Brian Sullivan's Random Musings Anything and everything that interests me might show up here. My interests include Jazz, (Auto)Road Racing, NetMeeting, E-Learning, Zope/Plone, Creative Problem Solving and lots of other stuff.
Last update: 22/06/2008; 12:07:25 PM. August 2004 Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31         Jul   Sep Home Stories Brian Sullivan's Flickr Space Meeting by Wire Courses by Wire ELearning Development Weblog Scobleizer Scripting News Zope Plone Brian Sullivan Auto Racing Creative Problem Solving E-Learning Jazz NetMeeting Zope/Plone Recent Posts Happy 60th  6/16/08 Does Twitter have founderitis?  5/20/08 Toronto Zoo  5/19/08 Twitter continues on its trip to down the toilet bowl  5/19/08 Regular Twitter outage  5/15/08 Twitter forked again  5/14/08 Google maps test  5/9/08 Twitter $$$ continued  5/9/08 End game for Skype - $0 revenue? What about Twitter?  4/28/08 Twitter is saved!  4/23/08 Tweetless  4/21/08 Robert Scoble and Twitter  4/14/08 Twitter vs. Pownce  3/5/08 Fragile DNS  2/25/08 Value of Video Blogging  2/13/08 Why do Twitter "upgrades" always seem like "downgrades"  1/31/08 Buffalo State vs. Geneseo  1/28/08 Facebook picture security/privacy breach  1/17/08 Big Lens  1/12/08 Bill Wadman  1/7/08 Hotmail down?  12/29/07 ROM  12/27/07 Merry Christmas  12/23/07 Loren Feldman - knob extraordinaire?  12/19/07 Twitter $$$  12/15/07 Free high speed internet service - the irony  12/15/07 Lijit Search		August 9, 2004   Back in the Saddle Well I am "back in the saddle again" -- well not quite maybe. I guess I am standing looking at the horse wondering how and when I will climb on again. I had a great vacation -- at the German GP in Hockenheim, a week in a sleepy town in southern France, a couple of days driving from southern France to Switzerland and 5 days in Switzerland mostly around Zurich. Some quick observations: The people at the Mannheim hotel that I stayed at for the German GP are very trusting. When we tried to pay the bill in a hurry to get to a connecting flight and their credit card system failed, they sent us off without paying, telling us to send the money when we could (I am still trying to find a way to get the payment to them). The international money system seems to work. We managed to get cash in all kinds of places big and small using bank machines with minimal hassle and only a standard reasonable fee ($3.00 Canadian per transaction - the same fee that would be charged in Canada for use of a bank machine not owned by our bank) and with competitive exchange rates. Credit cards were even better (good exchange rates with no extra transaction charge). In fact getting Euros from our bank in Canada before we left was a relative rip off. The German GP was much less fan friendly than CART races I have been to. The surrounding "circus" was not as classy, the access to get close to drivers and cars was almost non-existent except for the very expensive pit box seats. The race though was pretty good even though competition for Schumacher was limited. Southern France is very warm in the summer and air conditioning is not common. Who would've thunk that we would find a bed and breakfast in Provence (L'Ecole de la Combe: Rémuzat) with wireless internet access (and great food and company). Thanks to Margot and Nick. Switzerland is very expensive but pleasant (and visiting Julie and Martin in Zurich made it even more pleasant). They seem to have made tunneling through mountains for roads and railways a national obsession. You can get by with English and whatever attempt you can make to speak the local language but it sure helps to have somebody around that speaks the local language (thank you to Laura, Julie and Martin).   7:51:30 AM        comment []    © Copyright 2008 Brian Sullivan.