Unhappy advertising
Exactly the day after Industrial ticket drilled a hole in the ground the size of Portugal I head over to MarketWatch and see this:
Wachovia Ad @ MarketWatch
Guess one of their strategies would be: "get bought by larger bank"...
Pretty useless
Yesterday I had a rather infortunate event regarding a packet sniffer and my ThinkPad's network drivers. Long storty short: upon installing a certain software the darn thing just went "kaboom" in terms of connectivity. No WiFi, no Ethernet, not even bluetooth.
After denial came action. Thank god for the Ubuntu R50 sitting around here. I went to lenovo support site and downloaded the drivers and access connections. Right then I realized I had no way to get stuff from Computer 1 to Computer 2. I have come to rely so much on using networks to get stuff around my various PCs, that I had no blank CDs (or DVDs) and no memory key at hand.
While I watched a perfectly functional but not-able-to-connect PC I thought on how much stuff has changed. When I started doing things with IBM-compatible computers (on an 086 PC that had a beautiful Orange Hercules screen that could give you a nice sun tan) one had just the stuff that coud fit the 40MB drive or that could get loaded into one or several floppy disks.
Then came dial-up. At that time I was at the university, so I had to be very careful that the cost of dialing up to the ISP would not take over my "eating budget". This didn't always work and I ended up eating just rice for a couple of weeks because the phone bill arrived inflated. I can remember going to forums, opening as many pages as I could, disconnecting, writing down all replies and stuff, reconnecting and hitting "send" all around the place.
Then came Broadband and the rest is history.
My email signature reads "I do web stuff". When I can't access the internet I feel pretty useless, I must admit.
Post-vacation, post-Olympic cleanup
Picture a bomb exploding inside your computer. Imagine that it scatters files, folders and emails all over the place. On the desktop, under various folders under that lousy micorsoft idea that is known as "My Documents", and every other corner of the hard drive. That should give you an idea of the state of (un)tidyness my ThnkPad yields.
I got to the point where I had more stuff on my desktop than my desktop was able to display. And I use small icons. And I have a 1400 x 1280 screen resolution. Finding anything had become an ordeal.
And I havent yet mentioned emails. Amidst 24 x 7 Olympic watch and way too much stuff to handle, admin and think some emails went without reply for far longer than I like. Usually I reply within the hour; while clearing stuff today I noticed some had gone without a reply for some 20-odd days. Shame on me.
So, after all the fun and exitement that the Olympics represented I'm down to the task of trying to put some sense back into my file system and email. It is similar to the day after throwing a party: you have to clean up everything. Only difference is that I get to clean my computer without a hangover.
Going back!
This post should be posted while I'm going back to Buenos Aires. It has been a relaxing week; no snowboarding tho.
Tons of pics and some vids are to follow as soon as I get a chance to look at all of them.
Smarter posting about all this and that shall happen upon my return.
Reading Queue: History.
Back to normal reading, which means 3 to 6 books per month, hopefully. I seem to be inclined to read history.
This is a subject that I have been wanting to read for a very long time. I have always felt some sort of fascination with the arab people and culture.
It was the Arabs who allowed Europe to rediscover the ancient knowledge of greeks and romans. It was them who took math into a whole new era.
Yet so little is known or taught about them.
Historical Novel about Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, better known as "Caligula". Author Maria Grazia Siliato is an Italian archeologists who tries to bring Caligula back to life from a more humane and less-of-a-tyrant point of view. What drove the man to become a blood thirsty ruler? What lead to his assasination?
The emperor was surrounded by plots and plans to overthrow him. starting from his rise to power to his assassination at age 29, Caligula's history is rich in all sorts of plans within plans.
Crusades have been a passion of mine since I can remember. As a kid I remember regarding them with a certain romanticism. As I grew up and went from a naive and romantic vission of what they were to a more realistic and crude oppinion that passion grew.
One of my "dreams" is to write a historic novel that takes place in Istambul at the time of the second crusade.
This books ought to keep me entertained for a while.
So it begins (and it ends)
Since I didn't make it to China, I spent the morning watching the most amazing Olympic openning ceremony ever. It had quite a bunch of breath taking moments, but you'll probably watch that yourself if you haven't already.
This marks a sort of culmination of a lot of work. Not that I can sit back and relax, quite on the contrary, the next couple of weeks will be crazy, but I can't help but get a feeling of culmination this day, 08-08-08.
Although I already know what I will be doing after the games end there is a certain sense of "what's next?" lurking somewhere in my mind.
First thing will be to regroup my ideas. I have neglected many things in this time, both personally and profesionally; so straigting the wrongs is a top priority.
Some acknowledgments are due, I'd say. David, thanks for the inspiring ideas and Challenges; Rohit and Kaitlyn I've been honored to work with you on this. Alan, as I usually say: I speak more with you than I do with my wife! It has been a blast. Tim, we'll keep on a close loop, but thanks for everything-Olympically-delivered.
Let the games begin and enjoy the show!
August
This shall prove to be a busy month!
For starters, there is a certain sports events happening. But I have talked too much about that already.
This weekend I'm traveling to mi wife's hometown
By the end of the month: vacation; 1000 mile drive to Bariloche and, hopefully (as in "if it snows", and "if ski passes are somewhat affordable"!) some snowboarding.
The 24th, my wife's birthday, not to mention my mother-in-law's and grandmother-in-law's.
I have to thank Augustus (the Roman emperor) who decided to name a month after himself and gave it 31 days instead of the 29 it used to have when it was know as "Sextilis" under the Roman Republic's Calendar. Those 2 extra days shall prove to be quite useful to fit all events going on this month.
Rambles and Riff Raff vol. 1
I thought I'd start honoring the "rambles and riff raff about all this and that" tagline on this blog starting a weekly unordered list of loosely connected thoughts. This fits everything that is on my mind but not long enough for a post on itself.
- Argentina is screwed as a country. Sad to say, but true nonetheless. Too much stuff going on and I don't want to blog about it no more.
- Less than a month to go for the opening of Beijing 2008. I should be freaking out, but I'm not. I do expect this weekend to be the last one I take off until August 8, 2008.
- Fairly happy with the recent buzz around the "Voices of the Olympic Games" program. Also some mentions around the "Podium". Great feedback, took some of that this week as you probably witnessed.
- Personal life is in turmoil, but for good.
- I've ditched twitter. Maybe for good, might go back to it for the games. I simply lost interest.
- My Spanish blog is almost ready. It is live, but still not "launched".
- I still hate translations. And it is only bound to get worst.
- I will never work for a TOP Olympic sponsor again in my life
. I feel like I've pushed everything in my life (personal and professional) until "after the games". I'm starting to fear the emptiness inside I'll feel after the games are over. After all I have devoted the past 9 months to "Olympic Stuff". - I miss blogging somewhat smartly.