Category Archives: Community

“You’re amazed at the innate good in people. People will rally to a cause to help out their fellow human beings.”

LinkedIn: The inside story of what it took to keep a Texas grocery chain running in the chaos of Hurricane Harvey. “In Texas, a grocery chain is now inspiring memes. One goes like this: “State and federal resources are struggling to get into impacted areas. H.E.B. — outta the way, we’re coming.” Another adds: “I’ll see your FEMA and Red Cross and raise you my Texas grocery store chain.””

“One of my stores, we had 300 employees; 140 of them were displaced by the flooding. So how do you put your store back together quickly? We asked for volunteers in the rest of the company. We brought over 2,000 partners from Austin, San Antonio, the Rio Grande Valley. They hopped into cars and they just drove to Houston. They said, we’re here to help. It’s shitty work. For 18 hours a day, they’re going to help us restock and then they’ll go sleep on the couch at somebody’s house.”

Twelve years

Just wanted to “flip the page” to note this weblog’s twelfth anniversary today. I started posting to Andrea`s Weblog at Userland’s EditThisPage.com site on January 25th, 2000, which seems a long, long, long time ago.

It’s really great that some of the people I met there are still around – or recently returned to writing on the web, like Alwin. Hi Al! It’s good to see you again.

In honor of this weblog’s title, one serendipitous anecdote from today: This morning I opened the bathroom window after taking a shower at about 6:10am. It was still dark and quite cold, probably a few degrees below freezing. I heard a rustling sound outside and thought to myself that it was funny to hear a bird hopping through the frozen leaves on the ground this early in the day, so I decided to look outside. I turned on the light next to the back door and peeked through the window – and spotted a wild boar right in our back yard! It was foraging for acorns under the oak trees that separate the yard from the railway-turned-bike-path behind the house. The boar didn’t even react when I opened the door for a better look. Unfortunately it was too dark to take a photo…

Ten years ago

Since it’s all over every newspaper, TV channel and other media anyway, I’ll just post a few links.

Fray: Missing Pieces

“On September 11, 2001, an unthinkable act of terrorism occured in New York City and Washington DC. It left holes in our lives, holes in the skyline, holes in our spirit. These are some of the stories of those who were there. These are our missing pieces.”

Two recent MetaFilter threads of relevance:
Ask MeFi: Help me briefly re-live 9/11 as it happened.
MeFi: Teaching 9/11.

The documentary 102 Minutes That Changed America is recommended in the first thread.

Zeit online: Thema: Zehn Jahre nach dem 11. September.

Ten years ago, I only posted a brief note because it was already afternoon here in Germany when the attacks happened and because André and I were glued to the online stream of BBC World News for the rest of the day. I elaborated a bit the following day.

Wir Blogger (-innen): Schön, reich und berühmt.

Wie mir erst heute von meinem Mann zugetragen wurde, fand mein Weblog schon vor geraumer Zeit auf der re:publica 2011 in Berlin Erwähnung, und zwar in einem Gespräch von Don Dahlmann, Felix Schwenzel, Anke Gröner und Jörg Kantel, dem “Methusalem der deutschen Blogszene” (Zitat Don Dahlmann).

Natürlich hatte der Schockwellenreiter das entsprechende YouTube-Video 10 Jahre Blogs in Deutschland auf seiner Seite, allerdings habe ich es seinerzeit nicht angeschaut. Das habe ich gerade nachgeholt. Ich zitiere Jörg von hier:

“Das [sein Weblog] lief auf Manila, das war eine Blog-Software, die hatte Dave Winer, ein Amerikaner, geschrieben, und die war seltsamerweise in Deutschland mehr oder weniger führend um diese Zeit. Also alle, die Blogs machten, machten das in Deutschland mit EditThisPage, was ‘n bisschen, glaub’ ich, mit der Urmutter aller deutschsprachigen Weblogs, nämlich mit Andrea, zusammenhing. Die war mit einem Mitarbeiter von Userland befreundet und brachte sozusagen damit dann EditThisPage nach Deutschland.”

Jörg dürfte wohl der einzige sein, der ausgerechnet mich als Urmutter aller deutschsprachigen Weblogs bezeichnet. (Ich persönlich würde ja den Titel eher Melody aka Carola Heine zuschreiben.) Ein paar Reste meiner damaligen Seite, andrea.editthispage.com, findet man noch bei der Wayback Machine. Und der Mitarbeiter von Userland, mit dem ich befreundet war, ist heute mein angetrauter Ehemann, der immer noch – wie damals – unter SpicyNoodles! erreichbar ist (inzwischen allerdings unter .net und .org statt .com).

Meine erste tag line damals war “Not famous yet…” – und die passt noch immer, aber vielleicht wäre das anders, wenn passend zu Jörgs Äußerungen meine Web-Adresse eingeblendet worden wäre… und wenn ich es öfter als ein Mal im Monat schaffen würde, hier etwas Gehaltvolles zu posten. ;-)

P.S.: Und ja, den Titel habe ich vom Methusalem der deutschen Blogszene geklaut. :mrgreen:

This one goes to eleven, too!

This one goes to eleven, too!

All day Tuesday the thought went through my mind that January 25th was a special date somehow, but couldn’t for the life of me think whose birthday it was. I just remembered – this weblog’s birthday! So now it’s officially eleven years and three days old.

The first two sentences on my first posting:

I’d like to introduce myself first.
My name is Andrea Frick and I’m 24 years old.

Was I really that young? And don’t even look at the photo of André and me that was taken the previous year. (Yeah, back then we didn’t have a digital camera.)

Anyway, instead of a careless teenager student I’m now a responsible adult ;-) and will be off to work in a minute. Let’s see what the next eleven years will bring…

To the readers who have stuck with me for the past 1.1 decades, thanks!