I am in computers since i was 13 years old. I remember that my first machine was a VC20 in the “Hauptschule” (mainschool) here in Germany. We started then with 3 Apple IIe, it was SO cool, it came with two 5.15″ Floppy. When i went to the next school (Berufsschule) i got in touch with my first Mac Classic II and with Commodore CBM8000. A friend of mine sold me then his Laser 210, that was such a great machine, i loved it a lot (sadly i don’t have it anymore ). This time i started to fall in love with Atari. I got my first Atari 400. Man i will never forgett it! AS soon as the Atari800XL came out i got it and was totally impressed. We wrote a cool adventure and had a lot of fun.

Weiterlesen "Computer for eternity"

It is some time ago since my last update for my Castle. There was just to many things i had to do…

Let us talk about my sleeping room. It is exactly above the kitchen, so it had mostly the same size -ruffly 60sqm (*9 then you have feet). Thats the reason we also build up a room in the room for our cabinet. That room had no real doors inside and there were no real entrance. We found more or less by random the door to this room. Well there were a lot of speculations about the room above the kitchen but it took us a bit of time to find out how to step in best. The first thing we did then was cleaning the dust from maybe 40 or 50 years untouched walls and get in two openings for the new doors. One into our Office and one into our own bathroom.

Click the link to see all the pictures and the “development” of that really nice room.

Here you can see the room when you view to the street:

Weiterlesen "Sleep on the red side of life"

When we moved into our house it was also unbelievable important to get a bathroom You know, the “Girlthing” well. We had that old “living room/kitchen/storeroom” which got our Piano room, library, storage room and guest bathroom. As our house is really huge we decide to have the luxury to have a couple of bathrooms, so one for our kits, one for us (only connected thru our own sleeping room) a bathroom in the 1st floor, which is also for guests.

So after we made the walls we started to empty the room and made it ready for a bathroom:

Weiterlesen "Man i need a Bathroom!!!"

As i said in a preview article i want also comment the way i build my house. You remember i bought that old Castle and i try to fix it step by step. Sometimes i have some help and sometimes i do it on my own.

Today i want show you my kitchen. Alan you might remember The Kitchen was not really a part of the house itself. So I made a very large hole into the wall between the main house and that part. In the past it got used as a garage for a carpenter. But the room was so BIG and i saw it as it might look in the end and made the decision that i want use it absolutely as our Kitchen. Once all the old machines got taken out of the room we had a first base:

Weiterlesen "Kitchen is my next"

By the beginning of 2005 yellowTAB was running more and more and we moved with our office to a bigger place. We were growing up. I had to be in Mannheim all the time and it was kinda frustrating to stay in a small apartment while i had a nice house in northern Germany. My wife and my two kids used to life there. Another thing was my idea about an ideal world and father. In my opionion a father have to build a home for his family on his own. Our house in north Germany we bought when we were 24. It is a two family house and i had to rebuild a lot in it but it was not something that i could say -when i die- i build for my family. The other thing is that i am from south Germany and this is a totally different kind of people than in the north. I was fading like a flower in the 17 years i had to life in the north.

So in March 2005 i started to look for a new house for us in the south. I wanted to build it myself but yellowTAB used me at least 13-16 hours every day, even on weekends. So what to do? Well find a nice house which i can work at least in it as i did in our house in the north. I contacted several house dealers to find something. Nothing was really nice and i didn’t love what i saw. The last dealer we had showed me a house and said this is THE house for me. I was looking and well well well it was “ok” but i didn’t really feel my heart beating. He said then: Look we have a very old house, hmm 300 years or so, but it is TOTALLY broken, no more roof, no heading, no power, no real windows, all done in sand stone…. i said: Well lets have a look and we drove there. And you know what? IT WAS AWESOME! I am a visionary and this is my real passion. The house was a 300 year old Beer Brewing house with an amazing cellar and with about 2700 sqm (1 sqm = 9 sqf) living ground but as i said: totally broken. I came into the office switched my laptop on and started my CAD Software to plan it and make the visualization of it in 3D. Today i can tell you it is at least 90% of what i thought it should be when i am done. Some of my friends followed it and said that i never can move into it as this is the task force “Mission Impossible”.

So end of the story Today i want start to show photos of it and about the progress i did. I think i will do it step by step. Funny is that while i uploaded the photos i felt all it again and how hard it was to do all that things. Most of the stuff i did my self with some help from friends and my family. But in the end i invested even by now already 1000 of hours into that house and i do not miss a single hour !

I write that article inside my office on a laptop which stands on the desk i did myself. Here you can see the office when i started to work on it:

Weiterlesen "My Castle #1 - The Office"

Well today it is officially in Germany: We lose our chancellor and will have a new one called Dr. Angela Merkel. I do not know how Germany feels in that time but i am for me can say i feel really bad. Dr. Gerhard Schroeder is a visionary and is brave enough to make changes, significant changes. Now that we get a new government which is mixed up with the two biggest parties in Germany i cannot see any good reason to rise up the business

I am a person who always work hard, for me, for my family, for my employees and for this country. I went to school here, use the streets, my kid get a decent education, when i am sick i can always go to a doctor… a lot of such positive things let me think it is a great country and that it is worth to do all this to give something back.

I really have my concerns but other than that i have real hopes that it goes better again as Germany is not in the best position these days. Lets hope i am wrong and the new government can and WILL make it better as the former one.

Dr. Gerhard Schroeder, you have my deepest respect for all you did for Germany and i want to thank you for the time you picked it up and made the changes.

My two cents