Toonbots message board: Greetings from mid-Atlantic again!

mouse Tue Apr 12 13:14:23 2005 Re: Greetings from mid-Atlantic again! > I just love posting from ships. It gives me that old 21st-century frisson > every time. > That's all I had to say. Carry on. so can we post back? or do you only receive messages in bottles? anyway, hope you all are having a good trip!

Michael Fri Apr 15 18:22:22 2005 Re: Greetings from mid-Atlantic again! > so can we post back? or do you only receive messages in bottles? Sure, post back all you want. It costs me 50 cents a minute for Web access, so I'm unlikely to say much. :-) (Bottles are cheaper, but the message latency is murder.) > anyway, hope you all are having a good trip! After recovering from the heart attack I had upon learning I had only Web access on this ship, actually I *am* having a good trip. The free wireless hotspot in Bermuda helped. I'm sure they wondered why I was hanging out in the Maritime Museum all day, but it was a very relaxing place to work. It's an outdoor museum with lots of 200-year-old fortresses and cannon and a dolphin pool as a twenty-first-century afterthought. The dolphin pool, for reasons unknown to mortals, has a wireless hotspot. A free one. And a picnic table. And an electric outlet. All I need for a good day's work. :-)

mouse Mon Apr 18 19:40:57 2005 Re: Greetings from mid-Atlantic again! > Sure, post back all you want. It costs me 50 cents a minute for Web > access, so I'm unlikely to say much. :-) (Bottles are cheaper, but the > message latency is murder.) > After recovering from the heart attack I had upon learning I had only Web > access on this ship, actually I *am* having a good trip. The free wireless > hotspot in Bermuda helped. I'm sure they wondered why I was hanging out in > the Maritime Museum all day, but it was a very relaxing place to work. > It's an outdoor museum with lots of 200-year-old fortresses and cannon and > a dolphin pool as a twenty-first-century afterthought. The dolphin pool, > for reasons unknown to mortals, has a wireless hotspot. A free one. And a > picnic table. And an electric outlet. All I need for a good day's work. > :-) sounds like whoever designed/built the place liked to sit out at lunchtime and surf the web, while communing with the dolphins....

Michael Sat Apr 23 06:17:34 2005 Re: Greetings from mid-Atlantic again! > sounds like whoever designed/built the place liked to sit out at lunchtime > and surf the web, while communing with the dolphins.... All I can figure is that there is something in the dolphin pool shop that was easier to hook up on wireless than by stringing miles of cable. But it worked great. On the ship OTOH, life sucked. Well, life was pretty good, actually, but I couldn't get online to speak of. I'm sure most people would regard this as a positive aspect of vacationing. But those people are, let's face it, not as cool as I am. And then two days passed when I got to Budapest, but our friend who just happens to own a tech company (life get easier as you get older and all your friends have become doctors and lawyers and company presidents and stuff) is providing me with an office. The office is nice, but the broadband connection is life itself. Yesterday we found the perfect apartment. Granted, we got lost in the woods trying to find it (well, not lost per se -- I knew where *we* were, it was the location of the *apartment* which was obviously incorrect), but that's just an indication of how perfect it is. There is a huge wooded area next to this new subdivision right on the edge of Budapest, and my wife's sister's father-in-law is building a duplex in it. The upstairs apartment is nearly finished, it's all stone-and-tile construction, hardwood floors in the bedrooms, and best of all there's a big studio in the attic which is included in the price. The monthly rent is $350 a month. It's a small place by American standards, but roomy by Hungarian standards, so the price is really surprisingly low. I don't think there's nepotism involved. My sister-in-law says there isn't, but then she's the one who said it was in the middle of the woods, which it clearly wasn't. Ha. Anyway, it was a month ago yesterday that we left Puerto Rico, and it's been a stressful journey, but I think maybe this whole thing is going to work out.