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Sunday, October 22, 2006

NEW BLOG ADDRESS

Check out my new all-singing, all-dancing blog at: www.financeboyforpresident.com

That's right, I now have my own hosted blog, so check it out!

Friday, October 20, 2006

Viva La France, Viva La QWERTY

So here I am, stuck in Paris Charles De Gaulle airport for a 2 hour layover on my way from Luxembourg to JFK. The Air France lounge has some computers with internet access so I figure I'll go online check email and such. Then I noticed the keyboard. Apparently they don't use the QWERTY keyboard in France; instead they use something called the AZERTY keyboard (see if you can figure out the first 6 letters in the top left) Now once you've learned to type on a QWERTY keyboard and hqve done it for 15 years or so, you develop some muscle memory as to where the keys should be. But alas they are not there. On the plus side, they do have some symbols we dont have in the US like € and £, qnd qlso é, è, ç, ù and à. Bottom line though I'm back to the two finger method of typing. On the plus side they were trusting enough to not have any internet security programs installed so I could download AIM and talk to people while I wait for my plane. Anyway, this keyboard is really getting annoying so I'm gonna go now.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

What country am I in?

Well it's certainly been a while since I last posted, mostly because I've been travelling a lot lately. I have one more trip next week then will be home until Thanksgiving. In the past month or so, I've been to Toronto, Mexico City and London, and now am heading off to Luxembourg next week. I had the weirdest thing happen to me though. When I was in Toronto, I totally blacked out on what country I was in. I was in a restaurant having dinner with the group I was meeting with, and as I was walking to the men's room, for some reason I had no idea what country I was in. It was the strangest feeling but I actually had to stop and think about where I was. Took me a few moments before I remembered I was in Canada. On the plus side, I've spent enough hours on a plane to become a movie critic in my spare time. So here's my thoughts on current movie offerings on airlines:

Continental Airlines:
Mission Impossible 3: (B+) A pretty fun mindless action movie, that gets better by the 4th time you've seen it (thank you Continental for the lack of variety). Philip Seymour Hoffman makes an excellent villian, but the movie loses points because Tom Cruise is bat-shit crazy and it distracts you from the plot.
X-Men 3: (A-) Good all around sequel (or whatever the correct term for the third movie should be), continuing the X-Men franchise. Nice to see the ever expanding cast of mutants. Plus Halle Berry is in it, so that's good for some extra credit.

British Airways:
Click: (B-) Decent, but a little confused. Starts out as a comedy and ends a drama. Plus, the story of "career man is shown a future where he is wildly successful at work but loses his family and then is given a second chance and realises how family is more important than work" isn't exactly original thought. Nice to see David Hasselhoff again, and not in a bathing suit.
Poseidon: (D) Boring. Very boring. Emmy Rossum is nice to look at, but not for 90 minutes.
The Break-Up: (B) Better than I expected. Vince Vaughn is funny, but I'm starting to think he went to the Richard Gere School of Acting, since he plays the same character in every movie he's in. Jennifer Aniston looks good.
The Devil Wears Prada: (C) Pretty boring, though not as bad as Poseidon. Anne Hathaway is pretty hot, but again that's not enough to keep me interested for 2 hours. Only reason I chose this movie was I had worked my way through the library and had to choose between this and Garfield 2.
The DaVinci Code: (A) It's as good as the book. The plot moves quickly and keeps you interested. Even after reading the book, it was an enjoyable movie. Plus Audrey Tautou is nice to look at.

I think that's enough for now. I'll be back next weekend with a report on Air France (which by the way has some of the best flight attendants in the business).