Category Archives: Allgemein

Where the Swiss place their hopes

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swissfuture and weiterdenken.ch have again conducted their end-of-year survey to determine where the Swiss place their hopes and how optimistic they are for 2013.  Simply put, we’re optimistic; we’re more optimistic about Switzerland than about the rest of the world, and at the same time, place our hopes squarely at the feet of…

…Barack Obama.  It’s enough to make me pessimistic about Switzerland.

As an average Swiss, my top ten sources of hope are
62% — the many unsung heroes of everyday life
43% — Barack Obama
41% — myself
39% — my spouse or partner
27% — God
23% — my children / grandchildren
23% — Jesus Christ
17% — my parents / grandparents
13% — the Dalai Lama
10% — Alain Berset (the youngest, best-looking, and most recently elected member of the federal council)

Why we place our hopes in someone paid to look out for the interests of a foreign country, or in someone who embodies the identity and culture of a central Asian region, eludes me.  Any ideas?

 

Perfect device for an election year: SpeechJammer

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The folks at the Annals of Improbable Research sure got the timing right in announcing the 2012 Ig Nobel prize winners in acoustics, Kazutaka Kurihara and Koji Tsukada, who won it for their SpeechJammer device.  Awesome for stump speeches and debates!  Brilliant for that obnoxious drunk in the subway!  Combine it with face recognition and motion tracking, and you can silence those Occupy folks in a hurry.  Or… bring it to David Letterman’s show… the possibilities are nearly endless.

And how about turning it into an app for cell phones and VoIP systems to thwart telemarketers?  Kurihara-san!  Tsukada-san!  There’s more work to be done!

 

“Microsoft” phone call scam spreading to Switzerland

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We weren’t the first ones to get a call from an Indian-sounding guy saying he was from “Windows” (later he gave the name of his company as Global Intelligent Tracking Services) and contracted by Microsoft to call us and fix something on our computer. It seems like the scam’s been around in the US for a while, and the Swiss government has a post warning of this scam. I can add that their phone number showed up as 001 253 802 0308, a US number with plenty of complaints filed against it.

Pre-vacation videos

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There’s a big backlog of videos, which will take a while to work through.  Here are videos from before our trip to the US.

Joseph enjoys spinning all manner of things, among which this toy.

Joseph’s quite the imitator, which sometimes extends to things beyond his age, such as deodorant.  I’m glad I’ve so far managed to keep the spray out of reach.

He is continually expanding his list of names.  Here he’s saying “Götti Alain.”

He’s also fascinated with the United States, although watching him here serves mostly to show how much he’s improved since.

Before going on vacation, Janet told him we’d take a bus, take a train, take a plane, and take a car to see Grandma and Dad-o.  He started repeating that – here’s one short instance.  Here’s the full litany, on the morning of the flight.

We started using a new cream on his dry facial skin.  Bappe took to calling it “Supersalbi” – “super cream” – and Joseph immediately latched onto that.

Vivienne has a pretty tight grip, though in this video her hands are slippery and she doesn’t hold on to Bappe’s thumbs for long.

Here is Joseph counting to 100 before turning two.  Here he is counting to 100 with the dots book – at least I think so, because my internet connection keeps conking out before I can finish watching.

Vivienne’s first forays into mobility come just before vacation.  Success is varied.  Here’s another example of her efforts.

All the while, the little neighboring houses (Schindlerhüsli) are being torn down.  Work is painstaking, because the siding contains asbestos and the different components need to be separated and recycled.  Here’s the first pass: Untile my roof.  Here’s more noisy construction.

Vivienne likes being sung to.  Here we have Grossvater doing the honors.