Hello everyone! I'd like to welcome you all to the mailing list that will be documenting Patri's adventures as he explores the mysteries of "The Continent".
Happily, of the 30 people who received my earlier mail, advertising and extolling this wonderful opportunity for vicarious living, 24 responded affirmatively, each in their own style.
Whether or not my wireless laptop email contraption works is still up in the air. This morning I succesfully got it to connect and check my email with my domestic cellular handset. Unfortunately, I then began toying with my international handset, which I can't really test until I'm overseas and it works, and discovered big problems. First, the cord that comes from the power converter terminates in a little black box with a couple pins coming out, instead of a big happy cradle which embraces the bottom of the phone. Apparently the piece is just missing. This means I can't even charge the phone. The cradle turns out to be slightly different for the two handsets, so I can't use my domestic one. And even if the phone hadn't been shipped to me missing an important piece, I would still be unable to connect it to my laptop, since the data card comes with a cable that hooks into it at one end, and has a domestic cradle at the other. Since the cradles are different, I need a cable that goes from the data card to an international handset. Ack! I wish I had examined the handset more closely on friday when it arrived, but I was besieged with packages, and I turned my efforts towards assembling and testing things that would work in this country first.
If I am lucky, the main store of my provider, which is in philly, has the cables I need. If I am not, I will have to go to cellular stores in europe, looking for these two stupid little cables which they might not even want to sell my by themselves. bleh. Fortunately my first target city, Amsterdam, has wonderful cybercafes, at least it did last year, so you may rest assured of receiving some "trip" reports over the next few days.
Other than that, no major news. If you got this, you are on the list. If you didn't, you ain't. See y'all vicariously.
Oh, one note. Remember that while part of my time will be spent partying it up and stuffing myself chock-full of culture, I will also be spending lots of time on trains with my laptop, bored. Feel free to send me long personal email full of gossip, innuendo, self-deprecation, self-loathing, self-abnegation, self-elevation, or the latest jokes around the office. I will probably reply in a disgustingly verbose manner.
Potential project for next summer: Get a job programming (Java?), get a nicer, bigger, laptop, and bum around europe getting paid for it...
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