FedEx Delivery Exception: A Play in Two Acts

Act 1

Bought two off-lease laptops on eBay to add to my event stock. Day of delivery comes. No delivery. E-mail seller, get tracking number. Plug tracking number into FedEx web site. Get this:

"Unable to Deliver Shipment. Return To Shipper. Recipient Unknown".

Grrrrrrrrr.

Get on the horn to FedEx with a good head of steam. Tell FedEx Chick "WTF? How can the recipient be unknown? I live in a dinky little town, two FedEx guys, I know them both by name, they know who I am."

FedEx Chick: "Wellllll - there are some notes in the record. Let me see.... it says 'overturned trailer' ".

Me: "They tried to deliver my pkg to a trailer? I don't live in a trailer. I live in a house. And trailer homes are illegal here."

FedEx Chick: "Still reading....OK, what happened is the pkg was out for delivery on a FedEx delivery truck, which then got into a big crash, and it rolled over. All the boxes onboard are being returned to their shippers."

Me: "Hmglymph. {working...working.....working} Are you sure?"

FedEx Chick: "That's what it says".

Me: "OK, thanks."

Act 2

Redial FedEx. Get another rep on the horn.

Me: "Hi, I'd like to give you a tracking number, and perhaps you can tell me what happened to this shipment. I just had a conversation with another FedEx rep about this, and I'm not sure I believe what she told me."

FedEx dude: "OK, sure, what's the tracking #?"

{looks it up}

FedEx dude: "Yup, I see what you mean. FedEx truck crashed, rolled over a few times, boxes damaged, all returned to shipper".

Me: "Hmglymph." {working...working.....working}

FedEx dude: "Yeah, I know, it's rare but it happens. I've been here ten years, saw it once before. FedEx truck had a fuel leak and burned to the ground."

Me: "Just for the sake of my own curiosity, why were all the boxes returned to their shippers? Why not deliver them and let the recipient make a claim if the contents are damaged?"

FedEx dude: "It's company policy. FedEx returns the parcels because in most cases the contents are purchased goods. It's easier for buyers to make a refund claims on their credit card if the goods are never delivered at all than if they're delivered damaged. Once they're delivered, then the buyer has to document the damage, file a claim, possibly return the goods at their own expense, and it can be a lengthy and costly process."

Me: "Wow. Never thought of that. That's possibly the first time in 49 years that somebody has explained something by saying 'it's company policy' and the company policy actually made sense."

FedEx dude: {laughs} "Yes, sir. Can I help you with anything else today?"

Me: "No, thanks for your help. Aloha".

FedEx dude: "Thanks for calling FedEx".

More on Jay Freeman, aka "Saurik"

This item from Wired is a few months old, but I just spotted it today. It concerns the aforementioned Jay Freeman, a guy I know vaguely and whom Dr Nephew PhD knows really well. Jay continues to (fairly successfully, I might add) rage against the Apple machine.

Rejected By Apple, iPhone Developers Go Underground

Other than this, I haven't had much to write about in the past week. I've been laid pretty low with the Euro Death Crud (bronchitis) since returning from Kitzbühel, so I've been spending most of my time gargling with Jaegermeister and sleeping. Haven't been able to surf because I'm still shivering and suffering from flu-like symptoms, so I get too cold in the water, but I have been out riding my bike in the heat to sweat out all that Austrian schinken and schwine.

It's good time to be laying low. The Olympic Corruption Fest train wreck has sucked all the air out of the sports production room for the next month, so I'm going to be home, doing some programming to get ready for a variety of upcoming events, and catching up on my rest.

Last year I segued directly out of the Hahnenkamm races into the Amgen Tour of California bicycle race, which just about put me 6 feet under. By the end of ATOC, I was so sick and so exhausted that I basically went to bed for a month. I coughed so much that I suffered a hernia. This year the ATOC has moved to May, and with a change in production companies, I may not get that gig again anyway. That date change may turn out to be a bummer eventually, but for now I'm loving it.

Another Crazy-Ass Hahnenkamm Downhill

It was another unbelievably crazy Hahenkamm-Rennen downhill. Perfect weather. Great racing. Humongous, raucus crowds. Nobody badly hurt, at least not any racers. Michael Walchhofer, notably, hit the nets backwards at aboutMach 2 at the Hausbergkante, but after reconstructing his equipment yard sale, he managed to ski into the finish area under his own power. Walchhofer is a great skier and a super nice guy (I know his family from The Alpenrose in Altenmarkt-Zauchansee), so it was a personal relief to see him OK.

Our software, hardware, and display technology worked perfectly. RADARs were fantastic. Our timing team was firing on all cylinders, a great team effort under very difficult circumstances, and we were all whipped after executing the DH and then switching everything over to the slalom stadium for Sunday's SL. The HKR is much like the US Open in that it's so huge, so complicated, and with so much chaos working against you that it takes a mind-boggling amount of preparation, talent, teamwork, and just plain good luck for it all to work perfectly.

I was really happy for the KSC and particularly for Michael Huber, aka Dr Hahnenkamm, a super-smart and personable fellow who is managing his first HKR as President of the KSC. Michael is the busiest guy in the valley these weeks, wearing two hats: Prez of the KSC and Secretary General of the race ROC. He not only manages to do a terrific job, but also greets everyone with a smile and a hearty "Servus" as he rushes by, or flashes by on skis. He and the Rolex guys make time to have dinner every year with our humble group of timing geeks, a personal touch and a symbol of moral support that I have found missing from so many huge events over the years, particularly from the event I have hated most and considered the biggest, most impersonal train wreck: the US Open, the scourge of my existence for 20 years.

I was too busy to snap any photos, but here are some photos of the day, courtesy of Rolex and Stephan Cooper.







Still a slalom remaining, tomorrow. But let's face it....the HKR Super-G may indisputably be the biggest SG of the World Cup season, the slalom might be (arguably) the biggest slalom of the season (those from Schladming would disagree), but the Kitzbühel Hahnenkamm-Rennen is all about downhill, and the KSC solidly knocked that one out of the park today. I was happy to be here and happy to have made our not-insignificant contribution.

Buckleys, Jaegermeister, and Too Sick To Think About Sex

Twelve years ago, I found myself marooned in Whistler at a World Cup downhill event, as sick as I've ever been. On scale of 0-10, where 0 is feeling great and 9.5 is being so sick you start perusing your Last Will & Testament in between time spent wishing you were dead, I was at a solid 9.4.

Too Sick To Think About Sex comes on at about 6. Reaching 6 on the sick scale is the point where, if a naked Charlize Theron crawled into bed demanding affection, I would get out of bed, walk down the hall, find another bedroom, and lock the door behind me.

In Pissler I was afflicted with what I now call the "Euro Death Crud", named thusly because I always seem to get it when I'm in Europe during the winter. It's deep chest congestion, sore throat, hacking cough, and may or may not be accompanied by dizziness and sinus pressure of approximately 1,000,000,000 psi.

During the Pissler event ("Whistler" is known as "Pissler" on the World Cup because it apparently never stops raining there), my bro CoopFromCowburg introduced me to a viscous, motor oil-like over-the-counter Canadian medication called Buckley's. Buckley's motto is: "It Tastes Awful. And It Works."

At first, I thought he was kidding. But the only time I could stop shivering was while laying immersed in a bathtub filled with scalding water, so I gave Buckley's a try.

It does, in fact taste awful. Buckley's tastes like road asphalt mixed with transmission fluid, with a dash of epoxy resin.

It does, in fact, work. My coughing immediately was reduced by 90%, and in 24 hours I was down below 5 on the sick scale.

http://buckleys.com/index.html

Flash forward to last night. I'm in Kitzbühel and have managed to catch a moderate case of the Euro Death Crud, but fortunately I'm only at about 6.5 on the sick scale. Unfortunately, Buckley's is only available in North America.

My roomie JimmyBobBillyRay came up with a solution: Jaegermeister. Jaegermeister, evidently, has many of the same characteristics as Buckleys, except it tastes ever-so-slightly better. JBob went to the liquor store and bought a 12-pack of little shot-sized airline bottles of Jaegermeister. Reluctantly, I tried gargling with it. My throat instantly felt better, so I suspect Jaegermeister has some lidocaine-like anaesthesthetic qualities. Keeping the bottles out on the windowsill so that the Jaeger would be nice and cold, I got up every few hours during the night and gargled Jaegermeister. I slept well and coughed perhaps 10 times the whole night, instead of 10 times per minute, as I had been doing up to the point when I started medicating myself.

After 12 hours I had consumed a mere 1.5 shots of Jaegermeister, and I was down from 6.5 on the sick scale to 5.0.

To my colleagues often trapped far from home, sick as dogs, keep this home remedy in mind. I know my friend Listen2UncleJay thinks rum makes the world go round, and perhaps it does, but for me in this case, Jaegermeister actually stopped the world from spinning 'round.

Kitzbühel Then...And Now

One of the coolest things about Kitzbühel and about the Hahnenkamm-Rennen is the town's, and the race's, amazing history. The Kitzbüheler Ski Club was formed in 1907, the Hahnenkamm race was first run in 1911, and it has existed in its present form and on its present course since about 1930. Kitzbühel is The Grand Dame of ski resorts; Vail, for example, is a fake scale model of Kitzbühel, right down to its Bridge Street Clock Tower, which is a scale model of Kitzbühel's church clock tower.

In 1969, the definitive ski racing movie Downhill Racer was released. Starring a young Robert Redford, Downhill Racer was the ski racing version of Le Mans, which starred Steve McQueen in a similar verite version of its namesake race, and Grand Prix, which starred James Garner and a whole bunch of real drivers that anybody into motor racing would recognize (Phil Hill, Bob Bondurant, Graham Hill). A lot of the action sequences in Downhill Racer, including the climactic race, were filmed in Kitzbühel.

Downhill Racer was recently released on DVD, and Amazon had this photo the Kitzbühel Hahnenkamm - Rennen on its page selling the DVD:

I showed this photo to Hermann S, who is 64 years old and is the head of teknik for the race. He was born in Kitzbühel, his family has lived in this valley for over 500 years, and he remembers HKR races and HKR racers going back to the early 50's. He identified two of the red-clad skiers in this photo as his relatives.

I walked outside to where KSC members and a couple of Austrian Army troops were erecting the finish corral and snapped a photo from approximately the same spot.


I had some fun with Hermann and Ted identifying what has changed and what has stayed the same since 1969. The latter overwhelmingly outnumbers the former.

In These Difficult Economic Times, Somebody's Got To Keep Crazy Alive

Red Bull brought their modular hospitality BUILDING from MotoGP and erected it next to the Hahnenkamm starthaus to serve as a "Green Room" for the athletes. The whole thing was freighted in by chopper, with Slim Pickins' character from Dr Strangelove apparently at the controls. A fascinating, terrifying air show which took place about 25 feet above my head.

Dr. Nephew (pending PhD in Computer Science) looked at these pictures, listened to my story, and wrote back "In These Difficult Economic Times, Somebody's Got To Keep Crazy Alive"

When an Apparently Good Idea.....Isn't

Those of you who have traveled through Heathrow in the past 10 years know that Heathrow just plain sucks, even on a good day. Even if you're traveling 1^st Class with all the perks, you get off the plane and go into a passport queue and then a security queue with a few thousand of your best friends. It takes forever before you can head to the American Admiral's Club for a hot shower, and that is the last thing your red, sore eyes want to deal with after flying, say, 10 hours from Dallas. Since I'm an American Airlines Executive Platinum, I have to tolerate it, because on AA you almost always have to go through Heathrow, and connect to British Air, to get anywhere in Europe. Trust me on this, a free upgrade to First Class on a 10+ hour flight is worth transiting through what may possibly be the civilized world's suckiest airport.

I thought I'd try to get the best of both worlds, bypassing Heathrow by taking AA OneWorld affiliate IBERIA through Madrid. Free upgrade included. Madrid's airport is reputed to be very good. Instead of a 777 from LAX or Dallas, I'd ride an Airbus A340 from Chicago or NY to Madrid.

This time, Smart Guy outsmarted himself.

I was due, no, I was overdue, for a travel disaster...and I got one.

Sunday Morning to Sunday Evening

Leaving Salt Lake City after visiting with my good friends Gary and Sue and skiing Snowbasin, I arrived at Chicago ORD to a bitterly cold afternoon. Spent a 4-hour layover in the AA Flaghip Lounge downing half a bottle of California Shiraz, then staggered onto the IBERIA A340 around dinnertime and plunked my ass into a First Class lie-flat seat. Then I sat. And sat. And sat. We went nowhere, as the pilots struggled with a mechanical problem. One of the technicians walking through the cabin mumbled something about a frozen fuel pump on engine #2. But basically, like a balky '58 Buick on a cold winter morning, the A340, a $150,000,000 piece of Euro feces, wouldn't start.

After about 90 minutes spent sitting at the gate, First Class was told to get off the plane. Cattle Class continued to sit. IBERIA gave us each a $20 meal voucher, and said to be back in two hours. I headed back to the Flagship Lounge and started working on the rest of that bottle of wine. Fuck dinner.Two hours turned into three. We eventually trudged back onto the plane and left Chicago about 6 hours late. Meanwhile, it was snowing like hell all through Europe.

I thought I'd seen the worst of post-menopausal, snarly, ill-tempered flight attendants flying The Menopause Route (DFW-Hawaii and LAX-Hawaii) on AA, but those American FAs on The Menopause Route are Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm compared to the senior FAs on that Iberia flight. They were all somewhere between crabby & nasty. Since I declined dinner, apparently they decided to ignore me the entire flight. They didn't even serve a round of drinks. To anybody in First Class. Their douchiehness was somewhat tempered after I started talking to them in Spanish rather than English, but with one exception, they were the worst FAs I've seen since I flew Aeroflot from Moscow to London a few years ago.

I wrangled about 4 bottles of agua con gaz out of the various waddling Mauds, hit the recline button on the lie-flat seat, and went to sleep. I slept like a rock from Pennsylvania to the Spanish frontier. I awoke to a small breakfast, and while eating, I scrolled through the IFE unit's menus. I found absolutely nothing worth watching. I finally started watching a really lame chick flick called "He's Really Not That Into You", or something close to that. A really dumb, really bad movie with a pretty good cast, wasted. And just when the first and only good part started (Jennifer Connelly stripping down and grudge-fucking her filandering husband on his office desk) the pilot cut the IFE, and we landed.

Monday, Early Afternoon. Same trip.

It was weird seeing Madrid covered with so much snow on the way in. Madrid had more snow than Salt Lake City, which I'd left behind the previous morning.

Madrid's airport terminal is completely open from end to end and side to side, about 400 meters X 40 meters, with towering ceilings about 25 meters high. You could easily fit 40 or 50 indoor tennis courts inside each floor, and even a very defensive lob wouldn't hit the ceiling. You could fire a laser pointer from one end to the other without hitting anything. Add marble floors and you've got yourself a skateboarder's dream.I wonder if a really good bowler could throw a 400-meter strike down the length of the entire terminal. He'd have a chance to try at Madrid Airport, at 3AM.

The place was a wreck. Snow had paralyzed central Europe, so thousands of people were stranded and dozens if not hundreds of flights had been canceled. There were people sleeping on the floor and perhaps 500 people in line at the IBERIA desk. I headed for the IBERIA VIP Lounge (a perk of being Executive Platinum) only to find at least 50 people in line THERE, and the lines weren't moving at all.

I waited in line for a half-hour to see an agent, and the line did not move one inch. Gazing off at the huge flight info board nearby, I noticed that my original connection from Madrid to Munich, which should have left 5 hours previously, was still at the gate. So (mistake) I walked out to the gate, waited an hour through an additional delay, and boarded. Or more precisely, attempted to board. I was flagged by the ticket validating machine. Although I had a confirmed First Class seat and a boarding pass, IBERIA's shitty software had removed me from the flight once my ORD-MAD flight went late past the connection's original departure time, and then gave my seat away.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

It was around 16:00, and I saw my chances of getting out of Madrid that day slipping away. It had already been well over 24 hours since I'd left Gary's house in Salt Lake City.

The IBERIA GA was actually very nice and apologetic about the software fuckup, so the fantasy that flashed before my eyes of clubbing him to death with my military-grade, hardened Dell ATG laptop, walking down the jetbridge and plunking myself down in the pilot's jump seat, didn't actualize. I just sighed, hung my head, and trudged back to the VIP Club. I usually know when I'm defeated, and I could see this was one of those times when I could flash my Executive Platinum / OneWorld Sapphire / 3 Million Lifetime Miles ID all I wanted, and it would get me nowhere.

The line at the VIP Club had dwindled to five lines of about three customers each. After I worked my way up to the front, I got another 55 apologies from the GA, who clacked on his computer for a while and handed me a boarding pass for a MAD-MUC flight at 20:00. Three more hours to kill. Again, he was so nice and gracious that I felt guilty for fantasizing about shoving his ticket printer through his teeth. He even mumbled something about getting my luggage on the flight, which I doubted would happen.

As I finished up with the GA, I glanced to my left and saw two of the tallest, slimmest, most gorgeous women I've ever seen in person standing next to me. I was initially prompted to look at them not because of their jaw-dropping gorgeousness, but because they were screaming at the top of their lungs from 3 feet away. I discovered that it is possible for a 20-year-old, drop-dead gorgeous, 6-foot supermodel to look worn, haggard, and ugly. Evidently they'd had a day and a travel experience not unlike mine, and unlike the resigned sigh I emit when I get fucked by an airline, they were Russian supermodels used to getting their way, and both proceeded to throw a rather impressive tantrum right there at the VIP desk. Like 5-year-olds whose GameBoy has been confiscated, they both burst into tears and started cursing their GA in a mixture of French, Russian, and English at about 130 decibels. They were accompanied by a large, slimy-looking guy, a younger version of disgraced Formula One empressario Flavio Briatore: scraggy beard, bad teeth, solid gold anchor chain, $50,000 wristwatch. As I turned away and headed for the bar, Flav Jr was adding his two cents to the cacophony. I'm sure that got them far. Let me know how that goes for you, Vladimir.

I headed for the free internet hookups in the back of the VIP Lounge. For some reason the IBERIA VIP lounge is not allowed to offer WiFi, but they do offer hard-wired router access, and I had a couple of Cat5 cables with me (don't leave home without 'em). Realizing that even if my flight left on time I'd miss the last train from MUC to Kitz, I got on the internet and reserved myself a room at one of the MUC airport hotels, then called the angel of mercy known as Herta at Villa Mellon in Kitzbühel (my ultimate destination), and told her not to wait up for me.

I had a chance to use and appreciate my fast-booting, handy dandy little Lenovo S12 IdeaPad, which is great for airports and airplanes and was more fully described in this space in an earlier post.

My flight to MUC left about an hour late, but I was grateful because outright cancellations still filled the departure display boards, and I finally got to watch Madrid Airport disappear into the distance, albeit > 12 hours later than originally planned.

I sit here on an Airbus A320 en route to Munich. It's 23:00.I should be at the hotel by about 1AM, and my luggage will almost surely not accompany me. Total trip time will have been about 36 hours, and I won't even be in Austria yet.

I asked the GA at the VIP Lounge if IBERIA would give me a hotel voucher, since the hotel at MUC is on my dime and was 100% their fault. Predictably, he said no, they were getting me to Munich the same day as my original ticket promised, and any plans beyond that were not their problem. He said I was welcome to write IBERIA's customer complaint people and plead my case, but not to hold my breath.

Since the Russian supermodels were in full afterburner right next to me, I just smiled weakly through my 36-hour shadow, thanked him for his help, and moseyed off toward the bar.

Tuesday Evening

Things started looking up when I arrived in Munich. When we landed in MUC, one look out the window told me just how lucky I was to get out of Madrid at all. There was snow on the runway and piles of plowed snow everywhere. On final approach, it was snowing so hard I could barely see the wingtips.

My baggage, of course, didn't make it to MUC, which meant (law of unintended consequences working in my favor) I didn't have to schlep it to the hotel nor on the train to Austria today. At the Holiday Inn Express MUC, the hottie at the front desk explained that over 60 of their rooms were filled with stranded fliers, and that's why she didn't have any emergency razors left.

MUC is in the same complex as the train station and a shopping mall, so I stopped this morning on the way to the train and picked up a razor, some floss, fresh undies, and a few other necessities. Riding the excellent, on-time, comfortable ÖBB train from MUC to Kitzbühel, I observed that Austria was white like I've never seen it. GREAT racing conditions. Even the sunny side of Kitzbühel (Kitzbühelerhorn) was totally white.

When I showed up at Villa Mellon looking (and feeling) like hell, the Angel of Mercy (Herta) had a room ready for me; then she brought me green tea and cookies, which was heavenly beyond words.

I just talked to Iberia on the phone, they tell me my luggage has been located and will be delivered to me in Austria on Wednesday.

I wonder how the Russian supermodels made out.

El Nino Sucks If You're a Skier

Snowfall at Utah resorts is 100 - 130 inches below normal for this time of year, but 100 inches below a 250 inch normal is still a lot of schnee. I skied Snowbasin yesterday with my host, Gary, and you couldn't go off the groomers. Looked like early November. All the little drainage gulches on Strawberry that Andrew and Ted and I have explored in snorkel powder during better years were full of brush, and even tall grass in some places.

I did manage, by a fluke, to get a really fun powder day at Powder Mtn earlier this week. Powder's Paradise Chair, which roughly bisects the mountain and has some of Powder's best steeps, had been closed since the last big powder dump due to mechanical issues. In the ensuing days it had remained cold, so the snow was still deep and pretty good, a little heavy but not crusty. I just happened to show up to hike James Peak on the morning they got Paradise working, and the mountain was pretty much deserted, so I got 8 or 10 nice pow runs in before the place got socked in by a windblown snowstorm. Those Scott P4 super-fatties I keep here in Utah cut through anything. It was pretty rocky and stumpy underneath the knee-deep pow, so I did gouge up the P4s a bit. I'll get a quick tune on them - maybe today.

Austria, on the other hand, is hosed as far as skiing is concerned. I Skyped with Roman The Roamin' Roman last night from the womens DH in Haus im Enstal, who told me the mountain has only 5cm of snow and the race track is 100% man-made snow. The snow in Kitzbühel is isn't great, but the race course is in perfect shape, and my friends at the KSC have gotten some good alpentours this month, so Kitz apparently has more snow than almost any other resort in Austria.

In related news, Snowbasin is building two temporary ramp-monkey stadiums and a monstrous half-pipe, as The Dew Tour is coming to town next week. IDS does the Dew Tour scoring systems, so I Skyped Mr. Don Key, who will indeed be attending. Unfortunately, I'm flying out to Europe tomorrow (Sunday) to start setting up The Hahnenkamm, and Don flys in Monday, so I will miss him by one day. Would have been interesting to see Mr. Key in an alpine environment. Will also be interesting to see what kind of crowds show up at Snowbasin for Dew. Snowbasin is in the middle of nowhere, although one can drive here in less than an hour from Salt Lake City a whole whack of other major resorts: Alta, Snowbird, Brighton, Solitude, Deer Valley, Park Schitty, The Canyons, Powder Mtn, and Wolf.

Super-Ha'ole White-Skinned Hockey Boy Can Now Surf

Teaching Davis Cooper to surf. He learned the basics and was up on a wave about 3 minutes.

Throwing Tatiana Out of Bed (For Eating Crackers)

If you've read my previous couple of posts, you know I'm spending some of my holiday down time fiddling with two new toys: an IBM Ideapad S12 Nano netbook, and a Nokia e71 smartphone.

The Ideapad continues to impress. For a netbook that practically fits into one's coat pocket, it's pretty cool. The S12 definitely has a lot of weaknesses (way too much screen glare, for starters, and important keys in weird places for another) but for the cost and form factor, I'll accept those compromises to have an S12 (or several) in my quiver. I will probably buy a few more to put in my event inventory.

One thing absent from the S12 that I really miss from my notebooks, however, is the ThinkLight. Like most guys pushing 50, I don't see as well as I once did, and like many programmers, I'm a really lousy typist. I didn't realize how much I relied on the Thinkpad "ThinkLight" (and Dell's equivalent) until I started using the S12, which doesn't have one. I'd love to know the cost and weight penalty Lenovo would have been forced to pay in order for them to put a ThinkLight on the S12. I would gladly have paid extra bucks for one.

The Nokia e71, which I nicknamed "Tatiana" because of it's sleek, elegant, muscular resemblance to the gorgeous blonde Russo-Australian athletics star Tatiana Grigorieva, has revealed a couple of major faults. Faults so severe that I've read dozens, if not hundreds, of posts on various support and chat boards wherein furious Nokia users were resolving to switch phones. To wit:

1) The Nokia has serious bugs in its Brewtooth stack. I have 3 different Brewtooth earsets (Jabra stereo, BlueAnt, and Plantronics stereo), and Tatiana wouldn't stay connected to any of them. They would train and connect, but then go into an infinite loop of connecting, disconnecting, connecting, disconnecting...all day long. By rebooting the phone, I could sometimes get the connection to stabilize for a few minutes, but then it would go on the fritz again.

I Googled around for a while, finding maybe a zillion people reporting the same problem. Few suggestions were offered, and widespread fury at Nokia was ubiquitous. No wonder Nokia is losing market share hand over fist. One suggestion which seemed to solve the problem for most was to buy a Nokia-brand Brewtooth earpiece, but I really like all of my current Brewies, so I wanted to avoid that. Many suggested updating the Nokia's firmware, as listed among the recent Symbian OS revision histories is "better Bluetooth connectivity". I checked Tatiana's OS version and it was 200.something.something; the latest version availabe on Nokia's web site was 400.something.something.

So I updated.

No improvement.

At all.

My favorite Brewie is my BlueAnt Q1, which I believe is Australian-made. Although it's not stereo, it does have a voice command set which is trick as hell, and in general it really works well. I checked the BlueAnt web site, and my firmware was several minor revisions behind. I updated the BlueAnt firmware, and VOILA...Mr. BlueAnt now works flawlessly with Tatiana.

I think BlueAnt is perhaps in that rare place at which technology companies sometimes arrive, where they have indeed invented a better mousetrap, and are still small enough to respond to the marketplace and to problems. Sort of like Palm in 1998, before their world went to hell.

In any event, Tatiana's first eating-crackers-in-bed moment has been solved.

2) Nokia's sync support of anything other than Lotus and Outlook really is pathetic. I actually tried to work around this temporarily by exporting my Thunderbird Contacts DB (approximately 1800 records) into a comma-delimited file, and attempting to suck it into the Nokia PC Suite.

No dice.

The Nokia PC Suite is extremely picky about CSV files. It won't even suck in its own CSV exports. Even worse, the auto-suck will not tell you anything about what it doesn't like about your CSV files as it fails. I fiddled and fiddled, and Googled and Googled, and found nothing other than a LOT of really pissed-off Nokia customers.

After futzing around with my data for an hour using WordPad and OpenOffice SCalc, I finally gave up. Fuck it, for now.

I keep a list of procedures I perform on new Win7 and XP installs to turn off all the eye-candy bullshit, secure the OS, and get rid of performance-sucking, unneeded Services. One thing on that list is to remove the hopelessly insecure and clunky Outlook Express. I recently got a couple of new Dell ATG D630s for my event stash, and I hadn't had time to fully strip them of their Windows bullshit, so I grabbed one with Outlook Express still on it and imported my Thunderbird Contacts DB into it. Then I installed the Nokia PC Suite, and synched to Tatiana. Bingo. All 1800-odd contacts imported. Then I deleted Outlook Express. I'll give up syncing for now, until I decide whether I'm going to stick with Tatiana.

One thing I did notice, however, it the Nokia seems to gag on punctuation in phone numbers. When you enter a phone number into the Nokia's Contacts software, it will not let you do this:

(504) 555-5555

nor this

504.555.5555

nor this

504-555-5555

nor anything else with punctuation. Phone numbers must be entered as one big unreadable blob, i.e.

5045555555

Even the crude and user-unfriendly Windows Mobile allows you to punctuate phone numbers, and knows to ignore them when dialing.

I think some of my imported phone numbers had so much punctuation that the Nokia simply dropped them completely.

In any event, Tatiana remains gorgeous, sleek, and seductive to me, but her Windows Nokia PC Suite blows pretty badly. We'll see if I love her enough to stay with her, which will require an investment of $50 in a desktop sync workaround.

Nokia E71

Next on our tech hit parade is the Nokia e71. If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know my main phone is an AT&T Tilt w/Windows Mobile. I like the Tilt about 75 on a 100 scale. It's terrific for e-mail, calendar-ing, and pretty good for web stuff (as long as you use Skyfire rather than the crippled, pitiful IE Mobile). It's got a nice touchscreen and a half-decent slide-out kbd. (NOTE - I can't use an iPhone because (A) I'm hopeless with glass virtual keyboards (B) The phone part of the iPhone is scheisse, (C) the battery life sucks + the battery is not swappable, and (D) I'm not fabulous enough to use any Apple products).

Anyhow, one of the weaknesses of Windows Mobile is that WM phones are extremely cumbersome to use as phones. Try calling into a conference call (PIN required) or into your bank's telephony system with one hand, while walking, on a WM smartphone. Impossible, even if you've got hands like Chris Paul (of the New Orleans Hornets, arguably the best Point Guard in the NBA).

For Europe, where it seems I always need to talk to people on my phone while skiing down an injected race slope or while walking down the street (in both cases, while wearing gloves), I wanted to get a non-clamshell smartphone. I usually use a very cheap, very simple Nokia GSM shit-phone ($40 brand new) in Europe with my Austrian SIM, but I've become a lover of Bluetooth (pronounced "Brewtoot" in Japanese) earpieces, and the shit-phone doesn't have Brewtoot. With pre-paid SIM DATA plans getting more accessible, I figured what the hell, go for a smartphone.

Crackberry was out of the question, as the RIM OS blows chunks, and their browser is unusable.

After looking around for a while, it came down to either the Nokia e71 or the Nokia e63. The e63 is basically the cheaper, plastic version of the e71. I found an open-box new e71 on eBay for $200, so I went for it.

To my abject surprise, I love it. It is the most elegant phone hardware I've actually held in my hand. Light, slim, great kbd, great tactile feel from the metal case, nice click on the keys. I can type like a Tasmanian Devil on it. The Symbian OS is terrific. Browser is great. Tethering, e-mail is easy. And, unlike #$%^&*()@ Windows Mobile, you can do a lot of routine tasks with two or three keystrokes rather than the two or three DOZEN keystrokes required under WM.

Another thing I found really cool is that you can use the e71 to listen to FM radio (as well as internet radio). I know, it's dumb and I'm old...but I like FM radio.

It took me about 2 minutes to get it tethering to an XP laptop.

The e71's GPS simply ROCKS. My Tilt usually takes about 2 full minutes to find itself on the planet. The e71 found itself in about 15 seconds, and I wasn't even close to a window.

I find it incredibly annoying that my Tilt takes 3 minutes to completely boot. The Nokia cold boots in 30 seconds.

In a similar vein, the Tilt takes 3+ hours to fully charge, whereas the Nokia tops up in 15-20 minutes.

The Nokia camera is also way better than the Tilt's camera, although I rarely use a phone's camera. The Nokia camera has a flash, which the Tilt's camera does not. The rez seems much higher on the Nokia, although I will have to experiment further. Who knows, maybe using a camera phone will grow on me.

As with any phone (or unfortunately any girlfriend, as I've found), that initial rush of lust and fascination is soon tempered by annoying little shortcomings discovered in the course of a relationship (WTF - she leaves half-empty cat food cans in the fridge, stinking up all the other food to high heaven? Is sleeping with a Tatiana Grigorieva lookalike REALLY worth drinking tuna-flavored milk?).

By far the biggest annoyance I've found is the Nokia PC Suite only syncs with Outlook and with Lotus Notes. Lotus Notes? What pathetic luddite is still using Lotus Notes? Maybe it's a Euro thing. And Outlook is, well, Outlook. Enough said. I looked on the Nokia Support Forum, and found literally thousands of Nokia users bitterly railing against Nokia for lack of Thunderbird / Sunbird sync support. I agree, but there's more than one way to skin that particular cat. Several 3rd-party sync products, such as Sybase's XTNDConnect PC and Mobile Master, will solve that problem for $50.

Another thing I find weird is that the e71 cannot be charged via USB. Another "WTF" moment. I actually prefer charging through A/C power for various reasons (don't need to keep your laptop on all night for USB power, for example), but why not give users the option? Nokia does make a medusa-head USB cable with both a power plug and a micro-USB plug (part #CA-126), so that strangeness can be worked around.

I'm sure I'll find a few more annoying things about the e71, but in general I like the e71 so much that I may just retire the Tilt and use the Nokia as my main weapon in the US as well. If I do, I will bite the bullet and buy Mobile Master Pro, since I manage all my contacts and calendar with TBird / Sunbird.

Back to August: Nevados de Chillan, Redux

Wolf von Lindenau, one of the CASA guides I skied with in Chile this summer, finally got around to cleaning off the SD card in his camera and found these photos of me cutting up the Pirigallo Valley, sidecountry of Nevados de Chillan, from the first week in August. He was kind enough to send them along to me today. I'm easy to pick out because I was the only guy in the group wearing white.

Wow. That was some seriously good skiing. Can't wait to do it again.






Thanks, Wolf.

Lenovo S12 Netbook

This photo was taken outdoors in afternoon sunlight. The Dell on the left is a mighty ATG D630, which has a 500-nit outdoor screen, so bright it can warm a bowl of soup at 5 meters.

After looking at Netbooks for a long time, I finally ordered up a Lenovo S12 with the VIA Nano chipset.

It's pretty cool. Wouldn't want it as my primary development machine, but it'll come in handy at events, and will be a fine alternative to a real laptop during a week away for checking e-mail, SKYPEing, etc.

In short, it's a fun little toy.

No horsepower problems. The VIA NANO chipset is considerably more powerful than the ubiquitous ATOM chipset on most netbooks, even though the VIA clock rate is slower than the latest ATOMs(1.3 vs 1.6). Even with only 1 gig RAM, it rocks. I've got another gig of RAM ordered.

The chassis comes with a 1 Gig SODIMM soldered in, and another empty slot. The hardware will only recognize 2 Gigs, so I ordered an additional SODIMM. Had I known it worked this well with 1 gig, I might not have ordered that additional SODIMM. But then again, for $60, WTF.

The S12's full-sized kbd is much better than other netbooks I've tried. However Lenovo made a few poor choices on their "combi" keys, in my opinion. For example, HOME and END require a combi; two keys I use a shitload.

Another thing I like far better than most other netbooks is it's got two Touchpad buttons rather than one. Thus, right-clicking is solid, not an adventure in guesswork.

Screen is 1280 x 800. The extra real estate over the ubiquitous 1024 x 576 on other Netbooks is a huge improvement. 576 is just not enough real estate for me, especially when I'm browsing or using a compiler IDE such as Visual Studio.

The screen is relatively bright, but it is also very shiny. It reflects a ton of glare. It's way brighter than the previous-gen laptops (T30), but I'd not be too psyched to try to use it outdoors. However, under normal lighting, it's great. I don't see that well any more, so screens are very important to me. This one is fine in any indoor situation.

The integrated SD card slot on the left side is really convenient.

Another thing I thought was weird is in addition to a hard wireless LAN on/off switch (left side), there is also a soft wireless LAN switch (FN->F5). When I first fired the little guy up, I couldn't see any SSIDs, despite the fact that Windows told me the WL card was on and operating. I feared I might have a dud. But a little Googling revealed that a few zillion other people initially thought the same thing. I turned the soft switch on and away I went, wirelessly. Kind of goofy to have both a hard and a soft WL switch.

It came with Windows XP Home. I will probably replace that with W7 at some point.


The integrated webcam isn't any great shakes, but it's good enough for Skype and it's, well, integrated.

One irksome detail I just discovered is the HDD isn't easily swappable. You've got to spring the keyboard off the chassis to get at the HDD. Not the most convenient thing for a guy like me, who incessantly fiddles with HDDs.

So, in conclusion...is this little thang worth $420? You betcha. It'll come in handy in a lot of situations. I'm glad I waited. The ASUS, SANYO, and Dell netbooks that preceded it were cool little toys too, but this one has way fewer compromises. It won't fit in my jacket pocket like one of the 9" netbooks, but it's much closer to being a real PC. I can type on it and I can see the screen just fine.

Another Batshit-Crazy Euro.....

From the guys who brought us the "squirrel suit" (cruel enforcer of the Darwin theory), another batshit-crazy Euro invents a better way to kill himself.

link

Thanks to my good mate Digger in Melbourne, Australia, for this link.

Some Video To Make Your Teeth Chatter

It's Never Windy And Cold in Lake Louise

Today's Womens Downhill was moved down to the 2nd bad weather start because it was blowing about 45 knots at the regular start. With a temp of -8, the wind chill index was approximately -100,000,000,000C. It's warmer in outer space.

Where The Deer and the Antelope Play.....

Drove down to Banff last night to do some laundry. As we pulled into town, a humongous elk crossed the street in front of us...obeying all traffic laws. He crossed squarely in the crosswalk, like a good Bullwinkle.






In the meantime, an extremely rare Canadian Alpine Lynx showed up briefly to watch the mens Super-G on Sunday. Lynxes are both extremely rare and extremely shy, so the locals here were blown away that they actually got to see one in the flesh, er....in the fur.



For those of you who aren't familiar with ski racing, the orange stuff partially obscuring the Lynx is a substance known as "A-Net", a type of safety netting.