Tampering

A few days back I tampered with some of the setting for this blog. Let me know if something is broken. It should now be easier to submit comments; you are no longer required to be registered. That should raise the number of comments dramatically, from one to whatever, as long as I have something meaningful to write about.

The trip to San Diego draws closer and the preparations should be on the way. I still need to get a physical (related to a new insurance, not to the trip) before the trip. There's packing to do (what to wear and what to read?), a taxi to call and so on.

There's a kitchen guy putting the last touches to our kitchen now. He had to make a cupboard slightly thinner, which he's done in his workshop, and he's brought a pre-prepared masking plate, which unluckily was just a little too wide. He's also going to set up a shelf, which Virpi has been missing for months now. Last time he was here was end of November, so it was about time to get the job done.

I've been systematically going through my CD collection and ripping as many of them as I've been able. So far four CD's have been refused to be read by my iBook G4 - called QualiBook, of course - out of a few hundred. There are currently about 3400 songs on my harddisk and I'm in the letter M, going backwards. Let's see if everything fits. This is packing, too!

It makes sense to rip everything, because nowadays we play the music solely randomly, through the stereo speakers, surely but without using the CD's in the process. This is enabled by the AirPort Express, WLAN device, which lets me stream iTunes wirelessly to it. And now that it is connected to the stereo and another one is connected to another set of speakers in the working corner and now that I bought a small application called Airfoil, I can stream any audio from QualiBook to either or both of the speakers. There is a slight delay between the speakers, which makes standing between the living room and the working corner a strange experience when both sets of speakers are blaring. But this kind of 'central radio' will be a hit in parties, I'm sure.

Busy as a bee

Today was a busy day. I'm all out of steam. Luckily, it's almost weekend.

We went grocery shopping early today because then the shop's are not so crowded. We always try to buy for a whole week. It's a lot of carrying, takes certainly some planning from Virpi, but it is definitely worth it if we only need to go there only once a week. On arrival I checked the post but didn't find anything from the tax office (Finanzamt). I need to get a tax number urgently.

Our counselor arrived to explain accounting basics and some other office stuff to Virpi so I suddenly noticed that I wasn't needed. I decided to use the time for good and went out on business. I headed to the tax office with the intention of getting the tax number in person. I knew that the office closes at noon (and it was almost 2pm) but I tried my luck. I didn't get quite far enough before I was stopped by a stern gentleman who explained that nobody there would be able to help me. That I would have to come back tomorrow morning. He gave me a secret envelope addressed to "Für ihre Unternehmensgründung" ("For your company founding").

I continued to the business where I want my training material printed and laminated. I gave them my pdf-files (five of them) and naturally forgot the memory stick. Well, I'll just have to remember to get it back. Otherwise Mistick will be lost. There were some problems with the printing and the size of the cards and the fact that they have color all the way around. And I had to agree to cut the laminated cards to shape myself. Cutting a thousand cards will be a lot of work, but it needs to get done. I'm guessing next Thursday will be a day on the cutting edge of technology...

Next, I went to the Gravis Store that sells Mac software. I wanted to get an accounting software and I had seen advertisements for MacKonto X. The clerk in the store didn't know anything about accounting software and admitted it right off the bat. I asked for a certain interface good accounting software has and we went on the internet to search for it. Googling a bit brought up a forum where the people were deprecating MacKonto X and recommending Monkey Bilanz Kasse, which is a freeware application. So I didn't buy anything from the store. Instead I returned home and downloaded the freeware tool for Virpi.

The rest of the evening was used learning to use Pages (the text processing for Mac in the iWork package) and writing offer templates in Finnish, English and German.

Tomorrow, I need to get my tax number, get some cash for the printer, change my PIN code on my new bank card, close a couple of insurances and maybe have a beer at Mandra. Stefan, are you coming?

Business in Chinatown

Met with some old colleagues yesterday evening and on the agenda was playing board games. We started with a few (too) quick rounds of "Reaction", which proved not to be my game. And it is tough on the cards, too.

The second game was more strategic, called "Taj Mahal", which was excellent but would take more practice to win. After dinner, we decided to take one more quick game and we chose "Chinatown", which is a trading game. The game had six rounds and it was said that the trading is freeform and the heart of the whole game, and that it can take up to ten minutes per round. Ten minutes, my behind! We started the game half past nine and finished half past midnight! It took us three hours to trade businesses in Chinatown. It was fun, though.

I had to make some devious trades to get my two Hop Sing's Restaurants started in addition to my complete Antiques dealer and the maximum-sized Watchmakers business with six plates and the maximum income of 14000$. I was clearly making the most money in the end, but the deals I made were very expensive and I was left third of four players.


Here's our gaming group: me, Markus, Laurent (always with a glass), Julien and Frank.

The training materials are all but ready. They just need to be updated, the design needs to be polished, the layout finished and then the cards need to be printed and laminated. That's all there is to do.

Tomorrow, we focus on accounting basics with our business counselor (Unternehmensberaterin), and on Friday we close a couple of missing insurances for the business.

Barely over a week left to my first trip America!

Skating on the Balcony

This morning the puddle in the balcony was frozen. The cold weather from Russia, Finland and Scandinavia seems to have reached Bochum. Germany is in a state of shock as Berlin freezes with -15 degrees centigrade. We snigger at all the commotion. One reporter on TV was so excited that he measured people's face temperatures to point out that it is cold. At least he couldn't show that the skin would be any colder than the air was. But he seemed genuinely agitated.

The puddle in the balcony was a bigger one yesterday. I had to throw litres and litres of water overboard to keep it from coming into our living room. Somebody should be coming soon, with a drill.

We had some words with Mr. Uhe whose company took care of moving us. Some glasses bought in Cologne had been broken and we wanted to say that. Mr. Uhe was kind enough to just say "buy new ones and we'll pay for them". We told him that it would be more expensive than he thinks. If we are going to buy special glasses in the cellar brewery restaurant Früh, we must take the train or stay in a hotel. It would not be right to just eat in a brewery restaurant...

I went and bought a second Airport Express box, which allows me to stream my iTunes music wirelessly to my stereo speakers in the living room. The setup was simple as the first time and it started to work fine immediately. It is small enough to be taken on a trip to allow for a wireless internet access in a hotel room. Maybe that's a useful feature, I'll have to test it.

I finally figured out what was wrong with our telephone (the fax is still silent). It was a kind of contact problem with one of the connectors. It was a relief to find a reason and see a change caused by a repair. Cause and effect. Because last time the phone just fixed itself and I couldn't figure out what had changed. But now it works and for a reason.

Tomorrow I have an early appointment with my job counselor (Arbeitsvermittler). I'm applying for financial support on starting a self-employed existence. Wish me luck. Also on the agenda there's an appointment with my financial advisor (like I need one), a possible lunch with Yrjö and a board gaming evening in Herten. I get to meet some old colleagues, I haven't seen for weeks. It will surely be fun.

An Anniversary of sorts

It was exactly one year ago that I started to realistically dream about becoming self-employed. I still remember how I wrote an email to Holger who I though would know all about self-employment in Germany. Well, it turned out that his wife Dörte (pronounced "dirty") knew even more. She wrote a long email as reply and I tried my best to understand the German terms and conditions.
I drew a mind map combining the information on the email with what little knowledge I had at the time. Here's the mind map, I've kept it. I like to store things, I have a hard time throwing anything away. Well, not anything, but things and papers that might come in handy one day. Those I won't easily part with.


The mind map was a basis for our further discussion over a few beers. I don't remember too much from that meeting, but luckily Holger was making notes. Right from the beginning we talked about the possibility of becoming a freelancer (Freiberufler) but the other forms of enterprises were also considered during the past year. However, it seems to be simplest to start as a freelancer and see how everything goes and adapt accordingly. The long-term vision is to have a real company with skilled trainers presenting the course I'm doing right now.

The half-serious joke about getting rich, I invented about a year ago goes like this: "The further you are from actual work, the more money you make. You won't get rich by working. If you teach how to work, you're already better off. But if you train people who train other people how to work better, you have it really good. Imagine if you owned a company that has trainers who train people who train other people how to work better...That's my goal!"

I remember talking with Theo, who still owned his own Internet service provider company at the time. He gave me good advice on tax issues, although I haven't been able to use any of it yet. The tax issues will become actual pretty soon, though. I hope I remember Theo's and Nicki's advice.

"The road seems to know when straighten right out" sings Mary Chapin Carpenter, who has been my new favorite singer along with Billy Joel last year. Both of them have been around for ages, but I found them only recently. Great songs, magnificent lyrics. Music and especially music that lifts me up and makes me think is extremely important to me. I like song lyrics that express nuances with so little effort. One line speaks volumes in the best case.

Dominik, who was a contractor at Nokia and one of the two guys who were needed to replace Jem. Jem was a 55-year old contractor, who didn't return from his summer holiday in England. He had died quite suddenly. This was already in 2004, so I must be over it already. Or was it 2003? You see that my head is not for remembering timelines or old memories, it is hopefully focused on always learning new things. Anyway, Dominik has been a contractor for a long time and he also runs an internet grocery store with his wife. He had some good advice to give.

The other guy who replaced Jem for a while, before quitting Nokia and finding a more challenging job, was Antek. Antek is real cosmopolitan, he had ties to at least Poland, Denmark and the Netherlands. He had worked everywhere and to me who has had exactly two employers, his cv looked confusingly long. I didn't know what to think about him, did he have concentration or commitment problems, or did he just know himself really well? I've often thought that "things are not ok, I wonder if I should do something about it", only to notice that I haven't done anything. Sometimes time fixes things. And sometimes it is time to fix things.

In early 2005 I knew it was time to fix the situation. By August, Nokia had graciously arranged an outplacement coaching, which I selfishly abused to get to know myself better (I completed a few psychological tests, which don't normally belong to the coaching) and to write my cv properly. Dr. Hollmann was a great help, who supported me in getting ready for the first big deadline, the conference on my last working week. I still have to smile when I think how I left Nokia. On the last week of September, my last working week at Nokia, I took my last week of holiday and went to a software quality conference. Software quality, which would have fit perfectly with my job description. Software quality, which is also my future. I went to the conference on my own cost, because I knew nobody in their right mind would have paid me for it if I couldn't even report the results back. I didn't even ask, maybe I should have ;-)

And what did I do on the week before the conference? I went to Southwood, UK to train people. Many people said that had they known that their employment would end at the end of the month, they wouldn't have done anything beyond the mandatory. I, however, saw it as an opportunity to build critical mass inside the company. Mass, which could become handy in the future. And now it has. I have high hopes that it still will. The 200 or so people that I have personally trained are a large body of evidence for the quality of my training and the method i teach.

In the early fall, I hired an enterprise advisor (Unternehmensberaterin) to help with the details of founding a self-employed existence. She has been a huge help. She is probably the only reason I didn't get a three-month waiting period for my unemployment benefits, which would have delayed my founding a few months. There has been many things to organize for me but without Mrs. Jünkering I couldn't have done it.

I said to myself a year ago that if I manage to start a company in Germany, I can be proud. There is so much to go through and most of it in a foreign language, even. Now I'm really close to this goal and I am proud. But the challenges never end. "There's always one more thing to do" and "That golden bridge is just around the bend" sings Chris Rea in "That's What They Always Say" and he's nailed it.

One of the people who affected my decision positively is my father, whose becoming an entrepreneur has given my the courage to try it myself. Although nobody knows what my father really does, he must be doing ok. He's been doing it for some years now.

Here's another mind map showing my capabilities. I haven't totally forgotten my dreams about becoming a Seven-Habits trainer but it seems to be out of focus at the moment. But that seems appealing to me. I'm sure I would learn useful things myself. Maybe there's a hole in my logic currently. I'm teaching and therefore I learn. But if I'm teaching code inspection and not programming myself, how are the things I learn going to be useful and therefore interesting for me? I'm sure they help me in becoming a better trainer, which should be enough. Huh, no hole in logic found!


Here's one of the first drafts of a flow chart made for a flyer in the conference:


Then I drew it with Visio to be readable:


After which it was printed on our first official flyer.

This last year has made a dream reality for me. It's a powerful force, setting goals.

Friday Freedom

Took care of some official business today. Visited the Tax Office (Finanzamt), officially announcing my freelancer status. Went to the Unemployment Office (Agentur für Arbeit) and got an appointment for next week.
Finished the content of the four Tick-Its, I'm taking with me to San Diego. Now they need a nice graphic design and there is somebody on it, I hope. There's a fifth card I want to implement, too, but that has to wait until tomorrow. A condensed keyword-based list of the "Tick-The-Code" inspection method will make for a nice reminder for all the participants.

Our insurance expert, Mr. Pester, visited us with a few offers on the professional disability insurance (Berufsunfähigkeitsversicherung) and the legal protection insurance (?) (Rechtsschutzversicherung). We also fixed the sickness daily allowance (Krankentagegeld), which needed to be changed because I'm not employed anymore.

The first thing I noticed this morning when I switched on my mobile phone (YES, you can switch the mobile phone OFF for the night so it doesn't bother you!) was that Kaj had called me 7:52AM. This was strange as he doesn't normally call me and that is either very early for a Friday or very late for a Thursday even for him. The mystery was revealed later, when he let me know per text message that his phone had been calling other people too in his pocket all by itself. He said that "maybe it was feeling lonely..." Nicely put.

Yesterday, we bought Deadwood, the complete first season on DVD. We found a DVD in Germany with Finnish subtitles! The miracles never cease! We watched the first episode in the evening and it was fast-paced and a bit confusing. Virpi said that all the men had moustaches and hats and you couldn't tell them apart and that she couldn't really know what was going on. I like to think that she was just too tired and that the series will grab her too, eventually. I liked it, Lovejoy as a grim saloon owner in a "camp" with no law!

Oh, yeah, the TV shows no picture anymore. The storm must have broken our antenna. And the terrace is flooding with water because the drainage is just a small hole with no piping in the middle of the terrace. Or it would be flooding if we hadn't put the marquee down. Now that it is down, it is breaking in the wind. What should we do? The guy who built the terrace and forgot the piping promised to come and see it on Monday or Tuesday. Well, it is Friday and we haven't seen or heard from him yet. Shows that he's a good promiser. Unfortunately, he's not at all good at keeping promises.

This week

Monday was busy as always. There is something wrong with my weekly planning. I seem to plan all my tasks for Monday and then not get them all done and they slowly get delayed to the next day and the one after that until on Friday I'm feverishly trying to get something ready this week.

On Monday we wanted to open a business account at the bank. They had confusingly many alternatives so we had to leave that for a while. We met with our financial advisor, who wants us to give him a few of our friends' names as reference so he can try and sell them his advice. Unfortunately, I don't like the whole idea of "ratting out" my friends and so far I haven't been able to find any volunteers. It bothers me somewhat. So if anyone of you readers in Germany (around Bochum) is interested in good advice in financial matters, let me know. Mr Neumann analysed our finances and suggested a few improvements following our wishes in where we want to focus and all in all the experience has been a positive one.

My first customer has been confirmed. I'm flying to San Diego, California and I'm going to train "Tick-The-Code" inspection method for about 100 people! Officially my independence begins 01-Feb-06 and the Transatlantic flight takes place on Friday 03-Feb-06! Quite a beginning!

In the evening, Theo held a kegeling party because of his 44th birthday. "Kegeling" is German bowling. The idea is similar but it's completely different. The party was in a Greek restaurant called Troja, which meant that Ouzo was flowing (on the house). Once again something you can't have in Finland. Alcohol for free. The party was fun and I enjoyed practicing my kegeling skills late into the night. I still can't quite get the curve to the right.

On Tuesday, Mr. Pester, our insurance guy, came an hour too late for a visit by mistake. We waited and when he didn't show took advantage of the situation and moved some stuff to clear the chaos. We also started to put shelves on the new massive book shelf, which Kaj helped me to build on Monday. When Mr. Pester finally arrived, we just agreed a new date for Friday and sent him on his way. Well, he did get a glass of water for his troubles. These things happen.

In the evening, we (I, Virpi and Kaj) went to see the original film in RuhrPark, as we do Tuesdays. Tuesday is Kinotag, which means that there are not too many people there and the films are a bit cheaper than otherwise. This time we saw "Family Stone", which was more emotionally charged than expected. Not great cinema, but watchable.

Yesterday was a full working day. Virpi typed in the rules I've been developing for training material. They still need to be divided into cards ("Tick-its") after which a design can be added to the cards. Then they will be printed and laminated. I'm really excited about the cards, they will be great!

We still need to open a business account at the bank. For international access and based on experience, we are selecting Deutsche Bank. We are actually leaving right now. After the bank, we'll pop in to our car insurance company HUK Coburg, which we for some reason keep mixing with Burger King, don't know why. Then the plan is to drive to Düsseldorf and select Finland a new president!

Sunday

Built a desk, played Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan online and skyped with my brother and sister in Finland, watched an episode of Friends, That 70's Show, and Sex and the City, practised playing the guitar and skyped for the first time with a family in San Francisco, who used to live here in Bochum.

It was a very good day.

Progress?

I finally decided to order the iWork software package from Apple. It contains two applications, Pages for text processing and Keynote for presentations. So I ordered iWork '05 and it arrived promptly the next day. First I was confused about the language version, because they of course delivered the German version. Luckily, like most Mac applications, the software is multilingual, it's only the manual that is in German.

So, on the day the package arrived, I happened to go to the Apple Store and what do I notice? They have started to sell iWork '06 and it costs exactly the same amount as iWork '05 did! I haven't opened the package yet, and I'm seriously considering exchanging the software for a newer. There is a three week waiting period but still. How do I feel like I just bought a whole load of milk gone sour? In principle and practically the software hasn't changed. How come I don't feel good about it? I would have felt just fine had I bought the package a year ago.

Strange phenomenon that, progress.

Playing online and blogging in parallel

Let's see how this goes. I'm playing online board games at Brettspielwelt and writing this entry at the same time, between turns. Currently we are playing "Einfach Genial". We are aantsu from Tampere and lompsa from Lahti, both in Finland. I beat both guys two times in Carcassonne.

We'll have another game session tomorrow. This is a very social event especially with Skype for communication.

This is not going well, I'm going to lose this game!
I better stop blogging.

Have a nice housewarning party, Klaus and Melanie!

Slightly improved look

How do you like the new look?
There's even an RSS and Atom feed available. See the link on the sidebar.

The furniture building has been shifted at least to Saturday. My nostrils are burning. I guess it's only a simple cold but breathing through the nose is all but impossible. Has been for a couple of days.

I got two helpful hints to my fax problem. One said that I'd need an ADSL filter and another that I don't. Reminds me somehow of the saying "between the devil and the deep blue sea", which is a song by Chris Rea, too. Which brings me to the excellent blues CD's "Blue Guitars" that I've been listening to. One of my favorites in all its grittyness is the "KKK Blues". Currently playing is "Blind Willie".

Faxing problems

Yesterday, we received a card from a Hofbräuhaus restaurant. You might remember that in September 2005, we visited the brewery restaurant Hofbräuhaus in Munich. This time the restaurant was in Las Vegas and the visitors were our friends. The card conveyed a very similar atmosphere as in the original restaurant. I wonder if the beer in the USA is really like having sex in a canoe. Any comments, Marko?

I seem to have caught the cold Virpi was suffering from last week. Or it's another one. No matter, it still makes me weak and stay inside. It's a good thing also, now I can try and work on renewing my training material. The new tickets will be really cool, even if I say so myself!

I've been trying to get a fax machine to work. Unfortunately, all I seem to have accomplished so far is that our telephone doesn't work anymore. Neither does the fax, although that's more difficult to test. I've checked the HP web pages for advice, read through countless fora and tried in practice several ways of cabling. I'm now at a loss. If anybody of you readers has any good advice on how to connect an HP 2210 All-In-One fax machine to a telephone line that already has both ISDN and ADSL modems on it, I'd really appreciate it. I know that my iMac could receive and send faxes, but it would need a modem for that and the modem needs to be connected to a phone line. This seems to be a little too confusing for me. It might be that I need to buy an ADSL filter to filter out part of the digital signal, but I've never seen such a device.

Help me, please!

Tomorrow, I'll tell you how constructing the book case and the two desks went.

Furniture hunting

Today we were hunting for furniture. We started with a wholesome breakfast in a furniture store in Bochum, checked their lousy collection and continued to Ikea in Dortmund. After spending several hours there we had bought about 28 metres of shelf space for books and two desks for the office. Virpi couldn't resist the call of many small items in the downstairs department and now I'm wondering how many rooms in this apartment really need a waste basket...

We were cheated a bit before Christmas. The only cinema here that plays original films announced that they will have King Kong as original version for several weeks. That was the reason we didn't go and see the new film in Finland. And now we find out that the King Kong they are playing is the 1930s version! What a crock!

Instead, we stayed at home and watched "Saw" on DVD. It's not quite Se7en but it's not bad, either. Recommended.

These days, I'm listening more and more to the new blues of Chris Rea. He's composed over 130 new songs in about 18 months, all blues but in different styles of blues. It's like a whole alternate career for him. 11 CDs and a DVD inside a coffee table book illustrated with his own guitar paintings. "Blue Guitars" it's called.

Tropical dreams

We just noticed that we can lie under a palm tree and look at the moon.

This is a GREAT apartment!

Oriental adventures in Bochum

I simply must tell you what happened yesterday.

My friend Yrjö called me yesterday and we agreed to meet in an Indian restaurant called "Taj Mahal". The call ended by Yrjö promising to "try and reserve a table". And that's how we left it.

"I'm already late", I'm thinking as I walk towards the infamous Bermuda Dreieck. I've never been to Taj Mahal so I waste a few minutes finding it. I finally notice that it is on the second floor above two other restaurants. I can't see a door, I'm wondering if I need to go through one of the street-level restaurants. And if so, which one.

Finally, I notice a door that reads "Taj Mahal". There's a woman taping a note on the glass door. I'm not interested in the note, because it says something about "Freitag" and it isn't Friday today. She lets me open the door and I walk up the stairs. She follows me without a word and I let her in the door upstairs. I also enter the restaurant.

In the small restaurant there are half a dozen, mostly empty tables. One table is full of Indian people, adults and children. They all turn to look at me quite surprised. Well, I've been to a restaurant before, I'm not embarrased or anything. "I'll just find the table where Yrjö and Petra surely already are sitting", I think. "Maybe behind that corner? No, there are no more tables there. Hmm?" An Indian DJ is playing some music in the corner, there's a bartender behind the bar. Strangely, nobody is talking to me and helping me to get to a table, as you'd expect in a restaurant.

The bartender finally says "Hallo" and I tell him that I'm looking for a reserved table. "Oh, no", he says, "we haven't taken any calls at all today, as this is a private party." "Oops", I think and try to explain that I didn't want to disturb. Then I decide to retreat quietly. On the way out it strikes me that today IS Friday, and the note on the door must have meant today.

Okay, I'll call Yrjö and find out where they are. It is five minutes past our agreed meeting time. I call Yrjö from the second floor, but get only his answering machine. Just as I'm thinking how angry a message I should leave, I start to walk down the stairs and notice Yrjö outside the door with a mobile phone to his ear. I hang up, and go greet him with sarcastic comments about communication skills and how you know real friends.

Apparently, Yrjö had failed to reach anybody in the restaurant, but had not notified me. Understandable, maybe he wanted to catch me before I went in. Only two minutes separated us, I guess. We decide to instead go to the other side of the city, to a Thai restaurant and the rest of the evening turned out to be really funny and amusing.

Of course, we end up in Mandragora.

I'm sure I'll be able to report more embarrasing situations I end up in in the future.

A new year, after all

Hi, here I am again.
I didn't manage to post anything after Christmas. Many things happened, but internet connection was not one of those. I really have to figure out a way to stay connected wherever I am. Well, live and learn.

We had a nice Christmas, spent some time with good friends, saw Pelicans of Lahti beat Kalpa of Kuopio in ice hockey, and finally moved to Helsinki, Käpylä for the New Year. I have to say that we received all through the trip excellent food and were treated very kindly. But the reception in Käpylä was extraordinary. Even as we stayed there for several days just to be served, the food was excellent. It was delicious and had clearly taken a lot of planning. I hope we expressed our gratitude well enough.

Here's the front porch of the house in wood-Käpylä. I really like how the colours turned up here.


This is probably the most delicious dessert ever. It was some kind of warm chocolate muffin with ice cream. Mmmm.


Here's a small history lesson. Finland has been a part of Russia and a part of Sweden. Here's evidence of that. As a matter of fact, the streets in Helsinki started getting their names in the Russian period and first they only got Russian names. Later the names were also given in Swedish. The Finnish names came last. Nowadays, Finnish and Swedish are the official languages of Finland.


Thank you to everybody, who sent us a Christmas card, there were lots of them. Thank you.