After the Wall Street Journal, more Twitter Basics now in the New York Times. Conclusion:

But it’s also a brilliant channel for breaking news, asking questions, and attaining one step of separation from public figures you admire. No other communications channel can match its capacity for real-time, person-to-person broadcasting.

(Follow-up article here.)

…that for the past 18 months I have been using Skype without my computer on a cordless phone, which combines land line and Skype and works directly off my router – a very practical solution; with the exception of retrieving voice mail messages, I make all calls, domestic and international, via Skype.

For those who have me in their Skype contact list, this is clearly indicated. My entry looks something like this (with my name, of course):

Yet more and more, project managers contact me by sending written messages via Skype – which are not delivered to a Skype phone. That is one of the reasons why “Using Skype without my computer” and a blue phone icon are displayed in the contact list behind my name. When I then run Skype on my computer, which I do from time to time for special situations, those undelivered messages come tumbling out, but usually way too late.

So remember: “Skype without computer” means no text messages get through. Would you please use the call feature.

Wenn man das Land alle paar Jahre wechselt, hat das sogar Vorteile, denn sobald man sich ärgert, kann man sagen: Macht nix, ich gehe eh bald weg.

Georg Kreisler

Austria, late ’70s/early ’80s: “Des Hirn voll Heavy Metal, un sane Leber is hin.”

I am paranoid by nature. I lock my desk; I have a safe deposit box; my wireless router is password-protected; my passwords are, whenever possible, at least 12 characters long and randomly generated. I would never even dream of sending any important information on a postcard.

So why, I wonder, are my clients sending me their documents via unencrypted e-mail and why do they expect them back the same way?

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I have been reading a lot of buyer comments recently since I had to make some hardware purchasing decisions. When looking for a RAID controller, I was particularly intrigued by this comment, listed under “Cons”:

Purchase of product, and most of what followed [...] Install was like re-inserting teeth into a non-sedated cougar…

Why do I get the feeling that it would be better to stay away from this product?

If you are following this blog you know that I just had to rebuild my hard drive. The cloning of the the old drive went without problems, and the new drive content seemed to be identical to the previous one, including those annoying little problems that develop in software installations over time.

Last night, I found a more major problem: When I pushed F3 in Trados Workbench, the concordance window did not pop up. The call was executed and the Workbench window lost focus, but there was no concordance window anywhere to be found. I tried different screen resolutions in case it had slipped outside the screen real estate – no luck. I re-installed Trados – no improvement. When the re-installation did not bring any change, I was almost certain that the coordinates for placing the concordance window out of sight had to be stored in the registry. So reluctantly, I rolled up my sleeves.

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United just sent me an e-mail with some special fares from L.A. to Germany. The thing is, they don’t fly directly to Germany anymore from LAX, and during the Winter months it is not such a good idea to go via Chicago. It is possible to get United flights on Lufthansa, though, and LH still has direct flights between Germany and L.A. However, with reservations on Lufthansa through United it is not possible to pick your seats in advance. For that you have to be a registered user on the Lufthansa website and make your reservations through Lufthansa. And it was a good thing I checked the LH website – they are offering flights cheaper than United, from L.A. to Saarbrücken via Munich for as little as $670 rt, all fees included (and last time I traveled on LH, their booze was free). Perhaps I should take advantage of this deal and visit for a week in February.

Here is what I did over the holidays.

Just before Christmas, the RAID controller of my main computer indicated that the mirrored drive was “critical.” I love my computer! It was custom-built to my specifications, and it has been running flawlessly for quite a while. But computer years are huge multiples of human years and take their toll on hard drives. During our recent move, the DVD drive had gone bad for some reason, so I knew I had to do something anyway. Little did I know that this was just the beginning.

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