Easy to Believe

This is the weirdest thing and I hadn't seen it before . . .

You can access your flight itinerary and get current status of your flight directly from the central Amadeus flight reservation database no matter who you booked your flight with.  As long as you know your Amadeus reservation number (it is the short one with letters and numbers like "27JHG6") you can pull up your reservation and flight info.  The site is really well designed, showing time between flights in a visually friendly way instead of having to hunt around the printout for critical information.  It knows if your frequent flier number has been entered, what contact information for you is on file, and the weather of your destination city.  It is a reservation and current flight status all in one view without having to go through a different search to check for delays or cancellations.

At the moment there is no shortage of writing and analysis about the candidates.  And to some lesser degree writing about the issues.  What I am most curious about is what people really want to see happen in the next 8 years?  Not nebulous results like being better world citizens or strengthening education, but what hard results people would be interesting in producing if they could be dictator of the US with no political gridlock.  I'd like to find a better candidate, one good enough that the race wouldn't be split so evenly.  How about you?

Was recently introduced to a musical instrument I had never seen before.  Can you make one out of a spare Weber I wonder?

There was a post not long ago about learning to read alternate character sets.  At the moment I am grateful for having learned Cyrillic in high school.  Otherwise, I am not sure that arriving at the hotel on the subway system in Moscow would have worked out quite so well.  Pictures coming on the next post.

I always love finding out things the brain can do, especially things I think would be really hard that turn out to be unexpectedly reasonable.  After about a year of typing on two different keyboards, one with an American layout and one with a German layout I no longer make mistakes and can type on either one interchangeably.  At the beginning this was unnerving and frustrating to the point where I considered changing out the keyboard at work to an American one, but then I would not have been able to write to anyone like Jörg or Frau Bürger who makes the travel arrangements and can make me get up for crazy early flights.

This reminds me of one of the brain surprises that amazed me when I was in high school.  Our group of friends began using an alternate alphabet, one with no Arabic letters, to pass secret notes in class.  It was titled Noxmaltian and looked something like:

After remembering what a big deal it was to learn the alphabet when starting school it seemed quite impossible to be faced with learning a second one within the same lifetime.  It turns out the brain is quite good with this.  All it takes is a three page letter to decode and the brain already begins to associate phonetic sounds with the shapes.  After about three more secret notes it is no longer necessary to transcribe such things as they can be pronounced just like normal words.  Try it; it's fun, especially if you have strict teachers or cannot trust your neighbors ;)

It just builds and builds . . .

I am sharpening my multitasking blogging skills in order to become a more frequent poster.  This is hot in the oven right now for dinner.  It is a delicious half wheel of of Reblochon cheese melted over layers of sliced potatoes and onions bathed in a creme fraiche sauce with garlic and dill.  There is also some nice broccoli on the side that may get to visit the cheesy part as well.