Fraize Dotcom

I set the wake-up call for 6:30, hoping to make it to the airport in time. My flight left at 10:00am, or so I thought. Ty and I blazed through breakfast, and hopped the taxi to the airport. The main highway by the airport had both north and south lanes diverted for the trade show, so we had to cross the city to the other highway and make our way that way, adding 10 euro to the fare.

I’m sitting now at the ticket counter, an hour earlier than I was supposed to arrive. Security is a bit weird in that before we even arrive at the ticket counter, we had to have our luggage x-rayed. Equally strange was the fact that there were no screens by the x-ray machines. I imagine they were elsewhere in the airport, but I have also read about some airports outsourcing x-ray inspection offshore. Lovely.

The flight to Amsterdam was uneventful, but our connection was already boarding by the time we landed, so we hauled ass to the terminal, past all the nice duty free shops I would have loved to have perused. We made it with time to spare, but were the last in line. Whew.

Ty pointed out a young lady boarding our plane with a toddler in a papoose.  “She’s from Ghana,” he said, pointing out her passport. Ty’s wife was from Ghana, so we found that interesting. As we moved through the cabin to our assigned seats, Ty sat down right next to the young lady from Ghana. Her child, still snoozing, would end up whining and crying through the entire flight. Poor Ty.

Also, I was terribly confused by the plane’s entertainment system. It wasn’t updated with the USA’s new daylight-saving’s time laws. It told me that DC’s local time was 1 hour earlier than it really was. So, when I saw that we were going to land an hour earlier than I expected, I figured I did something wrong, and that my ride was going to show up an hour after we had agreed. More on that later.

Speaking of the entertainment system, it was pretty cool! The Airbus A330-200’s in-seat entertainment system was choc-a-bloc full of movies, tv shows, and mp3’s. I was able to watch The Departed and A Night at the Museum. They were also playing Casino Royale, but Heather and I agreed to watch it together later.

During the flight, they passed out blue and green forms – Customs and Immigration forms. They interrupted the onboard entertainment system to play a video explaining the forms. After it was over, they replayed it one more time, just in case you slept through part of it, or were in the lavatories. Then, inexplicably, they played it yet another time. The moan that rippled through our flying aluminum tube was impressive. After the third time, the entertainment system failed to return to the movie. The flight attendants had to reboot the server (I’m told it’s Linux based – what happened to stability?).

About an hour later, my own form was filled out, but the flight attendants decided to, you guessed it, play the instructional video again. This time, the moan was coupled with genuinely angry shouts. The guy sitting next to me actually yelled at a flight attendant, only to be hushed by his wife. Too funny!

Finally, we landed. I told Heather that she should expect about an hour to get through customs. In point of fact, I was off the plane and through customs in about 15 minutes. Oops! I had to wait a bit before she was ready to pick me up.

Jetlagged as hell, I was asleep before 8:00pm. What a tiring trip.

Today, I definitely feel sick. Not outwardly so, I can just feel my body breaking down on me. Headache, and the sniffles and a strong feeling of tiredness is just wearing me down. I decided at once that, if I wasn’t needed for work, I was going to take it easy today.

I grabbed my book, and finished it. Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb. Thanks, Rolf! Good book! I’m looking forward to the next one! I’m actually simultaneously reading three books. I normally have one in every room where I spend any time, and keep one in the car if I end up in line or sitting alone in a restaurant. I suppose that’s why it takes me so long to finish reading anything.

Ty had to go back to the show to visit with a vendor we missed. They were hidden in a corner of a hall we thought we covered. This hall was a combined telecommunications and general hardware section. We perused a few of the telecomm halls and realized it was mostly routers, hubs, phones, switches and cabling, so when we visited the “combined” hall, we bypassed what we thought was the telecomm end of the hall. That vendor was probably in that section.

I didn’t feel well enough to spend a lot of time out, but I couldn’t stomach ordering room service as it was way too expensive. I hopped the street train to the city center again and ate some pretty passable Thai food there. While I was there, I bought Heather a couple of gifts. You have to, you know?

Walking back to the train, I ran into Ty. I had to get right up in his face before he recognized me. When everyone around you is a stranger, and you don’t speak the language, I suppose you just turn off your peripheral vision and hearing. “Ty! Ty? Hey Ty!! TY!!!”

My sick feeling started to come back, so by the time I got back to the hotel, I decided to stay in, pack up the rest of my stuff, and relax with some bad German TV. I caught this BBC comedy that had been dubbed in German. The stars of the show were “Madame Hooch” from the Harry Potter movies, and “Colin the God of Love” from Love Actually. What was interesting was, since I wasn’t feeling well, I just sort of languished in my bed, passively watching the show. I realized after a few minutes that I was understanding most of the dialogue. The husband was a dentist, and the teenage daughter had a crush on another young dentist with long hair and an earring, so she got her teeth cleaned by him. Dad was incensed, and was ranting about it in bed. He kissed his wife goodnight, and thought her toothpaste tasted strange, and demanded she open her mouth for him to see. Reluctantly she did, and father discovered his wife had been seeing another dentist. “That’s not my work!” he exclaimed loudly. It wasn’t a very funny show, but I laughed at the fact that I could follow it.

I had the hardest time sleeping last night. I stayed up until 1:00am, with no understanding why. This time, not trusting my laptop, I set the alarm on the TV in the room. There is no alarm clock, but there is an alarm function on the TV, so I set it for 7am. Again, my alarm totally failed me, but my internal alarm saved me. I opened my eyes to “7:00″ on the clock. Weird.

Another good breakfast at the hotel, and we grabbed a cab to the convention. The two rooms we had left were each sparsely populated, so we found ourselves totally done with the show before 10am. Ty and I agreed to split up and do some personal searching, shopping and meet up at the hotel in the afternoon. I visited with some Linux vendors, and open-source community folks as well as some of my current vendors whom I missed the day before. I walked up and back the entire length of the show twice trying to coordinate a meeting with one of my newer vendors.

That done, and my feet throbbing with all the walking I’ve done these past few days, I limped back to the train station. I sat on the train to the city center where I was going to transfer to another train back to the hotel. However, I got on the wrong escalator and ended up at the top of the station, by the exit.

At that moment, I realized I was hungry and my feet weren’t hurting anymore, so I decided to wander. Ty had told me there was a shopping mall nearby, so I thought I would explore a bit. The mall was built inside a trench dug out from the walking street above. There were dozens of shops and little restaurants inside, and even though I was exposed to the sky, being underground sheltered me from the biting wind above. It was actually quite pleasant! I ended up having lunch at a Curry Wurst stand. Two Euro for a pile of hotdog slices in curried ketchup. Not bad, and filled me up.

I went back to the hotel, and met with Ty. We agreed to relax a bit and head back out around 7:30. I watched a little TV, and took a well deserved nap. I haven’t slept very well since the first day, so I really needed the rest. I thought I might have been getting sick, so it made sense that I should take it easy. After the nap, we hopped back on the street train, back to the city center, and back to the underground mall where we ate at a Fish-n-Chips shop. The lady behind the counter spoke no English, and made no attempt to slow down so I could understand her. I was able to catch her saying, “Of course, another Englishman…” the bitterness in her voice very evident. A younger man behind the counter helped out with a pained grin – apologizing for her rudeness with his eyes. I shrugged. Everyone in Hannover has been very kind and patient except her. I can hardly condemn an entire city for one person.

It was 1am again before I found sleep. I suppose I still really haven’t acclimated to the time difference yet. Just as well, as I leave in two days. Going back will be much easier.

Exhausted from the previous long day, I labored to stay awake until a reasonable hour. My intention was to try and limit my jetlag. Sleep finally claimed me at around 8:30PM local time. My room is very simple and sparsely decorated. The bed is a twin bed with a single feather-stuffed comforter and no topsheet with one feather pillow. Not luxurious, but I slept hard and long, not waking up until 7 am the next morning.

Interestingly enough, I had set an alarm on my laptop to wake me, but forgot to disable the power-saving mechanism. I woke up at 6:58am, only to notice the laptop asleep itself.

Breakfast was in the hotel “Frustuckraum,” or breakfast-room. A typical buffet style breakfast. Possibly, the best food we’re going to find here, so we made sure we loaded up to fuel us for the day.

Today, we hit CeBit with a certain gusto. We rocketed through half the entire show in a single day, visiting the halls we marked down yesterday.

We haven’t seen anything ground-breaking here, but there were lots of very reasonable products that we did like. There were a couple of things that we got to play with that were so ridiculously cheap that we couldn’t bear to not talk with the products’ owners. These are items that ThinkGeek hasn’t really carried recently, but the prices are so good, they would be stupid to ignore.

Lunch was had at the convention itself. One of the catered restaurants in one of the halls read, “Asian Food.” As it turns out, it was just stir-fry in your choice of noodles or instant rice. It was pretty boring stuff, and very expensive (naturally) but it was fuel to keep going.

Keep going, we did. Of the 8 halls we had marked to visit, we saw 6. Talking to dozens of vendors, fighting our way through the “strollers” and the “gawkers.” I call them “strollers” when they’re just passively strolling along, wandering left and right with no real agenda, totally oblivious to the line of people trying desperately to get around him. Gawkers congregate in huge crowds around presentations. As soon as anybody cracks a microphone, it doesn’t matter what they’re saying, everyone around just stops what they’re doing and stares in the direction of the sound.

We stayed until closing minutes, and grabbed a cab home. We were both completely exhausted. I ended up taking a short nap, planning on eating in my room. However, after my nap, I felt well enough to go back out, heading to the corner restaurant for some schnitzel. This was my first real opportunity to speak German with someone with very little English. I was surprised at how okay I did. I was able to translate the menu for my coworker, Ty, order for both of us, ask if we could pay with credit card, and even ask if we could split the check. Yay for me! Besides my language success, the food was really good. A touch heavy, but that was naturally expected for Germany.

ThinkGeek sent me to Hannover Germany to attend the CeBit convention. There, I will likely find millions of fantastic products we simply can’t go without. Since I speak a smattering of German, I was both fearing and looking forward to the trip. My German is really bad, but I can get by in the most simple of circumstances. For example, I’m an expert in asking where the toilet is, and ordering a beer.

The flight was set to leave Dulles at 6:40, so I had to be at the airport at 3:30. Heather took off work to give me a ride. She hung out with me while I stared at the ever-growing security line. However, she told me how much work she had to do before the evening was out, so I let her go.

I found Ty a few people in line ahead of me. We meandered through the long serpentine until we reached the metal detectors. The RFID Blocking Wallet and Passport Case I was carrying set the alarm off, so they got X-Rayed. Hee.

The plane was an Airbus A-330 200. I sat on an aisle a few rows behind Ty, and immediately got very sleepy. I swear, they must pump aerosol loolies into the cabin. I read some of my book until the flight took off. Once at our cruising altitude, I tried to watch some of the videos I had put on my Zune with my video goggles… you know, the kind that make you look like Geordie Laforge. Unfortunately, mine were broken, and had to be thrown into the bottom wastelands of my carryon bag. I watched the videos on the Zune’s screen instead, like some kind of low-rent pedestrian philistine.

The flight was very long and a little bumpy. The food was surprisingly good, actually, and I discovered that KLM offers free beer and wine to coach class passengers. Sweet! Of course, that would probably be the last good free thing I would see for a while.

We transferred to a puddle-jumper jet in Amsterdam to Hannover. I took it for granted that my luggage was following me – don’t worry, it was! I just had a panic moment when I stepped out of the plane, and all of the luggage had been removed from the plane and set on the tarmac. My bag wasn’t in that pile! Oh, Cwap! What if I left it on a carousel in Amsterdam!? Then, I remembered the porter told me that my bag was checked all the way to Hannover, so I calmed down.

Ty and I found our way to the Taxi stand and got a car to the hotel – The Congress Hotel am Standpark! Ah, what a very nice dump. Honestly, the room is fine, just spartan and dull. Typical German architecture for you.

We showered and changed and decided to go explore the city and go to CeBit for the first day. We had the hardest time finding anything to eat, and we were both underdressed for the biting wind, so we settled for McDonalds. Honestly, we couldn’t find anything! Ty also bought an 02 SIM card for his phone.

CeBit was NUTS. Thousands and thousands of bodies, of all sizes and nationalities, crammed into buildings the size of airplane hangars. We had time to fully explore 1 building out of the 8 we scoped out later as “acceptable.” We got to talk to [industrial secret redacted!], and wandered about half the other buildings. We made a list of buildings to return and visit. Note that each building has at least one hundred small to medium sized businesses. Wow!

Exhausted, we headed back to the hotel, grabbed some Curried Wurst for dinner, drank our local Pilsners and went to bed. Here I am, typing out my blog using my hideously expensive per-hour rate internet access. Boo!

Tomorrow had better be, well… better! Right now, Hannover sucks.

David Weaver, an old buddy of mine from Austin, saw demolition and smelled profit. When the Dotcom boom was in midswing, Intel decided to buy an empty lot in the middle of the warehouse district, and put their brand new corporate headquarters there. However, when dotcom dotbombed, Intel abandoned their plans and never finished the building.

It became known as the Intel Eyesore to Austinites, and it became a focus for ridicule and disgust. Finally, the Intel building itself was demolished. Dave went by, picked up some choice hunks of exploded concrete and repackaged them for sale.

In much the same way as people sold hunks of the Berlin wall – so that we never forget the evil that lives in the hearts of men – Dave now offers mementos of the Intel building that never was.

Battlestar Galactica has jumped the shark, but it actually did so at the end of last season. The fleet’s arrival and eventual temporary colonization on New Caprica set up the show for a cascade of failures. Now, ultimately, the show’s soul is lost, and I don’t believe it can ever be found again. Click the “Continue Reading” tag below if you don’t mind spoilers.

*** WARNING! SPOILERS BELOW !!! DON’T SAY I DIDN’T WARN YOU! ***

1. Kara’s death was totally without meaning and done “for the audacity of it.” The whole “layered with meaning” thing is bullshit writer talk for “we’re weaving a story so complex that you mere humans can’t possibly comprehend it.” That elitest attitude leaves BSG fans feeling disenfranchised and small. We like death to have meaning, or, if death is actually meaningless, then make that a part of the weaving of the tale. For all it’s bad writing and awful effects, the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation did it right when they killed off Tasha Yar. Her death was meaningless, but the story demanded it. The meaningless itself was a plot point. Since Kara died alone and gave no warning to anyone what she was doing, I doubt any member of the Galactica’s crew will ever truly understand why she died.
2. BSG jumped the shark when they reached New Caprica. I knew deep in my gut that settling New Caprica was a bad idea, not only for the fugitives from the ragtag fleet, but for the fans as well. The fleet had enjoyed a purpose of simplistic ideals: survive, find Earth. Once New Caprica was introduced as a viable alternative, suddenly the choices that were available to the outcome of the fleet were numerous and convoluted. While that normally sounds great, it gives the writers a broad palette and canvas with which to fuck up the core drives of survival and Earth. Consider the awful Tirrel / Cally episode in the airlock, Dee/Lee/Kara/Anders love parallelogram, and the mediocre Tirrel as the union president episode. None of these episodes advanced any story significantly, but were rooted in the time spent on New Caprica. I’m sure the writers envisioned little pet projects in their heads once they created these new weird and stupid circumstances in the script.
3. Too many unfinished story arcs. Lost has fallen under the same trap. There are too many loose ends that have never been fully tied. What’s up with the final 5? Why can Baltar see Six, and Six see Baltar? What destiny is this that Starbuck needs to meet? What about the eye of Jupiter? What’s so great about Hera? When is Helo going to get in some shit for killing the infected cylons? The writers know what they’re doing when they create these mysteries, but it seems like they enjoy making them, and never have any intention of resolving them. Again, it strikes of an elitest attitude of trickling out the barest minimum just to keep the fans from running away. Well, I’ve had it. This fan is done, and closing the book on Battlestar Galactica. Way to go, Ron.

I’ve moved Fraize Dotcom to a new server, but carried all the old content (minus comments) over. Yay! Much cheaper hosting, but with HUGE amounts of storage. Seriously. I have over 200 gigs of storage and TERABYTES of bandwidth.

Heather and I bought 43 MegaMillions tickets. In true geek fashion, I wrote an Excel spreadsheet with conditional formatting that told me which tickets were winners, and how much it would pay out. I know, that makes me a complete loser, but I am doubly so because for $43 worth of lottery tickets, I got a $19 return.

Last night, Glen Phillips came to our little neck of the woods and played an intimate show at Jammin Java. It was a short set, primarily due to his surprisingly good opening act, Craig Cardiff.

A Canadian singer/songwriter, Craig played a short but sweet set in KT Tungstall’s style. He used a looper to layer vocals and guitars into music that filled the room and captured the audience’s attention. Heather and I admitted that we weren’t really in the mood to hear any opening act, but Craig’s music was whimsical and lifting, and at times very sad.

One of the songs he played, Smallest Wingless, tells a story of a mother and a father witnessing the birth of their son, knowing full well that the baby won’t survive but a day or two. Just as they’re saying ‘hello,’ they’re also saying, ‘goodbye.’ There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

When he left the stage to make way for Glen Phillips, I have to admit to being disappointed. I could have used more time, but no matter. Glen himself took the stage and put on a great show. Although he forgot the lyrics to his own songs twice, he made up for it in candor and humor – telling several stories including a very funny one involving his vascectomy!

I took lots of pictures, and posted the best ones here. Glen and Craig were nice enough to stay and sign autographs and shake hands. Glen even posed with me and Heather for a picture!