Most modern browsers offer an auto-complete feature for the address bar; start typing an address and the browser offers one or more addresses that start with the same character or characters to save you from typing the entire URI. Over time your favorite sites gravitate towards the top of this auto-complete list, resulting in the ability to type just a single letter, in some cases, to get to a site. Here, then, are the top 26 sites in my version of the Internet, as determined by their first letter.
A a.wholelottanothing.org/ B bits.blogs.nytimes.com/ C cnn.com/ D daringfireball.net/ E ericalucci.com/ F flickr.com/ G google.com/ H hivelogic.com/ I idlewords.com/ J jasonsantamaria.com/ K kottke.org/ L lifehacker.com/ M mail.google.com/ N news.bbc.co.uk/ O officesnapshots.com/ P padawan.info/ Q quirksmode.org/ R randsinrepose.com/ S shawnblanc.net/ T twitter.com/ U http://www.useit.com/ V veerle.duoh.com/ W woot.com/ X x180.net/ Y yahoo.com/ Z zanshin.net/
While Sibylle and I were in Germany we made extensive use of an Internet Cafe in order to check email and upload pictures to Flickr. Every time we logged out of the machines we were both very careful to log out of any password protected sites or applications, and to close all application windows. Still, since we had no administrative rights on the machines and therefore couldn’t wipe out the cache or browsing history, I was a bit nervous about having entered my passwords on a strange machine.
This afternoon my Yahoo Messenger account suddenly disconnected giving me a “you logged in elsewhere” reason as the cause. Yikes!
I immediately logged back in to Yahoo Messenger on my computer, and messaged Sibylle at home to see if my other computer had woken up. If it had, then that would be the cause of the “logged in elsewhere” message. If it hadn’t then there was either a bug in Yahoo’s software (not impossible) or someone in Winnenden Germany was potentially masquerading as me.
Sibylle confirmed that my laptop at home was still slumbering away. Time to change the password.
What is interesting is that this password was one that Yahoo assigned me when I first start using IM about 100 years ago. For some reason clot451coat639 was easy to remember and type. I never saw a reason to change it until today. The only password I have that’s older would be the one for ICQ, which dates back to 1995 or so. Probably ought to change that one as well.
While we were in Germany, Sibylle and I made good use of a small Internet Cafe in Winnenden, the town next to the village where we were staying. The cafe had about a dozen mid-level desktop computers with 15 or 17 inch LCD monitors, and offered miltch kaffee, soft drinks, and beer.
The first time we sat down we discovered that the keyboards were quite a bit different than the English one we are used to in the States. I’m not sure I can remember all the differences, but here is a partial list:
Except for the viruses infestation on our camera’s memory cards, the Internet Cafe experience was a good one, made all the more interesting by the differences in something as common and ordinary as a keyboard.
My employer utilizes Microsoft Outlook for email and calendaring. The culture here uses the calendar to track outages. When you are going to be out of the office, whether for training, the dentist, or vacation, you are to send a meeting announcement to your team letting them know of your absence. It’s a good idea, provided everyone follows a couple of simple rules.
Make sure to leave your name out of the description of the event. This way it will appear to all who accept it that they are going to the dentist for root canal work.
Always mark the event as Busy, so that everyone has that time blocked out on their calendar too. After all, if you aren’t going to be here, no one should be getting any thing done? Right?
Send your event announcement to the widest possible audience. Use departmental mailing lists rather then just the names of people you work with on a daily basis.
Be sure to require everyone on your event. If you mark them as optional then they won’t have to send you a response.
Don’t proofread your event. Software is tested in production, so why shouldn’t everyone on the company-wide distribution list have to accept or decline multiple iterations of your outage as you correct the date, the time, the location, and the description six times.
Sibylle and I had a fantastic trip to the East Coast to see Ted, and a Genesis concert, and then to Germany to see her mom, and Stuttgart.
Flying Our flights were by and large good. We had a longish layover in Charlotte on our way to Hartford, but we were able to pass the time by browsing in some of the shops and by splitting a sandwich from Quiznos. Our overseas flight was only about two-thirds full, and we had a three-seat row to ourselves, which was very nice. Neither of us slept much or very well on the flight but we enjoyed sharing it with each other.
Amsterdam was chaotic and seemingly disorganized both going there and coming home. We will avoid plane changes there in the future.
Our return home yesterday covered over 5000 miles, took 26 hours, and visited 5 airports. We were very grateful to reach our own door at the end of the day. Getting back into the US at Bradley International airport was a lengthy, trying process. There were only two customs agents for the nearly 300 passengers. We stood in line for an hour before getting our turn. After collecting our luggage we discovered, much to our amazement and dismay, that the international arrivals terminal is not connected to the main domestic terminal. When we left the country 12 days earlier we didn’t have to leave the main terminal so we were unprepared to be nearly a mile away from the terminal we needed for our domestic flight home. Fortunately we were able to talk a long-term bus in to shuttling us to the main terminal.
Genesis Our visit with Ted and his family was wonderful. The Genesis concert on Sunday evening was spectacular in every sense of the word. I’ve been fortunate enough to see Genesis in concert 5 times and this show was by far and away the best. The band played for nearly three hours, and included a number of very old songs that I had never heard in concert before. Outstanding.
Germany Sibylle grew up just outside of Stuttgart Germany, and lived in Stuttgart for a time before moving to the US. We toured the entire Stuttgart area, taking in medieval ruins, the Wilhelma Zoo and Botanical Gardens, forests, trains, cafes, and people.
Stuttgart is a beautiful city, now that I’ve been there I can see why Sibylle loves it so much. We made extensive use of the train system to get around, and enjoyed a number of days exploring different parts of the city or surrounding area. I am already looking forward to returning there to revisit some parts, and to explore more of Germany, and Europe.
Great The best part of the trip was sharing it with Sibylle. We had a wonderful time together. Being able to see the places she went to school or worked while living in Germany was fantastic. Exploring together and sharing the sights and sounds was marvelous.
For our trip to Germany, Sibylle and I discussed at length whether or not to take a laptop computer with us. We were concerned about weight, space, and possible theft or damage. In the end we decided to go without a computer and trust to finding an Internet cafe for our needs.
We were very successful in finding and using an Internet cage in Winnenden. Almost every day we would stop in to catch up on email and upload pictures to our respective Flickr accounts. In order to be able to remove pictures from the cameras’ memory cards I brought a portable 40 GB USB drive in my bag, and the memory card readers for our two cameras.
Transferring pictures from the memory cards to the hard rive worked very well the first couple of times we tried it. Then one day I got a Windows Explorer window showing the file structure on the memory card rather than the usual Camera and Scanner wizard. I tried several times to get the wizard to start to no avail. Now, after returning home I know why.
Our cards had become infected with a virus. One of the machines in the cafe didn’t have a working firewall and was infected with a variety of viruses, it seems. Both of our cards, when plugged into our home machines, triggered an immediate virus quarantine. Both Norton (Sibylle’s computer) and Zone Alarm (my laptop) recognized three different viruses on our cards. Even after the cards were cleared of the viruses the picture copying wizard wouldn’t activate. Sibylle was able to recover her pictures using her camera rather than the card reader as the input device to the computer. I plugged my card reading into the Powerbook (Mac OS X) and was able to import all the pictures there. Windows viruses simply aren’t a problem for Macs.
Until today I had no idea that a camera memory card (and I suppose a PDA card or cell phone card) could be infected with a virus. It makes sense however, to the operating system it’s just another removable storage device.
Our cards have been cleaned and medicated. Next vacation we’re taking a laptop with us.
Sibylle and I are making good use of a small internet cafe in Winnenden Germany, near where her mother lives. We’ve been able to check our email, copy pictures from cameras to our portable hard drive, and generally feed our nerd needs.
Computers are universal, it seems, although there are some differences. The German keyoard has some extra keys, for ß, and ö, ä, and ü, It also moves some of the symbols around. Strg-Alt-Q is required for the at sign, for example. The hardest change is that the Y key and the Z key are reversed in position.
We created a Wordpress.com site to record our travels on. You can read our impressions and thoughts at sibylleandmark.wordpress.com.
On both of our flights today the seat tray tables had embedded ads. When you unfolded them for use the tray table top had a full-color ad that covered the entire surface. Maybe this is just a US Air innovation, maybe everyone is doing it now; I fly so infrequently that I am not up on the current trends. My first thought when I saw the ads was that planes are going to be the next stadiums. Just as we now have stadiums named for corporations or their products, we’ll soon have flights named for or sponsored by corporations.
“I’m taking the HP ScanJet flight to LA tomorrow.”
In about 90 minutes I’ll complete the last day of work before the start of our vacation. Sibylle and I are taking two weeks and traveling this year, all the way to Europe. And back. As with all vacations some measure of the fun is the anticipation leading up to the event. I’ve had a running countdown on my whiteboard at work for the past several weeks (Tage bis zum Urlaub: Eins), and I’ve got widgets on both laptops ticking away the time until our flight takes off tomorrow (20 hours and 40-odd minutes).
Mentally I think my vacation started yesterday. While I’ve been at work all day today, I’ve not been overly productive. I sent a few emails, updated a couple of documents and prepared my status reports for the next two weeks. Now that it is past lunch and the only thing remaining on my work calendar is a weekly team meeting, I’ve pretty my checked out.
On a related note, posting maybe sparse here at zanshin.net for the next couple of weeks. I have visions of putting up a Flickr picture or two while we are away, and maybe a posting here or there, but the truth is, I’ll be largely on vacation from this site too.
See you in October.
Several times in recent weeks the wireless broadband card I have from Sprint has been pressed into service while traveling in the car. The I-70 corridor from Kansas City west to at least K-177 (the Manhattan exit) has good data coverage. With Sibylle driving the car I’ve been able to connect, view emails, chat, even VPN into my workstation at work and accomplish tasks “at” work.
Last evening Sibylle got a chance to try this marvel out for herself, while I was driving. We both agreed that it is at the same time amazing and, almost, expected. Of course we can be online in a car traveling 70 mph on the highway, why would it work any other way?