membership cards, her work id badges, cellphone, car/house keys.

Now the story:

At Chic-Fil-A: Wife went into the bathroom with the kids to wash up before lunch, ended up leaving her purse in the bathroom. She goes back into the bathroom to go get it, can't find it, remembers another woman being the bathroom changing clothes. She calls me crying, I tell her to tell the store manager, then call the police so they can look at the cameras and see it what they can get to fill out a report. I drive home, pick up the spare keys, and drive to the restaurant. By the time I get there, they had just found the time on the video where the woman from the bathroom walks out with my wife's purse. She had gone to the counter, put down the purse and looked like she was going to order something, then you see my kids run by and my wife coming out, the woman sees my wife, covers the purse up with her backpack, and once my wife passes, leaves the restaurant out into the parking lot. She had on black stretch pants and a long t-shirt with the number 10 or 40 on it. The time of the video was 1:31pm

So we finish with the police (@3:30pm), they arrange to get a copy of the video and I leave to go to the Sprint Store and get her number changed to my old cell phone which would make her stolen one inactive. On the way there I call her cell phone and leave a message basically saying we don't care about the money, just please drop off the purse at any store or restaurant and tell them you found it and walk away. This was at 4:00pm.

I then got a call from an unknown number immediately which turned out to be the loss-prevention team at the JC Pennys at the mall next to the Chic-Fil-A, saying that someone had dropped off the purse saying they had found it in the store, and the loss prevention guy (Tim) happened to be carrying back to their store office when the phone rang so he called the number back (my number) trying to find the owner of the purse. I asked him to look through it and basically it sounded like everything was there, even the money.

I called the police back and met another cop (first one was off-shift) at the store, we looked through the video system and sure enough the woman who had stolen the purse was the one dropping it off saying she had found it in the store. She stuck around the customer desk while the store paged my wife, who of course was not there, and then took off.

So, timeline of the robbery/recovery:

1:30 pm Purse gets stolen from Chic-Fil-A
1:45 pm Thief turns purse in at JC Penny's across the street
3:45 pm Customer desk calls Tim since no one has claimed the purse
4:30 pm I have posession of my wife's purse with apparently nothing taken from it.

And the cops have a video showing her taking the purse from one store, a video of her turning the purse in at another store, and two witnesses saying that she told them she had found it in 2nd store.

I doubt they will ever find out who she is, but maybe she has done something before and they can use face-recognition to find out.

I'm just glad to get it back. Still pissed at the wife though for leaving it behind in the 1st place.

Figured I would ask for some advice from the journal ring:

Wife just had her purse stolen less than 20 minutes ago. She called me, the place has a camera system, so by now she should have called the police and hopefully can get a police report. Her wallet (in the purse) had everything in it, and her car/house keys were in the purse.

So far I have had her only credit card (visa checkcard) cancelled so the bank account should be safe.

Besides getting my house locks changed, any other advice anyone could give me?

Thanks in advance.

Now I get to bring her the spare keys so she can get home...

Was going to post this earlier but after reading one of Ethelred's recent journals it didn't quite feel right shouting out good news.

I farmed out my resume right before I went on my long ass trip and while I was out got a message from the wife about someone calling with a job in the DC area. Called the guy back, passed the pre-screening phone interview (fire off 10 *nix commands and what they do, whoopie) and they set me up with a face-face interview with the government leads for the project. I get back, drive up the the DC area for the interview. I meet the company recruiter (for a government contracting company), get escorted down to the government offices and get grilled for two hours on my *nix experience, everything from automated installs to firewalls, dns, locking down systems, etc. The two guys interviewing me are the lead on the sysad team and his boss, who is also the webmaster lead. We shake hands, I get passed off back to the contractor guy and spend 20 minutes getting a brief on the contract from the company program manager, then we sit down to talk about benefits, pay, etc. By this time both my interviewers had already emailed back and to the company that they were to pursue and hire me.

We finish up the rest of the company piece for the interview, they say they'll get back to me either way probably the next day. I drive back down to Richmon, have lunch with my friend at his workplace, and then go to finish the drive back home. Get a call on the cell phone, it is the regional recruiter giving me a verbal offer of exactly what I was asking for, PLUS a signing bonus to cover my relocation expenses (they don't officially pay for relocating). Basically, from meet to hire was less than 6 hours.

Now I am going back to the area this weekend to meet some people whom I found on roommates.com who are renting out basements so I have some short term place to live while the wife clears up some stuff back in Chesapeake and then the family will come up and join me. In the meantime I will be commuting back and forth every weekend unless I am on shift or something.

Basically I am extremely upbeat, although I really like the people I currently work with (they are not why I left) so is kind of depressing along with the stress of having to move and almost restart all over again in a new city. At least I know some people in the new area so I have an "in" with the place.

I will of course still be on /., so you are all still stuck with me :-)

P.S. To preempt the same question I have already gotten 15 times in real life, even counting the cost of living difference between DC and here, it is still a very good pay raise, plus only ONE job so no part time like I have now. I may finally get out of debt.

Here's my turn on the bandwagon.

True Neutral Gnome Ranger Thief
Follower Of Silvanus

Alignment:
True Neutral characters are very rare. They believe that balance is the most important thing, and will not side with any other force. They will do whatever is necessary to preserve that balance, even if it means switching allegiances suddenly.

Race:
Gnomes are also short, like dwarves, but much skinnier. They have no beards, and are very inclined towards technology, although they have been known to dabble in magic, too. They tend to be fun-loving and fond of jokes and humor. Some gnomes live underground, and some live in cities and villages. They are very tolerant of other races, and are generally well-liked, though occasionally considered frivolous.

Primary Class:
Rangers are the defenders of nature and the elements. They are in tune with the Earth, and work to keep it safe and healthy.

Secondary Class:
Thieves are the most roguish of the classes. They are sneaky and nimble-fingered, and have skills with traps and locks. While not all use these skills for burglary, that is a common occupation of this class.

Deity:
Silvanus is the True Neutral god of nature. He is also known as the Patron of Druids. His followers believe in the perfect balance of nature, and believe that nature's bounty is preferable to any other 'civilizing' method. They wear leather or metallic scale mail, constructed of leaf-shaped scales. Silvanus's symbol is an oak leaf.

Note that I have never played a gnome character in any role-playing game, although I usually like ranger-types.

Well, got back to the US about 2 weeks ago from my trip. 28 days in a former Soviet state. Kyrzygstan is one of the former states that actually benefited from the Communist state, as they really have nothing of value within their boundaries. Russians have most of what wealth remains, everything in the capital city at least was very corrupt, and the Kyrgyz peoples (as in the ethnic group) are not all that well off. The neighboring country of Kazahkstan has a ton of oil within their borders that they now own and that country is flowing with wealth. The event I supported this year in Bishkek is 99% likely to be held next year in the new Kazahkstan capitol of Astana, which is great for a techie because their simulation center is top of the line. At some point I might post links to photos of the bulding I worked in for a month, but they were still drilling holes and running power/networks when we showed up.

I was sick the first week there, as in the hit the bathroom every 10 minutes kind of sick. 1st week was extremely boring, but when some more people showed up for later stages of the event, we ended up with a very good drinking team. I drank more beer in the middle 2 weeks than I had drunk previously this year. Luckily for us a little hole in the wall outdoor cafe/bar was right across the street from hotel, so we only had to cross one dangerous street to make it to the rooms. There was tons of good food everywhere, I just got sick a lot from something. Lots of lamb, 3/4 of my meals were some sort of lamb dish just because I never get to eat it here in the states. Ate once at a killer italian restaurent, I had veal in a gorgonzola sauce, and had some curry in an Indian restaurant, but most food was native dishes.

Amazing things happen when one is gone for a month. I am about to have a massive life event of a very good nature occur, but I will post about that later as some people who could be affected by it know about my /. site. The logo I chose for this journal is a good indicator.

So here I am in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan after 30+ hours of airports and plane seats. Got in at 3:30 am local time last night, downed a few beers and some food at the casino bar, and crashed a good couple of hours until 11:00 am local. Now I just need to struggle to remain functional the rest of today (Sunday) so I can get an ok night's rest since tomorrow we start 2 weeks of setting up a WAN/LAN on our project here.

Short summary of the trip:

- I am getting old. Sitting in a plane seat for hours on end now results in my knees aching. I am sure the lack of working out over the last few years has something to do with it.

- Coach/Economy seats SUCK! My last few trips have been either business class (when I had the miles to upgrade) or economy plus on United airlines (coach seat with 6" more legroom). My routing was:
    Arrive 2 hours early
    Norfolk->Dulles via United Express (45 minute flight)
    4.5 hours layover (on purpose, met a friend for lunch)
    Dulles->Munich via Lufthansa
    1 hour layover
    Munich->Istanbul via Lufthansa (arrived over 1 hour late)
    45 min. layover
    Istanbul->Bishkek via Turkish Air

Small cramped seats got REALLY old after the trans-atlantic leg. I had aisles the whole way so could at least stretch one leg out

- Airport: Is Air Conditioning something new? Apparently airports have never heard of it. Norfolk was good, but Munich, Istanbul and Bishkek had us sweating our asses off. My clothes were so ripe I'm surprised they didn't walk away by themselves when I took them off at the hotel. However, I can't complain because the rest of my group did the Norfolk->Dulles route on a later flight than I, and they lost the AC in the plane halfway through the trip.

- Central Asia: Lines do not exist, common courtesy on the street (or anywhere else outside the hotel) does not seem to exist yet. Reminds me of Pakistan from when I was there in the mid-90s. A line is defined as a throng of people all trying to reach the same destination with no order whatsoever. We basically got our sim chips for the mobile phones by blocking the counter so we had exclusive access to the women working the shop. The funniest part was the plane landing. Fasten seatbelt sign still on, after we turned off the runway to taxi to the terminal, about a third of the plane gets out of there seats, grabs there bags from the overheads, and runs to the front of the plane by the door (I had the very last row of the plane so had a great view of this). The whole time the flight attendants, pilots, and pre-programmed voice are all repeating to stay in your seats, it is dangerous to be up, wait till the plane stops, etc... When we got to the terminal, I am sure on purpose, the plane came to a rather abrupt stop that almost sent people flying. Was semi-hilarious.

We were also supposed to be met and picked up from the airport by a driver from the embassy, who was a no-show, so we caravaned by "taxi" to the airport and had to play the hustle game with the drivers when they wanted more than what they said they would do it for. I say taxi in quote because there were no official taxis outside at the hour we arrived, so all the drivers were just groups of guys trying to make some side money. They also kept trying to race each other which was not-cool.

I have to say so far the hotel rocks. The service is excellent, staff completey friendly and the premises is top notch. Could use a bigger gym though, but the saunas and jacuzzis are nice sized. Prices, at least compared to local out in town, are outrageous. Internet to type this out runs .60 cents (USD) a minutes, with a cap of $35 in charges over 24 hours. Then your access is cut off until you sign up again via your web browser. I am only going to get it on my free weekends (today and next weekend), and only then if I can play Warcraft decently from here. I'll have internet at our job site (since I am the one installing it) so can use that for email and my time sheet system. Food for example is $30 USD for breakfast in the hotel. 5 minutes walk down the street is a place called Fat Boys that sells the same breakfast for $3 USD. The water and juice I bought in the market ran me less than $2 and would have been $12-$15 in the hotel. I get $75 per day in per diem for meals and what I don't spend I keep, so I plan to make some money even before the overtime by eating outside the hotel for most of the trip. I need to pay off the $1200 plane tickets that I bought for my mother-in-law to live with us to keep the wife happy while I travel.

Speaking of internet, the country iteslf only has a 6mb pipe coming into it from Kazakhstan, which has a bigger pipe ( I forget how big) that connects to Frankfurt and then into the worldwide circuits. One of our WAN sites is a satellite shot into Tajiksta which might not even be useable beyond email due to latency. We can't test until we get it up later this week when out guys get to that site.

Enough for now, time for Warcraft..yes I am addicted much to the wife's chagrin :-)

<backstory>

I will be overseas for the whole month of July on business, and the people we are supporting blocked rooms at the two western hotels for the 300 or so people who will be there for this event. However, there apparently was a "mistake"* in the reserving of the blocked rooms so now some people will be forced to double up. Normally as a contractor we are never required to do this, and I personally have not been required to for over a dozen trips in the last few years. Also, the people responsible for this "mistake" are high ranking enough (military or GS) that they will not be sharing rooms, so no repercussions on them. Lucky us, although supposedly the lead prep team that will be there for over 30 days (with me on that team) is not on the sharing list. We shall see.

</end backstory>

But that is not what I am writing this journal about. Obviously, rooms would be shared with 2 men or 2 women to a room to prevent all kinds of various problems (societal, HR, etc.) resulting from requiring two opposite sex coworkers to share lodging. However, I bring this a step further. In one (or more) of Robert Heinlein's** novels, he goes past the question "Are you male or female?" and introduces more sexes to society: hetero-male, hetero-female, homo-male, homo-female, bi-male, bi-female. I also think there were 2 or 3 more (androgynous, hermaphrodite, and not sure of a 3rd) but they are mostly irrelevant for my point.

Now comes my point: can I be required (as in the above situation for my trip) to share a room with a homo-male or bi-male co-worker? How is that any different from me sharing a room with a female employee? While we are both men, now it is no longer two "normal" men sharing a room. Since one of the two men is now known to be attracted to other men, how can there not possibly be the same problems that would exist if the room sharing was between male and female employees?

Current society as a whole (at least in the U.S.), in my opinion, is still not ready to accept as a norm the fact that people are also homo- and bi-. This is evidenced by all sorts of things: public restrooms, marriage/civil unions, locker rooms, dormitories, not to mention the attempt at a U.S. Constitutional amendment redefining marriage, and many others.

If it could be known as to which of the sexes an employee was, I can only see these possible combinations of room sharing (work-related):
Hetero-male with hetero-male
Hetero-female with hetero-female

No other combination exists that could follow the logic of current HR policies. You can't ever mix male/female, so that whole set of combos is out, and I can't see how homo- or bi- of the same sex can share a room for the same reason male/female is out.

The only situation where I can see my company saying that I (as a hetero-male) must share a room with a coworker following the rational of current HR guidelines is if that coworker is also a known hetero-male. Of course, it is illegal to classify or in any manner whatsoever have policies targeting homo- and bi- employees, so how can the company know which male employees are hetero? Therefore by the above reasoning can I be forced to share a room at all since the sex (as defined by Heinlein) can't be known about my male co-worker?

My lines of though also presents problems for every other public situation that is defined along the line of only two sexes.

Note that I am not all that good at formulating thoughts onto paper (I am a complete geek and hate writing) so undoubtedly I have logic problems with all of my reasoning.

Anyone else care to share their thoughts on this?

* I say "mistake" with quotes because back in April my coworkers supported another event for this organization and had to double up because the hotel didn't have enough rooms for the whole group of people who would be there. Turns out, not only was that a blatant lie and there were plenty of rooms, but not a single military/government person from the supporting org had to share a room, only 3rd party orgs. Basically, it came down to this org not wanting to pay full per-diem lodging rates for every contractor. The event became nicknamed the "Brokeback Contractor" event and involved numerous spooning jokes.

** I sincerely hope it was Heinlein, I am pretty sure since I can't think of another sci-fi author I have read that dealt with those kinds of sexual topics.

Follow up to my previous journal.

One of my friend's hobbies/interests is Manga/Graphic Novels, of the Heavy Metal type. He also doodles these kinds of drawings when he is bored. The story I heard through my other friend (the teacher is his brother-in-law) is that some students needed some supplies so the teacher told to grab some from his bag, and when they did so they saw his drawings, mentioned them to their parents, who called the school who called the police who then arrested the teacher AND searched the house with a warrant looking for anything child-porn related, to included all the computers in the house. As I mentioned before, said house belongs to his wife's parents, who also live there, so the whole situation is not very pleasant since everyone's possessions got searched by the police.

So, regardless of whose story is true (his accidental showing, or whether he actually showed them on purpose like the paper makes out) he is out of a job, will undoubtedly be found guilty of something, and basically has lost lots of oppurtunities for the rest of his life.

Dumbass comes to mind...

Still removing him from my references when I do my perdiodic clearance update this year.

While driving in to work this morning, the morning show news segment has a story about a Special Ed teacher getting arrested at a local school for showing "obscene" pictures to a pair of students...turns out this teacher is a friend of mine whom I have known since 1993. We were in the Marine Corps together, 3 of us all moved out to Virginia to go to school together, and he married our buddy's sister. Holy Shit.

Police actually came to their house, where they live with his wife's parents (father has been bedridden from emphysema since 1999 or so), and arrested them right in front of the neighboors.

I think I will be removing his name as a reference on my security clearance update this year.

Chesapeake teacher accused of showing students obscene drawings

I love it when programmers/documenters have great senses of humour. I am using netcat for the 1st time today so ran a quick 'man nc' and came across this piece:

-e command
                          Execute the specified command, using data from the network for
                          stdin, and sending stdout and stderr to the network. This
                          option is only present if nc was compiled with the GAPING_SECU-
                          RITY_HOLE compile time option, since it allows users to make
                          arbitrary programs available to anyone on the network.

I am trying to imagine telling our network nazis that we compiled a GAPING_SECURITY_HOLE in our software.

Also knew a programmer who needed an infinte loop in his program, so did this:

while (! HELL_FROZEN_OVER) {...

At least we techy geek people can have some fun in our work.

Tues and Weds

Tues night I went to the country social at the NATO school. There were about 10 countries who had a space setup with their food and drink samples. Ones that stood out in my mind:

Switzerland: Had the best white wine in my opinion. Served some sort of cheese where they melted the top layer with some contraption and then scraped the melted layer onto your plate. I ate the cheese with some sweet white onions they had and this combination was surprisingly good.

Hungary: Had some wines and something else that I skipped. I however did get talked into a shot of some liquor made from over 40 herbs. Very strong and stung the throat, but was almost licorice like in taste. I had this right after finishing my glass if Swiss wine so withing 15 minutes of arriving I was on the way to getting pretty well blitzed.

Americans: Didn't have anything from here, why sample what I can get back home..but they had Hot Dogs, Apple Pie, and shots of Jack Daniels. Yeah, pretty American.

Russia: Not sure at all what they had, but almost everything involved fish eggs. I tried some wrap that had meat, cheese, and fish eggs. Wasn't bad but I wasn't impressed. Also had numerous vodkas but I skipped.

Austria: Interesting in that they had a laptop playing some promo tourism video. They had some sort of peas/onion thing going on, and a sauce made from pork(?) that you mixed with it.

Finland. My favorite booth. Had some vodka and schnapps which I skipped, but had some sort of jerky (not dried, really moist and fresh) made from reindeer that had a very strong taste. I had numerous helpings of this. Also had a pepperoni looking food made from moose meat. I am sure Tuxette would have been at home here! Actually, I have no idea if they eat moose in Norway. This table also brought back some memories of a female Finnish friend I had met when I lived in Pakistan but lost track of her a year or two after we both left. Just in case any Finns look at this, name was Tarja Heikkenen, changed to Tarja Mard (with an umlat or something over the 'a') due to some deal with finding out who her father was. Last worked for the Finnish Foreign Ministry, this was in 1997-1998. Long shot but had to try.

??????: I forgot who the next booth was, maybe Netherlands, but they had the best cheese there. Most of the countries brought cheeses of some sort, which made my day, but I came back to this one two or three times. Also had two white wines, the first one I considered a close second to the Swiss one, but the other was way too sweet for my taste.

Germany: Beer!!!! Of course, though I skipped because I was mainly interested in finding good wines. Didn't notice them until the end, but that had a pan of the very good Bavarian White Sausages, of which I of course had to have. Also had them for lunch today (today=Wed).

Wednesday we got a half day since the school's students go on tours for professional interest/development or some excuse for more social time and less work. We (my fellow coworkers and I) drove out to the Schloss Linderhof, one of King Ludwig II's castles/palaces. We had lunch in the restaurant outside the grounds (where I had my white sausages), then did our tour. There were 12 total English speakers in the group so we got our own guide. She was definitely used to giving the tour in German, as her rhythm of presenting the rooms was not suited to the English language, but it was a very good tour in spite of some stupid jokes from some fellow coworkers. The fact that I found her rather attractive certainly helped me enjoy the tour...

I then fell asleep in the car (since I wasn't driving) on the way to a monastery almost literally in the middle of nowhere, Weiskirche. I was married in a 450 year old church in South America, so appreciate old historic buildings, but this thing was huge and not at all gaudy, which I tend to find most traditional Catholic Churches. The ceiling was easily over 100 feet high and interior was very cold, having apparently no heating whatsoever. I could see my breath inside, it was colder than the outside.

Dinner Wednesday was at the same restaurant as the first day. We wanted to go to a different restaurant but when we got here, a sign on the said the owners were on vacation starting yesterday and coming back after we would be gone. This time I had Jaegerschniztel (sp?) which was pretty good, along with some more spatzel and a beer.

Being here as shown me how out of shape I am, my legs are worn out every day from all the walking we are doing in town and on tours. Crashed at 8pm after dinner and pretty much slept the whole night with the exception of when I woke up at 1am sweating my ass off so I opened a window. It was well below freezing last night. I wish my house in Virginia was this well insulated.

Today's humorous note: my spell checker (OpenOffice2.0) wants to correct "Jaegerschniztel" to "Interscholastic". wtf?

More later.

Note: chose the SuSe logo since it used to be a German company, and I am in Germany at the moment :-)

This will be a series of ramblings more or less of my trip. I will try to post new journals as I get to them. I am not really a writer so please disregard any huge incoherent sentences.

So here I am now in Oberammergau, Germany. For whatever reason this flight my body did not take it very well. After the flight to Munich, clearing the airport, driving to Oberammergau, and a full day's work, I felt like I had ran a race and then had someone kick my ass. Managed to stay awake enough for us to go out to dinner in the town and then collapse for a solid 7 hours sleep. Of course, I got up @ 3am local time, so just went online and still managed to be able to play WoW with my friends who were still on at that time on the US east coast.

Rental car is a 5 series BMW...they wanted to give us a 3 series until we pointed to our stack of luggage, and the rental car agency person graciously gave us the 5 series instead. Very nice car, too bad it will be a lifetime before I can afford one back home. Only thing that I don't like about it is the I-drive thing or whatever they call that. Now I see why all the magazines slammed it. The last thing I want to have to do while driving is play with a click wheel/mouse thingy just to change channels and stuff.

The Munich airport is easily the cleanest and most efficient airport I've traveled through in a long time, although I don't know what it's normal traveler volume is. If you need rental car, put on some hiking boots, it is a hefty walk to the rental area. Was also the quickest I ever cleared customs in any country other than the times when I had a diplomatic passport.

My first experience with the Autobahn, pretty cool. I seriously wish the states would implement something like this on the long stretches between cities. I know one state did (Montana?) a number of years ago but haven't really paid attention since. We were cruising at about 160 km/h normal, and a couple of times got passed like we were standing still. Once by a BMW motorcycle, followed by a Porsche, followed by a 7 series BMW.

Now the cool part, the food. Only a few meals so far, lunch the 1st day was a sandwich and a soda from a corner deli for 2.7 euros. Dinner was at a restaurant about a 5 minute walk from the hotel, we sat outside although it was a little too cold for my liking. I ordered some pork that was served with a gravy and heavy cream sauce, along with a good sized portion of spatzel (sp?), and also had a light beer that was very smooth. One of my co-workers g ordered a white sausage plate and I got to snag one of his and that was very good as well.

Since I had gotten up at 3am, I was the 1st one to hit breakfast in the hotel at around 6:15, and they weren't kidding when they it was a large spread. Rolls, all kinds of juices, jellies, cereal, meat and cheese trays, fruit, yogurt, hard-boiled eggs. Much better than most traveler's hotels I've stayed at. My plan for the trip (to save some money) is stuff myself for breakfast, eat a light lunch like the 1st day, and follow the guys who have been here before for the good dinner restaurants. Tonight is a course dinner (note, I am providing computer support for a NATO course that has multinational military students attending) where each country's students provide a sampling of their native food and drink. I am not sure if I want to go as I am not the social event kind of person, but I may go because there are some middle-eastern/south asian countries here and I love those region's foods.

Humorous note of the day. I have a bunch of shipping containers sitting in the attic of the building we are working in. Runs most of the length of the building, so is probably close to 100ft long. So I am showing one of my co-workers where they are and walk into the attic door and there is some guy doing ARCHERY practice in the attic!! Luckily he was shooting from the doorway into the attic and not the other way around.

Things I like so far about Europe (Germany specific):
--Autobahn...great idea as long as you have intelligent drivers (so won't work in US)
--The countryside. Utterly beautiful, mountain, trees, trails everywhere.
-- restroom stalls. Offer full privacy, have real deadbolt type locks, not the stupid latch bolts, and have decent quality TP.
--The people. Most everyone I have dealt with so far has been cheerful and helpful, although this is a tourist town so may not be the norm.
--The food. I loved German food in the US, and definitely love it here as well.

More posting another day. Hopefully less rambling.

Ocean or Lake? Ocean.

Pizza or Chinese? Chinese (I love wonton soup....)

Mansion or Penthouse? Penthouse

Have you been on a Jet Ski? No.

Are you afraid of clowns? Not unless they are of the "It" type

How many brothers/sisters do you have? 1 Brother

Favorite band/group? Nine Inch Nails for the win.

Baseball or football? Football, because it involves hanging with the guys and drinking.

Favorite brand of makeup? Haven't gone metrosexual yet.

Waffles or pancakes? waffles

Do you have an iPod? Not yet...food has a higher priority than yet another gadget.

Bike or scooter? Bike.

Ever go in a hot air balloon? Nope

How will you celebrate turning 21? About 11 years too late on that one

What brand computer do you have? Alienware

How many times have you been to DisneyWorld? DisneyWORLD, never....Disneyland, California about 6

Favorite city? Can I get back to this one after all of my summer European business trips?

Ice cream or frozen yogurt? Ice cream

Do you think you are fat? Fat? No. Need to lose a few and tone up, yes.

Ever throw up in a public place? Does filling the bathroom stall of an asian bar about 2 inches deep count?

Do you have a pool? Inflatable..for the kids of course.

Ever drive a car? Duh....

How many times a month do you go to the movies? Try to go at least once a month, makes for a cheap date with the wife.

Last movie you saw? Flightplan 2 days ago...good movie BTW

Who is your hero? Don't really have one.

How old are your parents? 55 and 52

What deceased person would you like to meet? Robert Heinlein

Do you chew ice? Can't stand ice chewers

Have you been to California? Does growing up from 1981-1992 in San Diego count?

Last book you read? And finished? Not sure, either something from Raymod Feist or Robert Jordan.

Favorite teacher? Ashraf Wadaa...1st CompSci instructor I had at my university. Didn't take crap from idiots in the class...most of them dropped after his first assignment.

Do you like to go fishing? Reference the football comment above

How many boyfriends/girlfriends have you had? 2, married the 2nd one.

How many of those do you regret?

What is your average in school? Freshman 3.7, Sophomore 3.5, Junior, 3.2, Senior 2.1 (cumulative BTW)

Favorite professional team? none

Do you like mohawks? If I had some hair I might...I can pull a reverse mohawk though....

How many pairs of shoes do you own? Approx 6

Do you floss? Does the intent count?

Do you have braces? Still need them...damn cheapskate parents....

Do you bite your nails? I pick at them and rip them till they bleed usually.

What is your last thought before falling asleep? Why does the 5'2" wife take up SO MUCH FRICKIN ROOM IN THE BED!!!!!

Do you fall in love easily? No.

Ever have a crush and they never knew? All the time.

Do you babysit? Do my own kids count?

Ever been shot at? I was in the Marine Corps for almost 9 years...does staring at a bomb count?

Do you work out/exercise? Not since I couldn't afford going to the gym anymore...and the growing waistline is showing it.

Do you have 6 pack abs? if we go back in time to when I was 21...yes

Do you consider yourself nice? Not really.

What movie character would you like to be? Val Kilmer's character from Spartan.

Do you go to camp for the summer? Band Camp?

Ever been bit by a snake? No.

Have you been on a boat? Fishing and sailing.

Name of friend you have known the longest? Friend of mine who now lives 2 hours away...known since we were Marines back in 1993

Do you like jumping on a trampoline? After watching all of the trampoline mishap videos on the internet? Hell no....

Ever break a bone? Couple of stress fractures. And some guy's collarbone in wrestling in High School

Name of favorite Aunt/Uncle? Don't really know them.

What is your ultimate job? Retired mulit-millionaire

Do you want to walk on the moon? If I could afford it I would be using that Russian company's services as we speak.

Can you name the seven dwarfs? Gimli....don't know the rest

Favorite TV show? Battlestar Gallactica (the Sci-Fi version)

Apples or oranges? Either one

Favorite model of car? Anything with 4 doors, rear-wheel drive, a stick, and 250+ hp

Favorite flower?

Favorite color?

Besides family, ever have someone of the opp sex in your bedroom? yessirreeeee

Ever climb out your bedroom window? Climbed in when I forgot my keys....

Do you live in an apartment or house? House.

How many times in the last month have you had the hiccups? Haven't had in years I think.

Ever laugh so hard milk came out your nose? And soda, beer, etc...

How many cousins do you have? Somewhere around 10 I think. Havne't seen one since 2001.

Do you believe in ghosts? Up in the air

If you were a bird, what would you be? Eagle

Ever get stitches? Other than surgery, about 4-5 times. Ever take a jagged piece of metal to the face flung from across a backyard? I don't recommend it.

If you could, would you want to know what your future was going to be? Hell no, the present is bad enough. I want at least some hope I might get out of debt one day

How many kids do you want to have? About two less than I have...the person who said parenting wasn't easy wasn't lying.

If you could change your name, what would it be? Don't want to

Dogs or cats? Cats. They are independent...dogs are too damn clingy

Who do you tell your problems to? I don't, usually.

Who can your tell your secrets to and know they won't tell? My invisible friend.

Do you believe in love at first sight? Lust at first sight, yes....love nope.

Do you go to church? Not in quite awhile

Would you marry outside your religon? I am agnostic, everyone is outside my religion,

Volleyball or tennis? Volleyball.

How many people were at your last party? We don't have parties.....

Ever ride in a limo? Does riding one to the airport count?

Ever drink champagne? Yep.

Favorite dinner? This Iranian smorgasbord I had at a restaurant in Pakistan. Spiced mutton, various chops and breads with tons of yogurt sauces....always paid for it the next morning though. Plus, could feed 6 people till they were stuffed for the equivalent of $75 US.

For the relatively few people who know who the hell I am, and who actually live in Europe, I will be in Germany (Oberammergau) March 27th-April 7th on a business trip.

For anyone who might happen to be in the nearby area (Munich is the nearest large city I believe) I would be interested in meeting some fellow Slashdotters.

The Wine logo was chosing as it was the closest alcohol related thing I could find in Journal Topics...since I am going to be in Germany, I am damn well going to be sampling the local beers!! Any recomendations? I have had Grolsch and Deleirum Tremens (sp?) but that is about it.

---Edit 6 March 06---
Now it looks like we might need another person for 2 more trips to Germany. I probably can't make the one after this one becuase of another project I am on, but I MIGHT get the 3-4 week trip at the end of August. That would be sweet, plus it would pay some uber-overtime.

My first attempt at a flamebait/troll posting and I get downmodded!!!!! Go me!!!!!

Post here

It was only an offtopic mod, but hey, one has to start somewhere.

This is truly a moment I shall always be proud of. I would like to thank the following list of people in helping to make this moment happen:

Tsunayoshi
the_mad_poster (Q.E.P.D.)

Good night.