Mental Hygiene the best thing you've done for your brain all day

do you remember when you were in elementary school, and you first studied pompeii?

you know, the city that was buried under volcanic ash and preserved, like it was stuck in some prehistoric tupperware casserole and burped for that eternal seal of fdreshness?

remember the grisly story of the remains of the people covered in ash, who left perfect molds for archaeologists thousands of years later, the sick bastards that poured plaster into the voids left by the decomposed remains, uncovering the poses of these pompeiians at the exact moments of their death by suffocation under tons of volcanic ash?

yeah. those.

i saw those today. was close enough to touch them. those and the frescoes, mosaics, and everyday parephernalia left behind at pompeii. and then it hit me.

well, two things. so ‘they hit me’

one, despite how the ruins of pompeii today were full of people – school groups and tours, families and spring-breakers – it was once, well, full of *people*. it was, despite the noise, stray dogs, and children who had escaped their leashes, a very lonely place.

which is where the second thing struck me, and i needed to leave, to get back to my pensione and regroup, needed to drink wine, and lots of it.

i’m here.

in italy.

with the clusterfuck of delays, half-assed plans, and missed trains, i had almost forgotten the whole point. i’m not at home any more. i can’t stress over that kind of stuff, because my promise to myself was to act more italian. eat and drink only the local fare – no pizza until i get to napoli (day after tomorrow) and, for the love of pete, no mcdonalds, even if i’m dying in a gutter of hunger and grease deprivation. to forget for a while how to be the ugly american i saw in the newark and amsterdam airports.

after all, mi familia – il mio nonno – d’origine italiano.

(anybody who speaks italian, feel free to correct my spelling or grammar, but i’ll give you the italian equivalent of the bird and tell you in my defense that i’ve already had a bottle of the vino rosso locale for dinner)

and, as they say, when in rome (or naples, or sorrento, or palermo…)

overnight ferry from palermo to naples. another short hop to sorrento. and now, off to vesuvius!

more verbose entry later. bus leaves soon.

ah, sicily!

i love this place. nobody speaks english; they do speak in sign language, though. it appears they park by braille. they drive that way, too.

i feel fairly safe crossing the road, though, as it seems the rule here is to step out directly in front of oncoming traffic with no regard for personal safety. the traffic will stop, or at least slow down to a pace meant to injure, not kill. then they honk at you or, if you’re una bella ragaza, whistle.

so far, i haven’t been whistled at, which is a good sign.

after recovering from the airport crawl, and hungering for food not served covered in plastic, eaten with plastic utensils, and tasting like it was made of plastic, i ate a fantastic dinner and watched scenes from the sopranos acted out by the locals in a hole-in-the-wall trattoria. i didn’t understand a word of it, but they were having quite an energetic conversation, and it was hard not to enjoy the entertainment. lasagna, a pork chop, salad with lots of olive oil, and lots of red wine later, i wandered out into the rain-slick streets again in search of gelato.

i keep seeing posters and billboards advertising land for sale, land and property seized from the cosa nostra. i think a nice little mafioso’s villa outside of town would make a nice place to retire (and start my criminal empire)

well, i’m in italy. 6 hours late, but moving fast.

i missed my connection in newark, partly due to my travel agent’s short layover scheduling, but mostly due to the crack-smoking sadists that designed the newark airport.

if i have an hour and a half layover, and i need to check into my flight an hour befor departure or else get booted, an airport designed to take 30 minutes to travel from one point to another (and the worst directional signage in any airport, ever) leaves little room for delays.

at least i wasn’t alone. the other ugly american took the bad karma brunt for me by being an ass, while i slipped into a zen-like state, repeating to myself “i paid them to get me to palermo, and if it takes all day, they’ll get me there.” the capo di ticket agenti working on our connections set my mind at ease.

so, i’m in rome, and waiting on my puddle-jumper to sicily. the map is updated (i’m optimistic at this point)

clicketty click

i love open source software. love it.

and this time, i’m not being sarcastic when i say this. most of the open source software projects i come in contact with – linux, bsd, mozilla, apache – are the best at what they do. especially the server side of things.

(openoffice sucks rocks, especially on OS X, but still, it’s a start.)

anyhoo, the reason for this outpuring of love? i’m helping my office move from crappy microsoft outlook 2001 to slightly less crappy microsoft entourage X.

after much cursing and gnashing of teeth, our inept windows network admin finally managed to get the server working properly – i say she did, but it was the consultant she has do everything for her that finally figured out the permissions problem. so the time has come to migrate from outlook (classic, hella crappy to entourage (OS X native, slightly less crappy)

but there’s no mechanism for such migration. none. microsoft admits in their support materials that no program except outlook can read the outlook mailbox files. not even microsoft entourage, the outlook replacement microsoft is pushing mac users to adopt for connecting to an exchange 2000 or later server.

more cursing and gnashing of teeth.

but wait! what do i find in my research, but a solution! open source software to the rescue!

seems open source godsend mozilla can read the outlook mailbox files, and convert them to standard, universally adored .mbox format files.

and entourage can import mbox files.

but then, so can OS X’s mail.app. and with some inexpensive utilities iCal can read and post calendars to an exchange server.

so wait… why are we using entourage?

that does it. i’m old.

ancient. paleolithic. prehistoric, even.

i’ve receieved an invitation to my ten-year high school reunion. sigh.

actually, three of them.

apparently, when you accept the invitation from the company that’s organizing the event, they ask you for email addresses of other folks you graduated with – i presume, as i have yet to accept the invitation. so, at least three people i know will be there.

three people that know my email address, anyway.

and that’s about the number of people that i graduated with that i still keep in touch with. maybe a few more. most of the other five hundred or so, i couldn’t care less about.

wow. a little out of date, aren’t we?

well, watch this space. another grand adventure is coming soon, for you to Play Along at Home!

lord of the rings – return of the king: in short – long.

moreso even than two towers, if you haven’t seen the previous movies, don’t bother. even if you have, you should read the books.

having done both, i kept thinking to myself ‘i wonder if this part is explained better in the DVD version that’ll come out a year from now’

*sigh*

now that the matrix and ring trilogies are done, what do i have left to live for? star wars episode 3?

feh… maybe x-men 3. or the iron man movie.

God is a DJ,

…but all he ever plays is crappy “Christian rock.”

have you ever been in love with someone, but never realized just how much until she said she was a lesbian?