very simple

OK. So I’ve figured a few things out with the RSS feed.  If you click on the link directly at the bottom of the page, you’re going to get an error message (unless you’re in an old version of IE, because it doesn’t require strict HTML formatting).  The problem is that there’s something in my files that’s inserting an extra blank line at the beginning of the feed page.  Unfortunately, I’ve gone through every single file and deleted all of the extraneous blank spaces I could find, and I’m still having the same problem. 

However.

If you type in the feed address (or copy it) into most feed readers or aggregators (or use the "subscribe" button in a reader like Google reader), it gets picked up absolutely fine.  I’ve downloaded a few different freeware RSS readers to test it out, and there aren’t any problems so far.  So for now, I think I’m going to leave it alone, before I end up "tweaking" my blog files too much and accidentally creating some other, bigger problem. 

The feed address, for your reference, is http://www.very-simple.com/blog/feed/

Just testing the ability to post from my blackberry’s web browser…

So, the entire blog appears to be moved over and cleaned up at this point.  Unfortunately, it’s too difficult to import comments at the moment (it would require me to recode every entry in order to get the comments imported into the correct entry), so I’m probably going to avoid carrying those over.  My apologies to the twelve or so people who have left thought-provoking comments on my old site!

…deleting half of your website, and damaging the database that contains all of your blog posts, only days after you’ve converted the entire damn thing to a new system, because you hit the wrong delete button on your FTP upload software.  Yeah.  That was fun.

Luckily, I had "accidentally" made a backup of the blog on my laptop when I was updating the other blog files that I keep stored on there, so it wasn’t a complete disaster, and I just figured out how to reinstall the databases.  So, hopefully, this post should show up. 

Oy.  In theory this was supposed to make it easier!

As both an American Express cardholder and a prior donor to DonorsChoose (which is an awesome charity, by the way, and you should go donate to them regardless of whether they win), I had been dutifully voting for them in each round of the American Express Members Project. I had noticed when I voted in the final round that they were in second place behind "Clean Drinking Water for Kids". I didn’t think too much of it at the time, both are certainly worthy causes, and I just hoped that my favorite charity got into the lead. Well, I just read over at Tomato Nation that apparently, the water for kids program isn’t exactly the "individual idea" that it claims to be.

One of the other five finalists, though, isn’t so much a non-profit organization, it seems. Sure, drinking water for children is a concept everyone can get behind, but the problem in this case is that "everyone" is actually Procter & Gamble, which is a for-profit corporation. P&G and Amex have both tried to claim that the project is the brainchild of a P&G employee, who is working in concert with Unicef, so the entry violates neither the letter nor the spirit of the contest’s terms.

Uh…no. Not buying it. First of all, the text of the clean-drinking-water proposal is nearly identical to the text found here, which touts P&G’s PUR water filters. Amex has stated in an official message that "the project idea Cardmembers are voting on is not the P&G’s clean water program with PSI," but given that the Amex/P&G web sites are for all intents and purposes indistinguishable, this is hair-splitting — if you’re feeling generous. If you’re not, it’s merely absurd.

Seriously. As Sars points out, P&G has plenty of dough. They could just as easily just donate water filters (that they manufacture!) themselves to UNICEF. But apparently, beating out a truly startup and incredibly innovative charity organization that fills a major gap in our educational system was just too good an opportunity to pass up.

So. Go vote for DonorsChoose. and regardless of whether they win or not, go buy some books or computers for kids.

Edited to add – I don’t want this to seem like the water program isn’t a worthy project.  It is.  It’s just that UNICEF is an organization with massive corporate underwriting and a $300 million per year budget.  When Amex touted the Members Project, they specifically marketed it as a way to help fund a possibly little noticed, underfunded, original idea.  It’s not that you shouldn’t give money to UNICEF or support them in some way.  It’s that, in this very particular circumstance, they (and P&G), are pretty much the antithesis of what this entire campaign would appear to be about.

Ah, the joys of a new blog.  I’m having a little trouble with my rss feed – something’s not parsing right, and since I know less than nothing about php editing (going to buy a book today!), I can’t fix it at the moment.

However, at least some rss readers “fix” the problem themselves – if you use Google Reader (like me), and hit the “subscribe” button that they tell you to put in your toolbar, the feed shows up fine.  you just can’t access it directly from my website.

Look for this to be fixed in about…10 years.

I’m a bad blogger. I know. It’s like going to the gym. Doing it on a regular schedule is fun, but if you miss a few days, or a week, you start coming up with excuses as to why you don’t have time to go, and then, before you even realize it, a month has gone by and now there’s so much stuff that’s passed you by, you don’t even know how to start anymore.

And yeah, I did rejoin the gym the other day. So in the spirit of turning over a new leaf, I parked myself in front of my computer to write…something.

Since my last entry…

The Lucinda Williams concert was great, if a bit short, and we had some incredibly annoying drunk people sitting behind us, which was a bit weird, as we were at Radio City and not, say, Webster Hall. Still worked like crazy the following week, went to a wedding in Montauk (3 hour train ride) on the 31st of March, and flew back to Italy on April 2.

Had to go back for some work – stayed in Italy for about a week and a half (including over Easter weekend), did some shopping on my day off, came home, and then went to another wedding, this time in Florida, on April 21. Since then I haven’t had to travel. For three whole weeks!

I’m finally starting to feel like I’m actually home again. I’ve started making plans that involve more than three days notice. It’s nice.

Still haven’t downloaded my last photos, but I’ll hopefully get around to it soon.

And with that…I’m back. I promise some “real” blogging in the near future. Really!

Woohoo! working internet access. it only took 2 and a half months!

Flew back to Milan Sunday night. I was really sad to be leaving NY again, but when I got into the city yesterday morning, it felt pretty comfortable – like I recognized things and knew where we were going. So that was a nice feeling. The flight back was, of course, immensely annoying, most likely because I needed to go to work yesterday. The guy sitting next to me (he was in the window seat) spent most of the flight trying to elbow my arm off of the armrest in some pathetic attempt at dominance (given that he was really skinny, it’s not like he needed the room. Plus, given that all of the controls for my seat were contained on that armrest, I definitely considered it “mine”). The best part though, was in the middle of the night, after I had managed to fall asleep, he starts poking me so that he can get up to use the restroom. This is normally fine to me – it’s the price I pay for sitting in the aisle seat. But then, after I had finally managed to fall asleep again, his FRIEND, from somewhere else on the plane, comes over to have a conversation, and does this by LEANING ON THE BACK OF MY SEAT. It’s 3 o’clock in the friggin’ morning, I’m clearly attempting to sleep, and this asshole is basically rocking my seat back and forth while speaking in normal voice (read: not whispering) right over my head. I actually, after reorienting myself and realizing why I had been woken up, grabbed his arm and pushed him away from my seat. I think he got the hint.

Oh, I should also point out that the guy sitting next to me was the very last person on the plane before they closed the doors. I hate those people even when they’re not sitting near me. And then, he starts moving shit around in the overhead bins because his bag won’t fit. And instead of looking for an empty bin, or asking for help, he just starts literally crushing my bag. with my computer in it. It was so over-the-top that the guy sitting in front of me, who is watching this as well, pointedly said to me “I certainly hope you didn’t have anything breakable in there,” as a relatively polite attempt to point out to window guy that he was maybe not doing the right thing. Nevermind that he completely blocked my ability to actually reach my bag by doing this (the only reason why I didn’t get up as soon as the seatbelt light was off to make a big show out of needing something from my bag, like my computer, was that I was actually trying to SLEEP!).

The better part was that I actually made a friend – the guy sitting across the aisle from me and I had intermittent conversations through out the flight, where we discovered that (i) we were both americans from the NYC area, (ii) we were both lawyers working in Milan, and (iii) we were both named Sam. which was actually the funniest part. We had this whole conversation about our lives and had never introduced ourselves, but when I gave him my business card he did a double-take, and asked if I went by the name “sam”, when I said yes, he stuck out his hand and said, “hi, I’m Sam.” So that was funny.

Oh, but the best part was when I went to the grocery store last night after work (completely zonked out from the no-sleep flight), yet again, I’m buying, like, six things to tide me over until the weekend, and the person behind me (this time in Italian) asks to cut in line! This time I just played dumb, even though I knew what she was asking (it’s a lot easier to do when you don’t speak the language well). Is there something about me that makes me look like a pushover?

I think I’ve written about this before, but I think there’s something about my appearance that gives people a certain impression of me. I am constantly stopped on the street, both in NY and Milan, and asked for directions (I’m obviously a lot less useful in Milan). But I think it’s because I’m somehow non-threatening looking. So then, when I snap, or refuse to give in (in the case of supermarket checkout lines), people somehow become even more offended than they would from someone else. I’m apparently a bitch in sheep’s clothing.

So. I’m back in Milan, I’ll be here until March. I’ll (seriously now) try to get out this weekend and take some pictures, and I’m hoping to go somewhere interesting for the four-day Christmas weekend we get here. Ciao!

I keep trying to come up with something to blog about and then deciding that it’s stupid. random topics include…

• how lazy I’ve been so far on my vacation
• tv that I’ve tried to catch up on (seriously – heroes? is awesome)
• the fact that they’re powerwashing the outside of my building.

ugh. I’ve got bloggers block. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been away from it for some time, but I tried to keep up the stream of consciousness at least through the use of a written journal (I know, how archaic!). But that I tend to save for the stuff that I actually don’t want published on the internet. I can’t believe that it’s already Tuesday – that I’m going back in only a few days. Working in a foreign country is certainly a neat thing to do, but ultimately, I miss my home. What can I say. turns out that I’m a homebody. Granted, my home happens to be in one of the largest, most bustlingest, exciting cities in the world, but yeah…I’m a bit provincial at heart. Or maybe I just miss sushi. And convenient home goods stores. and same-day dry cleaners. and american TV. and internet access. (and my family and friends, of course).

My apartment in Italy is very nice. Size-wise, it’s actually about the same size as my apartment in NY. My only problem is aesthetic. Everything is white. If you’ve seen pictures of my apartment in NY, you’ll notice that nothing is white except for the kitchen and bathroom, and even those are because they’re subway tiled. In Italy, the walls are white, the couch is white, the chairs are white…it’s like living in a sanitarium. I can’t very well object to the arrangements, because objectively? it’s a perfectly nice one bedroom apartment in a very nice palazzo. Convenient to work, nice neighbors, helpful porter. But the whiteness is, to say the least, not my style. When I got home though, I all of a sudden felt like my apartment in NY was much smaller, and I realized that it’s because I’ve got, like, 10 foot ceilings in Italy, so when I walked in here, all of a sudden the ceilings felt very…low. So I guess I had adapted more than I thought.

And if I’ve got to pick one thing I’m missing about Italy? definitely the coffee. I have always hated American coffee and never go near the stuff except in overwhelming caffeine emergencies. But espresso? is like a little cup of heaven. I have to limit myself to 2 cups a day, otherwise I’ll end up never going to sleep. Sure, I have an espresso machine here in NY, but it’s not the same. I’ve heard that there’s a seriously high calcium content in the water in Italy, which is what makes their coffee and pasta taste so much better than it does here. Of course, I also end up with a mineral deposit at the bottom of the pot every time I cook dinner, so I’m guessing it’s true.

OK. it’s now after noon, and I’m still in my pajamas. It’s time to get motivated for the day. Especially since I have to go into the office this afternoon for my end-of-year evaluation. What fun. no wonder I’m procrastinating.

First, obviously, let me apologize for not updating for the past two months. Keeping up with a blog can be a bit difficult when the home internet access you insisted on as a condition of moving to another friggin’ country has yet to be installed.

Oh, they’ve been trying. Poor Alessandro, the IT guy in our Milan office, has quietly been losing his mind while trying to deal with the amount of red tape involved in getting internet into someone’s apartment. First, we had a contract with provider A, and we were told that it could take “up to a month” for the activation and the equipment. Now, a month seems a ridiculously long time to wait for me, but I was told by several people that this was pretty standard over there. So, a month goes by, and provider A never activates anything, and when Alessandro tries to find out where the modem is, it turns out that “they never ordered it.”

Needless to say, he cancelled the service contract. So then we decide to go with provider B. Now, provider B is actually a subsidiary of the incumbent telephone operator, so activation shouldn’t be a problem (cable TV infrastructure doesn’t exist in italy – everything is either run through satellite or the phone lines). Except, provider B screws up the contract, so they need to start over. Unfortunately, it takes at least a week to “cancel” the old contract and enter into a new one, even though the mistake was basically some data-entry lackey’s typo. So, we finally got the right “contract” about two weeks ago, meaning that activation should happen any day now. Alessandro was actually trying to get it done before I left, but that was probably wishful thinking on his part, so maybe (maybe!) when I get back it’ll be ready to hook up.

In the meantime I have some very funny e-mails from Alessandro, in broken english, that consist of him just not understanding why they don’t want to take our money.

Of course, I can’t actually deal with anything myself, because you need a codice fiscale to enter into any sort of agreement in Italy (it’s basically the Italian equivalent of a social security number, but it’s used for everything), and since I’m only technically a tourist, I can’t really qualify to get one.

So.

I actually wrote a bunch of posts on my computer, even knowing that I couldn’t post them, just to keep myself a bit current. But since they all basically consist of me bitching about the fact that I have no internet, and that I haven’t really done a whole lot other than work, I’ll try to summarize a bit.

I have no internet. I’ve been working too much. Milan is quite beautiful. The food is good. I’m really happy about the US election. I’ll be home for Thanksgiving.

So. The election. Needless to say I did a little dance in my chair at work on Wednesday morning. My dad (my dad!) sent me an e-mail that was practically giddy with excitement.

I actually wrote an entire post about this one right in the aftermath, so I’ll try to get that one up later, but I will say it’s been really interesting to see the reaction from an international perspective in particular. People in Italy normally don’t talk about politics. It’s considered rude. But I went to a meeting with a client on the Friday after the election, and when I mentioned that I was coming home for two weeks, he said, with a smile, “it’s like you’re going home to a different country now!” And I think that captures it pretty darn well. People here in the US can argue back and forth about the “meaning” of this election, but overseas, they all just think that we’ve finally come to our senses and given GWB the giant “fuck you” that he’s deserved for so long. More later.

But back to me…

I’m still jetlagged. I woke up yesterday to go to the airport at 5:30 in the morning, Italian time. then spent over 9 hours on a plane, with a crazy woman sitting behind me. No joke – she didn’t like her seat, so she threatened to get off the plane unless the stewardess forced someone else to move so that she could have the seat she wanted. Someone from ground crew and the pilot had to get involved. They were apparently about three seconds away from just letting her get off the plane when the girl behind me agreed to move. This woman tried to claim that they wouldn’t let her pick her seat when she booked the ticket, which is complete bullshit because everyone else pointed out, we all check the internet seat locater thing obsessively. Which means that she either booked her ticket at the last minute, or on something like priceline, where she thought she could have it both ways – book a super cheapskate restricted fare and then throw a fit until she got a premium economy seat.

(now, premium economy is exactly the same seat/same legroom as regular economy, except that it’s at the very front behind business class, meaning that you can get off the plane faster – you have to either pay a bit extra or be be a premium/elite flyer to get one).

So. that was self-absorbed bitch number one. The couple across the aisle from myself and I spent the entire flight pretty much making fun of her. really quietly. The flight attendants, needless to say, loved us (I’m not being sarcastic there – they actually gave us additional gossip about the whole situation when they got the chance).

Ordinarily, I would have been perfectly happy to see her get escorted off the flight, but these days, with the stepped up security, that would have meant also digging her bags out and getting them off the plane. Since we were about 10 minutes from our scheduled departure when this all started happening, it would have caused some pretty serious delays.

Self-absorbed bitch number two showed up when I arrived home and decided to go to the grocery store. At this point, I’ve been awake for at least 20 hours. I have a freshdirect delivery coming Sunday morning, but I still needed some real basics, like milk. So I dragged myself to the food emporium, bought the six things I needed, and got on the express line. where I waited patiently, and put my stuff on the conveyor belt when I got the chance. Then (and only then), the woman behind me on line, who is clutching a bag of goldfish crackers, pipes up in this super sweet voice to “request” that I let her go in front of me, seeing as she only has the one item. Now, on any other day, I probably would have let her without thinking about it, but I was pretty damn tired. and I thought for a second, and finally said back “you know, I don’t understand why you can’t just wait in line like everyone else.” It’s not like I had 100 items to ring up and she would have to wait very long, but she then starts responding, in this totally faux-sweet voice, about how she “really appreciates my kindness.” You know, trying to make me feel guilty because I wouldn’t let her cut the fucking line. I just ignored her at that point, but what I wanted to do was turn around and tell her to go fuck herself. Did I mention that I had been awake for, like, 20 hours at that point, and most of those had been spent in an airplane or Newark, New Jersey?

She didn’t know who I was, or whether I was actually in a hurry to get anywhere, or whether I was exhausted. She just assumed that her needs were somehow superior to mine and entitled her to special treatment, where she didn’t need to behave like everyone else at the damn supermarket. Now, if she had been holding, say, baby formula, or tampons, I might have assumed that she had some sort of emergency situation, but she could damn well wait 30 more seconds for her crackers (and don’t anyone tell me that maybe she was going into diabetic shock – if that were the case, no one would have objected to her eating some damn crackers in line and then paying for them after).

I know this pissed me off more than it should have, and I certainly have my own moments of selfishness, but yesterday I just seemed to encounter more than my usual share of people who seemed to think that the rules that apply to everyone else don’t apply to them. Maybe exhaustion and jet lag give me some sort of 6th sense for these things.

OK. A real entry later. I promise. Plus, I’ve read about 10 new books!