Hello world.

Hype is like cancer that spreads until it obliterates all facts in their wake.

Currently the Google word processor is being hyped as the alternative to using MS Word.

About two years ago I tried to use Open Office. MS Word was going to cost me an arm and a leg and I had every incentive. A month of painful struggle and irritation at what was an inferior and ultimately unusable product as compared to MS Word, I shelled out the big bucks.

Google Docs is an impressive piece of web software, and certainly superior to wordpress’ text editor widget. However, I am pretty sure, that I prefer using MS Word if I ever have to write any document.

Nonetheless, this document was written using google doc.

My next task is to see if I can get MS Word to publish directly to my blog….

And for the record, Open Office was far more usable.

Okay …

I am curious to see if I can somehow get the google wordprocessor to put a blog post on my blog….

Midomi is a great new website for finding music, if you can sing.

My sister once remarked that I had no sense of rhythm, tonality or harmony. I, of course , did not believe her.

I tried to find the Beatles song Yellow Submarine using midomi by humming a few bars. My wife was able to do it, and therefore I should have been able to.

Well I didn’t. But I did find a song called Special K. Trying to tell me something I think.

Bond is back with a vengeance.

In the early Bond, staring Sean Connery, it was about plot, gadgets and babes. But something happened with Moonraker. The emphasis changed from crazy plots to surreal and unbelievable plots. Villains were no longer trying to steal a lot of money they were out for global conquest. The movies had bigger budgets with more special effects, but were somehow less cool. Bond was no longer the greatest spy, he was a superhero fighting super-villains: sort of a Batman fighting an unending collection of Jokers.

In Casino Royale, we return to the old Bond and the old plots. Interestingly in this film there was no Q or R. There were no super gadgets. Instead it was all about Bond trying to get to the bottom of a very mysterious plot. The story in summary is a classic. Bond is trying to trace the source of some funding for some very nasty people. The pursuit leads him to a poker game at the Casino Royale where not only must he win the high stakes poker game he must also live long enough to enjoy his winnings. Bond steps out of the game and returns to the game periodically as if he were taking a pause. Each pause either involves him killing someone or surviving an attempt on his life.
The movie did return to a considerable number of it’s old tricks. Bond orders a martini. Although it was rather amusing to be in the movie theater. The order for the martini went like this:

James Bond: Dry Martini.
Bartender: Oui, monsieur.
James Bond: Wait… three measures of Gordon’s; one of vodka; half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it over ice, and add a thin slice of lemon peel.
Bartender: Yes, sir.
Tomelli: You know, I’ll have one of those.
Infante: So will I.
Bartender: Certainly.
Felix Leiter: My friend, bring me one as well, keep the fruit.
Le Chiffre: [annoyed] That’s it? Hm? Anyone want to play poker now?
Felix Leiter: Someone’s in a hurry.

The audience let out a collective gasp when we saw this scene. Had the new Bond given up Martini’s? But later on he returned to his old standby. And when asked how he wanted it the reply was a classic:

Bartender: Shaken or stirred?
James Bond: Do I look like I give a damn?

As for acting, Judi Dench once again proves that she is a Goddess of acting surrounded by mere mortals. Every scene she was in, she commanded. Sometimes, I wish we had more M. Recognizing that having more M makes for a better film, the screen writers had Bond and M interact far more regularly. The best moment in the film was in the beginning after Bond has just blown up part of a Nigerian embassy and killed a bomb maker. M is fuming. And remarks how back in the day, if a 007 made such a mess at least they had the decency to defect. Which leads her to this whine:

M: Christ, I miss the Cold War.

Daniel Craig finally gave us the real Bond. The Bond that could be both human and monster at the same time. The earlier Bond’s never quite convinced you that they could kill their lovers. This Bond does.

And yes, the movie does end with the most important line in any Bond film:

James Bond: The name’s Bond… James Bond.

Followed by the all important: Tan-ah Tan-na-nah….

Over the July 4th weekend I had to travel to Greece to attend the wedding of a dear friend of mine. He and I have known each other since we were 2 years old. Because I am not as well organized as I would like I ended up buying the tickets fairly late in the game. And because I ended up buying them fairly late, there was only two airlines that had tickets I could afford, Delta and Air France.

Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!

That’s what should have been going through my head, not: Sweet!.

My wife, tried to caution my enthousiasm for cheap fares, but I was too obstinate to care.

So I took Air France from SFO to Paris Charles de Gaulle to Athens and back.

What should have been a 4.5 day relaxing trip turned into a sprint to the heroic finish.

Our adventure began with the 26 hour delay of the flight out of SFO (because … well I think the pilot just decided he’d rather watch the World Cup game in Paris than do his job ..). Because of the chaos of having 400 people missing their flight and connections we had to stand in line for three hours to get our boarding passes. We then had to suffer an additional 2 hour delay because the processing of passengers was taking too much time.

Once in the plane, the very friendly Air France staff decided that feeding us was a low priority. Well that’s not strictly true. They decided chatting with every passenger in the plane as the passengers were being fed was a priority. As a result instead of getting food almost immediately it took them 2+ hours to feed the plane. For folks that had not eaten since their light breakfast, there was a strong temptation to do some self-service feeding.
Upon arrival in CDG, we discovered that our flight into Athens was delayed by another hour.

I was hopeful the return trip would be better.

However…

Our departure from Athens on July 4th was delayed by 20 minutes. This caused significant anxiety because our connection was very tight (55 minutes) and we were in danger of missing it. But that’s okay, the flight out of CDG was delayed by 2 hours, 30 minutes of which we spent in a shuttle on the tarmac waiting to be let into the plane.

Now why do I paint and tar Air France and Delta and North West with the same brush? Delta because I bought the ticket from Delta. And North West because they are in an alliance with those jokers. But that’s not the only reason I hate North West. In 2004 I was travelling to Athens on North West. I liked North West because I liked KLM. I had travelled thousands of miles on North West for many years. And in this one flight the callousness of their flight attendants destoyed a many year love affair. I got some coffee. The coffee was served in a defective styrofoam cup. I was sitting in the middle row of a 747. While I was getting ready to drink my cup, the stewardesses on either side of the middle row decided to pass over my head some trays. The trays almost fell on my head. In an attempt to avoid them I spilled the coffe. The stewardesses then did everything in their power to ignore my scalded leg (3rd degree burn). Even when I pointed out what happened they shrugged. A kind word, even an offer of a napkin would have been sufficient. In the end, I had to force my way into the galley and demand some towels to clean myself up.
So a pox on all of their houses.

Was it only 10 days ago and hundreds of hours ago that I decided that using 360.yahoo.com/kostadis for my blogging software was not hard core enough?

It was amr adwallah’s fault. He pointed out the limitations of the default yahoo blogging software, and I felt compelled to change. After all, I could not very well opine about web 2.0 and be using something that primtive.

I feel compelled to describe the pain, the frustration and the abject irritation as I fought with free software in a desperate attempt to get something to work. I worry however, that the net outcome will be my frustration.

Since I am currently vacationing with my wife in Tahoe and having a great time, I’ll do that another time.