So KC and I are back from a three week holiday in Europe. We did three days in Barcelona, a twelve day Mediterranean Cruise then three days in Venice.

Barcelona was pretty cool, but it seemed small. We were hoping to do some shopping, hit some cool clubs to listen to some tunes and have a couple of good meals. We found a really great place to eat, down a narrow cobblestoned street in the Gothic (architecture) district, off the beaten path in what looked liked a 16th century cellar illuminated by a huge chandelier, with large couches and throw pillows for lounging. The meal was as good as the ambiance. I'd heard Barcelona was a pretty stylin' city but I don't agree. For a population of a million and a half people, all the shops were pretty much the same. The nightclub we went to we got from the International Industrial Club listing: The Undead Dark Club. The decor was good, statues and dark murals, but there was no one there. Maybe 75 people total when we left at 3am.

The cruise was really relaxing. I guess we should have expected it, but the average age was probably 55-60. There weren't many young people at all, and those that were there, were traveling with their parents. Lots of wealth though. One 20-something cruising with her parents looked after their 9,000 sq ft house whenever her folks were in their place in Palm Springs. And if she got tired of that, she could go cruising with them on their 58 foot yacht.

We really liked Rome and Istanbul although we had been to Istanbul before and knew to avoid the really tourist areas. We really hated Athens. The ruins were in better shape than most of the city. The ship itself was great, I didn't lose too much at Blackjack, and there were three pools for lounging with a G&T, four dining rooms that were just like 4-star restaurants and room service at 3am after the bar.

We finished in Venice which we were surprised in liking. I pictured it to be really cramped and swarmed with tourists. It was swarmed with tourists, but there were places to avoid the crowds and the Gothic architecture, narrow cobblestoned streets and lack of any wheeled vehicles altogether was pretty refreshing. We had another good meal, but again were pretty much skunked in the shopping department, except for the surprising find of a "Borg" Carnevale mask. It wasn't cheap, but it was without a doubt the most distinct thing we saw in any of the cities we visited. It'll look great with a backlight on the wall. For anyone interested, here's a link to the some of the rest of our pics.

As you can tell, I've redone the layout. Made it simpler, with less pages, and reduced the number of frames so it can be properly displayed on more browsers and more screen resolutions. But on to the bigger problem. As you can tell, I've not been updating the site as much as I used to. I've been busy, blah blah blah. To help, I've also made the changes to make it easier to update. I've learned some Perl scripting, so now I can update from anywhere. I also wrote scripts to improve the functionality of the page. I wrote the login script, scripts to allow uploads and to list a downloads directory as well as a webtracker script to log all events on the site.

I'm still busy now, but that means I've got lots of stuff to update. I'm considering posting selections from my journal, although that may have to wait until September. At the very least, I'll post thoughts about what I've been doing for the past while once it's all over.

Two things:

DO NOT BUY A DELL COMPUTER! Ok. I'm not much of a shopper, so when a buddy of mine said that he'd had a really good experience with Dell, especially their technical service, I took a look at their stuff online. I was really impressed by their prices and decided to order one. My first clue as to what to expect should have been the difficulty with which the customer service processed my order. "A separate billing and shipping address?!?" Holy fuck. You'd think I'd asked them to map the human genome or some shit. They called my cell and my home at least three times each, confirming and asking the same questions over and over again. Clearly Dell subcontracts their customer service out to India because the english I heard ranged from barely passable to incoherent. Fine.

So I get the computer and the sound card isn't working properly. I spent two full hours on the phone with some dizzy broad that knew precious little more about computers than I do. Now I consider myself only moderately computer savvy, but this chick was clueless and kept asking me the same stupid questions. "Are your speakers plugged in?" "YES! DAMMIT!" The most frustrating part was that she was clearly just randomly reading through a trouble shooting manual, with no problem solving process whatsoever. Clearly Dell hires technical service reps for their Englishs skill and not their computer savvy or logical thinking. The end result was her to tell me to mail the computer back. I'm sure they realize what a hassle this is which cuts down on the number of non-functioning systems that are returned. I called back a second time, thinking the first idiot I talked to was a fluke. It was not. The second time I called buddy couldn't help me because their server was down. The guys at technical support can't even fix their own server. Awesome. And again a third time, with a very simple question, "Is the sound card I bought supposed to be integral or external?" I may as well have asked, "What is truth?" I can't them again without risking my sanity.

So now I have to repack and mail the computer, wait for however long it takes to get my refund (and God help them if they don't give me a full refund) and then go back to the local place I was originally going to buy a computer from. Where I'll get a system that works and I know I can simply go back if there's anything wrong and speak to someone in English.