Erwin's StarOffice Tango

If you care about global warming ...
If you care about global warming, you might be interested in the following event, the OpenEco Energy Camp 2008. "Start making a difference today and register to attend OpenEco Energy Camp, an event designed to inspire you to make positive environmental changes at work and at home."
( Jan 03 2008, 11:37:48 AM CET ) Permalink Kommentare [2]

Growing interest in Sun's x86 servers
I'm more of a software guy, but being a Sun employee, it still feels good to read more and more positive articles about our servers in the press. This one is a good example. The headline is "It's time to pay attention to Sun's x86 server biz".
( Sep 27 2007, 12:12:28 PM CEST ) Permalink Kommentare [1]

My new hobbies: bats and golf
I always had the strangest mixes of hobbies. Thus, my newest hobbies fit very nicely into that list. Recently my wife and I both took a golf class in order to learn playing golf and in order to get the "license" that is needed in Germany in order to be allowed to play on a real golf course. The one-week class was a lot of fun, even though my joints are still aching. I hope the pain will go away quickly, so that I can give in to my new addiction.

Another new hobby - and the one that actually makes my list of hobbies strange - is bats. I was always very interested in nature, but in the past I was more into bird watching. I even managed to get my wife addicted to bird watching as well. Recently my wife and I attended a few guided tours where we were introduced to the local bat species via ultra-sound / bat detectors. Since my wife and I wanted to learn more about bats and in order to get a chance to see them from closer by, we both volunteered to help with "cleaning up" the "houses" of the endangered species. On this picture you can see how we checked the "houses". It was a lot of fun! Being in nature is always fun! And that we got pretty close to the bats via our "housekeeping work" becomes obvious in the following pictures that I took with my little camera:

BTW, this one is NOT dead! It only pretends to be dead!

( Sep 17 2007, 07:25:04 PM CEST ) Permalink

If you were wondering why I had not blogged for more than two weeks, here is why. I just had two weeks of vacation during which my wife and I plus to close friends cruised on a houseboat on Canal du Midi in southern France. Here are some impressions:


Our houseboat	At full speed on Canal du Midi


Our first stop	A little church


Houseboats in a lock	Our crew coping with the lock


Bridges can be a challenge, too	Outstanding cheese and cider for lunch


Me navigating the boat	Another challenge: the water in the locks


Who knows what's behind the curve	A tunnel coming up


Another romantic lock	One of the many many bridges


A beautiful morning after I had just bought fresh croissants and baguette	The cathedral of Bezier in the evening


The view from the Canal du Midi	Growing wine


The church in Capestang	A little lizard


The tower of the church in Capestang	Flowers along Canal du Midi


A wine shop that looks like a shop	An alley in Carcasonne


Carcasonne from the outside	Pont du Gard on the way back home

This blog entry was created and published using the Sun Weblog Publisher for OpenOffice.org and StarOffice.

Wow! - "Sun Fire T1000 Server ... Outperforms ..."
I just saw this. Impressive numbers!
( Jun 06 2006, 04:53:30 PM CEST ) Permalink

Wow! Users seem to like the T2000
I just came across this blog entry which includes links to other blogs that contain user comments about the T2000 server. I just took a look at the numbers and comments in these blogs. I'm not really a hardware guy, but according to the comments people really seem to like Sun's new T2000 server.
( Apr 05 2006, 01:49:13 PM CEST ) Permalink

Back from vacation ...
In case some people were wondering why I haven't updated my blog for about two weeks, here is the answer. My wife and I spent two weeks in California where we hiked and met friends. If ever want to spend a few days in the Monterey Bay / Pacific Grove area I can definitely recommend the "Gosby House Inn" in Pacific Grove! The water in the shower/bath tub can be a little on the cold side depending on the time. Maybe this is because of the antique plumbing!? However, except for that the place is great.

The freshly made breakfast is very tasty. The afternoon tea including the freshly baked cookies and cakes are yummy as well. Both the breakfast and the afternoon tea are included in the room fee. Many rooms have a fire place and all rooms have nice antique Victorian furniture. You can find teddy bears in all the rooms, which can be adopted by the way. The best thing is, during less busy times they have special last minute offers if you book the room after 5pm.

Another hotel that I really like is the "W Silicon Valley" in Newark, CA. The rooms are huge. The bed is very comfortable. The interior is very nice. The breakfast is very tasty as well. The only downside of the W Silicon Valley is the breakfast service. It's o.k., but it does not meet the same level as everything else in the hotel. Often the waiters don't pay much attention to details, e.g. sometimes cups have a crack or it takes for ages to get milk for the tea. If the breakfast service would improve the W Silicon Valley would be the perfect hotel from my point of view. Nevertheless, I really like staying there.

BTW, I don't get paid by any of mentioned hotels and I'm also not related to the owners! ;-)

Now I have to get some news added to my blog. Quite a few exciting things happened while I was away from work.

Oh, one last thing, during my vacation I unfortunately had to get a root canal treatment during my vacation. I went to my old dentists from the time when I lived in California. If you are in need of a good dentist in the Fremont area, I can recommend Dr. Evans and Dr. Wong on Paseo Padre Parkway close to Lake Elizabeth! They do a great job and are very helpful and sweet. My German dentist is impressed by their work as well.
( Apr 05 2006, 10:39:49 AM CEST ) Permalink

The new "Hinz & Kunzt" is out!
For those of you who live in Hamburg, the new issue of "Hinz & Kunzt" is out. "Hinz & Kunzt" is Hamburg's street newspaper, and according to the "Hinz & Kunzt" homepage it "is the street newspaper with the highest distribution figures in Germany". Based on my personal experience, I would also say that it is the best street newspaper in Germany.
( Feb 01 2006, 08:34:56 AM CET ) Permalink

Congratulations to Sun's Identity Management Folks!
Congratulations!

"New Independent Research Report Names Sun's Identity Management Suite as the Provisioning Industry's Undisputed Market Leader
...
The Forrester report concluded that, "By a large margin, Sun Java System Identity Manager came in as the most-function-rich solution in Forrester's evaluation. The product led all of its competitors in several categories: connector functionality, policy management, auditing, and architecture. ... Sun Java System Identity Manager does everything a user would want a provisioning product to do.(1)""

Found here.
( Feb 01 2006, 06:17:55 AM CET ) Permalink

Sun's reputation
I just took a look at this article and this report. Quite interesting!!! Here is a quote that makes me even more confident about Sun's future:
"Well, the results are in, and they show Sun was the company with the most favourable impression amongst our readers."
( Jan 09 2006, 05:22:42 PM CET ) Permalink

Hamburg might have the best street magazine. - Buy it, if you can!
Since my blog is quite popular, I thought I should use it to help some people who do not get too much marketing support.

When I lived in the Bay Area, I was always shocked about the large number of homeless people especially in places like San Francisco and Oakland. Back then I believed that the situation is much better here in Germany. However, when I moved to Hamburg I had to realize that it's pretty bad here in Hamburg as well. Many people live on the street and have to eat what other people throw away.

I'm still doing far too little to help solve the problem, considering that I know, everybody including me could be one of them. However, I do buy the local street magazine every month. It's called Hinz & Kunzt, and I definitely can recommend it.

I don't buy it just because I want to make a little donation and to make the poor homeless guy selling it to me a little happier. Hinz & Kunzt is actually quite interesting to read! Just give it a try! I have bought a few street magazines in various cities, and I think Hinz & Kunzt is by far the best I have seen and read so far!

I don't agree with all articles and opinions published in that street magazine, but Hinz & Kunzt is an interesting and valuable "window" to a world of which I'm (fortunately and unfortunately) not really a part of. I learn about problems which I fortunately don't have to think and care about myself at the moment, simply because I still can affort to pay for my appartment. However, I learn about issues about which newspapers and TV typically don't talk about, since it's not popular to talk about these issues.

Thus, buy Hinz & Kunzt if you can! Reading it will open your eyes in many ways!
( Jan 09 2006, 01:01:39 PM CET ) Permalink

"Google Introduces Software Starter Kit"
"The "Google Pack" software bundle will include third-party apps such as the Firefox browser, Adobe Reader, Norton AntiVirus, and six of Google's own programs, including Desktop Search and the Picasa image management tool.

Google is distributing a free software startup kit designed to make computing safer and easier - a generous gesture driven by the company's desire to steer technology offline as well as online.

The software bundle, unveiled Friday in Las Vegas during a speech by Google co-founder Larry Page, represents the Internet search engine leader's latest jab at industry kingpin Microsoft."

The full article can be found here.
( Jan 09 2006, 12:35:37 PM CET ) Permalink

Do Desmond Tutu and Sun have the same dream?
My wife and I have a subscription of the weekly German newspaper "Die Zeit". My wife is commuting four hours per day by train and thus, unfortunately or fortunately, has a lot more time to read in the newspaper than me. The good thing about that is, that she always tells me about must-read articles she found. This morning, she made me read one again. Actually, she made me listen to it, since some of the articles are available as MP3 files as well.

The article I'm talking about is this one. The article belongs to a series of articles belonging to the column "I have a dream". In this case it's about Desmond Tutu's dream. As probably most of you know, Desmond Tutu is an archbishop and won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1984.

Tutu's dream reminds me very much of Sun's goal, even though Tutu's dream is much broader and definitely much harder, maybe impossible, to achieve. Sun's goal is to eliminate the digital devide. Thus, we at Sun try to connect every single individual on this globe and make her or him participate.

Tutu dreams of one large global family. A family that does not exclude anybody, but include everybody. I repeat, EVERYBODY!

Everybody belongs to this family: "black and white, rich and poor, smart and less smart, good looking and less good looking, people with and without disabilities, women and men, gay, lesbian and heterosexual people, just everybody, without exception".

In Tutu's dream even people who see each other as enemies would be members of this one global family.

As I said before, Sun's goal is to eliminate the digital devide, and I'm proud of that! The goal gives my job meaning beyond money!

If you are not sure what I'm talking about, just watch these public videos of Sun's Brand Summit last year. BTW, do a test, take a look at the homepages of Microsoft, IBM, HP, Oracle, Novell, Red Hat, etc. and Sun. In Firefox it's especially nice and easy to do that via tabbed browsing. What is your first impression? What do you see? What do the different companies highlight on their homepages?

I don't know how much Sun will be able to contribute to the elimination of the digital devide in the long run, but announcements like the following one from February 2004 let me believe that the Sun-initiated and Sun-sponsored OpenOffice.org project can actually help to bring people together:

"Today we have the pleasure to announce the opening of the Arabic and Hebrew Native-Lang projects. The Arabic Project (http://ar.openoffice.org) is led by Mr Khayat and backed by the Arabeyes free-software community, an important player and supporter of free software and OpenOffice.org in the Arabic world. The Hebrew project has been created by Tkos, an Israeli company who is also in charge of localizing OpenOffice.org and StarOffice but who managed to set up a real and lively community of users, developpers and marketers.

These two projects show the growing influence of OpenOffice.org in the Middle-East and we are delighted that such prestigious cultures and people have adopted OpenOffice.org as their free and open productivity suite ."
(Source)

The availability of OpenOffice.org in South Africa and India (read this, this, and this) also make me believe, that Sun together with the various (open source) communities can make a difference, can help to make this world a better place for us, our children, and their children. I belive that Sun can contribute to Tutu's dream of turning this world into one large global family, a family that does not exclude anybody, but includes everybody!
( Jan 07 2006, 06:41:14 PM CET ) Permalink Kommentare [2]

I wonder when I will have to stop blogging ...
Did you read this ("It's All About Google Results: German Blogger Asked to Remove Mention Of Organization")???

I wonder when I will have to stop blogging considering that my blog shows up as the first item when you search for the name "Tenhumberg". I overtook a carpentry, and what might be worse, a German state politician.
( Jan 06 2006, 06:49:29 PM CET ) Permalink

Congratulations!
Congratulations to all the people who created the UltraSPARC T1 chip and the Sun Fire T1000 and T2000 servers! I just read these news:

"Sun's Newest Server Based on CoolThreads Technology Wins InfoWorld's 2006 Technology of the Year Award as 'Most Innovative Server'"

Found here.
( Jan 05 2006, 10:42:28 AM CET ) Permalink