Archive for March, 2012

Spring morning

Wednesday, March 28th, 2012

Spring is in full swing this morning. It’s warm and a bit breezy, and the forest is bursting back to life. Noch ein paar Fruhlingsbilder hier …

Wahnsinn im März

Friday, March 23rd, 2012

März ist Ausnahmezustand hier in NCAA Country – March Madness steckt alle hier an. Besonders hier in North Carolina, wo wir dieses Jahr 4 Basketball teams in der nationalen Hochschulmeisterschaft hatten. Vor ein paar Minuten hat es UNC  in das regionale Endspiel geschafft. Das heisst das Team ist eins von 8 Teams die noch von […]

Germany’s new President elected

Sunday, March 18th, 2012

Today, Joachim Gauck was elected the 11th President of the Federal Republic of Germany. The non-partisan consensus candidate of the five mainstream parties (SPD, Green Party, CDU, CSU and FDP) was elected by a majority of 991 votes out of 1228 votes cast in the Federal Convention. In the previous Federal Convention in 2010, Joachim […]

1998 Dodge RAM 2500 starter rebuild

Tuesday, March 13th, 2012

Last week the starter on my truck died. I had had some problems starting the truck, but I blamed the old batteries. I installed new(er) batteries, and all seemed fine. Until last week. The starter was dead – not even a “click” – nothing. I was just lucky that we made it home. At the […]

The Gulf War

Thursday, March 8th, 2012

Raffi Khatchadourian’s in-depth account of the BP DeepWater Horizon oil spill cleanup effort provides an interesting perspective on one of the largest responses ever mounted to a man-made environmental disaster. He uses many war analogies and the whole story has a bit of an “embedded reporter” feel to it. It’s a very sincere account of […]

Welding flash burn

Thursday, March 1st, 2012

I am taking welding lessons Wednesday nights at the local Community College, and so I spent three hours last night welding with a stick welder. At 2 AM, I woke up and I felt like my eyes had burning sand in them. That condition is called flash burn, or arc eye, and it is essentially […]