For those of you asking me about my DomainEditorial.com Blog – yes, it’s down, I am aware of it and trying to get it back up as quickly as possible. On top of a move of the physical location of the server on Wednesday we are now facing some hardware issues on that server. Hopefully it will be back online today.
[Update]: It’s back up – but it’s running off one hard drive instead of two.
Yes yes, I know. I never got beyond the first part of my DomainFest Global diary… Well, it appears that there was just too much going on there for me to keep track, but let’s just say that I had a great and successful time. More later…
Consider this the personal part of my diary of my trip to DomainFest in LA – I wrote this part on the plane yesterday. If you are looking for news from the event itself, you’ll be more likely to find them on my other blog, DomainEditorial.com.
January 31st, 2007:
Air Canada moved all of their flights to the new Terminal 1 in Toronto starting yesterday. So anticipating a little “new” chaos, I tried to make my way to the airport early. Well, tried. Things just don’t always work out as they should, so I arrived just the recommended 90 minutes ahead of my flight. At least I had checked in on the web the night before, so I should have been able to pass quickly through the Web-Luggage-Drop Off counter (where you don’t actually drop off your luggage, since you need to clear US customs first).
So I get to the web drop off counter and just in front of my 5 people join the row. Well, there was one whole counter open in this area, so I prepared for the long wait. An Air Canada employee appeared and managed to send some of the people in front of me away, since they had not actually checked in on the web. Still, some of those people that had not checked on the web remained in the line, so the wait took a while. Meanwhile, a friend who is traveling with me calls me and tells me he’s on his way, but late. So I give him directions on how to get to the counter, since he had checked in on the web as well. It’s almost my turn when they decide to add two more check-in agents, what a great move. One of them takes a while to adjust his monitor, since his station is right underneath one of the neat windows in the the roof of the new hall. Finally I am checked in without any problems, my luggage is tagged, so on to US customs and immigrations.
I am still ‘just’ a German citizen, so I get into the line for the people traveling with a Visa waiver form. Basically this means you need to fill out an extra form (I94W used to be the name, I think they have a new name for it now though) and they will fingerprint your two index fingers (on an electronic fingerprint machine) as well as take a picture of your face with something that looks like a basic webcam. So it’s always a gamble, but usually this line used to be of the shorter lines in Terminal 2, and in Terminal 3 you always had many people in front of you some of them taking ages to clear immigration (I missed my flight once due that that).
Well, there’s nobody else in my line – so far so good. However there is no open counter in front of the line. In fact, my line appears to share counters with the US citizen lineup, which is quite long. Especially since some of the officers appear to be leaving at this time (they were actually turning off their lit number signs at this point). Plus the person directing people to counters actually appears to only direct the US citizens to agents. At this point in time I am joined by a British fellow, who appears to be a little nervous about catching his flight (which is scheduled to leave 5 minutes before mine). After a while the person assigning people to desks actually notices us and moves me to one of the two open counters – next.
So after the immigration control (the officer barely asked me anything, complained about the glare on his screen when I asked him how he liked the new terminal). Also one of his pens was not working, so I promised to bring him a new one next time I see him. He was joking about wanting a Mont Blanc pen, but I said I could only offer him one of these hotel pens that I pick up on my trips.
On to customs, which was uneventful as usual, just showing my customs form. Then the luggage drop-off “Please put your suitcase on the X on the belt, wheels up”. Well, since I am not traveling with an upright suitcase I decided to lay it on it’s side instead of having it stand upside down on the belt. Next: Security. Normal stuff, just for some odd reason they wanted to X-Ray my laptop bag twice.
On to buy a drink, some food and water for the flight – off to the gate, where my friend joined me about a bit later. So we are in the air now – just past Denver on our way to Los Angeles. Turns out both rear toilets in the plane are clogged or broken, and the crew has not yet found a way to unclog them, so they are even possibly considering going to Las Vegas instead in order, since the lineup for the remaining front toilet is quite large. The pilot explained all of this and basically told us to try our best to keep it in and that they will try to arrive in LAX early.
Well, we did arrive about 15 minutes early – at the end of the flight the pilot again apologized for the “poor maintenance status” of the plane and sent us off. I had some problems with the pressure changes on the plane, this must be the last remains of my cold.
(to be continued)
Happy belated holidays and happy new year. We are now back home after a long vacation in Europe visiting family and friends – and the 20 hours trip back home (which normally is quite a bit shorter). More details to follow.
A short affair with Vonage leads me to cancel my account before my telephone number is even transferred to them. I guess I should have done some research in advance (but this info is hard to find on their site):
You cannot use a Softphone with a regular Vonage account. It turns out that you need to add a seperate softphone number to your account, at an additional $12.99 per month. There go all the savings. I have not found an option that allows you to make your main line a softphone.
One of my main points in transferring one of my numbers to Vonage would have been the ability to access it from my laptop from anywhere. Something that I consider standard for a Voip-Service, not an additional feature.
[update]: I’ve decided to keep this line with Vonage (for now), mainly because it seemed I might be running a risk of losing my number if I canceled so close to the end of the trial period. I do think that the quality of the line is very good. I have also been looking at Inter.Net’s voip service, which actually does allow you to use a softphone. However it took them too long to answer my email asking about the features and about transferability of my number. I’ll keep them in mind though, as it appears that their offer is a little cheaper too.
Please also take a look at my blog about and for the Domain-Industry:
http://DomainEditorial.com/
Dear Charitable Organization:
When I donated some money last year on your website, I did so because I wanted to help your cause, I could identify with some of your ideas. You disappointed me. You took my address information and added it to your mailing list, in order to solicit repeat donations from me. You are driving me away instead.
You ignored my letter to remove me off your mailing list. Who knows, maybe you even sold my address information to other charitable organizations.
Please leave me alone. I decide when I donate and to whom. I visit your website, subscribe to your newsletter if I want to. Do not try to decide for me.
Thank you,
/Frank
Our car insurance is up for renewal next month, so I figured it’s time
to get some quotes to compare. TD already gave me a quote (over the phone), which was
far more expensive than our current insurance from Aviva Traders. Let’s see what the other players in this market can offer me.
OK, let’s go. I go to belairdirect.ca. I saw some advertising from them
and figure that this might be their domain. Got it right. Click on huge
“Get a Quote” button.
Guess they didn’t set things up properly. Well, let’s klick on “OK”. What’s next:
OK, let’s try “belairdirect.com” – same problem. It only works when you
use “www.belairdirect.com”. Note for the webmaster of the Belairdirect
sites: It is very nice that you made sure that you can also access the
websites under different domains, and even without using the “www.”
prefix. To prevent people from encountering this error, you might want
to set up a redirect on the other domains that points to the working main site. If you need any help doing this, I am available for consulting 
Anyways, let’s get a quote, now that we know which website they want us
to go to. Filling out page after page. Side note: Canadian Auto
Insurance will generally not acknowledge any experience driving in
countries other than possibly the US. Even when the driver’s license
now just gets changed these days, without any additional test for many
countries. Anyways, still on my way throught he forms… Finally there,
the last button “Obtain a Quote”. Click.
Exciting… Insert Elevator music here… and then (60 seconds later or so):
(Please note, when you try again later (and go through all the (now pre-filled) forms again), you receive the same error).
Since I had advertising from them I figured let’s try RBC insurance. However, here too after filling out a loooooong form:
Our
online quote service is designed to handle most situations. However,
based on details you entered, we require additional information in
order to provide you with an accurate quote for your insurance needs.
I guess I will end up staying with Aviva, for now.
I feel torn. Torn between many different projects, and of course my
newly expanded family enjoys the highest priority in my life. What is
this blog about? What is the next project I should be working on? How
can I work on as many projects as possible?
I think I am on the way. On the way of clearing the path, to use one of
my employer’s project name. I do think that “clearing the path” does
not necessarily mean to get rid of things, even though it can be part
of it. For me the most important meaning is to sort through the
clutter. Organizing things makes things better and easier to follow.
This blog here for example. It’s a personal blog. It will remain a
personal blog. This probably means it will cover many topics of my
interest. Then there is a neglected family blog, which is in need of a
new name. Ah, and yes, it should not only be in English. Back to the
i.m.fm blog… Some sub-topics (some of them quite popular amongst my
visitors) should be moved to separate sites in order to unclutter this
blog. I am mainly talking about some of my “consumer be aware” type of
posts… And maybe the business stuff needs a new home as well? What do
you think?
One day I will clear through (most of) the clutter, promise
Unfortunately this blog here is not the highest cleanup priority on my
list (my wife will confirm this, even though we probably still disagree
on the top 5 rankings).
As the domain monetization and domain investing space gains more and
more (negative and positive) attention, I think it’s time for a
reminder that I do have a separate blog about the domainer industry:
Domain Editorial: About and for Domainers