![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Jun. 8th, 2007 08:32 pmFor those of you who weren't already aware of this, my mother decided to go with me to Switzerland for two weeks as a graduation present. We left on June 6, and will be back on June 20.
I figure, given that this is actually mildly interesting, that I owe you LJ folks a post about it! :-)
We got on the plane at about 7 PM Wednesday night (Pacific time) and arrived in Switzerland at about 7 AM Thursday morning (Pacific time) / 4 PM Thursday afternoon (Swiss time).
The plane had an in-seat entertainment system, with a little remote control and a video display in the back of the headrest in front of you. I managed to crash it twice, both times totally by accident. (It's apparently running Linux, at least in part. I caught a 10-second glimpse of an X-windows mouse pointer, and controlled it with the remote, each time it crashed and the timeout rebooted it.)
Of course being who I am, I decided to disassemble the box under the seat in front of us, which controls the displays, and take pictures. I'll post them later, when the Internet access sucks much, much less.
Once we got here we basically had dinner and went straight to sleep, and got up this morning for a boat tour and then a walking tour of Zurich, both of which were pretty cool. (We've also done quite a fair bit of walking-around on our own since we got here.)
Tomorrow morning we leave on a train for Locarno. In Zurich, they speak Swiss-German, which my mother can follow a little; I understand that in Locarno it will be Italian, so we'll do a little better. :-)
[This keyboard is driving me nuts. It uses the "qwertz" layout, which means 1) y and z are switched; 2) punctuation is totally randomized. Fine except for typing passwords. And smilies... first time I've ever had to use the AltGr key.]
On the subject of Internet access, I'm not sure if I'll have any in Locarno, but if I do I'll be trying to play in Brian's RPG this Sunday over Skype. We shall see how _that_ goes. :-) All we have here is the computer in the lobby, because the wireless "doesn't seem to work for Americans". I have two theories: one is that it's on channel 12-14, which American 802.11 cards can't receive due to FCC regulations (that spectrum is used for other purposes in the US.) The other is that only Americans ever ask for Wi-Fi, and they actually don't have any. ;-)
It looks like my Internet access will be fairly nonexistent for the rest of this trip -- I may take advantage of that, and try to stop using the Internet so much once I get back. At the least I don't project to be checking LJ for the forseeable future (comments on my posts get emailed to me, so that's ok), so don't rely on it for anything I need to know!
Hopefully I'll write again from Locarno!
I figure, given that this is actually mildly interesting, that I owe you LJ folks a post about it! :-)
We got on the plane at about 7 PM Wednesday night (Pacific time) and arrived in Switzerland at about 7 AM Thursday morning (Pacific time) / 4 PM Thursday afternoon (Swiss time).
The plane had an in-seat entertainment system, with a little remote control and a video display in the back of the headrest in front of you. I managed to crash it twice, both times totally by accident. (It's apparently running Linux, at least in part. I caught a 10-second glimpse of an X-windows mouse pointer, and controlled it with the remote, each time it crashed and the timeout rebooted it.)
Of course being who I am, I decided to disassemble the box under the seat in front of us, which controls the displays, and take pictures. I'll post them later, when the Internet access sucks much, much less.
Once we got here we basically had dinner and went straight to sleep, and got up this morning for a boat tour and then a walking tour of Zurich, both of which were pretty cool. (We've also done quite a fair bit of walking-around on our own since we got here.)
Tomorrow morning we leave on a train for Locarno. In Zurich, they speak Swiss-German, which my mother can follow a little; I understand that in Locarno it will be Italian, so we'll do a little better. :-)
[This keyboard is driving me nuts. It uses the "qwertz" layout, which means 1) y and z are switched; 2) punctuation is totally randomized. Fine except for typing passwords. And smilies... first time I've ever had to use the AltGr key.]
On the subject of Internet access, I'm not sure if I'll have any in Locarno, but if I do I'll be trying to play in Brian's RPG this Sunday over Skype. We shall see how _that_ goes. :-) All we have here is the computer in the lobby, because the wireless "doesn't seem to work for Americans". I have two theories: one is that it's on channel 12-14, which American 802.11 cards can't receive due to FCC regulations (that spectrum is used for other purposes in the US.) The other is that only Americans ever ask for Wi-Fi, and they actually don't have any. ;-)
It looks like my Internet access will be fairly nonexistent for the rest of this trip -- I may take advantage of that, and try to stop using the Internet so much once I get back. At the least I don't project to be checking LJ for the forseeable future (comments on my posts get emailed to me, so that's ok), so don't rely on it for anything I need to know!
Hopefully I'll write again from Locarno!
