zGerman – Michael Stuben – The German

Since this is my homepage, here a bit about myself.  What I like can be summed up in four things.

•Traveling to any place, at any time

•The outdoors  like spear fishing, fishing, swimming, hiking, camping and so on

•Hanging out with fun people

•Technical stuff  like Computers, Photography, tinker with my boat or home systems

I live in Las Vegas since 93 but my accent will quickly give away that I am German by birth. Vegas itself is not to bad, even so the City lacks somewhat in charm. I like the fact that it is open 24h/day and that i can hop on to a plane and go pretty much anywhere in the US.

On weekend I often leave town. I enjoy hiking in Utah, near Cedar City, Zion or Moab as well as Big Bear Lake in CA are nice places. The mountains south of Flagstaff AZ are very nice during the wintertime. I don’t mind the cold since I can dress up for 10F degrees but not for 115F degrees. I go out with a friend, sometimes a group of people or just by myself. I also like to fish the river from my boat or using a spear.  On occasion I charter a yacht, for example I went with Philipp in 2014 to Thailand sailing.  I also went off the coast of California on a catamaran sailing in 2015.

I travel more than the average person. If I have a chance to work out of town or out of the country I jump on it. I enjoy seeing new places and often plan my trips to be in the beginning or end of a week and spend the weekend out of town. In the US I like the state of Oregon and Washington. British Columbia is also very nice (I know BC is actually located in Canada).  Maybe it sounds crazy but on average I am outside the US at least once a month visiting mostly Mexico and Central and South America.  On average I am twice a year in Europe.

Work: I worked until June 2000 for a Gaming Manufacturer in Las Vegas in several locations/positions since June 85. I started in Engineering and later worked in Test Engineering. I have been working as a Production Supervisor / Test Engineer in the Berlin/Germany facility. At this time I also became involved in Quality Assurance. In 1993 I transferred to Las Vegas and worked as Quality Assurance Manager for seven years.

In June of 2000 I resigned after 15 years with the company and started a consulting and web hosting business company, hostmeister.com, check it out online.

While working in my own business I frequently contracted with Expedia.com on various projects. In June of 2003 Expedia made a very smart move and hired me as a System Administrator slash network engineer. My own company remained in business but I scaled back during my engagement with Expedia. The Expedia management decided to close the majority of the Las Vegas operations in October of 2004. Fortunately my own business picked back up again the same month the call center left Vegas. One door closes, another door opens.  My work load is usually stable and predictable with short spurts of crazy.

My main income is about 55% large multinational corporations, 40% consulting for local offices, mainly the real estate, education and health care business. The remaining 5% is hosting income from hosting sites like mine for businesses and private parties in both, US and Europe.

I speak English fluently as well as you guessed it, Deutsch (German).  I am also fluent in Spanish and understand some French and Korean. By “understand” I mean it is by no means good enough to start a conversation in those languages, but good enough to order food or express basic essentials.

By the way, the German spelling of my name is Michael Stüben, with an Umlaut. When I moved to the US I dropped the Umlaut and it is now just Michael Stuben – minus the dots above the u.