Kris and Jo go to Paris

New blog!

I don't know if anyone is still reading this blog, but if you are, I've started a new one at http://krismarkel.com/yousexything. It's about learning to code in Cocoa.

More blog news coming soon.

Site changes

The site changes I talked about earlier have been implemented.

Based on Stew's suggestion, I've added a search feature to the right column. Typepad makes this pretty easy, which was nice. Type "Vichy France" into the search box and you'll see the appropriate entry at the top of the list.

I've also kept the FeedBlitz subscription box since a couple people have actually used it. (Welcome Mom and Uncle Steve!)

I did remove the MapStats and TopBlogSites counters. MapStats just never worked properly and TopBlogSites didn't really bring any traffic to the site, and that place is just ugly.

I've also started a "daily publish" schedule for my posts. From now on, you should see one post a day, and it should appear at noon Paris time. Some days you'll get something interesting, and some days you'll get boring crap like this. Sorry about that. Jo's posts will still appear as she creates them.

Blog changes

I'm going to make some changes to the blog in the next week or so. If you're interested in the details, click the "continue" link.

Sexy blog sexy news: sexy, sexy, sexy!

Blogging tip: If you ever want a lot of random strangers to visit your weblog, include the word "sexy" in the title of your post.

And for those of you who are wondering about the title of Jo's last post, check out this link. (iTunes required. Here's a non-iTunes link. And don't worry, all the links are family friendly.)

Blog changes

I've changed the settings for the blog so you no longer need a "TypeKey" account to post a comment. Instead, I need to approve any comments before they appear on the site. If the spam gets too bad, I'll switch things back.

For now, it's going to take a while before comments appear since I'll only be approving them a couple times a day. (Not that we get all that many comments, but maybe now we'll get more.)

Who are you?

UPDATED: Click the "continue" link for some updates.

We're approaching our second week of daily posts, and as best as I can tell, we've attracted (or re-attracted) some regular readers. We'd like to know who you are, how you found the site, how you read the site, and what you do and don't like about the site. More details and an example are below the fold.

Ah Dat is all that

We have become big fans of Ah Dat, the Hong Kong pug. If we ever make it to Hong Kong, we're going to see if we can arrange to meet him. (Looks like we may have to hurry.)

UPDATE: Peter and Lee (who just moved to Hong Kong) met Ah Dat in person today! That's quite a coincidence. Here's what Peter had to say. ('Sachmo' refers to our pug, Louis, as in Louis Armstrong.)

Today, Lee and I took a bus up to the peak in Hong Kong (it is still a holiday weekend here) and then walked down into the city. On the trail, there was a couple walking with a couple of dogs, one of them was Ah Dat -- without the head gear. We thought of you. He was breathing pretty hard but making good work of that steeeeep climb. I would dare say he is a little more fit than mister Sachmo but Louis could do it if he wanted...and if there was some food at the top!

Links to the best of Ah Dat are below the fold.

Happy birthday Raoul!

Today is Raoul's birthday.

Happy birthday, Raoul.
Happy birthday, Raoul.
May you find a smoked ham bone
And have a nap too.

This picture is from our trip to visit Raoul in October. Below the fold is another picture from the same trip.

Feed me Seymour

I've made some modifications to the blog, mainly switching back to using FeedBurner to handle the news feeds. If you subscribe to the site's feed, please change your subscription URL to http://feeds.feedburner.com/KrisAndJoGoToParis. This is because Typepad's stats capabilities are very weak, and StatCounter.com only counts visits to the site, not feed requests.

If you don't use a feed reader, but are sick of checking the site every day, you can now sign up for daily email updates using the "Subscribe me!" form on the page.

For more information on feed readers, check out this post.

Settling in, technology-wise

Well, the last package finally made it. Here's what it went through.

Date/Time

Activity

Location

Details

Sep 28, 2005

9:59 AM

Delivered

PARIS FR

Payment received

8:25 AM

On FedEx vehicle for delivery

AUBERVILLIERS FR

7:38 AM

At local FedEx facility

AUBERVILLIERS FR

Sep 27, 2005

10:23 PM

Departed FedEx location

PARIS FR

8:27 PM

Arrived at FedEx location

PARIS FR

4:11 PM

Int'l shipment release

PARIS FR

3:07 AM

Shipment exception

PARIS FR

Regulatory agency clearance delay

Sep 26, 2005

4:10 PM

Clearance delay

PARIS FR

6:56 AM

Shipment exception

PARIS FR

Regulatory agency clearance delay

Sep 25, 2005

3:40 AM

Shipment exception

PARIS FR

Regulatory agency clearance delay

Sep 24, 2005

3:39 AM

Shipment exception

PARIS FR

Regulatory agency clearance delay

Sep 23, 2005

4:04 AM

Shipment exception

PARIS FR

Regulatory agency clearance delay

3:45 AM

Shipment exception

PARIS FR

Regulatory agency clearance delay

Sep 22, 2005

3:35 AM

Shipment exception

PARIS FR

Regulatory agency clearance delay

Sep 21, 2005

3:38 AM

Shipment exception

PARIS FR

Regulatory agency clearance delay

Sep 20, 2005

2:56 AM

Shipment exception

PARIS FR

Regulatory agency clearance delay

12:15 AM

Clearance delay

PARIS FR

Sep 19, 2005

9:41 PM

Shipment exception

PARIS FR

Package held for duties and/or taxes

9:41 PM

Clearance delay

PARIS FR

7:19 PM

Arrived at FedEx location

PARIS FR

7:19 PM

In transit

PARIS FR

Package available for clearance

Sep 17, 2005

3:44 PM

In transit

MEMPHIS, TN

10:54 AM

Arrived at FedEx location

MEMPHIS, TN

Sep 16, 2005

9:16 PM

At local FedEx facility

SEATTLE, WA

4:27 PM

Left origin

SEATTLE, WA

3:18 PM

Picked up

SEATTLE, WA

The "payment received" is the €80 we had to pay in duties. I have no idea why we had to pay duties on this box of random crap and not the monitor or the other box of random crap.

Everything is now set up computer wise. It is really nice having a real keyboard and a full-sized mouse to work with instead of the cramped notebook keyboard and travel mouse.

Unfortunately, I fried the power supply on my "real" mouse (a Logitech MX700, very nice) by not paying attention to the voltage rating on the plug. It made a couple popping noises and started smelling like burnt electronics. In the end, it was a good thing because it made me check the power rating on the XBox and Gamecube, neither of which is rated for 220 volts. Now I need a "300 watt step down voltage converter", which I can't find locally, but seem to be plentiful (and cheap) in the states. The Gamecube only requires about 50 watts, but the XBox needs more than 200. No console gaming for me for a while, unless you count the GBA SP. Maybe I'll finally finish Advance Wars 2. Last week I reached 100% complete and got all the unlockables on WarioWare.

To fix the mouse I need to order a new power cord for it. Logitech may have a 220 volt version available that I can order, I'll have to look into it. The rest of the mouse is fine; it all works, but I can no longer charge the batteries. For now I'm using a cheap Microsoft optical mouse. It's cordless and works well, but but doesn't have all the buttons I like. It's also not a very good mouse for gaming, but I can't really play any twitch-style games on my anemic laptop anyway. ("Mediocre in every way" is my laptop's motto.) I'll have to resist the temptation to just get the MX1000 or the G7 which are available locally, and use lasers, but are also expensive and not really a justifiable expenditure at this time.

While I'm working on a wish list, I think I'll add this keyboard to my Christmas list (though I'm sure I'll have forgotten about it come Christmas), even though I don't think I can really handle it. I'm a competent touch typist, but I can't say I have every key memorized, especially the punctuation keys. However, as someone who makes his living typing all day, I do really know the value of an excellent keyboard and I'm very picky about what I use. In fact, I had the company I work for purchase a specific keyboard for me because the ones they normally give out are miserable. (Actually, they make me miserable. I don't know how the keyboards feel about themselves.)

Since we're on the topic of keyboards and mice, I'd like to say that except for gaming, I really hate using a mouse, and I hate applications (and web pages - damn you Flash!) that force me to use the mouse. With a little practice, operations you normally use the mouse for become 100 times faster using keyboard shortcuts. That said, for PC gaming, a really nice mouse is essential. However, like I said before, my teetering-on-the-edge-of-craptacular laptop can't really play any recent games of interest, so all I need right now is a competent mouse. I do have a ginormous catalog of really fun, older games locked in storage 9000 miles away, but my plan was to catch up on my growing catalog of console games while I was over here. Unfortunately, that's not happening without a step down voltage converter.

Okay, I've gotten way off my original topic, and I need to start work soon, so I'll get back on track. To round out the technology side of things, Jo and I went down to the local fnac Tech store (It's pronounced "fnac" and not "F.N.A.C." and it's written in lower case. I guess it's actually a word and not an acronym. Crazy French!) and bought a cheap printer / scanner /copier device. We ended up with an HP PSC 1410 simply because it was the cheapest one they had that wasn't a Lexmark. (I don't like Lexmark for a couple reasons. First, I don't think they make quality products, and second, they file dumb lawsuits.) I'm not a huge fan of HP either, especially after experiencing the testament to mediocrity that is the nc6000, even though every printer I've ever bought has been from HP. I think the next printer I purchase where the motivating factor is quality and features and not price will be a Canon, but I don't think we'll need a new printer for several years, so who knows.

Finally, the last piece to the workstation set up, the office chair and keyboard tray, are getting delivered by Ikea some time in the next 15 days. Which, if it's anything like the DSL modem, means it will show up this coming Wednesday. Jo had an email discussion with the Ikea folks who wanted to ship the furniture via the post office rather than a delivery company. Turns out it's cheaper and faster, and they'll deliver it to our door, so we said okay, but it looks like Ikea has become confused and is responding with conflicting emails and unclear phone calls about the delivery method, cost, and time frame, so who knows when we'll get it. I am curious as to why the delivery company exists at all, except that maybe you can't mail everything you buy at Ikea, like a couch, for example.

One last bit and then I'm done, I swear. I'm still missing a couple items that I'm pretty sure I brought over or shipped, namely my Leatherman Juice S2 and my mini tripod. I think I must have tucked them into some corner of my luggage that I forgot to unpack. I'll have to look through my bags again.

Finally (this time I really swear!) some pictures. (One of the barely redeeming features of my laptop is that it has a built-in SD card slot, which is nice because it means my phone, my camera, Jo's camera, and my laptop all share the same memory card format so we can readily exchange media between them. If only Jo's laptop had a built in SD card reader, we would have a complete set.)

Here is an updated picture of the workspace. You can see the printer, keyboard, and other assorted equipment. I've also switched out the "dining room" chair for a much more comfortable lounge chair. What I really need, however, is an office chair. You can also see the printer box that I need to figure out what to do with.

Here is a detail of the rats nest of power cables I have going. I hope to clean this up somewhat today. After all, at some point I need to be able to fit a 300 watt step down voltage converter in here.

That's it for now! (See, I told you.) Coming soon: Adventures in coffee making, Blog points update, and (if I find my tripod) I am a giant.

News from other blogs

Thanks to the cool "headlines" features of NewsGator, I've just added a "News from other blogs" section to the bottom of the column on the right. These are the latest entries from the blogs I check regularly. (Some of the blogs don't provide titles and / or descriptions in their entries, which is why there are sometimes weird blank lines in that section.)

If you're looking for an RSS news reader, I highly recommend NewsGator. I use the Outlook version which you have to pay for, but the free web version is really nice as well. Stew prefers Firefox's Live Bookmarks feature, but I like the more detailed view NewsGator provides.

If you're not familiar with RSS and you're checking this and other blogs every day to see if there's been an update, then you should definitely look into it. See the article linked above for more details, but what an RSS reader does is tell you when a blog has been updated so you don't have to bother checking it every day. Wikipedia has a list of several readers (aggregators in the technical parlance), many of which are free. The article lists NewsGator under commercial software, but there is a free version that works in Firefox or IE (and probably Safari as well). Maybe I should update the article.

You can use the "Subscribe to this blog's feed" link on the right to get to the RSS feed for our blog.

I made some other changes to the sidebar a couple days ago if you haven't noticed. I removed the ads (which have earned me a whopping $1.29 since starting this blog) and some of the other lists that don't really apply anymore.

Stew's news

Stew has added a blog to his site, which has been blank for a while. (I'll have to update the sidebar text on this site.)

We've already gotten several referrals to this site from his. Welcome friends of Stew!

I haven't had much time to post because I'm not only getting ready to leave for Paris in a few weeks, but I'm getting ready to leave for Long Island (NY) and Boston today. I'm not sure about Long Island, but I should be able to post from Boston. That is, if I can find time in my schedule between all the eating and XBox playing.

Heard from Jo

She's made it to the apartment without any problems. It sounds a lot bigger than I was expecting.

Paris is hot and full of Americans while there are hardly any Parisians to be found.

The Internet cafe we used a couple years ago has closed and she hasn't found a new one yet, but she's working on getting an Internet connection (as well as a phone line) set up in the Apartment.

I promise to start more regular postings soon. Work has actually been a lot of fun recently, and I've got a personal trip to Boston and Long Island starting next week.

I've continued taking pictures of food and some other things, but I forgotten my camera a few times, so I'm missed some interesting stuff (like a sushi party at work yesterday).

In the meantime, I suggest you check out Jon's site smartbrother.org. To also check out his photos (which are spectacular), subscribe to his news feed or his Flickr site. (Jon is a coworker of mine.)

Latest blog points

Julie: 10
Mary: 6
Stew: 5

New way to get points: If you're the first to point out a spelling or grammatical mistake in a post, you get 5 blog points. At my discretion, I can decree that some spelling and grammatical errors intentional, and pointing them out doesn't net you any blog points. My decree may not come until after you've found the mistake.

We have reached the Internets!

Sorry about the lack of posts recently. Work has been super busy and life has been chaotic. I'll write a couple catch up posts today. (It looks like our visitor numbers go way down when there's no posts. I wonder how people know.)

Anyway, as I'm certain you're aware, one the things that makes the Internets so great is the Intralinking. This is where one Hyperspot can Intralink to another Hyperspot using an Intralinking Intralink. That way you can Webport between the different Hyperspots.

Well, the other day, Anita decided to place an Intralinking Intralink from her Hyperspot to our Hyperspot. As Anita says, we were office mates way back in the day, when blogs were called "eJournaltronica", and there were Hyperspots that did your laundry. (Check out the pic at the bottom of this page. Unfortunately, the juggling pictures no longer exists.)

Anyway, this is the fist link to our site from another blog. Maybe our site will finally start showing up in Google searches. (We already appear in Yahoo.)

Anyway, speaking of blogging, we should have a new blog feature showing up soon: Improved pictures. Right now, I'll probably be adding the pictures to posts long after their posted because I have no easy way to transfer the images from my camera to a computer at work. This should change soon however.

Anyway, oh wait, that's it. I'll post food stuff later.

 

More site stats

Wholly cow! (As in 100% beef.) According to the stat counter, we had 72 unique visitors yesterday. I know some of these visitors are not really unique, but I wouldn't have expected even half that. I don't think I even know 72 people. (I count for at least two visitors, and the stats say we had at least three unique visitors from Middlebury College, but I'm pretty sure those are all Jo.)

Also, we have new numbers in the blog points contest.
Mary - 5
Stew - 4
Julie - 3

Johanna also has 3, but she can't compete in the contest.

Remember, you get blog points by posting comments. First one to 100 gets to post to the blog. At some point I'll post ways you can earn bonus blog points.

Blog news

This blog hit its first day with over 100 page views yesterday. On Thursday we hit 85, but most of that was me experimenting with the site templates. Now if we can get to 100 unique visitors in a day, that will be something.

According to FeedBurner, we've got 14 people subscribed to this blog, but I highly doubt that number. FeedBurner doesn't provide detailed statistics, so it's hard  to know what's going on. (FeedBurner also doesn't have a way to make its stats public.) I think I count for at least 4 of those subscriptions.

We've also finally got some real competition for blog points. Here are the latest scores:
Stew - 4
Julie - 3 (including this comment, which led to this post)
Everyone else in the world - 0

Remember, the first one to 100 gets to create his or her own post for this blog.

Blog points update

For a blog points refresher, see this post. Be sure to check out the comments as well.

As much as I'd like to win the opportunity to post to my own blog, I think fairness dictates that I take myself out of the running for the blog points contest.

That changes the blog points score to:
Stew: 4
Everyone else in the entire world except me: 0

Come on people, I know you're checking out the site. Leave a comment and earn some blog points.

YASGDWSANFM

Yet another Starbucks grande drip with Splenda and non-fat milk.

Ten blog points to the first person who posts a comment correctly stating what SYFFITF stands for. What are blog points? Something I just made up to encourage people to post comments. You get 1 point for every comment you make, and you can earn additional points for answering questions. First person to 100 gets to create their own blog entry. (With TypePad, you can set up guest posters.)

Current score:
Kris: 1
Stew: 1

Updated feed info

I've updated the layouts to specify the FeedBurner feed for Firefox's Live Bookmarks. If you're using Firefox, please delete your Live Bookmark and re-add it.

Thanks, and sorry for the inconvenience.

More ketchup (this time it's kinda sideways)

This time, I'm just going to cover Saturday, and it's not going to be in any particular order. So instead of Memento, this is more like Pulp Fiction.

Food
For breakfast, Stew came over and we went to the 5-Spot. I got the Toulouse Street Scram which includes hash browns and whole grain toast. It was good. I was starving and it hit the spot. I also had coffee and water to drink. I don't remember exactly what Stew got, but I think it was two eggs over-easy, coffee, and grapefruit juice. I'm pretty sure he got something else as well, but I can't remember what. That's what happens when you wait four days before posting.

We got to the 5-Spot just as they opened, but we still had to wait for a table. Usually there's no line until around 9:30. I don't think it was the lack of empty tables, but rather they were taking forever to seat people. Also, the fact that the sun rises at 5:30 AM these days makes 8:30 seems a lot later than it normally does, so there may have been a lot of early risers waiting for breakfast as well.

At some point during the day I had to leave because the apartment was being shown, so I went do Caffe Ladro and got an orange Italian cream soda, which is what I get when I'm not interested in caffeine.

I have no clue what else I ate on Saturday, and I would have completely forgotten about the trip to Ladro if I hadn't taken a picture.

Technology
Stew drove me to Fry's so I could buy the parts to fix the Internets. I also picked up a part that I thought would give me faster transfers from my Tivo, but after playing around with it, my transfer rates are the same.

After getting some work done (and leaving the house for a bit), I made some "improvements" to the blog.

1. I added some javascript to the pages so that I could use StatCounter.com to track site usage. You can see who's been viewing the site by clicking here. You can also use the link that appears at the bottom of the column on the right. See if you can find your visit!
2. I switched the RSS feed link to use FeedBurner, so I can get some stats on who is subscribing to the site. Unfortunately, it doesn't yet work with Firefox's Live Bookmarks, so if you're using that to see the feed, it's not showing up in the logs. This is really no big deal, since I'm pretty sure that I'm the only one with a subscription to the site. (Note: If you want to use the FeedBurner feed within Firefox, simply click on the "Subscribe to this site" link on the left from within Firefox, and then use that page to create the live bookmark. Or you can manually subscribe to "http://feeds.feedburner.com/KrisAndJoGoToParis".)
3. I got tired of waiting for this site to appear in a Google search, so I bought some AdWords. If you search on "Kris Markel", "Kris", "Markel", "Johanna Trobough", "Johanna", or "Trobough", you may see an add for this site. There one ad for me and one for Jo. My daily budget is set really, really low, so the ads stop showing up after about five people click on them. Jo's ad has a much higher click-through rate (the percentage of people who see the ad and actually click on it), which is a little ironic since she never posts anything.

Movies
As I alluded to in the post about Sunday, I rented Shaolin Soccer and watched the American Edit. (As I also said on Sunday, the original edit is better, but it's missing subtitles in places.) I liked it, but not as much as Kung Fu Hustle, which I watched the previous weekend.

Getting to Paris
(I'm saving the best for last.) Jo and I accepted an offer on the house! I don't want to say too much because we still have to deal with the inspection and some other paperwork, and I'm worried about jinxing it. However, I am pretty pleased with the offer.

I promise to do a better job of staying on top of posts, at least for a little while. I'm not going to talk about what I've been eating recently, but tomorrow I'll resume my regular meal postings.

The Internets is broken

My router died sometime yesterday and I've just now been able to get a new one up and running, but someone is coming to look at the house, so I don't have time to compose a catch up post yet. Once I get back I'll make an update.

TypePad supports posting from your phone. I'll need to figure out how to make that work.

Site changes

Using some new Typepad features, I gave the site a theme and made some other tweaks.

Within a couple weeks, the site should show up on Google if you do a search for "Kris Markel" or "Johanna Trobough". We'll see.

Mustard catch up

Finished combining all three blogs. Will resume regular posts soon.