Welcome
My name is Carsten Langrock and yes, that sounds like a german name because I am german. And no, I am not from Bavaria and do not own a pair of lederhosen, even though many people might mistake Bavaria for Germany. As a matter of fact, Bavaria was the last state to join the German Republic and still considers itself as independent from the rest of the country, hence the name "Freistaat Bayern" (free state of Bavaria). I've never been to the Oktoberfest in Munich or anywhere else in Bavaria for that matter, but I've been told by many americans that it's really a nice place to visit for a couple of days. I'll take their word for it.
I was born in Düsseldorf, the capital of Nordrhein-Westfalen. Cologne (that's Köln, for those in the know) is one of our neighboring cities, a city whose inhabitants real Düsseldorfer pitty for their lack of taste and pitiful beer. If you appreciate beer (and, come on, who doesn't), swing by Düsseldorf one of these days and check out our Altstadt, you won't regret it. I am currently working as a research associate at Stanford University in California in Prof. Martin Fejer's research group. The picture on the right-hand side shows my wife Sandrine and myself.
Please also have a look at ONStor's website, a company that produces high-quality, high-performance, low-cost, hardware and software solutions for network attached storage (NAS) systems, and incidentially, the company Sandrine works for. If they ever go public, please buy plenty of their stock, Sandrine will appreciate it.