So … it’s Labor Day and the gas grill is busted. What to do? Fire up the hobo grill, of course! My half-barrel burn barrel came in really handy today. We lit a fire in the barrel and chucked some charcoal on top and grilled our chicken kebabs and sweet corn – old school. This worked so well, that I think we’ll do that again. It takes a while for the fire to burn down, but with a bit of planning – no sweat.  And the kebabs are so much tastier!

What else? Goats, of course! Friday we bought two goats and one of them was a wedding present for our neighbors on Saturday. The goat was a big hit at the wedding. Nick and Emily really liked the goat, and a bunch of the guests came to check out the goat. Both goats were born in March. The brown one March 10 and the the white one March 18. They are real charmers! They are both female goats and they grew up together, so they are buddies. We’ll keep them together, too. Eventually, the plan is for them to live together in one of the old horse shelters on the neighbor’s property.

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The sailing stones of Death Valley were one of natures curious and vexing riddles. How do the stones move to leave their distinctive trails? I wrote about this phenomenon a few years ago. Now I found the answer in this YT video published today:

Germany wins the U20 Women’s Soccer Worldcup!

Deutschland’s U20 Auswahl der Frauen hat in Kanada die Auswahl Nigeria’s knapp besiegt und damit den dritten großen internationalen Titel dieses Jahres für den deutschen Fußball ergattert! Super Leistung!

Today, I cooked my 120th bath of biodiesel. With every batch I convert 50 gallons/200 liters of used fryer oil to fuel for my vehicles. So at this point I have converted roughly 6,000 gallons/24,000 liters of used fryer oil to fuel.

Recently, I have been cooking a lot more frequently – almost every other weekend. My friend Manfred stopped making fuel, so I am getting his oil now as well. I can use it, too, because Laura’s commute to her new job is now much longer. Also, we’ve been taking the horses out pretty frequently, and  since we have to trailer them to Hill Forest or to the park to go riding, that takes fuel, too.

So here’s to non-sequestered carbon! Cheers!

Another Championship! Germany’s U19 Mannschaft is UEFA Champion! They defeated Portugal’s U19 team 1:0 today in Hungary in the final.

Fortsetzung! Die deutsche U19 Nationalmannschaft ist Europameister! Die Jungs haben heute Portugal im Finale in Ungarn 1:0 geschlagen. Ganz tolle Leistung!

Here are some new records and interesting numbers from Germany’s 2014 Worldcup appearance

Germany now has won FOUR Association Football (Soccer) World championships: 1954, 1974, 1990 and 2014
This ties them with Italy and is one less than Brazil.

Germany now has had the most Final appearances (8), most top-three spots (12) and most consecutive top 3 spots (four: 2002 – 2014)

Germany has now played the most Worldcup games (106) and scored the most Worldcup goals (224). Germany has also conceded the most WC goals (121) of any team.

(source: wikipedia)

At the end of the 2014 Worldcup, Germany’s Mannschaft has not only the highest ELO rating of any football World Champion – they have the highest ELO rating of any national soccer team, ever!! (source fivethirtyeight.com)

The Final – Germany vs Argentina – is now a classic. The two sides have now met in the Final three times: 1986 (ARG), 1990 (GER) and 2014 (GER) and a total of 7 times in the Worldcup.

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(SPON)

If you missed any of the games, here are highlight reels of all Germany games and below the fold links to all games of the Worldcup in Brazil.

Falls du ein Spiel verpasst hast, hier sind Links für Highlight Videos der Deutschen Weltmeistermannschaft. Weiter unten sind Links zu den Highlight Videos aller Spiele der WM in Brasilien.

Group stage/Gruppenspiele

• Germany 4–0 Portugal[13]

  Just skip the crap at the beginning | den Unsinn am Anfang am Besten überspringen 

• Germany 2–2 Ghana[29]
• United States 0–1 Germany[45]

Group of 16/Achtelfinale

• Germany 2–1 Algeria[54]

Quarterfinal/Viertelfinale

• France 0–1 Germany[58]

Semifinal/Halbfinale

• Brazil 1–7 Germany[61]

FINALE

• Germany 1–0 Argentina[64]

HT to /u/AnxietyEmerged on Reddit

Se below for all the game highlights.

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What a great Worldcup! And what a fantastic achievement by Jogi Löw and his Mannschaft!

This moment had been 10 years in the making. In 2004, after the German debacle at Euro, former star-striker Jürgen Klinsmann took over from Rudi Völler as team manager. Klinsmann brought in a new assistant coach, Joachim Löw, who had just been fired from his coaching job at Austria Wien. Together, they rebuilt the team and brought in young, talented but inexperienced players. It took some time to turn this team into champions, but their performance was consistently world class: the reached the Worldcup semifinals in 2006 and 2010, the final at Euro 2008 and the semifinal at Euro 2012. But 2014 the time was right and all the hard work of 10 years was rewarded!

Fantastic performance! Tolle Leistung! WELTMEISTERLICH!

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Deutschland ist Weltmeister!!!
★★★★
What a game!

Zum ersten Mal triumphiert ein europäisches Team in der Neuen Welt!

Summer is here and today Laura, Jacob and Julia all embarked on a new adventure. Laura started her new job at Unique Batik, where she will help Sharon grow this great company, and take it to the next level. After her stint in an academic environment at Duke, my dear wife will now foray into the world of enterprise, but also return to her true passion of Fair Trade. Pretty cool!

Julia had her first full day at the NC Governor’s School East at Meredith College in Raleigh. Sunday, we drove her to Meredith College campus in Raleigh and helped her settle into her dorm room. She will stay there for 6 weeks this summer, along with some of the smartest high school kids in the state. They will learn about creative writing, philosophy and citizenship from some of North Carolina’s best teachers. Aaand Jacob started his job today as a camp counselor at SEEDS’ summer camp in Durham. On Thursday he will teach a class on using garden herbs in making bread. He works 8-noon and at lunch he and I will probably be watching Worldcup games at Dain’s Place.

Last week, I retired the last XP machine at work. Today Microsoft retires XP. Rest in Peace.

[Update: interesting story about the iconic XP desktop background “Bliss”]

Today, we bought our third horse. we brought her to our place on Friday and introduced her to our two guys. Her name is R. U . Madison Saint and she is a registered Rocky Mountain Horse.

This is not really a great photo of her – it’s windy and she had just had a roll in the dirt. Behind her are our two Tennessee Walking Horses – our gelding Wally and our mare Cleo.

DEUTSCH: Heute haben wir unser drittes Pferd gekauft. Sie ist eine Rocky Mountain Stute und ihr Name is R. U. Madison Saint.

(DEUTSCH)
And yet another ice storm in March! Yesterday morning everything was coated in ice, yet again, even the poor little daffodils. After it had rained all Monday, temperatures dipped just below freezing Tuesday morning, while it was still raining. It was not as bad as the ice storm on March 4th, but schools closed, yet again. This time there was not too much tree damage and no power outage. It was just annoying.

But this was our second ice storm in March! And after several +70 degree weekends!! The pear trees and the daffodils are blooming. Spring seems to spring, and then it freezes. It’s pretty silly.  Oh well … check out th pictures I took yesterday …

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25 years ago, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. He almost named it the Mesh. Happy Birthday, WWW! Let’s keep the Web free and open!

(DEUTSCH)    This winter has been a bit of a rollercoaster here in Central North Carolina, with temperatures in the 50s and 60s one day and then well below freezing the next. Earlier this week was a good example:

On Sunday, we hit 71°F (21°C) and for the next 40 hours temperatures went straight down. At sunrise on Tuesday, we recorded the lowest temperature at 14°F (-10°C). After that, temperatures went back into the 40s.

Last weekend we saw the first tics and mosquitoes out, too, after we had taken the horses out to Hill Forest. Hopefully, the subsequent chill put a lid on the bugs for a little bit longer.

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Today, on my way to take Julia to school, my 1991 Mercedes 300D completed 300,000 miles (482.803 KM).

Funny – the odometer rolled over at Brightleaf Square, right before the 11foot8 bridge!

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On Feb 12, winter storm Pax dumped a lot of snow on the East Coast of the US. we got 3 inches on Wednesday afternoon between 1:00 PM and 5:00 PM. I made the animation below from the footage recorded by our home security camera:

Click on the image for a larger version (warning: 21MB)

That night, on top of the snow, we also got about a 1/4 inch (6mm) in ice rain, which made for pretty harsh conditions for the animals out in the pasture. The next morning, I got up early and went out to check on the animals and I could not find one of the emus! The horses were OK – they had their blankets on. The other emu was not happy about the snow, and especially not the thick icy crust on top, which made it hard for the bird to walk around. Looking at the tracks in the snow, I was able to tell that the other emu, Sidney, had scooted under the fence in a spot where there was a bit of a dip. So Sidney was on the lam, again.

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© 2006 Jarle Vines, some rights reserved.

Angélique Kpasseloko Hinto Hounsinou Kandjo Manta Zogbin Kidjo – or Angélique Kidjo – is one Africa’s greatest voices and my favorite singer. Last night we had the great fortune to experience her and her band live at Durham’s Hayti Heritage Center. Plus … a guest appearance of none other than Branford Marsalis. Yes, that Branford Marsalis. The jazz giant and greatest living saxophonist.

The Hayti is an old church and a very intimate venue and Angelique and her crew rocked that place solid for 2 hours, non-stop. And toward the end, she invited her old friend Branford on stage. Angelique and Branford go waaaay back – they met in Paris in 1991 when Angelique was recording her album Logozo with Island Records and she met Branford and apparently she told him something along the lines of “I hear you’re a pretty good sax player. I am recording a song tomorrow. I want you to play sax in that song. And if you suck – $^(% you!” Apparently she approved of his sax skills and he liked her attitude and they have been friends ever since.

Toward the end of the set, Angélique invited the audience on stage to dance while the band – and Marsalis – were jamming! So a couple dozen people (incl. Laura and Agbessi) ended up dancing on stage with Angélique, who seemed to really enjoy the mayhem! Great show, and great start for her 2014 U.S tour.

Update: Christiane Amanpour interviews Angélique Kidjo (CNN, Feb 4th, 2014)

Once again our annual quest for our favorite beer was successful (and chilly). After a late night drive to Winston Salem, Manfred and I had or first taste of this year’s incarnation of Foothills Brewing’s Sexual Chocolate Stout at the brewery. Then we camped out in sub-freezing temperatures on the sidewalk with a hundred or so fellow footheads in anticipation of the bottle release on Saturday at 10:00 AM. It was quieter than the previous years, and so I actually got 3 or 4 hours of sleep.

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Emus don’t like the snow. A few cold nights are no problem for them. They keep warm by huddling in a sheltered spot, tucking their feet under their plumage. But when snow is on the ground and it’s hard for them to find a dry spot where they can sit to stay warm, they just stand there shivering. I tried to convince them to stay in the shelter, but to no avail. At least after a few hours of sunshine, the snow is gone from same areas, so they should be able to find a dry spot tonight. Which they will need, as temperatures are supposed to drop to 13°F.

Die Emus mögen den Schnee gar nicht. Ein paar kalte Nächte sind kein großes Problem für die beiden, da sie sich hinlegen und die Füße unter dem Gefieder warmhalten können. Aber wenn es schneit und kein trockenes Plätzchen zu finden ist wo sie sich warmhalten können, stehen sie nur zitternd da. Dabei haben wir ja sogar eine überdachte Stallung wo sie sitzen könnten. Aber dieses Konzept verstehen sie nicht richtig. Wenigstens schien heute die Sonne eine ganze Weile, und jetzt ist der Schnee teilweise schon weggetaut. Also können die beiden Heute Nacht ein trockenes Pläzchen finden um sich warm zuhalten. Sie werden es brauchen, denn die Temperaturen sollen auf -11°C fallen.

More Photos below /  Mehr Bilder unten

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