I just made a wonderful salad. Tuscan Bread Salad. Tomatoes and peppers all seeded and skinned, mixed with olives and capers plus bread soaked in the juice of the tomotoes, olive oil, vinger. Yum…

If you are like many American’s, your Cell Phone is not one of the ones that can be used outside the Continental United States.  I have had to provide phones for various Executives over the year, due to this I was very aware of the problem and possible resolution.

The problem is the United States has an Extensive network that is based on CDMA technology.  While very good and reliable, it is not technology that the rest of the world has chosen.  The rest of the world is based on GSM.  Now AT&T’s network is based on GSM, so if you have an AT&T phone your almost there.  If not you will need a GMS phone prior to traveling to Europe.

First AT&T, check your plan talk to a rep.  you will find the cost to make and receive calls in Europe is pretty high.  Also, just because you turn on the “International” option and pay the fee, it still is an international call for someone in Eurpoe to call you.

I found Celluar Abroad to be an excellent alternative.  They supply you with a phone from England, give you very good rates and have an Excellent Customer Service Group.  My experience was great.  We rented two phones, and used them to keep in touch with our groups.  When I needed more minutes a quick call to Customer Service and 5 minutes later I was all set.  Terrific.

Third option, buy an unlocked GSM phone. When you arrive in your designated country purchased a SIM card for the country with so many minutes.  and you all set.

This past week I watched aGeek Brief and discovered why to twitter and what it brings to you. Twittering lets people see what you are interested and what you do. Makes things like Blogs more meaningful, because you can twitter a subject and then in your blog expound on it.

So the tools I have tried,

1. TweetDeck - Great interface, easy to install, nice to see facebook and twitter together, plus update both

2. My phone, yes I turned on the ablitity to send and receive “tweets” from my phone.  See how that works.

3.  Web page nice, but you can’t see other social networks.

4.  Wish I could add Linked In to it all.

This past Christmas my family and I had the opportunity to travel from Barcelona to Florence(Livorno). After reviewing the options, Airplane, Train, and Ferry, the train was going to be a long trip and pretty expensive, the plane would be quick and not very expensive, and finally Ferry. We decided on the Ferry, it would be overnight about 17 hours total, price would not be much more than a hotel room and airplane fair.

First the boarding process was at best rude and unintuitive. A rude gentleman took our ticket information and passports, after about 20 minutes he handed us the stuff back. Told us to take a bus. We took the bus out to the ship and went up to the boarding deck and then to our room. It was a very nice room with four beds and plenty of room for us. We then made our way to a midnight meal, good basic fare nothing fancy but good. After a good nights sleep, we made it up to breakfast. Wound up sitting around doing nothing much.

The biggest issue with the whole thing. We were one of 2 families on board and maybe a total of 50 passengers. Most of which spoke Italian or Spanish, but not English. The only other problem is the trip went to 23 hours total which means we got in about 11:30 pm. So if you are looking for a long day of down time with nothing to do and an opportunity to sleep late see nothing but water it is great opportunity.

The watchmen did not disappoint me.  Though the movie could of moved a little faster, the overall effect and setup of the story made it a riveting 2 hours and 45 minutes.  What can be said is Rorschach leads the story with his journal’s narrative. Each step a forgone conclusion, but with each step the viewer hopes the foot goes down only slightly to the left.  Only to end with you feeling sorry for him, because his personal code will not let him waiver in his decision to reveal all.

It has been said that the fine line of genius and insanity is so microscopic that you can not see it. The Watchmen proves this time and time again.  Every character walking that fine and with one misstep on the wrong side.  Even the Psychologist in prison proves that no one is immune to this walk.

As an adaption of the original, I don’t care.  The orignal authors did a great job, the filmakers took the idea and made it a combination of their vision and the authors words. Even if you know what is coming next, you still hope the foot goes down a little to the left this time.

Applications to make life better,  Evernote:

With Evernote you can cut and paste to a mobile notepad, extract the data on the next system and have fun.  You can even setup a page that others can look at.  The past year I used my notepads to track our trip to Europe.  Listing all the sites I looked at, how I came to a decsion and then shared it with the compatriots that were traveling with me.  They could then let me know what sounded good or bad.
Evernote has plugins for Mac/Linux/Windows which suits my lifestyle.

I have decided to start looking for a house and have discovered that there a many tools out there to help us discover information about the house.

Information you can use in negotiating a better price, understanding the property and it’s uses in the past, and most importantly what you are required to do.  The best resource for all of this is your Deed Registrar.

1. Find out how to access the Deed’s hopefully online.
2. Get the Book/Page number and look it up.

What can you find:

1. Purchase price for the property
2. What Liens are on the propery current and/or past
3. Have the owners refianced
4. What covents there are

With this information you can make a pretty good guess at what the current owners are trying to do with the land in selling it.  Use the information to negotiate the terms and win.

i have that the art of writing the daily and/or weekly post to be on ethe hardest thing to do.  You have to come up with a series of themes, do research and then finally build the words to build the post.    I have a new respect for the people who been writing daily newspaper editorial all these years.

Well we are now on the final stretch of our trip, heading home.  Reflect upon the trip as a whole, it was a wonderful unique experience according to Kelli, though she spent most of the trip trying to escape from us PU’s. (To ask her though she will deny it.)  We did spend the Begining of 2009 under the lights of the Eiffel Tower.  Something we may never do again, unless they reestablish the FTS transports.

As you can see we had a great time. The tour as a whole was not bad, but I would wish for more guides that are very well versed in the different aspects of the part of Paris we are looking at. Do not get me wrong, as a guide for Paris on a whole Patrick is great and Elizabeth and Iris, our guides for Versailles/Louvre/Montmartre made these places special. Our guide in Rome, being an archeologist by trade with an interest in the Roman Culture made the whole Vatican/Pantheon/Spanish Steps/etc… extremely interesting.

Anyways. We are heading home now and it is time to start thinking about how to work 6months a year and travel the rest.

Well it has been a week since I last posted.  My intention to post daily went by the wayside once we arrived.  Since the 18th we have been all over the place.  Barcelona, Pisa, Florence, Rome and finally Paris.  2 weeks into the tour, now on a Rick Steves 7 day tour of Central Paris, we are on the final leg.  I think if I have one piece of advice, listen to friends, do the trip and have fun.  21 days is a lot of time away from home for all of us and the time away is starting to stress.  I am very impressed in that it has been 14 days and now it is only showing.  Well next Saturday we fly home, back to snow, ice, cold, work… yeah.   I will be ready for it.  Though it is going to take a month to finish all the photo’s.  I just never knew how much there is to do.

Impressions:  Tower of Pisa arrising out of the buildingscape like out of another world, just blew my mind.  The photo is on my Picasa page.  Florence’s Dumo just can’t be described, it has to be seen and then you go see Saint Peter’s Basilica and realize that it makes Florence look small.  Seeing the Pope give Christmas Day Blessing, and realizing that I am actually there in person.  Finally the Eiffel tower appearing in the sky over a building, brings this all to perspective.  This has been worth it.