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Forgot that email posting to wordpress has to be plain text, so
reposting again (from my balcony in Rome (which is just still cool to
me))
Great flight from Phoenix to Philadelphia. Got separated in Philly
airport, which is the size of New Zealand. Marco Polo covered less
ground than we did going from Terminal B to Terminal A. These are
neighboring letters of the alphabet, yet we got Memorial Terminal A
Connecting Flight 5K Run shirts when we finally made it.
No less than ten security officers and dogs (”We can’t tell you what
they are sniffing for, but it is many things.”) were on the concourse
as we boarded. Fortunately it didn’t seem to involve us for a change,
and we boarded smoothly. We had very comfy, spacious seating courtesy
of cashing in a heinyload of Frequent Flier Miles, and were handed
tasty mimosas as we sat down.
These chairs had 16 different adjustable buttons for doing things like
moving your headrest, extending your leg support and extending “the
bump”. Sadly, these comfy chairs were almost impossible to sleep in.
We nodded in and out, but that was it. And our fancy in-flight
entertainment system BSOD’d on us, AND they didn’t have a power
adapter so I could charge devices like my netbook. Quite silly.
Rome’s airport was a bit confusing, but nowhere near the nightmare of
Heathrow. I even spoke the native language and Heathrow and it was
worse. Eventually we found our way to the train station, caught the
“Leonardo Express” to Termini Station, got lost again, and finally
found a taxi to our hotel.
I have never seen so much graffiti as I saw on the train trip from the
airport to the center of Rome. Not just scrawls but full on artwork.
Even saw a few “Ave Cesar!” which I’m not sure what to make of. And
traffic here is as batcrap crazy as you may have heard. Even
batcrappier. I gladly pay money to the cabbie to navigate it for us.
Our hotel is in an alley, which concerned me at first, but I was being
a pansy. This is apparently quite normal, and the hotel is fantastic.
The people are great, and we have a balcony on the fourth floor that
overlooks some rooftop gardens. It’s beyond ridiculously gorgeous, and
I may not want to leave. The only downside is there is no lift, and
the steps are steep little buggers.
We’re trying to get ourselves on Rome time, which means trying to stay
up until nighttime. Since we came in at 9am local, that’s a full day
of it. We walked around Piazza Navona, and then over to the Pantheon,
up past Parliament, and across to the column for Marcus Aurelius
before we were just on total fumes and headed back (about 3pm). I’ll
write more about the sites later, but I have to comment on the
Pantheon.
I’ve never had outright goosebumps being somewhere before. Such a
sense of power and history in a place… erected by an Emperor,
dithered over by the Popes, and ultimately saved by its conversion to
a Catholic Church. Nearly two thousand years old and populated with
Gods the entire time. Its dome a marvel that Bernini felt surpassed
that of St. Paul’s Cathedral itself. I heard Spanish, French, German,
English, Japanese, and ton of other languages I couldn’t identify as
people from around the world marveled. Across the ancient square, past
the marble fountain, a McDonald’s sold Big Macs. It was a completely
surreal experience.
Bandwidth is a lot trickier here than I thought, so pictures are going
to have to wait until I can find an internet cafe tomorrow. Oh, I
also had two of the best Cappucinos I have ever had. Just… ever.
Austin needs to come here just to try these things. The Italians do
know their espresso drinks, no question
I’m about to die, and the wife is already toast. After I figure out
how to post this, we’ll get some rest and recharge for tomorrow’s
target… the Vatican!
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We’re headed to Italy for a little over a week, and I may need a separate suitcase just for all the freaking power cables and connectors. iPhone, Kindle, netbook, camera, and I don’t know all what else. It looks like a gangly plastic squid died on our kitchen table as I sort it all out to pack. And it’s not just the different amps for each one, they make universal adapters for that, but it’s all the custom end connectors for each toy.
I could charge them all (in theory) over USB from my Netbook, but I haven’t had it long enough to know how well that really works. So 4 miles of cables are going with us across the Rubicon.
I’m also using this as an experiment to see how I can blog about my trip WHILE I’m tripping. I mean traveling, not tripping. Anyway, I think I have Flickr set up for the images, which should be appearing on the front page of the blog. I also am going to turn back on the Twitter Tools feature to add my tweets into a blog post each day, so even if I only get a few tweets off each day they will get posted. Then there is the email-to-post feature in WP I’ve enabled, should I want to do a full post with the limited bandwidth I’ll have. Part of the challenge is not wanting a $3,000 iPhone bill when I get home. I’ll have a roaming package but it will be as sparse as I can possibly use it.
So if you want to follow along with our adventure, this is the place to watch…. in theory.
One school of thought might be I’m making this too complicated, and I think I’ve attended that school, but it’s kind of fun sorting all the silly stuff out. It’s the geek in me. It’s what I do.
A long time back I set up some job alerts at different career sites like Dice and Monster.com for Social Media positions. I hadn’t received an email alert from Monster.com in a while, and I’d almost entirely forgotten I had it still active.
Until this week.
Monster.com is either drunk out of their minds, or there is a deep change coming in the Social Media landscape. The same alert that once returned positions like “Community Manager” and “Wiki Administrator” in just Arizona have now returned:
The message is clear. Social Media has moved beyond trying to drive authentic, dynamic conversations and is now a critical component of every facet of our lives. Where once you needed to just know how to set up Wordpress, now you must know CPR. Where once you just had to know how to use Friendfeed, now you have to be able to carve shrubbery into funny animal shapes. Where once you just had to know how to filter Scoble out from every damned Internet tool on Earth, you now must be able to infiltrate enemy governments while cooking Asian gourmet food AT THE SAME TIME.
I, for one, welcome the challenge. And if you happen to be looking for a job yourself, I think there may be a Web Developer position opening up really soon over at Monster.com
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This debate between the marquees for two churches, while clearly from one of those sign generators, still made me laugh. Having friends of all religious leanings, I have no problem seeing this happening. It’s a big image, so click through to read all the Holy Goodness.
Esquire has an amazing article about the story of one of the most famous photographs from the September 11th attacks in New York City… that of a single man falling through the air after having lept to his death.
One of the most fascinating things to me was how the family of the man presumed to be in the picture refused to believe it could be him. They felt that his suicide would have been act of cowardice, and his love for them would have kept him working to return to them.
I cannot remotely assume to know what it was like to be in that situation, in those buildings, on that day. Most pictures of the jumpers were censored inside the United States, but some estimates place the total as high as 200 people. They fell for 10 seconds. They reached speeds of 150 miles per hour. They fled a hell of chaos, terror, and burning jet fuel.
How you exit this life is an important part of how you live it. Whether those people jumped out of fear or in act of defiance, they most assuredly were not cowards.
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Just cleaning up and getting this place up to Wordpress 2.6 and refreshing a few of the plugins. Once upon a time it used to be a pain to maintain web sites, then blogs came along to simplify the content management and posting. Now blogs have become so feature rich I sometimes think we’re back at Square One.
Most of my blog time has been going into Ignite Phoenix and Writing Is Cake, but I hope to restore the balance a bit. Also trying to get my wiferoni blogging here, which should be an interesting prospect. 
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Up at OSCON in Portland, in the conf hall, writing this from my iPhone. Could this be cooler? Could it be lamer?
At least I got a green Google moleskine out of the trip!
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