Still a beautiful place.

UPDATE: While surfing around with Google Earth, I think I found a shot that shows the webcam housing for the shots above. Seems like the right angle and placement.

Ups and Downs of the Week

Done with School – Defended my thesis (CCK) this week, so I’m done. My degree requirements are complete. No more school for me.

Congress – Can it get any worse?

Patriots – Kicked NY Jets to the curb where they belong. Now they need to dominate the Bears to cement their position as the premier NFL team this year.

Red Sox – They finally opened the purse strings and bought some serious talent. I’m really looking forward to next season now. They still need some starting pitchers and mucho bullpen help.

Ramsau Webcam – Caught a ghost family crossing the bridge.

US Postal Service – The single worst way to ship anything. My order from NY made it from the shipper in some small town in upstate to Forest Park, IL (Chicagoland) in a day. Somehow 3 days later it still hasn’t made it downstate to my door. Pathetic.

Ups and Downs of the week.

Photoshop – I should be designing Christmas ornaments.

Patriots – Doing well so far. Monday night is their chance to finally hold the lead in their division. Or be firmly in second place.

Catbirds – Not exactly what I was hoping for when I put this feeder up.

Ups and Downs of the week.

Red Sox – They’ve been coming on lately and the return of Mike Lowell, one of the classiest players to ever grace the field, could not have come at a better time. In his first at bat after returning from rehab, he hit the first pitch into the Monster seats at Fenway. He’s made some great plays at 1st base, too. With Youkilis out for the season now, the Red Sox front office has no choice but to play Lowell at 1st for most games. The Sox will be better for it. Tonight they beat the Yankees in their own park. A very good Friday night.

Photoshop CS5 – “Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day, oh yeah.” Ok, this isn’t perfect, but it took less than 3 minutes. Think what you could do if you really devoted some time to it.

Weather – Man, it’s been a brutal summer. We had a decent day today and tomorrow is supposed to be ok, but starting Sunday and all the way through next week we’re expecting temps in the mid- to upper-90s with killer humidity. Bring on autumn, already.

Day Three was Sarah’s birthday. We had planned to drive from Munich to Passau and then up along the border with the Czech Republic to see areas where I used to patrol. But I had been talking about seeing Ramsau for a while because it’s one of my favorite webcams and is often featured on this blog. Sarah suggested we head that way and swing up to Passau later. So off we went. The ride to Ramsau was pretty spectacular. We avoided a traffic jam thanks to the excellent navigation system in the Mercedes and wound down through some really tight roads which ran along a river gorge into Ramsau. This is not a place you want to accidentally go off the road. It’s a long way to the bottom of the gorge. The scenery reminded me of Colorado.

When we got to Ramsau, the sky was brilliant blue with some clouds moving in.

It was well past lunchtime and we were starving, so we stopped in at the Gasthof Oberwirt for an excellent lunch.

When we came out after lunch, the clouds had started to move in, although there was still some blue showing.

Here’s the webcam responsible for so many awesome sunrise images I’ve posted here.

And here’s the famous webcam view, taken this time with my own camera. This is the view I came to see.

Of course we couldn’t resist getting in the image ourselves.

Ramsau is famous for hiking and cross country skiing and, of course, stunning views no matter which way you turn. The buildings on the hill are some vacation rentals.

Here’s Ramsau other, less famous church. Still very picturesque.

There was a small park in Ramsau with this rather unique “inhalatorium” where water was filtered down through branches which then gave off supposedly healing fumes.

Behind the church in Ramsau is a rather elaborate cemetery. Oddly enough, most of the graves are dated within the last 30 years or so.

The interior of the church is pretty impressive for such a small structure.

We left Ramsau and drove the short distance to Berchtesgaden. I wanted to see the Eagles Nest, Hitler’s WWII mountain retreat, but the early snow had closed the roads up there, so we had to settle for a picture from the village below.

Then, again at Sarah’s suggestion, we decided to drive the very short distance into Salzburg, Austria. It would prove to be the best decision we made during our trip. Salzburg is amazing. We parked the car and found ourselves right at Mozart Platz. After seeing the city up close for just a few minutes, we knew we had to stay here for the night.

We went and found a room for the night and continued exploring. Salzburg screams history everywhere you look. There are cathedrals with huge squares surrounding them and museums and grand architecture around every corner. After a magical evening stroll through this timeless city, we returned to our hotel and booked another night.

We didn’t book a suite, but there was one apparently custom made for me.

The hotel was within easy walking distance of the center of the old city. It was a very comfortable place with a great breakfast every morning. It’s called the Altstadthotel Kasererbräu. I highly recommend it for anyone staying in Salzburg.

So that was Day Three of our trip. Another very busy, but highly enjoyable day.

Ups and Downs of the week.

 Malwarebytes – Great little program for ferreting out deeply hidden malware on your PC.

 Patriots – Shaping up nicely. We’ll see how they do against Indy this weekend.

 Ramsau – The webcam is still kicking out awesome images.

Ups and Downs of the week.

 Vacation – Our ten days in Germany and Austria were excellent. I have a million pictures to post later, but for now, here are a few pics and a video from the Dom zu Salzburg in Salzburg, Austria.

You may recognize the background in this next pic from the webcam stills I post every now and then. It was great being there in person.

I’ll have many more pics later after I’ve done some editing and uploading. Below is a video I shot inside the Dom zu Salzburg during a program called LichtNacht (Light Night) on our second night in Salzburg, Austria. Salzburg is an amazing city with history everywhere you turn.

  Weather – Second wettest October in history here. We may even set a new record. So far 19 days of rain this month. 

 Phillies – They took one game in the Bronx. I hope they take all three at home and send the Yankmees off to play golf for the winter.

Sixt Car Rental – We returned our rental car on Tuesday evening. The attendant there walked around the car meticulously inspecting it for damage, even going so far as to wipe off some road grime to check for scratches underneath. He found no damage. Our receipt clearly states there was no damage on the car. But now, several days later, Sixt is claiming there is a dent and scratches on the trunk and bumper. This despite the fact that the attendant and I stood at the rear of the car while he finalized the inspection and neither of us saw any such damage. It should also be noted that upon picking the car up initially, the car was a long walk from the rental desk at the airport and there was no one around to inspect the car with me then. I did, however, look the car over and saw no damage. This is an entirely bogus claim. Still, I checked with Visa services about coverage and they said they’d cover any claims and that this type of claim was not unusual. It seems that Sixt knows they can make a few extra bucks off bogus claims when the car is covered under the credit card insurance. I would advise Americans traveling in Europe to avoid Sixt car rental as it appears that they will make claims after the car is returned despite the client having a receipt verifying no damage.

  Home – Good to be here after a long trip. 

Ups and Downs of the week.

 MLB.com – Despite technical difficulties on Opening Day (inexcusable), the picture quality this year is awesome, although the delay of nearly a minute makes it difficult to read posts on Sawxheads.com without reading spoilers. And the Nexdef app really ramps up the CPU usage. 

  Red Sox – Not a promising start to the season.

  Weather – Supposed to be cracking into the 60’s this coming week.

  Weather- It was in the 40’s today. It’s April, for Pete’s sake!!!!

 Dad – The man is a born fighter. So hard to gain that last bit of confidence and strength, though. Still, he’s toughing it out and will prevail, I’m sure. 

 Ramsau – I know I post about this a lot, but this has to be one of the most awe-inspiring webcams on the internet.

This one is in Ramsau, Germany. Beautiful sunrise.