About

Some words about us/me...........

Born in the southern part of Germany I went through school and university there. As a main study I had communications engineering (mainly RF and analog but some computer stuff too) and as I already had the hobby of model aircraft’s I studied several semesters of aeronautics. As there was close to no chance to find a job in the small aircraft industry in Europe I never intended to finish that study.

After several years in the semiconductor industry in Germany I received an offer from a US company and in April 1998 we (my wife and 2 kids) moved to Arizona where our 3rd child was born. As management of this company looks like being selected by a “negative selection process” the company “went South” at an incredible speed and I have to say that the last 2.5 years of the total 5 years with this company have been really bad. As the electronics industry was in bad shape it took me about 1 year to find a decent new job and all of a sudden there was the one which attracted me. The new company was located in Paterson, NJ. Time to pack our belongings and to move to New Jersey where we found a new home in Ringwood.
Side note: do you know why NJ calls itself “Garden State”? Well, they had to think hard... What do you need to make plants grow in the garden? You got it! But they couldn’t name it “Sh*t State”.......
Welll, things change and after 1-2 years the company went back to its old mode of operation which I can best describe as kindergarden.... As times are good for RF people a new job was found pretty fast and again time to pack and move. This time it’s a dual move. The family moves back to the best place on earth: Arizona and I will stay during the week in Boston, MA and fly to AZ for the weekend. That combines a great job at the wrong place with life at the best offroad place, Arizona.

Since a long time I wanted to own a Mercedes Unimog again but I was always aware that it’s too big, too heavy and would never fit into any garage. Then all of a sudden I remembered the Steyr-Daimler-Puch Haflingers and Pinzgauers I watched when I spent my vacations in Switzerland. THIS would be a truck which is as rugged and almost more versatile as a Unimog but much smaller and easier to handle.

As my wife Tanja likes to go “into the woods” with her motorcycle it would be a good way to join her with the rest of the family. Much more convenient then ATV’s and much safer for the kids (and cheaper too!). Tanja gave the last push to buy one with her comment that “the last shirt doesn’t have pockets”.........

We started to check the dealers close to Phoenix/AZ (there are two in Prescott) but didn’t see what we wanted. By chance a family in Mesa wanted to sell their “Pinzi” and after we inspected the truck we found that it’s in very good shape for it’s age (built 1975).

Unfortunately both, the offroad MC and the Pinz are of no real use in NJ as everything is illegal here (with the exception of paying outrageous taxes and lousy roads and schools) and offroading is only possible in the backyard...... Not much incentive to finish the Pinz project as you can see with the snail-speed progress we made since we moved here. Back to AZ this should change because the incentive is too high!

Beside the the outdoor hobbies my wife’s and my own interest are computers. We run a home network with 5 PC’s, one is a server and are connected via a cable modem to “the world” (internet). Naturally there is a conflict programmed into the network.... The server runs under Fedora Linux and since I’m fed up in watching blue screens and other crashes I decided to also convert my own PC to Linux. First it was SuSE which then was pyrchased by Novell and after the unfortunate decission to sell out to Microsoft I went with Fedora Linux with KDE desktop. A bit of work to set it up and get it running but still easier then Windowze XPee and no more blue screens and most of the software FREE. Now I only have to convince my wife and the kids that Linux is better and computer life will be easier.......

Sure, there are even more hobbies like ham radio (DB3TB) and other electronics but who can treat them all as well as they deserve?????