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Monday, October 25, 2004

Pen Pals

My grandfather Gerhard Lenssen tells another story.

 

A senior pen pal agency in Canada made it possible for me to contact a group of people using the internet. This was several years ago but some of the friendships still remain. There’s an American ex-Officer in Texas, an ex-bank clerk in Finland, an Australian woman, and a Chinese engineer who I met in Germany.

Some years ago the Australian woman and her husband were on a journey round the world. They also traveled in Germany along the Rhine and Mosel river from Mainz to Trier. Their ship would anchor in our Bernkastel haven for a night, and the lady and I had agreed to meet in person.

When the time of our appointment arrived the ship was indeed there and I asked for my friend. Shortly thereafter she appeared with a big smile on her face, telling me I should follow her onto the deck this instant. The other passengers were lying there taking a sun-bath, and when we arrived she was shouting: “Listen up everyone – this is my friend Gerhard from the internet, just so you believe it!”

I then understood she told everyone about me and no one wanted to believe her; nobody could imagine she already knew someone in this town via the internet. I served as living proof she was right.

Later on she and her husband came to our home to drink a nice wine from the Mosel region. The minute she entered the door she went to my computer to check the internet for new mails. It just so happened she had become first-time grandmother and now learned of the well-being of her grandchild. Of course we would drink on the health of this new human to welcome him on our planet. The next morning, the lady would continue her world tour, but we are still emailing each other.

Googling Favorite Words

I queried the web for “my favorite word is *”. Here are the results.

My favorite word is ...

And then, there’s the least favorite words...

Yahoo and Adobe

Adobe and Yahoo announced a partnership. More at this AP article. [Via SearchEngineWatch.]

Blabble

Blabble is a blog search engine. I found Blabble’s main font to be far too tiny to easily read, but maybe you get more out of this. [Via Zawodny at Hot Links.]

Nielsen: Don’t Educate Users on Security

“Internet scams cannot be thwarted by placing the burden on users to defend themselves at all times. Beleaguered users need protection, and the technology must change to provide this.”
– Jakob Nielsen, User Education Is Not the Answer to Security Problems (Useit.com), October 25, 2004

Ashlee Simpson Doesn’t Sing

Ashlee Simpson (who was working on her career to become a pop star) walked off the Saturday Night Live stage when a wrong lyp-sync track started to play, and now the whole world can watch her [WMV]. Popjustice says her band played live and she had a live microphone but she simply didn’t want to sing. [Via Waxy.]

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