Worse than Clueless is Mindless

Today, I learned about the fact that Harley-Davidson is closing the doors of Buell. Well, these are hard times, and HD has been hit as hard as a lot of other companies by the crisis. But celebrating the past instead of driving the future with innovations have seldom paid out as viable strategy.

Erik Buell left a very emotional video message about the situation, don't miss it!

Back again

Almost a year ago I thought I would never visit this country again. Wrong. I wasn't even forced. I just had some spare holidays - and ended up in a flight to New York. Flight, and entering the country went absolutely seamless.

If you live in a big city traveling by public transport is not unfamiliar (although we have problems with the practice currently). Anyway, switching trains in an unknown city always is tricky, and I ended up with a little subway zig-zag tour.

The hotel was somewhat impressive. I wouldn't expect that spacious rooms in New York - but I found out its a converted appartment building, so maybe they will refurbish the suites to make them smaller one day.

What was like expected - air conditioning. And the problem is not that it is freezing cold (at least for the first 10 minutes) it is the noise. Finding the switch that turned the beast off was definitely the most complicated task of the day.

A long time without a post ...

... so there's definitively room for improvement.

Lot's (or little) - depending on the view point has happened since then and may be worth to be mentioned here:

• I learned the real meaning of the word delicatessen.
• I'm glad that there was no need to swim in the Hudson river.
• Sometimes it's better to have no warranty anymore - or at least it may be more comfortable.

So, perhaps I'll add some things here - but don't hold your breath (you know I'm lazy).

The exploitation of cluelessness and clumsiness

First to say, I left the clueless country yesterday. For some time you like being there, but at some point you see whether you can make some place a home or not. For myself it's a not.

Being relaxed and laid back because the day is sunny (and the next day too), and you know life is going on anyway is one. Acting laid back with good intentions but little thinking about the consequences is another - which you spot more in some places than in other (hint: clumsy people are everywhere, and we all do it from time to time). Acting clumsy but pretending not to do just for being friendly is the third - good intention to not turn somebody away while messing it up completely.

Perhaps this is finally a problem of big rifts you see when you are there: differences in the money they people can spend in a month, differences in the education, differences in the personal beliefs (which interact with daily life much more than in a lot of other places). If all your goal in life is having a house with picket fences around, you worlds ends not far from these fences. Perhaps I expect just too much.

Death by Newspaper

At least in the country where I live, newspapers are delivered to mailbox. So the delivery method here almost struck me, when I was leaving the appartment a little bit early on the morning. When I walked around the corner to the parking lot, a flying newspaper in a bag almost hit me.

Scary.

It's alive again

... and humming friendly in front of me. My MacBook, which died more than a week ago, is resurrected. While after warranty is over such a resurrection always costs some money, it went absolutely smooth and painless.

You can even not hate Apple if your toy made by them breaks ... at least they make it possible to come out without a scratch (and they do that really pretty well and straightforward).

AM and PM

I almost overslept today. Not because I had to get up at 6 am, I need a alarm clock at this time anyway. It only did not alarm. When I then came back home, and enjoyed a small dinner suddenly the clock went off. Silly me, day will always have 24 hours counted from 0 to 24 to me ...

Anyway, this was unfortunately easy to fix, so no excuse being late the next time.