Second Dutch Saturday

Weather has gone totally horrible. 45 F and 16 mile/hour wind. Umbrella doesn't do that much good. Broke out the cheap poncho I bought in Scotland... It's not the yellow rubber of my childhood but basically a plastic bag with shape. And sleeves - short.

Between weather and getting up late I'd consider staying in all day, but I'n not sure I have enough food, plus I seemed to find used clothing stores online. Not that I want more weight to carry, but safer clothes would be good to look for.

Cured some of my ongoing life annoyances last night. Tethering hadn't been working with Vodafone, but I belatedly realized I'd need to set up a new mobile broadband connection. A few seconds with the Ubuntu wizard and voila, my up to date Ubuntu could be online. Of course, Vodafone doesn't extend 3G to 15 km outside Amsterdam, so it was really slow. Too slow to painlessly do my further planning.

But then I put eeebuntu 2.0 -- atill had the ISO -- on my empty 16 GB stick. The old boot stick was 2G and had filled up what little userspace it had, while not being able to mount the ext4 main drive. Firefox was still usable but had no history or working back button. The new stick had 4G userspace on top of the install, and access to another 10G, plus I copied my Firefox and Pidgin directories over. So while I'm still annoyed by WiFi failure, my coping is much improved.

Shopping results... First didn't have much, and nothing that was what I wanted and fit well. Second had one €400 coat, very nice actually but way out of line. Others will take more walking or trams; getting pho and fresh OJ first.

Oy. Just saw in the bathroom that I'll need new jeans. Or another patch job, but there's nothing to wear during that. Be great if I knew how to sew.

But know what happens when you take time for a very late lunch? All the clothing stores close. Feh! Well, it was good pho. And fresh OJ, too. Though, €4... Fuck, really expensive OJ. When I visited NY 10ish years ago I'd get twice as much for $3.

Retreated home and nearly finished re-reading Something Positive. Had thought about visiting a 'coffeehouse' for the ambient experience but just the smell of pot on the sidewalk convinced me some experiences don't have to be tried.

Bought a 2-day transit pass but think it must have fallen out somewhere when I took my wallet out. It was escaping in the supermarket but I thought I had it back. €11 poof. :( But I have chocolates. And very tasty pepperburger OMG nom.

Quiet day

Spent a couple hours looking at transportation and hotel options. I haaaate this part. Trains looked complicated and going through the strike zone, Orbitz was expensive, but easyjet had good prices... at 9am or 7pm. And Tuesday was half the price of tomorrow. So I'll move to a hotel for one day in Amsterdam, 25 minutes closer to everything, and fly to Madrid Tuesday morning. Got a heavily discounted 4-star hotel for 3 days there... should have gone for 4, 3 nights really means only 2 full days. Well, I can juggle later.

Future plans are still a toss between "flee to Boston!" and "winter in South America". mlc23 had suggested language study as something for purpose; even if I didn't get into a class, I could probably put an ad out for someone to tutor me. Once I learned enough to be worthwhile... I realized the smart thing, or a smart thing, would be to hang on in Chile where I have friends, big city love notwithstanding. That could be fun, and I've have help finding an apartment. OTOH it'd delay actually putting down roots somewhere, and part of the appeal of Boston is 3 million SF and anime conventions to start going to, starting in January. Then again New Year's is a good time to leave Chile anyway... and a poor time to fly into Boston, of course.

Sunny today, so I figured I'd take advantage of my location and bike in the countryside some more. Unfortunately my butt is still sore and the bike seat rock hard, so that didn't last long. Tried walking to Katwoude, but know what walking along a flat farmy freeway you've seen for a week is? Boring, at least for me. My body kept voting for "warm sunny nap" so I eventually turned back.

One thing I don't remember Jane Jacobs mentioning in favor of short city blocks is all the interest they afford. You're not just walking in a straight line, or at least forced to, there's all these visual and ambulatory options you keep passing. Hmm, kind of like the advice for garden design, to have blocked sightlines so that there's surprises as you move around. Vs. very long blocks, which just feel oppressive to me. Or freeways. Trapped! On a line!

Skype is awesome; I called anime-German-Anna and talked for an hour for 1 euro and half my battery. Bad battery! Called got dropped once early on. It's occurred to me I might have more energy if I'd been talking to my friends more; text and e-mail are nice (though quiet recently), but hearing voices is cool.

Had second pepperburger, then tried some grilled cheese sandwiches with margarine (it was what was in the fridge) and the last of my brie. Came out... ok.

Anna asked if I've been eating healthily. Answer: somewhat? Diet low on vegetables or salads. Well, green vegetables. Decent in fruit -- bananas, oranges or OJ, apples -- and easy veggies like carrots or cherry tomatoes. Muesli and whole milk for breakfast for the past week, which I wonder if is a good idea given how little I've been drinking milk. Otherwise, lots of steaks, lasagna, bread, cheese.

Ubuntu fail

Wifi support for netbooks seems to be regressing. With 10.04, I lost the ability to connect to some WPA networks (by report, those using TKIP encryption.) I still haven't found a fix I'm willing to try messing with. (I only found out about this after moving out.) 10.10 is out, and I just googled for wifi threads on it, and lots of people seem to be reporting connection failure in general, and not just on the eee. I sure won't be upgrading...

Grrrr.