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Guido Schlabitz
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Berlin, Germany - 1992

Berlin, Germany - 1993

Potsdam, Germany - 1995

September

Software Developer at TeraCom

Self-employed in Potsdam: improved call center operations for E-Plus, a German cell phone provider, with digital forms; wrote a point-of-sale Windows app used in five local retail stores; and sped up the phone sales process by three days with a credit-check update.

Phoenix, Arizona - 1998

August

Software Engineer at Informative Graphics

Built a browser version (ActiveX on IE) of the in-house CAD/3D image viewer, removing the need to install a Windows application, and integrated the viewer with five third-party CMS systems.

Keams Canyon, Arizona - 2005

April

Howdy

The new ISP came without webspace, so the sporadic mass emails to family became a bilingual blog instead — German and English, for family on both sides of the Atlantic. The backdrop: a home in the high desert at the foot of a mesa, sand roads, and the local cedars and junipers.

April

Pix, pix!

Of course I will post pictures of us regularly.

April

Comments

You don't actually need to sign up to leave comments.

April

Fence

And here is the reason why you need a fence, if you want to be a successful gardener on the reservation: free range

April

Kai

Kai has been enjoying his "school" (Headstart program) immensely.

April

Shortcut

After church today, Amy wanted to get some groceries.

April

Tumbleweeds

That is how it went for a while and, even though we had a map, every turn led to more uncertainty.

April

Wild Horses

The path after the gate in the razor wire fence got better and better, and eventually led to a two lane dirt road.

April

Name Dispute

However, I'm usually giving the names to our pets, and I thought Muddy would be cute.

April

Taxes

We finally finished our tax return!

April

Live Vault

If you like John Cleese (Monty Python, A Fish Called Wanda) you'll probably enjoy this Live Vault ad starrin…

April

Penny Stacking

I am not saying, that I have nothing to do as a house husband, but this looks like an interesting time killer.

April

Even more puppies

Okay, now it really gets complicated with naming the doggies...

April

War Paint

Ich muss mir mal diese manuellen Einstellungen durchlesen...

April

Ouch

Well okay, I am not going to be that mean, and use only links to the pictures.

April

Typical ;)

Einer der Amerikaner sagte zum anderen: \"Du, ich glaube wir sollten auch mal eine Fremdsprache erlernen.\" \"Wieso?\" sagte der andere, \"Der Typ kannte vier…

May

MP3 versus WMA

"Heart of the Sunrise", Yes > \_10,717KB MP3 128 \*\*\* > \_16,087KB MP3 192 \*\*\* > \_26,827KB MP3 320 \*\*\* > 118,393KB WAV 14k \*\*\*\*\* > \_10,803KB WMA…

May

Modern Daydreams

"The dance world's Woody Allen" (NY Times), Mitchell Rose, exhibits some of his great comedic short films via the AOAI channel…

May

The New Home

My dear mother asked me for more pictures of our new house.

May

The New Home 2

On this picture you can see a local cowboy with revolver in our driveway.

May

Trabant has investment value!

Even though the Trabantwerke in Zwickau are long since dead, the vehicles manufatured there have a high resale…

June

Coen Expeditions Progress

Arrived in Shawnee National Forrest late at night and could not find the way to Dan's ranch in all the fog.

June

I didn't do it!

The concrete block is mine, I use it to hold down the tarp on my fire wood, but how it fell on the snake I do not know.

June

Rock Point, Day 1

A week at the Navajo Evangelical Lutheran Mission in Rock Point with old friends from our former church in Mesa — painting the school's computer lab, helping with repairs and the summer vacation bible school, and learning that at 1,400 meters the desert cools off mercifully fast after dark.

June

Rock Point, Day 2

Today, we painted the computer lab of the school at the mission.

June

Rock Point, Day 3

As Lutherans, we were, of course, all organized and ready to start Vacation Bible School precisely at 9:30 am, until we found out that we are on Navajo Time, w…

June

Rock Point, Day 4

This morning we had Vacation Bible School again, this time relatively on time (10:05 am instead of 9:30 am).

June

Rock Point, Day 5

This brush is used to fill the many tiny holes in the concrete blocks:

June

I bought it on eBay

Passend zum Weird Al Yankovic song \"I bought it on eBay\" hat jemand eine echte eBay-Auktion erstellt.

June

Gas price

According to www.Benzinpreis.de Germans currently pay 1.23 Euros for one liter of Super (89, the middle choice, no…

July

Aha!

That was easy, I just used the new picture upload feature in Blogger!

July

Roswell, New Mexico

We started our vacation today by going from home to [Roswell, New Mexico](http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?ovi=1&zoom=2&mapdata=slIDb%2fBv9J9GHeYIyaOOsWWlv…

August

Object Gender Wars

Here is a list of properties that "determine" what gender objects have.

August

Somewhere in Texas

The closer wie got to the Texan state border, the more oil wells (or actually oil rigs) were see-sawing up and down next to the road.

September

80s Quiz

The name of a beloved 80s TV series, which features this famous skyline in its opening credits.

September

Hogs Hollow

We got to Amy's parents without a hitch, which means not driving past the path into the dark woods that leads to Hogs Hollow as usual.

September

Cave-In-Rock

When we stayed with Dan and Janet, we traveled the Ohio river aboard the Shawnee Queen.

September

Coen Lodge

When we visited the Coens in July, I did not take any pictures of Coen Lodge, but I just discovered one I took, when I picked up Grandma Ruth in June.

September

The New Home 3

This is my little kitchen I like to cook in a lot.

October

Windows Noises

As Oliver can surly elaborate (and will, if you want to or not ;)), windows is a poor creative medium - the other meanings of "poor" included.

October

Guido's Green Garden, Epilogue

In spite of the unplanned summer drought, some veggies struggled hard and perked up, once I reestablished the water flow.

October

The New Home 4

To the north of our house lies this rocky cliff, where I sometimes sit and contemplate the world.

October

Prince of Persia!

Oh, those where the times, when Little Guido had the leisure to play games like "Prince of Persia".

October

Kai's Fourth

Here are a few pictures of Kai's little birthday party.

October

Doll House

Hier ist nun endlich das (mütterlicheseits) ersehnte Photo des Puppenhauses, das Kirin zu ihrem sechsten Geburtstag bekam.

November

Halloween

Of course, Kai had to go to bed with his Batman outfit on, but decided against the mask sometime during the night.

November

Halloween Update

Here is the pumpkin pie I made from the insides of our Halloween pumpkin.

November

The New (Dog)House

Didgy survived the last winter without a dog house, but I always feel sorry for her out on the porch during these bitterly cold high desert nights.

November

Slay Radio

To all C-64 fans: Look what I found!!

Jeddito, Arizona - 2006

January

Best Blonde Joke Ever!

The Christmas/New Year-family gathering in Illinois is over and we all arrived safely at home via various ways.

January

Russian Gymnasts

Those poor former gymnasts of the soviet sport propaganda machine; the brain washing was so intense, they [just can not stop jumping around](http://video.googl…

February

Oh Holy Night

Since my dear mom is in the Christmas spirit again (or still?

February

Rock? Paper? Scissors!

Our princess had some difficulties removing her royal hairtie from her pony tail.

February

Chicago

The sun helped a little on the next day, but even the Germans, who usually warm themselves on ice blocks, felt the pinch and pinched their eyes.

February

One Horse Gap

One Horse Gap is a gulch in the Shawnee National Forrest, which is just wide enough for one horse, hence the name.

February

Visual Jazz

Animations like these always tempt me to buy one of the many Flash tools.

March

Go Chica

Even though I just was there for Christmas, I have a hard time finding my way around this [transit map of Chicago](http://cowperthwait.livejournal.com/85239.ht…

March

Work, work, work!

Just to let you know, why I have not been blogging very frequently lately; I've been working for this German security start-up called Hitec Security.

March

Snow!

A few weeks ago we finally got some snow in arid Arizona (no rain for 143 days).

March

TI apologizes

Wow, I just read, that TI has somehow apologized to Moni.

March

Vaudeville and Ethics

Anyway, here is his message he sent her on Friday, 3/24/2006, as quoted in the "[Unexpected Email from legal advisor, got until Sunday to decide](http://waswei…

April

Mom in Memphis

I had one of the coolest brain farts just before my parents arrived for their Christmas visit in Illinois.

April

Illinois Visit 2005

Here are the rest of the photos that I made during the parent's visit in Illinois.

June

Pack(en), Pack(en), Pack(en)

Unfortunately we could not pick up the moving truck in Holbrook as promised, but U-Haul had one in Show Low.

June

New Home Illinois

Packed a rental truck on June 4th, drove three days down what used to be Route 66, and rolled in at the in-laws' in southern Illinois — trading high-desert sand roads for overabundant greenery, songbirds, deer, and wild tiger lilies, with the hospitality of the Coen residence as home base until job and house were found.

June

Eselsbrücke

Viele meiner werten Leser und Leserinnen kommen per Suchmaschiene auf meinem bescheidenen Familienblog an.

June

New Teeth and Hats

Kirin's front teeth were wiggling since Christmas, but now daddy and grandma Janet had enough and pulled them (and a good piece of gums) out, ignoring much scr…

July

Dusty Drives

The road to the Coens is pretty dusty in the summer and the backs of the cars are always covered in a thick layer of dust.

July

Our Harrisburg Home

Found the house in Harrisburg we set out to buy — mailbox right at the door, a garden on the south side, and enough of a yard to restart Guido's Green Garden in Midwestern soil.

July

Grandpa's Safari

Hier sind ein paar Bilder von Dan's Safari in Limpopo, Südafrika.

August

Software Developer at Evolution MC

Postgres stored procedures sped up the PHP backend for an online poker affiliates program by 80% while cutting code complexity in half.

December

Alien Invasion

The reason why nothing happens here lately, are the aliens that keep us hostage.

December

Christmas 2006

Hier sind wir am ersten Weihnachtsfest in unserem Haus in Harrisburg.

Harrisburg, Illinois - 2007

January

Went freelance as a web developer

Started out self-employed on oDesk (now Upwork): 44 completed contracts, 13,540 logged hours for 36 clients, and a 4.93-out-of-5 rating over seven years.

March

Cat & Cut

This is our new cat "Weasley" and I paid a visit to the barber shop on our street.

March

Summer in March

Today it was 80 degrees (in March!) and the Kids thought that it would be nice to cool off in the Ohio River.

May

Sleeping on your toes

Young parents often wonder why some kids can just sleep anywhere and if you can train them that way.

June

Email

You probably noticed, that I don't list my email on this blog.

June

SOB

Apparently Google doesn't think much of me.

July

Kids and Cabbage

Hier steht Kirin neben meinem aus Bambus gebasteltem Tomatenkäfig.

July

Happy Fourth of July

Heute ist Unabhängigkeitstag und die Männers haben dies zum Anlass genommen um eine kleine Angeltour zu unternehmen.

August

Visiting the Georges

Im Juli, als wir Sara wieder nach Hause fuhren, ließen wir unsere Kinder für eine Woche bei den Georges, Amys Schwester Brendas Familie.

September

Lilie a la Surprise

Im Frühling hatte ich haufenweise Narzissen, die einfach nicht blühen wollten.

September

Storm Damage

Einer unserer Bäume hat die Sommerhitze und Gewitter nicht gut überstanden.

September

Kirin's 8th

Wir hatten eine kleine Familienfeier für Kirin aber eine große Buttercremetorte als Geburtstagskuchen.

October

Kai's 6th

Sechsjähriger mit Schokoladenkuchen.

October

Halloween 2007

Dieses Jahr fand Halloween einen Tag früher statt, weil, nach Angaben des Lokalblattes, \"viele\" Stadteinwohner am Mittwochabend, dem eigentlichen Halloween i…

December

Neues Auto

Wir haben unseren Saturn VUE in unser vorheriges Auto, Saturn ION, umgetauscht.

December

Christmas 2007

Weinachtsabend bei den Schlabitzens: Dieses Jahr haben ich und Dan unsere Weihnachtsbäume von seinem Waldgrundstück geholt.

Harrisburg, Illinois - 2008

January

More videos

Jetzt wo ich hier Videos posten kann, sollte ich vielleicht mal mehr filmen.

February

Dramatic Animals

Who's gonna win this year's Oscar for the most dramatic Scene by a supporting animal?

February

Two Teeth

Kai ist gerade zwei Zähne älter geworden.

February

Ice, Ice, Baby

Genau so wie alles andere in Harrisburg vereist war.

March

Software Developer at Screen Pilot

Built 20+ static and interactive landing pages for hospitality and travel digital promotions, and designed an ad-impression-to-call-center tracking system used on a dozen client sites.

March

Flood 2008

The flood spared our home on the higher side of town, behind the water tower — but it hit nearly every business in Harrisburg. The Girl Scouts were out helping flood victims within the week.

March

Girl Scouts help flood victims

Unsere Pfadfinderinnentruppe 269 (Amy ist die Leiterin) hat Kekse und andere Mittel dem lokalen Roten Kreuz gespendet.

June

Amy sews

After I installed Kai's window air conditioner in Amy's sewing room, she's able to conduct her main hobby even during the summer.

August

Memphis BBQ

South with a barbecue stop in Memphis, then miles of freeway on massive concrete pillars over the bayous, pointing excitedly at the Spanish moss — all the way to Jackson Square, the heart of the French Quarter.

August

Through the Swamp

Still traveling to New Orleans, the freeway hits [the swamps](http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=New+Orleans,+LA&ie=UTF8&ll=30.056339,-90.373597&…

August

Jackson Square

Jackson Square is the heart of the French Quarter, which in turn forms the historic and cultural center of the city of New Orleans.

Harrisburg, Illinois - 2011

December

Technical Lead at Touchpoint Dashboard

Took over as lead developer during the prototype phase and grew the Django app into a selling SaaS customer-journey-mapping platform, leading up to four off-shore contractors. Moving the backend to AWS doubled performance and cut hosting costs by 90%; the frontend evolved from jQuery through Backbone to React along the way.

Harrisburg, Illinois - 2015

Harrisburg, Illinois - 2018

Harrisburg, Illinois - 2020

July

Senior Software Developer at Material

LRW rebranded to Material, a modern marketing services company. Transformed the Yamaha Motor US website onto an AWS backend and a Next.js frontend — a Storybook-driven workflow halved the time from design to implemented UI — and maintained Touchpoint Dashboard until its sunset, planning and executing the shutdown of all of its AWS infrastructure.

Champaign, Illinois - 2023

November

Senior Software Developer at Updraft

A three-month contract that turned into a full-time position with the client. Translated a legacy Django–Shopify integration to Remix (removing 80% of the code), moved Python code to Node.js, and lifted the AWS backend to GCP — cutting deployment time from 30+ minutes to 2–4.

Champaign, Illinois - 2024

March

Senior Software Developer at Afloat

Afloat is a local gifting app and a Shopify marketplace for local businesses. A new REST API and Shopify integration cut the manual steps in half, sign-up for new businesses got 80% shorter, and Sentry instrumentation trimmed log output by 60%.

July

Senior Full Stack Engineer on Upwork

Back to freelancing as a one-man software team with front- and back-end expertise. Recent projects: Finaware, a SaaS platform investigating financial crimes with LLM and vision models processing bank statements; Teetag, a WooCommerce t-shirt shop with Printify integration; and an internal inventory dashboard for Coverland built on Retool and Supabase.

Champaign, Illinois - 2025

October

Senior Full Stack Engineer at GovRecover

Adding features to and improving the backend services behind GovRecover.org, expanding the service to new US states and their particular processes for claiming property.