Safe cracker

Frustrating morning running around the airport in DF. an early
flight and a late beer meant I only slept a few hours before being
rudely snatched from the arms of sleep by the crazy annoying alarm
on my cell phone. I got ready and almost walked out the door forgetting
my passport in the safe, walked back into the room and entered the
wrong code,bonk, then the code I was sure was right, bonk, then a
variation on the right code, bonk, then the right code again, bonk.
The LED flashed "slep" and blinked off.

Fuck. I was on the verge of being late for the flight so I called the
front desk, no answer, ana de llaves, no answer, gerente. nada.
Ran the 200 yards to the front desk; "estoy (gasp) en (gasp) hab. (gasp)
veinte-tres zero cuatro (gasp)". blank look from the girl wrapped
in two coats and two scarves because the lobby of the NH hotel is
the coldest place in mexico. two more guesses at my room number
and then finally the girl lights up, says she'll send the guy right
away. 15 minutes later, the guy shows up to unclog a toilet, no magic
safe cracking box. fuck, now I'm actually late for the flight, he leaves
and comes back 10 minutes later with a box, the safe pops open and we
jog to the front desk.

I had a ticket, so I just dropped my bag at the AM counter and the girl
said 'they are boarding, hay que correr'. A nice lady in a wheelchair
helped me cut most of the security line, through security with just a quick
explanation of what a kindle is, "libro, no es un ipad" since they are
making people with ipads take them out and put them in another tray,
and I jogged to the gate where I was third to the last to board the bus.

After all that running and huffing the plane turned around went back to
the ramp because the pilot's seatbelt was broken. I could have slept half
an hour more.

Bucket List

If taking a dump on a mexican bus while riding from Poza Rica
to Veracruz was on my bucket list, it's scratched off now. I
made the mistake of ordering something for lunch that wasn't
what I thought it was.

I asked for Steak Pimientado, which I translated as pepper
steak, a piece of hamburger with pepper. In Poza Rica, that
is translated as flank steak with black pepper, plus enough
spicy pepper that I was sweating on the back of my head. I
dove into the baked potato for some relief, it was just as
spicy if not spicier.

All in all, a very mistaken lunch, especially since I had
to take a 5 hour bus ride back to Veracruz. Not a good place
to have a tumultuous stomach, but I survived. The strange
thing is the toilet seat on the bus is spring loaded, so it
does a "no time for sargeants" salute when you get up. Adding
in the bumps on the road, the net acceleration wanted to turn me
into a toilet launched projectile.

The buses in Mexico are pretty good, the ADO Platinium
and GL buses are nicer than most planes now, and bus frequency is
similar to a good train system. There were no nice buses available
for this trip, I expected to be seated on a 1950's era school bus
with people carrying chickens, but in reality it was just the same,
slightly more crowded and without free headphones. I took a coworker's
advice and bought a 2nd child ticket for half price, and that gave me
enough room to take a nap.
buses available

You can't go to waffle house again

I'm stuck in houston, i missed a flight back south
when the connecting flight had a mechanical problem.
Continental gave me a hotel voucher for a hotel, but
a shuttle from a different hotel came cruising up and asked
me if I have a voucher, if so I could use it there. Pretty
creepy, but sounded like a good deal and meant i wouldn't have
to stand on the curb anymore like a cheap hooker.

Continental gave me vouchers for meals tool
Since there's a waffle house in front of the hotel, and
when I worked in north lafayette 20 years ago, I ate
there almost every day that I wasn't offshore. Unfortunately
it wasn't too great, not as good as I remember. Doh, I wasted
a continental voucher.

Not too bad though I guess, compared to the book "the Road",
a waffle house sandwich would be much appreciated in post apocalyptic
america. I read that book on the flight up, and it scared the shit
out of me. worse than "IT" from stephen king. Made me miss
a night's sleep scary. Great book though.

New country song

I was just passing through the security theater line
here in IAH, where everyone goes through the motions of being
safer, but a 4 year old could think of ways to get a weapon
through. The guy behind me grabbed his stuff off the conveyor,
and holding his shoes and his belt in one hand, a plastic bag and
a computer in the other and supporting his other bags under his
arms. He dropped it all on a chair and said "Fuck it. I ain't
gonna fly anymore."

Which hit exactly what everyone in the line was feeling too, and
would make a really terrific country song:

I got my belt and my boots in a grey plastic tray
my bag's in another one, sent on it's way
an overpaid security guard is telling me to wait,
I used to like traveling, but I'm beginning to hate
Fuck it. I aint gonna fly anymore.

Crappy little seats that are too small to sit
It's raining hard outside my cigarette won't stay lit
Six dollars a drink for stale old beer
the pilots up front probably too drunk to steer.
fuck it...etc.

A test, Government sucks

I blogged about some recent travel woes last week
and posted by accident on my old blog url, complaining specifically
about orbitz.com and continental. Strangely enough Orbitz
posted a comment, then apologized and gave me a voucher.

I can see that my blogs have power over time and space now,
so as an experiment, I'd like to say that I think Obama is doing
a poor job as president, and the government sucks. Can I please
have a non-obama voucher?

Airport floor blogging

I'm traveling from europe back to the western hemisphere
and my laptop's battery died. There are power plugs in one
of the houston terminal b corridors of despair, but non are
near a chair so I must sit indian style on the ground, looking
like an unjolly budda.

I did miss a flight yesterday and get stuck in Rome. The
other option was waiting six hours then flying standby to spend
the night in Newark. For some reason I chose Rome over Newark.
I did a nice hike from the Vatican to the Pantheon, then
through all the fori and all the way south to some
(caracella?) pretty impressive ruins of a giant bathhouse.

I then walked back around towards the vatican following the Tiber.
A pretty good walk, it's possible to see almost all the sights of
Rome on an extended walking tour. it took me 4 hours total, including
gawking time. Rome isn't my favorite city, it's too frenetic, but
a nice quiet walk along the river certainly does raise it up on my
list of best places.

Vacation - Napoli and Sorrento

We went to Napoli

and sorrento on

vacation last week,

and we got to see

Pompeii, Capri

and the Amalfi

coast.

[view of Vesuvius

from Sorrento]

It's too hot in southern Italy to actually go outside during July, but we did anyway

leading to our visit to Pompeii being like the bataan death march.

We stayed a few days in Napoli, (best pizza in Italy) then moved down

the coast to Sorrento taking a hydrofoil across the bay. The hotel in Sorrento

was the Plaza that has a rooftop pool. I'd like a service that could pick you up

by helicopter in Pompei and just fly back and drop you in that pool.

Unfortunately there's no service yet, so we took the CircumVesuviano train

back around to Sorrento, which is a pretty hot dust covered crowd leaving

Pompei. Luckily the Plaza is only about 2 blocks from the station, so we were

safely submerged in cool water 15 minutes after getting back.

The key to getting the best experience out of Pompeii is to go to the Archealogical

museum in Napoli first. Our bad luck there was a strike or some protest

that meant it was open, but we'd have to cross a crowd of angry napolitanos to

get in; no thanks. Most of the best mosaics and casts of people killed in Pompeii

were there.

Also I didn't get up to Herculanum and Vesuvius itself. I figure that next time

we come back it will still be here. After our vacation in NYC in August 2001 I

thought we'd have another chance to go to the WTC and go up to the roof, since

it was rained out when we went. But no. In this case we should be pretty safe

that no jerkwad is going to fly a plane into mount Vesuvius (they are welcome to

try though) so we'll go back some day to Napoli to eat the excellent deserts and

go to the museum and up to the volcano.

airport bloggin

Picture looking from

St sophia's to the

other monastery

at the end of the

street.

I'm at munich airport flying back home from Ukraine. Yesterday was a pretty

long day, took a train to Poltava and back in the evening. Everyone else went out

again for a last 4 hours on the town before a 6 am flight, but I p'd out and crawled

into bed for 4 hours of deeply needed sleep.

I just encountered my first really inefficient germans, while struggling through

security before coming through immigration. The security setup was running

like a well oiled barrel of monkeys with a football; taking 1/2 hour to get 1o people

through. Anyone with a close connection was screwed right there. I felt like

yelling 'what kind of germans are you?', but probably not a good idea.

Kiev blogging

I've been in Kiev, Ukraine for most of this week. It's a nice city that
gives you a scare when you leave the airport, blocks of russian style
apartments that look like they were crappy when they were built. Then they
stop and you have to drive another 20 minutes to the city. Then downtown
is pretty nice.

Very few people speak any english here, but everyone speaks Ukrainian and
Russian. It's still a very low trust society, the hotel bill is paid when you
check in, and to charge something to your room you have to prepay a credit
to your account.

I have had more vodka this week then I've had since LSU. It kind of forces you
to drink the next night too, because the only thing that helps with the hangovers
I've had every day is a beer. I think my liver will fly back to Italy before me, trying
to make it's escape.

The one afternoon I had to play tourist and the weather turned crappy. I got to see
St Sophia and the museum, but it took me two tries to get in. They have a ticketbooth
in the big gatehouse you enter through, with a sign in english that says 50 hrivna
(pronounced "grivna")for a combination ticket. I gave the lady a 50, she gave me 45
back in change and a ticket.

I walked into the courtyard, an older guy was playing a sitar and singing in a really good
voice. When I tried to enter the cathedral, the lady said no, 'need ticket, giftshop'. grr.
I tried in the next building that looked like a giftshop, but it's a crappy museum with cool
amber pieces, but it's all in ukrainian so who knows what that's about. The equally fat
amber museum ladies say 'not right ticket, giftshop' and point to the entrance. I'm steamed
now, the old guy is still playing the sitar, but the music hurts my ears, he's probably
singing about americans that can't get in to see the cathedral. grrr. Back at the entrance
there's a little trailer to the left of the main gate. doh! it's has 6 price options, none
of them total to 50 hrivna, and the unlikely total to see everything is around 200 hrivna.
I give her a 100 and ask for everything and make finger motions that indicate everthing.
She gives me back 60 in change. I wanted to yell what the hell are you giving me, none of
the options total up to the price you charged me. grrr.

I walk back to the cathedral, the guy is still singing, I give him 5 hrivna, expecting him
to switch from his dirge to NY, NY; but he doesn't. The catheral is beautiful. It's one
of the few that weren't knocked down by the soviets, and it looks similar to San Vitale in
Ravenna, just not as old. (11 century vs 5th century.)

Everything here has a bureaucratic feel. Hopefully things will get better. There are a lot
of people here that are beautiful with nice cars, then the 50 and above generation all look
shabbier.

Tirana

Well, I'm in albania and tripadvisor was right about the traffic noise
in Tirana, the sound of the cars passing almost overwhelms the sound
of the call to prayer from the mosque down the street. The lack of traffic
noise at 5 am means the morning call to prayer sounded like it was right
outside my window. Too early, I don't think I have it in me to be so devout.

From what I've seen today, the entire country looks like it's under construction,
things are definitely booming. The strangest sight was the number of bunkers,
nearly every house out in the countryside has what looks to be a machine gun
pillbox left over from the communist days when america was going to attack any
day. It did make me yearn for the days of yore when the carter administration
would gobble up small countries and grind their bones for our bread.
[update: they were worried about the soviets invading too. yeah us!]

I'd bet in 10 more years this will look like any other european country that has
a mediteranean seafront. The people here have advantages; everyone speaks
Italian and some english, they'll zoom ahead of the rest of the eastern european
countries.

(updated from vienna)
I walked around Tirana a little
before flying out, the town is much
better looking than Bucharest,
just because the Mayor took the
initiative to have buildings painted
different colors. Same drab
communist buildings...all
dressed up.

Albania will be banging in
5-10 years. (buy now)

Now I'm in Vienna, and after 2 beers ready to pass out. Sono stanco.

Long strange trip

I'm traveling this week and I think I overdid it and have lost
the will to travel ever again. I went to Bucharest-Ploesti-Constanta-
Bucharest-Istanbul-Ankara-Istanbul-Bucharest-Forli and just
today I've been through a security checkpoint 5 times.

I was just so tired that when I checked in here in bucharest I thought
there was a mirror behind the counter, instead it's see-through to the other
side, the girl on the other side of the counter just looked almost like the
girl in front of me with her back turned towards me. Finally, the girl on
the other side of the counter turned around and in a split second before
I realized there was no mirror, it looked to me like the counter girl in front
of me had seperated from her reflection. I guess I'm tired.

But heading home now.

Happy New Year!

A fairly strange but good new year's eve. This hotel's
restaurant was closed so that it could cook for the hotel's
new year's party that we weren't invited to. Luckily the
excellent staff here at the hotel hooked us up with
dinner in the bar, with good food, good Ouzo, champagne
then more good ouzo.

Today I feel shot at and missed, shit at and hit and my eyes
look like two piss holes in the snow as my father would say, but
the ouzo seemed to kill off most of my sinus infection I've been
fighting all week, making this a worthwhile new year's hangover.

Home and back again

We went to the USA for Christmas which was nice to see family
and bask in the deserts of home. (mmmm, chocolate). I had to come
back here for work which meant my flight was Birmingham>Houston>
Frankfurt>+2 more connections and 29 hours total. Today I feel like I was
shot at and missed, shit at and hit.

Apparently I traveled just ahead of the new search requirements and
the restrictions of going to the bathroom in the last hour of flight. That restriction
won't stand up to actual practice, we'll have situations like Frozone in the
Incredibles "You can shoot me, but I'm going to pee".

Apparently the guy setting off the bomb hid it on his leg and burned off his
junk. I don't see how improved searching is going to find these kind of bombs,
if someone is willing to burn their love tackle off to take down a plane no amount
of taking your shoes off is going to stop that without much more personal pat downs,
and even then you'll get the eternal question, "Is that an explosive in your pocket
or are you just happy to see me?"

Sleepy luggage thief

We made it back to the usa for Christmas. I had to travel to Greece
and back earlier in the week, then we flew from bologna to germany to
Houston to New Orleans and I was pretty wiped out by the time we got
to MSY. Instead of dutifully checking my luggage tags, I picked up a bag
that looks just like ours but is around 10% smaller. We zombied around for
a day, my wife thinking that the strange bag belonged to my parents and our
bag was still in the car. I thought I had the right bag until I was asked to go
get our other bag. It several minutes of travel fogged arguing until we looked
inside and gave a mutual "doh!"

I called Continental and they said bring the bag to the airport and pickup ours
and the bag's owner would be waiting. I said that sounded bad, what if he's
some kind of hitman on a mission? The girl said 'don't worry, he'll be waiting
outside', which didn't really comfort me.

Luckily the bag's owner's went to lunch when I made the bag switch and there
were no sniper's bullets to take me out as I walked into baggage claim. It turned
out the bag's owner's had a wedding to go and were about to go out to buy new clothes.

All I can say in my defense is "doh!"

Limousine point

I flew over to Athens yesterday morning after getting back from
Aberdeen the night before and I almost made a 50 euro mistake.
Walking out of the airport terminal I was mostly asleep, so tired that
I slept through my free cookie on alitalia (mmmm, cookie).

A well dressed guy stopped me and offered me a ride in one of a line of cars,
all mercedes and Peugot 706's. He showed me the price on a laminated
car...90 euros, or I could walk 100 yards to the taxi line and wait. My
tired feet said yes then he pointed out the driver that would take me
who was a spitting image of Fred Gwinn as Ed Munster. I let out an
almost verbal "gah" and scurried to the taxi line. The taxi was only 40
euros, so a scary face saved me 50 euros.

I'll crush you like a worm

I'm in Aberdeen this week,
it's a pretty gray place. All
of the buildings are made of
gray granite, the sky is
normally gray, even with
an exceptional blue sky
today it still seems like
a gray world.

I did get out and walk around
this afternoon and I stumbled
on a statue of William Wallace.
All of the other buildings that
might be of historical interest
have been turned into pubs. I only saw one church that is still a church, the
rest are pretty cool looking gothic nightclubs. One even has a casino.

Unfortunately I'm working nights, so no guinness or single malt for me this trip.
I did get a fish and chip(s?) with a beef pie on the side. I thought he would just
nuke the meat pie, but he dropped it in a fryer. I couldn't eat after I
saw how much grease was on it which was a shame. They don't appear to be
food for the sober, but are great after about 6 pints of Guiness.

Don't use Hotwire

I used Hotwire to book a hotel room in rome last week. I won't use them
again. They have a business model where they list prices and star level
without saying the hotel name. I think the underlying assumption is supposed
to be that they are honest, otherwise why would I buy a box without a label?

They aren't honest. Or they are incompetent. Or both. The hotel that was
supposed to be 4 star was at best a 2.5 star hotel. No internet, no gym, resterant
only open for dinner, no room service, no valet parking would make it a non-
4 star hotel for me. But then the rooms were crappy, worn, small, crappy TV
with few channels, crappy snotty service, which to me make the hotel a 2 star.
(hotel Pacific).

Anyway. Don't use Hotwire, they suck, their answer was they went there this year
and rated it themselves as a 4 star. They can't do math, they said their fare was lower
than the hotel's posted fare, it was $10 less on the hotel's website than hotair.

for google: hotwire sucks, hotwire sucks hotwire sucks.

downside of 1st class

I paid the extra 10E
for a first class ticket
on a trip to milano, thinking
I can plug in my laptop
and work instead of just
sweating in 2nd class.

Unfortunately I forgot
my power supply, so
I just sat in 1st class
and watched the scenery
roll by very quickly
as the new fast train
ate up the distance from
bologna to milano in about 58 minutes. Unfortunately, if you're in
the last car of the train the trip to the station door in milano is pretty
long. This picture shows the huge painting on the wall of the station
that is about 100 yards across.

Back to bucharest

I'm on my way to romania this week and I'm on wifi in prague
waiting patiently for my czech airlines flight. It's a pretty nice airport here, with
wifi for 12 euros for 3 hours and most importantly abundant power points, nearly
one on every column. I'm busily catching up on all the news I missed last week
when we went to morocco for several days in rabat and a day in marrakech.
[some girls on roller blades just passed down the concorse, the only way to get
around in this massive airport]

The news is the same, obama is a twit, swine flu is everywhere but nowhere
(they are still counting cases in 10s and 20s and deaths in ones or twos
thank goodness) if it was going to get really bad I'd expect cases to be nearly
uncountable by this point, maybe we dodged a bullet. The press is still crowing
what a fantastic job obama is doing, one idiot in the times herald is saying that
obama's mellow foreign policy is working. I guess someone never paid attention
to the way the islamofacists think; strong horse or weak horse. there is no mellow
horse option.

I was reading the voice in my head (very circular blog name, tvimh says
"weatherstripping!") and one jerkwad commenter complained about insults
to the one's basketball skillz and presidential skillz by commenter chicago:

you do the fucking job then chicago. how about everyone who didn't run for president and get elected shut the fuck up. if you can do it better or have any tips that won't make you look like a sore asshole, please feel free to run for government office or at least post your ideas - america is waiting.

here are my ideas:
- lower taxes especially on businesses that hire people in the usa
- make it easier to start businesses, less regulation
- fasttrack the construction of100 nuclear power plants
- import tax on oil to keep the price above $50/bbl
- import tax on natural gas to keep the price above $3/MM ft3


back to travel blogging...
It's kind of sucky that I'll probably have to go to the rig for a few days. I've gained
enough weight this year eating pizza, gnocchi and piadina that the one pair of coveralls
i could find barely fit, they fit more like a 5 pounds of shit in a 3 pound bag kind of fit

religion and science

The onscreen scientist has an interesting
post comparing the Trinity and god as seen
by dante in the divine comedy to the nature of
quarks. It's an interesting insight that reminds
me of an old joke: all the scientists finally finish
climbing the mountain of truth to find all the
priests and philosophers waiting for them at
the top.

here's a photo from here in Ravenna
of a sculpture of a bench robe and book
that are supposed to represent a favorite
reading spot of Dante, just inside the old
walls by the porte of via cavour.

Dante is one of the people that permeates
northern italy. he's buried here in Ravenna,
he wrote the divine comedy in Firenze and
he was one of the motivations for the Scovegni
chapel in Padova as he placed chapel builder's father in hell for usary.

We just spent the week traveling around italy, from ravenna to padova to
venice to florence to assisi and back to Ravenna. Dante gets a mention everywhere,
rivaled only by St Francis. It would be pretty cool if he hit on a good description
of the nature of matter without any high energy experiments.