So, this is my first official post using the new iPhone plugin. It was very easy to implement, and I hope to be using it more in the future.
Tracy -
Jalen, Sophia and I would like to invite you to a lovely family evening out for dinner at Joe Pena's. I hope you approve of the Mexican-in-Germany choice for your Birthday Dinner. We want to kick start not only your birth'day', but also your birth'week'.
We love you very much and we're looking forward to a nice evening out.
Love,
Damon, Jalen & Sophia
So, as boredom set in and nothing really planned, Chris, Steve and myself decided to drive down to see what was at the lake. We took the less beaten path for most of the way, so we were able to see some of the countryside. It was taking a bit longer, but we really didn't mind.
The weather was great and the A-class Mercedes was getting us where we wanted to go. I was able to get it up to 180 km/hour on the Autobahn... Nice! (Well, until the steering wheel started shaking a bit.)
Well, we ended up here in Überlingen; a small quaint town right on the lake. We had a nice, quiet time walking around, having a leisurely lunch at a great Greek restaurant and seeing someone drive by in an Audi R8... yes, I salivated.
Überlingen - Seepromenade Boardwalk
Überlingen - Lake Bodensee View from Lunch
Überlingen Landungsplatz
Überlingen - Downtown View
Überlingen - Boardwalk Pier (well, not much of a pier, but this is what they have... Nice view!)
This is a church that we ran across while traveling down to Lake Bodensee for the day. I can't exactly remember, but I believe this was in Haigerloch. I guess I need to get better about posting pics as I take them?
Church in Haigerloch
Castle in Haigerloch
In moving to Germany, I had to make a few changes to abruzere.com. The first major obstacle was to figure out how to continue getting email, web services etc... when my server was to be moved overseas; and keep a .com url. So, I decided to move all Email to Google Apps. I know Google isn't always the best option for things, but I've gotta say, I'm pretty pleased with the services so far.
My biggest concern was that I wanted to access my Email using the combination of Exchange 2007 & Outlook. While I like the control of hosting the email, I certainly don't have the headaches and worries of keeping the server patched, online and services running all the time. It became a real pain in the neck some weeks. The server would be working great for 3 months, then all the sudden, something would crap out or a patch would cause a reboot and some services wouldn't start. Then, there were the occasional DSL outages at my house, even on a business line that I had no control over. Luckily, no mail was lost during that time as I was using DynDNS to hold/forward my email to the server.
So now, I can access my email anywhere and it's hosted by Google. I hate to say that any company really has it figured out, but Google really has it figured out. If you're familiar with Gmail, you know how easy it is to use. With a lot of the new upgrades in the past 1-2 years, accessing your messsages is more secure; notice I said "accessing," not storage. I know they have their complex backend storage of email and it's "supposedly" secure from others, but I'm still very skeptical of having my personal email on a publicly accessible system.
Even with all that, I'm willing to accept the risk. They also offer Google Docs, Calendar & Sites if you want to use them. It makes it nice if I'm at an Internet cafe or something and I need to read a document fast. I'm getting an iPhone here in Germany, so I'm hoping to sync it up with my Google Apps too.
Lastly, I had to move the website that you're reading now. I've had multiple domain names that I've supported over the years and I ended up on MyDomain.com as my Registrar. So, I have a small Linux hosting package that works great if I just want to quickly put a website or something up. Well, "quickly" may not be the right word, but it works. I've found that during the process of migrating to this hosting service, their access times for their shared servers is quite slow. Nonetheless, it works for this blog and our website.
One thing I can say is that compared to working on my Windows Server 2008 Server w/ IIS 7, installing Movable Type for the website was breeze on MyDomain hosting. They had every required piece of software installed without a problem (MySQL 5, PHP, CGI, etc). I can't tell you how many hours I put in to making Movable Type work on my IIS Webserver! And then, once I got it working, 2 days later, it would start throwing errors... I wanted to pull my hair out; if it doesn't fall out earlier.
So, all-in-all, I'm satisfied with how the migrations went. I now have abruzere.com services up and running for those family members that chose to use it.
Well, I'm officially in the land of the Hasselhoff. I'm looking forward to learning more about the people here and the history while I continue my career. I have yet to eat the German food yet, but I was able to find an pizzeria run by a great gentleman who is of Indian decent, grew up in Malaysia & has lived in Germany for years and years. What a way to start the week... and the pizza was pretty good too.
So, I'll keep this updated the best I can throughout the next 36 months. I will also post some pictures as soon as I get my camera out.
There have been a lot of people asking me for this worksheet, but I took my old server down and it hasn't been readily available, so here it is. Just go here to download it.
KEEP PUSHING PLAY!!!
Welcome to my new blog powered by Movable Type. This is the first post on my blog and was created for me automatically when I finished the installation process. But that is ok, because I will soon be creating posts of my own!
Our web site is sporting a new look and feel thanks to Movable Type and the Professional Template Set. The Professional Template Set makes it possible for just about anyone to get up and running with a new web site using Movable Type. It is literally as easy as just a few clicks. Just pick a new for your web site, select the Professional Template Set and publish. Then viola! a new web site. Thank you Movable Type!
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