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July 13, 2006
Whirlwind Business Trip to Europe
Woohoo! I got my first business trip to Europe!
My company needed me to go to Frankfurt, Germany (actually a suburb named Wiesbaden) for two days, then down to Milan, Italy for two more days...an opportunity that would have been hard to pass up, even with the 8 day notice I had.
I flew Lufthansa from Boston to Frankfurt. It's been a while since I've been wined and dined by an airline and treated well by every employee I encountered along the way, so Lufthansa gets my honorable mention. Lufthansa fed us lunch and dinner, had excellent complimentary beverages (I had a Warsteiner beer with dinner, and a shot of Bailey's Irish Cream afterwards). Not only were the Economy seats reasonable, but they had a major added bonus: when the purson in front of you puts his seat-back back, his seat moves forward a little and crushes *his* knees, not yours. I would take another Lufthansa flight in a minute, but that won't happen on this trip.
I had plenty of time once I got to Frankfurt, so rather than take a taxi to the hotel, I found my way to the S-Bahn, figured out how to work the kiosk, then proceeded to take the train in the wrong direction. The problem is that I couldn't find Wiesbaden, my destination, on the route map. It turns out that the Frankfurt airport is on two of the S-Bahn lines that go there, but I was expecting to travel via Frankfurt's central station. Smooth sailing once I figured out where Wiesbaden was, and even though everything was written in German with no English to help me out.
Wiesbaden is a pleasant little town. Did I say it was little? There's a 10-block area that was probably the original settlement, with narrow streets and all. The streets are still narrow, and to my surprise, my taxi from the train station went down several of them, narrowly missing restaurant tables that would be filled with crowds later in the day. Seriously, cars drive through there just feet from people eating. My hotel was on the border of all this, so I had easy access to the area. The actual town is larger though.
My coworker showed up a little later in the day, and we went out exploring. I took a handful of photos. I guess I wasn't really in a photographic mood. Probably the most interesting tidbit is that Wiesbaden used to be a destination because of its hot springs. The last of these is commemorated by a prominent sculpture just around the corner from my hotel. Incidentally, Wiesbaden means "pointed bath", at least that's what Babelfish tells me.
Germany lived up to my expectations of having lots of good beer. I tried something different each glass, and there was nothing I didn't enjoy. In the afternoon and two evenings I had free, I probably sampled 10 different brews, not counting the Irish beer at the Irish pub where we watched the World Cup championship fußball match (and where we saw Frenchman Zinedine Zidane commit his final foul, getting red-carded for headbutting Italian Matarazzi.)
The bars and restaurants were packed to the max for the World Cup championship. They all had multiple televisions set up, but as the evening went on it was pretty clear that some broadcasts were better than others. There was up to a 5 second variation among the different programming feeds, and people slowly migrated to the TVs with the shortest delays. These crowds would cheer first, followed by the crowds at the next shortest delay, and so forth. Maybe you had to be there, but I thought it was amusing.
On Monday evening we went out to dinner with the German coworkers whom we were visiting. They're a good bunch and were fun to hang out with.
On Tuesday evening it was time to fly Alitalia towards the south for more meetings, this time in Milano. Checkin at the hotel was fairly late, and nothing was open to see, so it was just dinner then sleep. The Hilton wanted 27 Euros, or about $35, for two nights of internet. I didn't want to reward them for their high price point, so I went without it for the two nights.
On Wednesday night we went to an Argentinian restaurant named Don Juan. Their specialty is beef, and that beef comes in all shapes and sizes. I think mine was around a pound before cooking (and after cooking too, it was barely medium-rare). Definitely some good stuff to eat though! Afterwards we went to a nightlub that our host knew about, where we proceeded to stay until very early hours. Again, a great crowd and good company.
I'm writing this on my final night in Italy, which I'm spending at a hotel at the Malpensa airport, located in the middle of nowhere. There's nothing touristy to do here, so I went on the internet in my room, and here I am.
I'm USA-bound in the morning!
Posted by Pat at 04:31 PM
July 28, 2006
Yahoo! internal security not so great?
I got a phishing email from somebody wanting to steal my PayPal username and password. They set up their server on a machine owned by Yahoo. Being the good internet citizen I try to be, I sent Yahoo! an email to tell them about this security issue, addressing it to their abuse department and attaching the email from the phishers. They replied with a canned letter explaining that they don't open attachments due to security issues.
I read a couple of things into this...
- Yahoo! does not equip their abuse department with the tools they need to safely read email. I can't imagine how this could be--why don't these people have a way to deal with attachments both troublesome and legitimate, when their job is to take care of problems? It's not rocket science to isolate these emails so they can do no harm.
- Yahoo! does not want my help. I provided them with precise details and evidence that a phisher was using their machines, and despite this, they could not be bothered to investigate--merely because I enclosed the message as an attachment.
I wrote back to Yahoo! and explained that there are secure ways to deal with attachments, and maybe they ought to use one of them. I also added that I wasn't requesting their help, I was providing them with information important to their business, and as far as I'm concerned I already did far more than I needed to help them out, and if they felt this was important to them, they would find a way to read my attachment.
What did I get back? A second copy of the email informing me that they don't accept attachments.
I probably shouldn't be that surprised.
Posted by Pat at 12:42 PM