Wow, airlines have one hell of a scam going
April 17th, 2007. Published under Business. No Comments.
I’m no math genius, but follow along with me for a second here:
One way trip to Ottawa from Toronto on Westjet: $11
Two travelers, round trip would be: $44
Have I got that right so far? How in the hell does that translate into $275 round trip for two people?! Yeah, yeah I know there are airport fees, taxes, surcharges, fuel tax….blah, blah blah. Come on though, there is no way that an airline should be allowed to advertise an airfare of $11 if that actually ends up being a hundred (or more) dollars more! I like understanding the breakdown of why my airfare costs so much, but if you’re going to advertise a rate, then I should just be paying that rate plus tax. $11+tax.
Airlines: do the right thing and stop jerking our chains with false low-sounding rates. I’m not asking you to lower your rates (that is a separate issue), just don’t advertise an airfare that is artificially low.
Going to Geneva for the LIFT Conference?
January 29th, 2007. Published under General. 3 Comments.
Scoble has mentioned a couple of times that he is going to Geneva for the LIFT conference; if you are heading there as well then while you are in Geneva you should take some time to do a couple of things:
- Take the 40 minute drive to Chamonix and take the cable car to the top of the Aiguille du Midi, the view is absolutely incredible. If you’re a skier take some extra time and go skiing there
- Check out the many Swiss watch makers, most of them are based in Geneva and their watches truely are like works of art
- Patek Philippe (My favourite watch maker, they also invented the wrist watch): www.patek.com/
- Piaget (lots of flash and jewels): http://www.piaget.com/
- Bucherer (they are not a watchmaker really, they sell many different brands/models and if you would like to compare different companies side by side this is a great place to do it: www.bucherer.com/
- There are others (Audemars Piguet, Chopard, Girard-Perregaux, Breitling, Rolex), but Patek and Piaget are a good example of the pinnacle of watch making (although for very different reasons; Patek is the best in the business when it comes to the movement and it’s complexity while Piaget is all about the bling).
- If you are into watches, or you get into watches after looking at some of the crazily expensive ones available from the Swiss watchmakers then check out the Patek Philippe Museum: http://www.patekmuseum.com/
- The European headquarters of the UN
- The WTO is also in Geneva, not sure if you can get in to check it out or not
- If you like chocolate as much as I do (and that is a lot!) then definitely check out this chocolate shop: www.chocolat-auer.ch/en/chocolate_factory.html
- Geneva is the home of Davidoff Cigars, anyone who likes cigars even a little bit should drop by their Geneva store. It’s not a big store, but it’s where Zino’s first shop was (and his father before him, but Zino is the one who really got them into cigars): www.davidoff.com/davidoff/
While you are there take taxi’s to get around, don’t bother renting a car. Parking in Geneva is totally brutal, especially during the workday. If you do rent a car, don’t take the car out for lunch or you might find yourself sitting in a long line waiting to get a parking spot again after lunch.
The old part of Geneva is a beautiful thing to see and shouldnt be missed. There is a train-like tour through the city that starts downtown near the main shopping area and takes you through the old part of town and past an incredibly beautiful church. If you’re like me and you love to see the old architecture of European buildings then take the tour, it doesnt take too long and is well worth it just for some of the views. Don’t forget to check out the Jet D’Eau, although that only takes a minute and you can do it from anywhere in downtown Geneva. Not the most exciting thing, but it’s cool to see (giant jet of water shooting out of the lake). Also there is a great little coffee shop type thing in a park right in the middle of the river just a little west of downtown. I have no idea what it’s called and can’t give you any directions so if that makes any sense to you or someone you’re with can decipher that then go check it out, it is a very quiet and relaxing spot in Geneva, although it might be a little too cool there now to sit out and enjoy. I believe that it’s just west of the Place D I’Ile in this map.
That is what I can think of quickly off the top of my head (with some quick searches for the links), anyone else have things they love to see/do in Geneva?
In Switzerland; an odd technical tidbit
August 27th, 2006. Published under General. No Comments.
So I am in Geneva visiting my Brother-in-law and his family and I just noticed something. Google has been guessing my location based on my IP address for quite a while, pretty much everytime I use Google it defaults to Google Canada (when I am at home in Toronto), which is normally no big deal. This week though I am here in Geneva and when I go to Google it tries to guess where I am and correctly judges that I am in Switzerland and defaults to www.google.ch … and displays everything in German.
This caught be a bit by surprise and when I went looking for a button to change the language to English I couldn’t find one. I was using Firefox at the time and was getting the Google Firefox page, when bringing Google up in IE7 it does give a link to change the language which is good.
So this isnt really that important, but it was a minor little annoyance when I first saw it. If I lived here in Geneva (mostly French) and got the German page by default I might even be a bit put off, even though most of Switzerland speaks German primarily.
Phil
Mark Russinovich is joining Microsoft
July 18th, 2006. Published under Work. No Comments.
Big news today that Microsoft has purchased Sysinternals, but I think the bigger news is that Mark is going to join Microsoft as a technical fellow. This is great news and a great hire. Welcome to the team Mark :)
I know that Scoble isnt working for Microsoft anymore, but I’m surprised he hasn’t blogged this yet.
XBox 360 compatible wireless routers
April 22nd, 2006. Published under Technology. No Comments.
I’ve been pondering buying a new wireless router for home since the one that I currently have is only 802.11b while all my devices now support G or A; finally I broke down and decided to get a new one, but I wanted one that had A/B/G and was compatible with my Xbox 360. Took me a little while to dig up the page that had a list of the compatible routers so I thought I would post it here (for my own reference and potentially others).
Xbox 360 home networking compatibility list
Phil