Among The Clueless

Worse than Clueless is Mindless

2009-10-24T05:41:00.002-07:00

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

2009-09-23T13:46:00.000-07:00

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 ...

2009-09-23T13:40:00.000-07:00

... 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

2008-10-25T23:42:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-07T21:58:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-27T22:53:00.000-07:00

... 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

2008-08-19T20:08:00.000-07:00

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.

Serendipity

2008-08-18T19:51:00.000-07:00

Well, this actually does not really belong here because there is nothing clueless in it, just luck.
Because my MacBook was rather full, I decided to buy an USB hard disk. When I put it on, I just tried Apples Time Machine because of curiosity. Some time later, I had a full backup. A day later the hard drive in my MacBook died. While it cost some money to replace it, the order is already on the way and all I need now is a Philips screwdriver #1 to exchange the trash drive with the new hopefully working drive.

I would call this a serendipity.

Things you don't want to know

2008-08-09T16:00:00.000-07:00

Air traffic is so common these days that you don't really think about it. As long as things go well. If things don't go that well, you have at least a somewhat interesting story to tell. Already in the plane, the captain told something about some paperwork to be completed before takeoff.
A short time later, he talks about some repair work done on the engine.
Some more time later everybody had to leave the plane for an engine test. At least now you could see Lake Michigan below one of the engines. Probably this turned some people off who did not come back after the test was successful.

Finally, on the way to the runway again a stop because the plane was not yet officially declared airworthy (however we left already the gate, probably to go for the interstate and not for the runway). After some more minutes we took off with some 2 hours offset to the schedule.

Well things like the engine problem just happen. Nobody can do something about that.
However there may be different ways to handle it ...

How many bags?

2008-08-09T11:00:00.000-07:00

Imagine you are at a well known coffee shop (OK, with well known I mean the chain). You order some tea. You get a paper cup with a closed lid. And the cashier asks you: "How many bags?" What would be the right answer (you don't have the tea yet, so you cannot open the lid and have a look)?

Avoiding experiments

2008-08-02T07:58:00.000-07:00

You are at an airport and get a rental car. You are in a foreign country. You are told just to pick one out of that row in the parking lot. So what do you choose? I picked the one I was most familiar with: a VW Jetta. I already had enough experience with Chevrolets, Dodges, and Fords to allow myself to be a little bit conservative this time.

Car looked like what I know, behaved like what I know, however there was a detail which I never had seen before: the small red button on the underside of the key. There, in fine letters one could read the word: PANIC. Hmm...

Turns out that this interesting feature is somewhat required in new cars here.

Well, I did not yet try it to find my car in a large parking lot, as all people do. At least it was not designed on this key in a way that you press this thing accidentally.

Why this has been set up

2008-08-01T07:54:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it happen that you relocate from your home for whatever reason. Of course, most of the time, the reason is somehow work-related. And then, sometimes, you see something that you cannot believe that it exists. You just wonder and scratch your head.

However, most of these moments fade away rather quickly. There are just too many of them ...

Keeping some of these moments is the goal of the blog entries that follow here.