kuechenserver.org

Category: General

  • Taxes HowTo – Christian style

    It’s about time: our local “Finanzamt” which is the town’s legal entity to collect your income taxes in Germany, in my case Hamburg-Hansa (which will hopefully not change due to the move), has again reminded me that my income taxes were due in May and that I should consider handing them in till September, 14th, or else…. (I love those “or else” letters).

    So, I’m at the moment preparing my income taxes which is a bit difficult due to “Christian Louis Veranstaltungstechnik und Medienproduktion”, my own company that I founded 11 years ago. I don’t do anything anymore that is considered to be even partly self-employed, but since the legal entity still exists, it is part of my income taxes.

    The problem is however that – also due to historic reasons – this company’s legal address is still in Leverkusen, my birth town. I never bothered to change this, since – as already mentioned – I don’t actively do anything with it anyways.

    So, instead of handing in all my paperwork at ONE tax office, I have to first of all file my company’s taxes in Leverkusen (which is normally done quite quickly, just write a bunch of zeroes in some forms) and after that I have to take the outcome (0 EUR income out of my company) and file my personal income taxes in Hamburg.

    Quick HowTo, so that I remember how to do this next year:

    0. Hand in “Umsatzsteuererklärung”

    1. Grab an “Anlage G” to claim your company’s profit and hand it in together with the so-called “Mantelbogen”: Erklärung zur gesonderten Feststellung von Grundlagen für die Einkommensbesteuerung, Vordruck ESt 1 B

    2. Send to Leverkusen tax office, wait for results

    3. File Einkommensteuererklärung Vordruck Est 1 A + additional sheets like KAP with the Hamburg tax office

    Especially writing down the names hopefully helps me remembering all of this in 2011. If you are curious how such a German tax form looks like, you’ll find plenty of them here: https://www.formulare-bfinv.de/ffw/content.do

    For my other “normal” income taxes, I use t@x 2010 by the way; unfortunately this crazy “you own a company in a different town” stuff can’t be managed with this properly.

  • Twitter OAuth – does it work?

    I use twitter quite reguarly and of course, I also twitter when I write a new blog entry.

    However, twitter has recently changed their API and this forces me to upgrade the twitter integration + test it.

    So, this rather boring blog post is just a proof of concept that twitter integration works (again).

    So: pass along, there is nothing to see here 😉

  • Video killed the radio star

    Due to a conversation I just had with a friend / ex-colleague of mine, I decided to give you a little insight in what I like to watch from time to time. I’ll split the list a bit to help you pick whatever genre you fancy:

    Great German TV series (contrary to popular belief, there are a few of them):

    • Türkisch für Anfänger
    • Mein Leben und Ich
    • Doctor’s Diary
    • Danni Lowinski
    • Edel + Stark
    • 18 – Allein unter Mädchen
    • Popstars
    • Stromberg
    • IBES-HMHR (aka: “Ich bin ein Star, holt mich hier raus!”)

    Documentaries / scripted reality:

    • My Restaurant Rules (Australian version, rare to get)
    • Top Chef
    • Undercover Boss

    Teenager / High School themed:

    • Veronica Mars
    • Buffy The Vampire Slayer
    • Gossip Girl
    • Hannah Montana
    • Glee
    • 10 Things I Hate About You
    • One Tree Hill
    • Dawsons Creek

    British TV:

    • Top Gear
    • Sherlock
    • Coupling
    • Hotter Than My Daugther
    • How Not To Live Your Life
    • Drop Dead Gorgeous
    • Secret Diary Of A Call Girl
    • NY-LON

    General Comedy:

    • 30 Rock
    • Saturday Night Live
    • How I Met Your Mother
    • Big Bang Theory
    • Blue Mountain State
    • Futurama
    • Simpsons
    • My Name Is Earl
    • Friends
    • Joey

    Medical:

    • Royal Pains
    • Scrubs
    • Grey’s Anatomy
    • Lie To Me
    • Trauma
    • Nip/Tuck
    • House

    Lawyer:

    • Drop Dead Diva
    • Boston Legal
    • Eli Stone
    • Dirty Sexy Money (in a way)
    • The Good Wife

    Drama / Action / just plain crazy:

    • Californication
    • Weeds
    • Mad Men
    • Six Feet Under
    • 24
    • Being Erica
    • Entourage
    • Gilmore Girls
    • Leverage
    • Party Down
    • Rizzoli & Isles
    • Dollhouse
    • Kitchen Confidential
    • New Amsterdam
    • Knight Rider (2008)

    Maybe you’ll find an inspiration for something to watch.

    On my personal ist is e.g. Lost, Heroes and The West Wing at the moment, if you have any other additions, let me know 😉

  • A whole bunch of news

    Wow, that went (un-)surprisingly bad. Of course I didn’t find the time to post any story at all about my trip to the far east, let alone the trips to Moscow, Dubai and the myriad of visits to the UK that followed after.

    However I remembered today that I still have this blog here and that it might be worth to fill it with some content after all, for those of you who have not yet found my twitter or Facebook account, have not yet befriended me on 4², Gowalla or any of the other 2000+ social communites that are (contentwise) fed by my twitter account.

    So, dear not-internet-citizens, here is a brief wrap-up on what happened in the last 6+ months:

    – Mobile phones. Despite my rather longish quest for the “perfect” data plan I ended up paying a 700+ EUR bill for a week in Moscow. After that (and since o2 has released a 60 EUR EU wide data cap), I decided to go back to my 11 year old contract (well, I’ve changed plans quite often inbetween) and as of now I am an ordinary o2 Germany private customer again. On the other hand, I now constantly carry foreign prepaid SIMs around.

    – Travel. I have quite well adjusted to travelling now; interestingly enough most of my birthday presens (oh yes, I turned 30 inbetween and celebrated – of course – at the Irish Rover) reflected pretty well on that. Thanks for all the thought you put into this! One outcome of me travelling so often is the fact that I now own a Priority Pass membership, partly due to the fact that I still didn’t manage to gain the FTL status with Lufthansa. And yes, a lounge is one of the most beautiful places you can find in an Airport (maybe besides the exit, if a well known taxi driver waits there to drive you home).

    – Home. This will also change in the near future. I’ve lived in the Högerdamm now for roughly 5 years, half of the time sharing it with Inka. As the cats moved in and our offices changed into home-based ones, there is the need for a larger space. We’ve managed to find something decent and better-located to rent and will – at latest on 1st of October – move to the new place.

    – Cats. If you don’t know by now: I don’t only live together with Inka, but also with our two great cats. If you need to see some cat content, let me know.

    – New job: also something that I have not yet mentioned so explicitly here. After almost 5 years working for Computacenter, which was a great time, I left. I joined a privately-owned, 170+ employee strong German security vendor called Astaro, where I now work as a Pre-Sales Engineer responsible for the non-German speaking EMEA region; which means travelling a lot, but less than before. I also have an official home office and get even paid rent for that! And before you ask: I’ve not regretted this move a single day in my life up to now. The only sad thing is that I had to leave great colleagues and fun to work with customers behind.

    – Summer: we really have something that can be compared to it at the moment here in Hamburg. Which hit us all by surprise.

    – Fitness: As you might have whitnessed, I’ve cancelled my membership with Elixia way before they went bancrupt. Lucky me. However, it’s about time that I start again. But, I learned by observing myself that signing up for a fitness club that is across town doesn’t work at all. But, there are 3+ fittness clubs within a 10 minute walk from our new place, so chances are there that I’ll start again and hopefully keep on going there.

    – The rest: There are probably plenty of other things to talk about, but I forgot about them. If you want to touch base again, just drop me a quick line via E-Mail and we can at least try to arrange a longer talk on the phone, over a drink in person or whatever is possible.