No, really. Completed today with church bells tolling, emailed in just now. Hopefully I won’t have to touch it again while I’m on vacation.

a) T-Mobile (and Starbucks) have no fucking clue what they’re doing with wifi points. I’m going to be asking for refunds shortly, because their well-run operation stopped, it seems, at the crossing.
b) I’m hoping this scrolls off before my parents chance to read this, but I had my first infuriating Parisian experience today. Short version –
There’s a grocer next to my parents’ hotel. Since they stay there often, they know the dude, whatever.
The last few days, we’ve hiked over to their hotel before we all head out.
Today, we stopped at the grocer to buy water, because it’s really hot here. We bought two .65E bottles of water for 1.30E. While I was working out the change in my head, my mom & wife were talking to the grocer, the grocer’s joking that I can just give it all to him and he’ll work it out. I’m reluctant to do this. I give him 2.30E in a two-euro coin and .30 in other change. He says “You pay big this time, next time you pay small.” I stare at him, stand there, wait. He doesn’t move. I stand there, hand out, expectent, and nothing. My mom & wife chat about moving on, everyone else in Paris has been nice and helpful, plus he knows my parents– I figure it’s good. Plus, it’s my mom’s birthday, I don’t want to cause some big scene.
I stew about this for some time, in particular his refusal to hand over a euro when clearly I was not into his “wheel of karma” argument. It pisses me off.
Then later, after we’ve hiked around and whatever, we stop in to buy crackers, more water, etc. This is a perfect opportunity for him to give me that euro he owes me, or even a good faith chunk of it. Nope, exact change.
Bonus incident: I’m stewing some more about this, and complain to my dad while birthday mom is up in her room. He expresses consternation, not because I’ve been ripped off for 1E by someone he knows and does business with all the time, but in his words “I just can’t figure out why he’d do that” which, to translate, is “I don’t think that happened, or at least not in the way you describe it” which, to digress, was probably the most infuriating thing about my youth, which – and I freely admit this as much my fault for being delinquent all the time as anything – had any number of incidents where it was my entirely truthful word against someone (generally a teacher or other authority figure) else’s story, and they’d totally buy mine. In this case, the essential implication is that I, a former cashier myself and not a s dull knife at this, must somehow be responsible.

Anyway. Fuck you, grocer on ÃŽle Saint-Louis! This is why visitors get bad impressions. Everyone else is kind and nice, and you fuck it up for them.

I’m not sure what the proper Parisian response is: graffiti or brick-through-window. I’ll ask at the hotel front desk tomorrow, see what they say.

I hate hate hate working on this thing while I’m on vacation, but I knew what I was signing on for, years ago.

Edits have been pretty light, I’m about ~100 pages through them and they’re going pretty fast. Unfortunately my ability to do research from here, where internet access is horrible, price and unreliable even where available, is pretty limited, so I’ve been unable to answer some re-re-research questions. We’ll see what happens.

I’m in Europe, Expedia launches my cool carbon credit thing (fight global warming!) and Al Gore’s hanging around. He was in Edinburgh with me, and he’s been running around the UK praising the country for trying to beat its Kyoto obligations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

I’m a fan. I know Gore’s a pretty polarizing guy, but I was a fan back when he was leading nuclear arms reduction pushes from the Senate, and I’m still a fan.

Anyway, while here, I’ve been trying to read all the papers I can, and I came across a London Times editorial that argued – in print! In the Times! that argued that we couldn’t really know if global warming was man-made until NASA got some more satellites up, since it could just be the sun.

This is one of the big myths of the global warming ostrich crowd (part of the “we don’t know enough to act yet” bundle), and pretty easily debunked. And yet I had to wonder – Al Gore’s in town, the UK’s doing good work, and they ran that editorial? Why?

(as an aside, since I can write endless annoying asides on my blog – run a google search for “global warming myth” and you’ll get one of the more disturbing sets of results I’ve ever seen)

Anyway, hi Al! We should chat sometime about creating market-based incentives for greenhouse reduction. I know what I’m talking about, I got something out there (well, sorta, since I wasn’t there for the implementation) — drop me a line.

Or… does anyone know him? Want to give me an intro?

I started a longer post on the carbon credit thing I hope to post today. Later dudes.

It’s out.

Here’s the short, complete history of the idea, then:
– I thought about this and a couple ways to do it
– I write up a pitch idea, send it to a short list
– They flip out, give me feedback
– I go to a wider group, they flip out
– I start pushing it upwards, struggle, find allies, struggle
– Repeat that last one for a while
(- I quit)
– It gets picked up
(- I leave)
– A competitor announces a similar idea
– It goes out into the world

I knew I said I’d have longer commentary about this, but
a) Internet’s really tough to come by here in Edinburgh
b) I’m finally starting to get into vacation mode and I’m just not quite in the mood

So the whole time I was shopping this thing, one of the points I kept pounding was ‘We have to do this if for no other reason that it’s cheap and the companies who come second get no benefit’

Travelocity just did a version of it, and I still haven’t seen an Expedia press release.

Today, many of us recycle and walk, bike, or take public transportation when we can, but there’s still no way to get across the country or ocean in time for that important meeting or family event – or to reach that great vacation spot out of driving distance– unless we get on a plane. And while air travel is considered a contributor to the carbon dioxide emissions that lead to global warming, now there’s something you can do to offset the negative environmental impact of your travel: by contributing to The Conservation Fund’s Go Zero program, you can effectively offset the CO2 emissions of your entire trip.

So first-mover advantage is gone… hopefully they can still salvage some good from this.

I’ll have somthing more substantial to say later, but my first reaction is (as you’d expect) ‘If they’d listened to the good idea immediately and moved on it, they’d have deployed long ahead of the competition.’

It’s another point in favor of working somewhere really small or, barring that, really agile. I guess my former employer wasn’t it. This sucks.

I spent today wandering around the web, loading up a bunch of recommended software, and I’m really digging this thing. It’s fast, it’s elegant, it’s hackable.

My only complaint so far is that it runs way hot, to the point of being difficult to actually use on my lap comfortably.

It’s weird, I spent time using a PowerBook on and off at Expedia, but I never really got the hang of it. With a new one, I’m using some hotkeys, playing around, and it’s far more enjoyable. This thing rocks. I’m going to have a hard time giving it up, if that’s what it comes to.

Many of you are wondering what happens now that I’ve turned in RC1. Except that there aren’t many of you, and you weren’t wondering that.

So I talked to my editor today and here’s what it looks like:
– next couple of days-2 weeks: I get the next batch of edits back, which should, hopefully, be all minor polishes. I will be on vacation, working on my hot, hot, hot new MacBook Pro, which I totally don’t have the money for and am hoping to sell used if it comes to that on my return.
– hopefully this means I’m not in Toledo, sipping on red wine while I fix things. Plus my ability to do research without my books and boxes on boxes of notes and photocopies is going to be pretty limited.

Side note: holy mackeral is this MacBook beautiful. Apple, to make sure the MacBook meets Apple’s exacting standards for items I buy, took special care to make the keys at the top left look a little blistered. $3,000 laptop. One of the things Apple does really well is make opening the computer a pleasure – it’s all so easy and each step is obvious, like unwrapping a candy. Design makes a difference.

– then when we’ve agreed on a version that can go to press, it goes to the manuscript people, who give it a severe series of readings for typos, fragmented sentences, and so on. That should be about 6 weeks from now, which is a good argument for me not to hurry back to work

– I fix everything the manuscript people come up with. I don’t know how long that’ll take, but typos aren’t that tough to do edits on. So let’s say it’s… first week of October.

Then nothing happens for four months while it gets printed, and then bam! It comes out in February.

Now, whether I try and get another book project together or go back into IT is another thing entirely. We’ll see, I guess. If I don’t, it seems likely that I’d have to sell off this sweet-looking laptop with the slightly blistered keys.

This is a box of notes, photocopies, printouts, and revisions.

Yes, it’s *a* box. There’s more. Been a loooong haul.

(Released To Editor)

Version 3’s done and submitted.

I think I may get up and get on the bike tomorrow for the first time in ages. Hot cha cha.