chattius

Just got pre-warning orange for tomorrow and pre-warning red for friday on my phone from firefighter central. Warm rain clouds coming next days. Temperature should climb from -10 celcius to +10 in just a day. Living in germany's mid mountain range: the clouds will let go a lot of rain when climbing up to pass the mountains. So rain and melting snow may cause severe river flooding in valleys. Luckily home and work are close to hill tops, but I fear we will be called out to pump water from cellars of people from valleys at weekend. Think I posted some weeks ago that this is what troubles me most at snow in my area: if it is ended suddenly by warm rain. Not so funny ending of winterbreaks for kids.

Think it fits here: I got 3 more 'Holzbücher' as X-mass gift (from oldest daughter, daughter of my sister and wife of my little brother, the 3 worked together to do them), now it are 218 books created while the last 100+ years. Holzbücher translate as wooden books. It is a book from wood and each one holds a collection of pieces from a certain tree or bush. As kids our grandpa taught us how to do them, they demand a lot of time. When becoming 16 each member of the family created a book and added it to the family collection. My family were woodworkers and the wooden books were used as teaching material, rememberance of family members (a picture of the creator is included), ... The books cover a whole wall in the old 'Schreibraum' (writing room/office) of the house. It was the room were sales and orders were discussed and sealed with a drink. Having an open oven and old hunting trophies covering the walls it is now more a family museum room. When relatives are visiting they always look at the book they did and show it to their kids, husbands, ... Picture of a part of the famous work of Schildbach who did more than 500 books from different trees. The Schildbach collection is now at a museum in Kassel/Hessen/Germany: A book holds leaves, discs from trunk, blossoms, fruits, seed, piece from bark, a piece of charcoal from the tree, .... And in our family a picture of the person who did it. You start in spring with collecting tree parts and collect till autumn and then you have to craft the book in a nearly air tight way. The class of our second daughter was visiting our collection and the female teacher asked if the books were hard to do. She planed to have each kid of her class (and coming classes, she is only 31) doing such a book before leaving school and so build up a nice school Xylotheque. Xylotheque is not the real fitting word (collection of wood). What we have and she is planing is more a bibleotheque of wood books, but could be named xylotheque in a broader meaning. Also she will do pictures of the kids on the books, so she and others can remember the old classmates.

Does Australia have a system of dams, leveesm, dikes, flut walls, ... ? Or is the country to young for such a work? Imaginating that the flood walls/dams in europe developed over more than 1000 years, they are a generation work. And the flooded area in australia is like france and germany together. So its not like we know in europe trying to keep flood walls/dams intact. Something were army, citizens, firefighters build long lines of sandbags and stuff like this to fortify existing dams. And there are no australian documents reaching back for hundreds of years how much rain/flood had appeared in different years. In 1362 germany suffered from the "Grosse Manntränke" = great drowning of men, when high storm tide, summed up with a cyclone and an inland rivers flood from lot of rain. Estimations are 25000-100000 people drown. Same area today would be millions. For the coming centuries Deichgrafen (translates dike earls) had command over the dams, What I know from smaller local floodings: even if you can save the farm animals, most stray and hay is wasted and you have to slaughter the animals because you can't feed them.

The main traffic jams in my area are when netherlands have winter or summer breaks. Then I wish that germany would do street taxes for highways like in france, austria, ... And a speed limit, since our oldtimer van isn't fast anyway. So that people do the shorter trip via france to south europe. But with france having speed limit and street taxes most drive via germany even if it is longer distance, but driving time is shorter. But it are just the weekends when breaks start when I have this feelings and I avoid autobahns at these weekends. As for car signs: German car signs are: 1-3 characters for district, a '-' and then 1-2 characters followed by 1-4 digits. So it is a bit hard to do combinations. GI = district and town of Giessen. But people outside Giessen read it as GummiInsel (rubber island). The Gummiinsel is a river island in Giessen which had a rubber factory. People on this island are among the last people who speak manisch , a sort of robber language. WZ = district of my birthtown WetZlar. The district had a lot of roads through forests which didn't allow to see what is behind the next curve. People living there knew the streets and were driving fast, so people from outside read WZ as wild zone. LDK = at a district reforming Wetzlar, Dillenburg formed a new discrict named after the main rivers: Lahn Dill Kreis. Kreis = district. People living in th district read LDK as Land der Könige (land of the kings) while people from outside read it as Lauter Dummköpfe (all fool heads) WW = Westerwald district = Wilde Wätz = wild horde VB = VogelsBerg (bird mountains vulcano area) = Vorsicht Bauern = caution farmers. Vulcanic soil made a lot of farms. F = Frankfurt at river Main: F is read as Führerschein = driving license OF = Offenbach, a neighbour town of Frankfurt and old rivals: Frankfurts read OF as Ohne Führerschein = without driving license ... So one of the games we do with kids in the car is doing funny nicks for the different districts.

Correct. Eins Zwei Drei, One two Three

A little tipp: It was Cagneys last real movie. It plays in Berlin before the wall, but the wall was build while the filming. That made the movie flop at cinema's. A comedy about capitalism and communism and then the wall was build. German's didn't like it at this time because of the wall, americans didn't like it because it was a time when all communism was bad and capitalism good by definition, communists didn't like it because an ultra communist turns into an ultra capitalist in days, ... The movie became popular in germany after re-union. More time distance to the early sixties, new generation had no longer experience with the Nazi's, Hoover no longer doing a communist hunt in USA,... So 30 years later people could enjoy the movie as what it is: A great satiric comedy and a big collection of eastereggs from other movies. The actress on the picture is the swiss Liselotte 'Lilo' Pulver. She played in a lot of mainly german comedies and a TV series of kids. Her first international movie was: A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958). A movie based on a story from Erich Maria Remarque (Im Westen nichts Neues = All Quiet on the Western Front, Der Funke Leben = The Spark of Life...). We had to read 'The Spark of Life' when we were 16 at school. It is settled in a concentration camp and the hero is trying to survive. The movie is on my Top10 of the FECAL MATTER! happens list: David Haselhoff doing a pay TV concert at his own financial risc, and the very same moment the concert starts O J Simpson flees from the police and whole america is watching the hunt. A local band Juli doing a fantastic song 'Die perfekte Welle' about love coming to you as the perfect wave to surf on, and when 3 weeks at number one the Tsunami in Indonesia killed millions and no radio station played the song anymore. The above movie which flopped because of the building of the Berlin Wall. ...

Hard: My wife says 'Ein Mann wie Sprengstoff' with Gary Cooper about an architect. English: The Fountainhead ? Hard: An easy one for germans, a bit harder for others. One of the best comedies and satirics ever. Sadly the movie was banned from cinema's for 20 years because of an political event which happened shortly after the movie was done. Noe it is run a lot at german re-union day in TV.

This year we decided to do Silvester (that's how we call New Year's Eve) with volunteer firefighters. Ice rain is predicted so we build a big 200 people tent on a hill close to a crossing between villages. So we could reach everything in case of emergency. All cars and recovery gear is placed close to it. We do a party with families and hope nothing will happen. Floodlights so kids can do skiing on the hill till midnight. The adults prepare some grilling/barbescue on fireplaces in the snow: Spanferkel= suckling pigs. Mulled wine Feuerzangenbowle: Bleigiessen = lead oracle? You melt small lead icones (traditional ones which stay for luck) in a spoon over a torch and drop the lead in a water container. Then you interpret the shapes of the hardened lead to know what the new year will bring to you. Fireworks, firecrackers In the village of my parents every family bought them. At midnight they left houses and fired them and everyone wished each other a happy new year. We at firefighters bought like 100 rockets. No house cleaning An old tradition delivered from the family of one of my grandmothers: Cleaning the house between x-mas and new year will give bad pain in the back for the whole year. We don't really believe that this is true, but this week is spend with kids for fun and not for a frustrating house cleaning. House cleaning is done at the weekend following the holy 3 kings day. Then the x-mas tree is removed and all the other orbnaments. This will give a lot of tree needles spread in the house so cleaning has to be done anyway. I wish you all a happy new year, or as we say: Einen guten Rutsch und ein frohes neues Jahr.

Additional damage by life leech on consoles is like 2.34 on PC. It is divided by 1000 and rounded down. PC 2.34 0-999 life leech damage= no message shown 1000-1999: Extraschaden 1= additional damage 1 2000-2999: additional damage 2 3000-3999: 3 ... It is damage and healing. And it can be reflected. So a 3% hit on a reflector would be 9000 damage on a 300000hp beast. Reflected it would heal the beast for 9000 and you would receive the 9000 damage. The leech is allways from the current (not initial) maximum hitpoints of the target. (Someone with better english fix this in wiki). 3% leech from 300000 health from 300000 max: 9000 additional damage 3% leech from 150000 health from 300000 max: 9000 additional damage 3% leech from a 20% weakened initial 300000hp beast: 240000 current max hitpoints (weakening) so only 7200 additional damage. If you mix life leech weapon hits with stat reducing spells, deep wounds, weakening you see the additional damage change every time an effect is put on or leaves, at least in the AddOn where the full extra damage is shown, not divided by 1000.

Our oldest knows vinyl records, but they asked why the disc player had 3 speeds: 33, 45 and 78. Good old Schellackplatten from the time before vinyl came into broad usage. First rock and roll songs were still on the old format. A nearby village does a golden fifties weekend each year. Free entrance to people who come dressed with pettycoats, or in a car of the time (only time the year our ancient Isetta leaves the barn). Summer 2008 our oldest was 3 weeks in a youthcamp which had no electricity. 90% of the kids had mp3 players, but forgot either the batteries or that there would be no chance to recharge them. They even didn't know how our daughter made music with a Maultrommel: Maultrommel (translates as mouth drum), I think english name is mouth haro is something like this: Mundharmonika translates as mouth harmonica From 130 kids only 3 had instruments: 2 with guitars and ours with the above 2. And that is really sad. I remember that at my time the ratio was like one of five had an instrument at youth camps.

8 years army and then 2 years university before our first daughter was born. Then and two more daughters and 12 years later twins and the twins became 3 a week before x-mas. So I am in the age starting with a 4. But still a bit closer to the 4 than the 5. Imaginating that it will be 12 more years till the twins are the age now the first has, probably I will have grandchildren before I can play an age rated game with the twins. Currently we are a bit away from Sacred and play Patrizier4 = Patrician4. My wife and me played Patrician (from Ascon, then Ascaron, now Gaming Minds) already in 1993 on an old Amiga computer. We played Patrician2 with our oldest and now with Patrician4 out we gave it a try too. It is a historic trade simulation so kids learn a bit maths, economics, history and that their mom and dad are mean enemies who prefer to play as pirates and take away the cargo ships of their kids. Way cheaper to steal ships than building them So if I am a bit lazy last days in Sacred discussions, that is one of the reasons. Winter breaks and weather allowing skating, skiing,... another. Visiting relatives and relatives visiting us, ...another. No busses because of weather so if kids want to visit friends we have to drive them, all takes away time.

We had -16 celcius this night. For swans in lakes, firefighters do training classes for this: Myself I had only 3 cases of swans in 20 years. All 3 were swans who left not frozen parts of a lake and walked on frozen part to warm up. When unfolding wings to warm up in sunshine the water went down their body and the feet were frozen to the ice in seconds. More common are other water birds frozen to ground. We don't have paid firefighters or paid animal rescue as in bigger towns. So volunteer firefighters are called in such cases here. Remove hornet nests, the famous cat in the tree, .... Swans are always watch for the wings, they can break an arm. On the other side, their wings are strong so approaching from behind and throwing a blanket does the trick, Not much risc to injure them. Bussards catched in a snow covered wire fence are more tricky, you can break their wings easily. most of the time it is best to cut a piece of the fence out and bring the whole piece inclusing the bird to a vet. Cormorants and herons with their flexible necks and sharp beaks: protect your eyes. I do a big helm mounted visor. We do animal lessons with our youth department of volunteer firefighters each summer. At home we have a big collection of animals we care for till spring. hedgehogs, a Baumfalke(translates 'tree falcon' =Eurasian Hobby) with an injured (luckily not broken) wing, a Sperlingskauz(translates sparrow owl,/Eurasian_Pygmy-owl), ... The Baumfalke will be ready to move to the water hose drying tower of fire department next week. Tower is big enough to learn flying again indoors and it can hunt living grasshoppers for training. The owl sadly has only a half wing left, probably a fox biting it. Phoned a falconer who will take it. While looking at wiki I learned something: Only german language makes a difference between Kauz (plump robust owls) and Eule (longer body owls), french make a difference in language between owls with and without ears, in english all is just owls.

24.12. Morning: walking 5 minutes to forest and chopped a tree. Half family made it pretty, the other half was preparing lunch. I did lunch. Lunch: traditional Weihnachtskarpfen- x-mas carp (?). Carefully prepared so it got a nice blue skin at preparing. You have to keep the slime covering the scales intact at preparing. In germanic countries x-mas used to be a feasting day, so only fish (and goose). Centuries back a king didn't like fish and he said that goose and duck would be like fish, both swimmimg and diving in the water too. Karpfen Blau (carp blue) looks like: 14:00-20:00 Volunteer firefighters readiness dispatcher, drying water hoses, preparing chainsaws , hydraulic presses, .... Had lot of snow and icy rain was predicted for night. Good thing was that the rain was not there when the church chorus did their singing on central place of village. Our church is an old fortified one from centuries back and a bit to small nowadays to hold all the people. So I opened a window at firefighting tower (which is located at central place) and listened to the chorus where 3 of my daughters were singing. Then it was planed that everyone would open one gift box before night and the rest at morning. When and how many boxes we open at 24. or 25. decembre depends a bit if we celebrate with parents, brother, sisters, ... But we had bad weather for days so we decided to do it wit hjust us: my wife, 5 kids, au pair girl and myself. But all changed changed: At 8.30pm our third daughter asked if a friend could celebrate with us. His family planed to fly to grandparents in Berlin for x-mas. But all train and planes were cancelled. So they had no x-mas tree, gifts, ... So my wife invited whole family to do some singing at x-mas tree. They had kids aged 8, 6 and 4. At 10:15pm I was called to clean a street with fallen trees. At 10.45pm my wife was called to hospital since she was in readiness. Doctors from other part of district culdn't arrive because of fallen trees. 25.12 3am: When returning 7 kids were sleeping in sleeping bags before x-mas tree. What I got for x-mas: A paper signed by our oldest for 3 days of babysitting A paper signed by our second for 3 days cleaning the house A paper signed by our third for 3 days to listen to older sisters (small written, only if their orders apply to laws of united nations) A paper signed by my wife: for a weekend without kids in germanies black forest with a cooking training in a 2 star restaurant And my comment to our oldest was: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? She wasn't blushing, so I think it is okay to do this weekend trip in february.

Sitting at volunter firefighters, window opened and listening to chorus singing on main place, which includes or 3 oldest daughters. One of my favourite x-mas songs and fitting to a village surrounded by a forest and a pond a tmain place, which was used for fire fighting in old times. Today the pond is deep frozen and used for skating by the kids. Here is a video with an english singer singing the song in german, but english translation unterlayed:

Welcome back Bondbug. I am currently sitting at volunteer firefighters while my family is at church. Will be released at 8pm. We have ice rain here and together with all the snow on trees already some of us are in readiness in case trees are breaking down. The ones with no kids will do the night shift. So I answer emails and read some forum probably for last time for some days. Will be visiting relatives. Brussel sprouds are called Rosenkohl (rose cabbage) in our area, We grow them in our garden as winter food. I do not know if it is just our local variant, but they need frost. If the whole plant, while still in earth, is getting frost, some of the starch is changed to sugar. Just like with Schlehen (sloes ? like mini plums), they need a frost to become eatible= less bitter. That's why most people grew their own ones here. Simple variant: 2 pounds sprouts 1 large spoon of butter 1 onion cut in small squares make half a cup of bouillon = meat extract broth or other broth heat onions in butter till they are glassy (loose their white colour, close to getting brown) add sprouts and heat for 5 more minutes, you have to move them a lot add some salt, pepper, nutmeg add a half cup of bouillon and do 10-15 medium heat (dünsten nicht kochen, steaming not boiling ?) We like it with potatoes and breaded cutlets-

How you define 'modern' instrumental music? Is it last years, or a time frame like gothic, renaissance, barock, .. so would be last 100 years. Shadows: Apache moog synthesizers: Rick Wakeman: The Six Wives of Henry VIII ? Emerson, Lake and Palmer: Pictures at an Exhibition Midi Michael Rother: Katzenmusik Harald Faltermeier, later Harold Faltermeyer: Axel F Vangelis: Conquest of Paradise ... I had a cousine who did ice dancing and she was allways looking for instrumental music. Ah, forgot these ones: Werner Thomas: Vogerltanz - better known in its covered versions: Dance little bird, Chicken Dance, ... Karlheinz Stockhausen. probably the most creative of all

Talking about snow. One of the best commercials showed a snow plow on a highway. And then text was underlined: Have you ever wondered how the snow plow driver arrives at work? Nothing else, no company mentioned. But everyone remembered the commercial running 10 years earlier:

In the AddOn you can choose between the 2 system at creation

The new regenerating system brought by Ice and Blood is better if you play single aspect or use combinations. But if you play a character which uses combat arts from different aspects randomly: You use a combat art in aspect A, then the regeneration is split on all 3 aspects A,B and C. So you can't use a combat art in any aspect right away before the full 3 aspect regeneration is done.

Was Ferrari, not Porsche Mister Lamborghini bought a Ferrari (companies are just a few miles away from each other) and returned to have some changes, because he thought that his tractors would vibrate less than this sports car. Mister Fwerrai said to his 'neighbour' Lamborghini that he wouldn't listen to a tractor producer. Lamborghini then produced own sport cars. You could lay a coin on the engine and give full throttle and the coin was not moving.

Yes, kinda a lesson how to use the Unimog and he was allowed to test drive the Unimog later, controlled by my daughter. Farm roads to field barns had to be cleaned from snow anyway. Removing log splitter and attaching snow plow takes only 10 minutes. He thought my daughter was lying at school when she said she drove a Lamborghini with 5, a Porsche with 8 and a Mercedes (=Unimog) with 12. So she was showing our tractor collection, Country live is a bit different. On normal streets you have to be 18 to drive a car here. But small tractors I teach to 5 year olds - I don't want them to climb ladders at fruit harvest, but they can drive the tractor to pull the wagon with the baskets with fruits. I taught cleaning the heat elements of the washing machine to our 12 year old, and she can do it, including all electric work. I just take a last look before closing the cover of the machine. Way cheaper to explain stuff carefully then paying a repair servive who takes 2 hours driving costs. When I am on sales travel I know that most repairs could be done by our oldest and the easier ones even by our second.

Found a picture in internet: The cap's of the people show that one of the couple is a member of a carneval's club. At hour marriage we hadn't to use a saw. We married at the church in the birth village of my wife. The grandpa of my wife did sidecar motorbike races with my wife as a monkey in the sidecar. Monkey because the sidecar person has to do acrobatics do move the centre of gravity to adapt to different road parts at cross country races. So friends removed the wheel's of the carriage we used to drive to the church. We had to attach the wheels again before we could use the carriage to drive away from church. So our quest was wood work (wooden carriage) and hobby of my wife: car races combined. I like these traditions, even they become rare.

Yes translation of the finer variants of a tool is hard. We have several tools: Beil = hand axe. Used when dry beech trunks are sawed to 1 foot high discs. Used single handed. If a hand axe is stuck you revert the striking, hand axe below wood. Spalthammer = translated splitting hammer = splitting maul, The 'axe' with the red head from threads above. If a 1 metres long log is laying flat on ground you hammer it into the round part of the log and with a bit training the log is halved with one swing. Axt = axe, to chop trees, removes branches, used two handed. There are several variants, My favourite one has a axe side and a Raven's beak side to pull logs. Keil = wood splitting wedge, used when the splitting maul failed to split the log in one strike and is stuck. Trummsäge = two man saw In our area with old wood working traditions a fresh married couple has to saw a log with such a saw to leave the church after marriage, Nowadays there are little 'quests' which are around the profession or hobby of the couple which have to be done after marriage.

Thats why I wrote beside wounds, I only checked the spells for physical dot damage.

Our daughter had to finish an art project for school together with a classmate: making a sculpture from some old metal parts. Because of all the snow and ice I allowed them to use our machine hall. My daughter said the wood oven in it had to be heated so she graped a Rabenschnabel (translates as raven's beak, bec de corbin and looks a bit like the weapon and forest worker used it as this in old times) and walked to the log storage. The boy said he will chop the firewood and got an axe. My daughter worked on the project meanwhile. After 30 minutes and no firewood arriving she looked what took so long. He was trying an axe on fresh chopped wood, instead using the wood which was stored for 2 years already to loose water. Also old wood is way easier to chop. And it seemed he put no thoughts why our daughter took a Raven's Beak. With a bit training you can hammer the beak into a log without bowing down and pull the log into a hydraulic log splitter attached to one of our Unimogs. Video about people using a Log Splitter on a Unimog, Difference is that our tool is army coloured like the Unimog. Bought an old army Unimog including all tools years back: snow blow, grass and bush cutters, ... We have one of these too, and I allow my daughters only to use it if standing behind the unicorn horn like thing. Thats when the Raven's beak comes into action. Video of a very riscy (for men and car) variant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1HZztie5ac