Customer service is coming back into vogue. AOL hasn’t gotten the memo apparently: “An AOL service guy told me to stop complaining and learn to use a computer,” she said. “Then he hung up.” Ahh, a classic example of blaming the user. If they really hope to compete with their new free business model, they’re… Read more »
Has a cute little cat managed to sink his teeth into your luscious flesh lately? In multiple places, most notably on a joint? Wondering if it will get horribly infected? The answer is PROBABLY. That’s right. Cats have dirty little mouths (dirty as in bacterial dirty, not dirty like a sailor’s). Not nearly as dirty… Read more »
I like to use car analogies a lot when explaining to people why a lot of user interfaces suck. Pepole often hear me say something like, “You just know how to drive a car. It’s intuitive. If they designed car controls the way that they design most software interfaces, you’d have wrecks happening all the… Read more »
Ok, I’m back home after a great month of travel through the Balkans. It’s nice to sleep in my own bed again, but I could travel for a long time, I think. Photos and more stories to be posted. For now, enjoy some photos I snapped over the Alps during a flight from Zagreb to… Read more »
Wow, what a change from Kosovo. Dubrovnik is tourism central, English is spoken everywhere and there are no destroyed buildings to speak of. (Though Dubrovnik was shelled to bits by Serbian forces in 1991 for no strategic reason. It’s since been restored.) I’m too tired to really post anything interesting because I spent 15 hours… Read more »
I arrived in Prishtina, Kosovo last night. What’s a Kosovo, you ask? It’s a region in the Balkans, formerly part of Serbia. As of 1999, Kosovo is a protectorate of the UN and NATO after they intervened to stop Serbian agression – genocide and mass expulsion – against Albanian Kosovars. If you’re wondering about the… Read more »
[I’m jumping ahead to write about Serbia due to limited Internet time and apathy. More on Slovenia and Croatia soon.] From Zagreb, I caught a night train to Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro (Yugoslav Republic, whatever you want to call it). When I got on the train, I was able to supersize to a sleeper car… Read more »
After Vienna, I made my way by train to Ljubljana, the capital city of the tiny-but-wealthy Slovenia (pop. 2 million). The Austrian Alps are incredibly scenic. The rolling mountains are dotted with castles, some of them fairly intact and really spectacular. Just imagining California’s governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, wandering through this countryside as a young body-builder-in-training… Read more »
It’s a given that when you travel, you will encounter weird food, so today I’ll talk about my experience with Bavarian food The Germans like meat. They eat it for breakfast, luch, dinner, dessert, whatever. In Augsburg, I had the pleasure of eating several new, tasty meat dishes. Schweinehaxe This is basically a big hunk… Read more »
After Munich, I headed to Augsburg – about an hour away by train – to visit my friend Tim, a German I met the last time I was in Germany two years ago. Augsburg is famous for the Peace of Augsburg and fashion mullets sported by the local university kids. It seems that these kids… Read more »