RaSchi’s Valhalla

Houston

Del Frisco’s is an excellent restaurant/steakhouse. I’ve had one of the best steaks ever. The meat so tender that the knife almost slides through it by itself. I ordered medium-rare and the meat was just cooked perfectly. Plus, the dessert just topped that. Both were an excellent recommendation by the waiter. Generally the service was very friendly and available just when I needed it.
The price tag isn’t for people on budget, but rather for business people.
Mein Beitrag zu Del Frisco’s Double Eagle - Ich bin raschi - auf Qype

Mannheim - Restaurants - Japanisch & Sushi

All den Lobeshymnen kann ich mich nur anschliessen. Die Auswahl ist wirklich beeindruckend, für den Sushi-Anfänger wäre vermutlich eine etwas grössere Auswahl an "fertig konfigurierten" Platten hilfreich, aber wenn man sich etwas auskennt bzw. einfach auch probierfreudig ist, dann findet sich auf der Karte bestimmt etwas, woran man Freude hat. Und auch der Kenner findet vermutlich etwas, was für ihn neu ist.
Das Personal ist sehr freundlich und sehr aufmerksam, so dass ich auch bei gut gefülltem Restaurant nicht lange warten musste.
Preislich muss man natürlich bei Sushi mit etwas mehr rechnen als bei der Pizzeria nebenan, aber eine 6-teilige Rolle mit Lachs und Gurke und Avocado für € 6.50 ist m.E. noch völlig vertretbar, zumal diese Rolle grösser und der Lachs üpppiger war als ich es anderswo auch schon erlebt habe.

Mein Beitrag zu Tokyo Sushi Bar Restaurant - Ich bin raschi - auf Qype

Mannheim - Restaurants - Japanese & Sushi

This is really an excellent place to have sushi. The choice is almost overwhelming, the quality is just outstanding and the atmosphere in the restaurant is very well also. You can sit at the bar and actually watch the chefs prepare the sushi. Staff is friendly and very attentive, so there was almost no wait for me. Prices are reasonable for sushi, you just have to expect to pay a bit more than for pizza ;-). But e.g. for €6.50 you get a 6-piece roll of salmon and cucumber and that roll is bigger than other’s I’ve seen elsewhere.

Check out my review of Tokyo Sushi Bar Restaurant - I am raschi - on Qype

In a recent initiative called Backfiles, Publisher Emerald Insight has opened access to some of their out-of-print content from several of their academic journals. One of the sample articles that has just made it to my list of “things to read, when time allows” is the article in which Tim Berners-Lee and his colleagues allegedly coined the term “World Wide Web” by mentioning it first in a publication.

Everynow and then I still see some comment spam, despite Aksimet running on this blog. Akismet catches most of the spam and I really appreciate the work the fine folks over at Akismet.com are doing. However, inspired by the article in the most recent issue of c’t magazine, I installed the reCAPTCHA plug-in and it seems to work pretty nicely. I hope none of my (admittedly few) readers mind the extra effort. If you do, remember: it’s serving two good causes: the first is to improve the results of the Internet Archive project which is digitizing books to archive human knowledge and culture and the second is (much more humble) to save me the time and effort of deleting spam which made it through Akismet.

… when you could actually call a product “SPAM”

You have a GPS in your car to help you navigate through Europe? Well, then you may want to check the European Speed Camera Database: Our Tip: SCDB.info - the most up-to-date speed camera database in Europe for your Navi. Download speed cameras as Points of Interest and be alerted (incl. the speed limit). No speeding tickets anymore!

It seems as if these days are really eventful. Today I received the official confirmation of my rising in the Swiss “hierarchy of foreigners”. Effective today, I am a “settled foreign national” (or in official language Amtsdeutsch: Inhaber der Niederlassungsbewilligung C). This means that e.g. I will no longer be taxed according to the “withholding tax” (Quellensteuer), but just as any “real Swiss”. And also, less restrictions concerning working in Switzerland apply, but that actually doesn’t really have an impact, since effectively there are no restrictions since I am a citizen of the EU/EFTA with which Switzerland has bilateral contracts easing the transition between the jurisdictions (”Freizügigkeitsabkommen”). Also, if I’m not mistaken, this allows me to leave the country for a longer time without having to re-apply for a work permit. This may be helpful if I get the opportunity to do a job rotation to some foreign location of ABB sometime. We’ll see…

Besides the professional development, there’s more, even bigger things going on as well: As of 11:45h am today, I am the proud uncle of Merle Schulte. Mother and child are all well and the rest of the family is happy about and proud of the new family member.

In case you wonder what these acronyms mean:

Global Information Assurance Certification - GIAC Certified Intrusion Analyst

If you’re interested, find out more here and here. And what is this all about? I’ve just passed the certification exams and so from now on (for the next four years at least),  I may call myself a GCIA. I’ve attended the SANS course SEC503 in the summer and finally found the time to go over the material again and take the exams.

What’s the course / the certification about? Well, as the name suggests, intrusion detection. It’s a typical industry / practitioner certification on intrusion detection concepts and systems. Systems… actually the system part is largely focused on Snort, the probably best (known) open source IDS/IPS out there.