Travel Trials

OK so generally not a good week for my commute to Brussels.

The first issue was as I was checking in at LCY airport I received an email from the carrier VLM saying they had rescheduled my flight for the following week.

This did not particularly faze me as I had plenty of time to discuss any issues with the client. In fact, I was very happy with VLM for the electronic advanced warning.

Unfortunately when I landed I received a similar message for the following three weeks flights.

At this point I called the as usual fantastically helpful customer service people to see what was going on.

The bad news was that they had decided not to offer the early morning flight any longer. Now this did not cheer me up, but I am constantly advising and helping businesses to make hard decisions so I cannot really complain (much).

So in the end I have had to cancel the flights and am back to traveling to Brussels by Eurostar. Not a complete killer, despite the four am get up on Monday, but it means I will get home an hour and a half later on Friday. I get little enough time with the family that this is painful.

Well I got over that as I had a good work week on project, as the system was being belligerent and the team hit it head on and won. (Sounds so much better than we found a work around for a bug)

My next trial came today as around lunch I was informed by one of my coworkers that the local bus drivers had just gone on strike. The issue for me is I needed to get from one side of the airport where I work to the other side where the passenger terminal was. Of course you may have guessed the only way to do this is to get one of the shuttle busses! After much consideration (and panic) the issue was solved by another very kind coworker that drove me around the airport.

So at least the drama’s are over for the weekend, and I’m home to recharge for next week's issues!

 

 

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Diplomats

Well diplomats are somewhat a dime a dozen in Brussels du to the number of Embassies, Missions and Delegations based there. Also as I reside near the BRU airport and actually work there, you get used to the convoy's of police cars and motorbikes picking them up and dropping them off. These occurrences along with the semi random huge jumps in local security, are just part of the day to day.

However, this mornings one was unusual enough for a double take. So diplomat x, fully kitted out in their speed riding gear on their bicycle completely blended in with the area, even with the neon outfit. The very large SUV (4x4) police car with blue flashing lights and trailing car with diplomatic tags both doing the same 15kph as the bike made everything just a little bit obvious.

 

I really felt sorry for the diplomatic protection police who are normally the byword for discreet protection for their foreign visitors.

 

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Fond Memories

Well I came across the link below via Twitter today (http://twitter.com/Paul_Hartrick ) and nearly fell off my chair laughing!

http://paulhartrick.com/where-is-the-mens-room

 

Japan really is the place for culture shock for Europeans and Americans and the article brought back some great memories. I really want to go back for work as I love the place and the people.

 

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Reply on Twitter

OK so in reply to the comment from Q1999

"still not sure about the whole twitter thing. it has proven its right to exist, but - ok, let me own up - my days are too boring and I have to few friends to hop on board"

That is part of what I love about twitter. You really only need to know 1 or 2 people and just have buckets of time! You can then go look at their friend list. You then click on the friends name and read their Twitters if interesting click follow, if not move on to the next person or look at this persons friends. You can burn a LOT of time this way so don't do it at work!

Another way of finding interesting people/tweets is twitscoop (http://www.twitscoop.com/ or set up a column in TweetDeck) This gives you a view of what is "Buzzing" and what topics are "Trending". As any particular Buzz or trend grabs your interest, just click on it. You will then be taken to a list of tweets about that. Guess what, if you find a tweet interesting click on the users name and you can see all of their tweets. Again if you like the tweets follow the user, if not move on.

Basically some of it is gossip on a global scale, some of it is brilliant insight (i.e. they agree with my preconceptions) and some of it is pure sales pitch. Follow what looks interesting to you. If you make a mistake in following someone you can also unfollow just as easily by clicking on your following link then just click on remove for that tweeter!

I try and add new people regularly by these methods, so I am constantly getting interesting input. If you tweet regularly (mine is just a stream of consciousness), you will get followers. You can use the same methods to look at their posts and friends and add as you wish!

The final think I would say is if you think something about someone's tweet, tell them. You can reply to a tweet easily and most people like feedback. A few of my (I hope) humorous replies have turned into very interesting conversations and mutual following.

Just remember best not to do all of this while you are supposed to be working!

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Zaventem in the Morning

Feeling Arty on my walk to the Bus this morning :

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Beta Peter

Well you have already heard from me on the wonders of Ping (http://randombusinesstraveller.blogspot.com/2009/02/pingfm.html) a piece of beta software. Well once again I have to sing their praises. They along with half the southwest are out at #sxsw destroying their livers! But as soon as part of the system goes down they are on their phones with WAP fixing the problem. You have to love these guy's dedication.

 

Another piece of beta software worth a look is the new tweetdeck http://post.ly/8et (@TweetDeck). This reads and writes to both Twitter and now FaceBook so If like me you use both this is excellent! I just want them to integrate with the ping update client and I am a happy bunny!

 

These keep me up to date on some of my key social networks with the rest being taken care of by my RSS reader Klipfolio Personal Dashboard (http://downloads.klipfolio.com/downloads/home ). This is a Freeware version of some business software I installed for a client and again with a thriving user community to ensure you can read information from stock quoted to Dilbert in one place. As this is a spin off and "taster" for business software it is a (little) bit more reliable than the others.

 

The final bit I am using (when in the UK and can afford the data charges) is ceTwit http://www.kosertech.com/blog/?page_id=5 on my WM6 phone. This Reads twitter, but will write either to twitter or the Ping client.

 

The scary bit about all of these is they are all Beta versions. OK so my PC, phone and data all have industrial level backup, anti virus and firewall, but the number of crashes for these applications is minimal and absolutely no more than the commercial Outlook 2007 I use! Another cool thing with these pieces of software is that when they fail they fail "cleanly". This means that they never take down anything but themselves and are generally pretty good at telling you if there is a partial failure.

 

The only other one for my wish list is that Twitter will implement something in their API so I do not have to give my password to every single integration point I want to use!

 

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Do as I say not as I do

Well yet another one got to me today.

 

You do take your life in your hands here at times as a very high percentage of drivers quite happily use their mobile / cell phones while driving. This is another one of those wonderful things where EU laws are enacted but only the Brits are dumb enough to enforce the law.

 

While Belgian law "prohibits the use of a cell phone while driving. Phone can be used when the vehicle is not mobile and not in traffic" , it is just plain not enforced around Brussels. Today's little exercise was to guess if the driver of an 18 wheeler truck would drop the phone he was using so as to have two hands to get his truck around the roundabout (Traffic Circle).  The thing that exasperated me was he was STILL on the phone after turning the truck in its side and climbing out the window.

 

Good (ish) news is the bus drivers do not do this but they all have hands free and are still constantly on the phone or chatting with their friends who stand next to them and chat.

 

No wonder this place has a death rate per Km that is twice that of the UK.

 

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Spelling IS Optional!

Hey I built (yes built) my first computer in 1977 (!), in a Nissen Hut in the wilds of Suffolk, just so I could create a spell checker!

Well here is one for those of you that have given me grief over my spelling over the years (you know who you are!).

Lifted from a friend on twitter ( RT @NMKX) here it is verbatim:

 

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch procejt at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosnt mttaer waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter.

 

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Monster Drill Goes Down The Hole

As I said prviously my work overlooks the access point for the new Brussels high speed rail link and today they lowerd the monster drill bit down the hole.

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London City Airport LCY

Ok, so if you read this you know I love Eurostar, but i am now having to fly to Brussels.
Now LCY is my favorite airport, but even they are sliding into the horror zone.
Today's pain was security! On the entrance they asked everyone to remove their shoes , belts an laptops from bags. Now this is a pain but reasonable.The issue was on the other side where there was just enough space for one person and nowhere to sit to put your shoes on! This was then compounded by officials trying to get people out of the exit area.
This inevitably caused delays, frayed tempers and absolutely no increase in anything except travellers misery .
Of course the nice people anoying the travellers on the exit area did not appreciate having the root design flaws pointed out!
I doubt if I will get the call about my offer to provide flow dynamics consultancy, not because I was being difficult but because they just don't care!

Sent from my Windows Mobile® phone.

Expensive Kids (sorry UK Only)

Well for all of those of you that have kids you will already know how expensive they are. However the nice people over at software for students (http://www.software4students.co.uk/) actually have a way to save you money!

The general idea is that if you have a child in full time education you can register them and then buy software at the same price your Childs school or university does. Considering MS Office Professional plus retails for GBP349 and you can legally buy a licence for your home computer for GBP 44.03!

The caveat's on this are clearly documented and EASY to understand as well as actually being reasonable.

 

I do not work for them (honest), but if you have a child in full time education and they need some software, this should always be your first port of call.

 

Oh sorry to comply with the perfectly legal licence conditions, this is only applicable for the UK. Do not know about the scheme for other countries!

 

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Plurk

OK so another little site that I found via my friends at Ping (http://ping.fm/) is Plurk (http://plurk.com/peterhc/invite). This is a status / mini-blog site similar to Twitter (http://twitter.com/) but with a novel and interesting (read I like)time line interface for tracking your friends "plurks".

It also has a system of karma that is not terribly transparent, but like many good reward systems, it makes you spend more time on the site.

As usual I will be doing my updates onto the site via Ping, but once I find a few people to link to I'll start reading it as well.

Keep you updated, but it's worth a look!

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