The keyboard and mouse is actually attached to the Ubuntu machine, in other words that’s the “server”.  The XP and Windows 7 machines are “clients”.  One thing to consider with Synergy is that it’s not secure.  It does send everything you type in plain text over the network.  This can be avoided by tunnelling the connection over something like SSH.  Perhaps I’ll cover that later.  Synergy2 isn’t new, it’s been around a very long time.

I don’t want to reinvent the wheel or try to take any limelight from those that have already posted great articles on how to set it up, the best information can be found from the Synergy2 website itself.

What I’m posting about is really how to fix a problem that I’m sure others might have encountered.  Right.. so the problem is this.  As I’ve said, the server is on Ubuntu.  Naturally the “Windows key” on Ubuntu has no natural meaning to the OS, it’s just another key and not mapped to anything out of the box.  The problem I’ve had is that while using Synergy the “Windows Key” didn’t work on the Ubuntu machine even though I’d remapped it to do things, such as Win + T to open a new xterm, Win + R to open the Run Command Dialog (basically making it operate a bit like Windows).   the fix for this was a change in the $HOME/.synergy.ini file on the Ubuntu machine.  The weird thing was that when move the mouse to the XP machine the Windows key did what it should, however on the Windows 7 it wouldn’t work.

Right, so what was the fix?  Here is my .synergy.ini file

section: screens
burma:
scotland:
  meta = super
rambler:
  meta = super
end

section: links
burma:
left = scotland
right = rambler
scotland:
right = burma
left = rambler
rambler:
left = burma
right = scotland
end

section: options
screenSaverSync = true
end

The important lines above are the “meta = super”.  Under Ubuntu the Windows Key is called “meta”.  This tells Synergy when the focus is on the windows machines to map the “meta” key to the “super” key, or in other words the Windows key.  Once that was changed and synergys was restarted all was good again.

I’m posting this for anyone else that might have a problem with the windows key not working under synergy with Linux/Ubuntu/Unix machines and windows machines, but also as a reminder to myself should I forget how I fixed it   I’d been through this exercise about 4 years ago but having rebuilt that machine I couldn’t for the life of me recall how I fixed it .. well, now that I’ve blogged about it I’ll at least have one good place to go and find the answer again  

We’ve all suffered through Christmas and of course New Years, so Happy New Year eh?

Well, that brings us to today now.  I’ve converted back to Windows (it was a sad day yesterday).  I’d finally had enough of Ubuntu.  It was a series of issues that forced me back to Windows … apps that stopped working, funny things happening since upgrading from Ubuntu 9.04 to 9.10, that was a mistake for sure and generally speaking I just grew tired of missing functionality in Ubuntu when everyone you deal with uses Windows.  Oh well.  I’m not running Windows 7, 64-Bit, finally making full use of the hardware in my laptop.  The only “issue” I have right now is Win 7 doesn’t seem to support the ACPI power management stuff.. so, as a result when I pull the power and run on battery the only performance tuning that happens is the screen dims but the CPU’s run full out and thus drain the battery at an alarming rate.  I’m sure I’ll find the correct drivers for that issue at some point. 

Oh yeah, I bought a new car as well .. pics of the new motor here ..

There’s not really much else to report I suppose.  As usual, check out the photos on our flickr account for new photos and videos. Such as this one, Lisa playing her piano..

I hope I’ll have some more interesting things to blog about in the future.. just sort of lost the desire to blog.. hoping it comes back.

The weather this past week has been brutal here with highs not much higher then 14C in the day time and loads of rain. I’ve been told this is not normal weather for this time of the year, especially since this is the summer time down here.

This weekends plans were a bit scuppered due to the weather but what can you do. I just hope we have better weather this coming week. I’d hate to think I brought shorts and didn’t have a chance to wear them, save for the first day I arrived.

I’ll try to get some pics and post them later, unfortunately the broadband speeds down here are less then desirable so uploading photos would be very tedious and time consuming.

I’ll post more later when I have something more interesting.

The trip to Johannesburg started with a taxi ride to Heathrow Airport in London. The trip was uneventful and actually quite educational. The driver gave me some great tips on alternate ways to the airport that avoided nearly all f the dreaded M25. As I will be going to Heathrow in Dec to collect my mum when she comes over it will give me a chance to test the routes.

Getting through security was about the easiest I’ve seen in years, well for me anyhow. Unlike most others around me (men and women) i didn’t need to take off my belt or shoes. A short wait on the secure side for the gate to assigned and opened, then about 90 mins ish in the boarding area. The flight was late owing to “catering and security checks”… Hmm security checks on the catering. On the flight I have seat 51J on a 747-400, flight VS601 with Virgin Atlantic.

The take-off was quite late. However it was announced the expected flight time was reduced from the original 11h5m to 10h15m or something, so this will make up for the later departure.

There weren’t many seats free on the aircraft but that didn’t put a dampener on all the people bent on moving around trying to find a better seat somewhere else. Speaking of seats, there several rows of some new fangled seat that Virgin is trialling to be the new economy seats. I wasn’t in one of these rows, oh well haha.

Shortly after take-off they started the ovens to cook dinner, I’m sitting right next to one of the galley’s and smell of dinner is starting to get to me haha… The last thing I ate was at about 12pm, its now 720pm.

Dinner was beef stew, roll, pasta salad and a small “Gu” chocolate thing.

This is the first time I have flown since all of my weight loss, and I have to say that flying is a hell of a lot easier now. Everything from simply sitting in the seats, no more need for a seatbelt extension but most of all just walking around the cabin and toilets haha.

Its now 00:49 Johannesburg time and currently we are somewhere over southern Niger. Extreme boredom is setting in. I’m in a middle seat so getting up for a walk isn’t easy. Curiously, as I typed the above House Of Pain – Jump Around has just come on the music player haha could the have been a more inappropriate song for the moment

I suppose what I am typing now should really fall under day 2 haha… I have arrived in Johannesburg. The rest of the flight was uneventful and breakfast was actually quite good. We has scrambled eggs, sausage, hash browns and beans. There was a muffin also, that got eaten and a yogurt pot, that did not haha.

Passing through Immigration consisted of first looking into the FluIR camera to check for illness, a little late if you ask me, they should be doing that BEFORE people board the aircraft. Then it was my turn with the immigration officer. This consisted of me standing silent, her thumbing to a page in my passport and inserting a sticker and stamping my entry.

The only hitch of the day… No driver?!?! I call the hotel to enquirer. She informed me the driver had waited for me yesterday morning. Clearly they were confused about my travel arrangements.. So now I wait for my driver to get dispatched… Not sure if thats a correct term to use in SA or not haha.

I finally made it to the hotel, got checked, showered and changed. Then had to get over to another colleagues room to had out too a braai across town. That was very good. It was being hosted by one some of the folks from a business partner. It was nice to meet them and chill out eating great food.

I finally got back to the hotel about 7 I think it was.. had a bite to eat at the hotel then back to the room to chill out. It was a great day but was very glad to get back and get to bed. I’d woken at 7am Saturday morning UK time and finally got to sleep about 930pm Sunday night, UK Time.

Monday was good at the office, got a fair amount done in the office so that’s good. Looks like we won’t be able to move the people in the office to new office until Wed or Thursday this week, so that means we’re a few days behind.

I’ll post more when I’ve done something more interesting

I’ll have to get some photos as well and get them posted.

Expect some blog postings from me while I’m there, certainly not a day by day posting like previous trips haha there’ll be way too much boring work stuff I’m sure. I will however post when I’ve done something fun and have some pics to show as well.

Follow me on twitter and on facebook.

I bought my NokiaN97 back in June.  I’m not ashamed to admit that I, like everyone else that ever ordered one of these devices, was excited like I’d never been about a phone.  The prospect of what was promised by Vodafone and Nokia was overwhelming the senses.  However, I very quickly found myself, like pretty much everyone else that has ever ordered this device, sad and disappointed to entirely new levels.

Where do I start .. well the device came shipped with the then current firmware level of 10.x .. right out of the box it was acting odd.. dropped calls, low phone signals levels where there should full signals, etc, etc.  The worst at the time was making and taking calls… you might be lucky and get a call in and you might be lucky to not have the device crash and reboot during or immediately after a call.  This was frustrating to say the least.

While the start of my relationship with my new N97 was rocky it was manageable .  Plus the promise of the much talked about V11 firmware and how it would fix a lot of problems, that and that alone kept me hopeful that we could make things work (me and the N97).  Firmware V11 came and went, sure, some problems were resolved, but entirely new problems were introduced.  Once again, we were on the rocks with our relationship.  I managed, somehow, to tolerate the device.  It wasn’t crashing randomly any more, which I suppose is a positive thing.  However, one of the new problems that came with V11 was a memory leak that slowly filled up my C:.  The first time it happened I received an “out of memory” error and the phone crashed and rebooted.  Upon reboot I was confused at first since the C: had about 18meg free.  I then noticed it would slowly fill as days went on and crash again.

Until now, I’ve not even touched on the other long laundry list of known issues with this device, including the much loathed Nokia N97 Self Harming issue where it scratches and destroys it’s own camera lense.  Mine has been no exception to this issue, the lense is nicely scratched and gashed, thankfully not directly over the camera’s optics so the camera is still very usable.  Others, however, have not been so lucky.

So, back to the story.. we last off with the tails of whoa over V11 firmware.  Well, it was many months before Nokia finally released the even more anticipated V12 firmware. It was even longer for UK contract phone owners since the UK carriers either refused to push it out to us or they blamed Nokia for the delay.  I don’t know where the problem really was or who was really to blame, suffice to say it sucked big time.   Finally, V12 was released and the world cheered, until they installed it and noticed yet more problems were introduced, for some it was more problems then fixes.  Some of my issues were fixed but my memory leak got worse.  I could now only run my phone for 2 days before the C: would fill and the phone would crash or I had to reboot it.

Well, here I am now in Nov.  After waiting for V20 to come out and then deciding not to wait until sometime next year I changed the product code on my phone by following the instructions on THIS PAGE.  That worked a treat I was then able to upgrade to V20.  That did not go well at all I have to say.  The process of loading the firmware was fine, however after the initial reboot there were loads of performance issues and lots of crashes.  After much Googling I’d come to conclusion that I needed to do a hard reset and rebuild my phone from scratch   That was the first time I had to a full rebuild.  Somewhat painful .. loads of apps to find and install, activation codes to find etc.  More annoyingly was I had to rebuild all my menus again for all the apps.  Very time consuming.  Fine, I accepted that, the phone is crap, the OS is crap and Nokia is crap, just one of the little joys of having bleeding edge hardware and Beta software.

Well, last night the phone acted up and needed a reboot.  This wasn’t the memory leak, that seemed to be mostly cured going to V20, I forgot to mention that above.  I pushed the power button, turned off the phone.  It did as it was suppose to.  Power it back on.. it sits at the white Nokia screen for about 2-3 mins.  This is NOT normal.  60-90 seconds boot time is normal for my phone.  I pull the battery, try again.  Leave it for 10 mins or so this time.  Still, no boot.  Bugger me.  I pull the battery, sim card and microSD card out.  Wait a few mins, replace the sim and battery and power on.  Nothing, just the White Screen of Death.  I tried all the “fixes” that others posted about, nothing at all.  I was again forced to hard reset and rebuild my phone.

This was the last time I ever hard reset my phone for no valid reason.  The next time the phone does this, I will hard reset it clear and format the internal mass storage and sell it on EBay for whatever I’m lucky enough to get for it.  That will be it.  I will also not be organizing my icons again or doing much else in the way of customizing my phone because of the hassles and time it takes, all to have it destroyed because Nokia can’t get it’s act together.

I would love to return the phone to Nokia for a full refund not to mention refunds for the software I’ve purchased for the device that will, on the next total lock up will become of no use to me since I won’t be using the device.

I am one very unhappy customer of Nokia at this point, the only good thing is knowing I’m no the only one.  There are 1000’s and 1000’s of people that have bought this phone and posted about their deep disappointment with the device and Nokia in general.  I hope, like me, they will all vote with their feet and refuse to by any more Nokia and Symbian based phones!  I think my next phone will be an Android of some sort.  It can’t be any worse.  No, don’t even think of trying to talk into an Apple i-CAN’T DO WHAT I LIKE ON MY PHONE-Phone.

If you are thinking of buying a Nokia N97 I would strongly encourage you to spend 2 hours at least Googling about the device and issues people are having.  Don’t take my rantings on here for it, see what everyone else is saying about the device.  If you have any sense you’ll see it’s not a good investment, and a very costly one at that.

Wednesday, it was back to the Albert Cuypstraat Market again for a couple of things that we didn’t get the day before.  We’d only walked a small part of that market.  Then it decided we’d take in the Tropenmuseum.  This is quite the place.  Four floors of Dutch history centred around the Caribbean and tropical areas.  They also had a great “Getting to know China” tour in a special area of the museum, the only problem was it was given entirely in Dutch by a Chinese guy.  It would have been nice for a just a little bit of English to be given, but oh well.  They covered the Chinese art of Tai Chi and Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chinese cuisine, Chinese writing with hair and feather pens.  They also spoke about Chinese traditions for celebrating and honouring the dead and Chinese tea ceremony’s and different famous Chinese teas.

I have heaps of photos from the museum which I’ll get up shortly.  After the museum we headed for the “China District”, which is just on the edge of the Red Light district.  Bloody shame too, we had to walk through the RLD twice again that day   We had lunch at a Chinese Dim Sum restraunt.  The sign outside (I have a photo somewhere) that read “All you can eat for 8.95, in 1 hour” haha

After stuffing ourselves with Chinese food and leaving the owner suffering from a minor stroke having witnessed the awesome eating power of Yuki (I’m certain he’ll change his sign either increasing the price the cutting the 1 hour to 30 mins), we headed back to Nieuwendijk and Kalverstraat shopping areas and Dam square.  One of the tram drivers from a previous day liked his job a lot, when we approached Dam square his announcement over the tannoy was something like “Now stopping at the Dam square, all those going to the Dam square get off here at the Dam square”.  We wandered around the square and got a photo with all the girls and Batman, which nearly made Emma cry, what a scary cat.  Yuki then went to the Amsterdam Diamond Centre.  I stayed around the square with the kids.

After that it was back to the hotel, rather early then previously, but we were all completely knackered.  Poor Yuki, when we got back to the hotel we’d found out the Internet had been shutdown due to some technical problem (apparently their open wifi was used by spammers or something so the ISP killed their connection for 24 hours).  It was a long and boring night with no Internet haha

We all just chilled out for a while then about 1830 Lisa and I walked down the street to the Domino’s Pizza and picked up a medium pizza and some chicken wings for dinner and took it back to the hotel room.

Thursday morning we got all packed up and had breakfast and got a taxi back to the Olympic Stadium Park and Ride.  We had too much stuff to carry on the Trams there, it was just easier.  The Park and Ride was by far the best bargain of the trip, 6 Euro per day, so 24 Euro and the car was kept safe in a well lit, underground 24hr guarded parking facility.  I was well impressed.  Anyone planning to drive to Amsterdam should seriously consider using the P-n-R facilities they have, it’s cheap and easy for sure!  Wish more cities has those sorts of secure short/longish term parking facilities.

We then made our way back towards the Hook of Holland port, taking our time and exploring some of the county lanes along the way.  There weren’t many windmills to be seen really, to really experience those you need to get on a bus tour from Amsterdam .. we didn’t bother as they were quite expensive and very long.. they were 32 Euro for each adult and 16 for each of the kids plus they were 5 ½ hours out on the go.  There’s no way the kids would have survived that trip

We took a bunch of photos of the countryside and settled in the Hook of Holland to explore the small town here and have lunch before getting on the ship.  We found a nice little clothing shop and managed to find Yuki a cute PJ set with Snoopy on it (that’s her fav), plus we picked up a bunch of things for the kids and I got a fleece jacket I’ll keep at the office (since our AC is mental and seems to be set on “Fend off Global Warming” mode all the time), that was a bargain as well, a huge bag of clothes for 40 something Euro.  Much better then shopping in Amsterdam haha

That brings me to the current time, 1426hrs.  Currently sitting on deck seven of our ship just waiting for them to cast off and hoist the mainsails, heave the anchors and get the cat-o-nine-tails out to encourage the rowing team to crack on with the crossing.

Yuki has given up on getting online for now and decided to sack out over 3 chairs and try and sleep.  It’s highly unlikely that will happen, now with our kids.

Speaking of the kids, they’ve been in the kids play area for about the last hour or so since we boarded the ship.  We’re sat right next to the kids area, I’m not sure if that was a good or bad idea.. haha we can see the kids but we can also HEAR them too.. do they sell mufflers for children?  If not they should, there’s a fortune waiting for the smart bugger that brings that to market!!

Right, enough for now.. we have about 7 hours until we land I think.. then it’s straight home with the kids and get them to bed.  We’ll deal with the aftermath of the clothing and bags tomorrow or something.  I’ll be ready for bed myself as son as I walk in the door I think.

Good bye Amsterdam and Holland, it’s been mostly good but had it’s moments as well.  Can’t say we’d hurry back again, but mostly that’s just because of the cost of visiting verses a couple of bad experiences.

check for an update Friday evening for day 4 and 5 combined plus i will get the loads of pics and vids uploaded …

Thansk for reahjfkndsjkn ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Posted by Wordmobi

Once there we found a nice kebab shop where we had what appears to have been a faeces free lunch, much to our delight. After lunch it onto a tram heading towards the Central Station. We ditches the tram at the Rokin and Grimburgwal stop. There was a tour boat leaving in 15 mins so we got out tickets and boarded for a 1hr tour. Sadly this boat didn’t do cover the canals through the Red Light district, however it was still very good. It has a GPS triggered multi lingual playout system for the commentary which was neat.

Once back, we embarked on a monumental walk which I will try to work out with google earth later… But it went from the Allard Pierson Museum NNE along Kloveniersburghwal, down Oude Hoogstraat, before entering the Red Light District we stopped for a snack.. Another experience of cost of living here.. 2 average sized chocolate dipped donuts with sprinkles, 1 chocolate topped waffle with crushed peanuts, a coffee, a bottle of Lemon Ice Tea and use of the bathroom … €14. Unreal!!

Now we set off to the Red Light District. I have to admit I was a bit bothered about having the kids there, just on principle. However, seeing how many other famines there were made me feel better… Two wrongs might not make a right but it give some validation haha. It was interesting and loads of ladies hanging out in their windows looking for punters to ‘do business’ with. The place was very clean and tidy. I’m sure its much more impressive at night though. We leave that area and head WNW through the Warmoesstraat district, mostly sex shops, sex screening and what not, then out past Beure van Berlage shop, sort of your Harrods of Amsterdam I guess, 6 floors of ass dragging shopping goodness.

We then joined Nieuwendijk and headed SSW on there till we reached Dam Square. We continued south along Kalverstraat till its very bitter end at the Kalvertoren and the Flower Marker… tulips, tulips, tulips…. And yup more tulips. Bulbs for mile.

Right, for those keeping locational tabs, we are now (still on foot I might add) at the corners of Singal (flower market), Heiligeweg, Koningsplein and the start of the Leidsestraat shopping area. We now walk SW for the full length of this area, starting to remember some of the muddle we found ourselves in yesterday looking for tram tickets.

Getting hungry again due to the now 4 or 4.hrs that have passed since walking..er I mean lunch. I’ getting a union signed up for my next holiday! We found a nice little Mexican place and ordered 5 starters, those left us stuffed. Total damage was only €31, a record for the week!!

Right, fed watered and leaked we were now able to get back to the hotel to get the kids a much needed bath. That simply consisting getting 2 trams with a change. Luckily we guessed right and even managed our stops without the need for one of our soon to be patented

‘oh shit missed the stop, never mind, get off at the next on and either walk back or tram back, screw that its too far just get a tram’

This time it all worked out perfectly, how said you can’t teach imports new tricks. The rest of the evening was uneventful back in the room. We should be fully chilled out and ready for tomorrow…..

Posted by Wordmobi

Having walked around for about 1.5mi looking at shops that apparently don’t open on on Monday until 11am, or if at all. One lessoned learned is NEVER go to Amsterdam on Monday, it’s shut!! We were looking for a tourist info booth, which should have been somewhere around the Diamant Museum, so we could buy a couple unlimited travel cards. Turns out they hide them from the tourists, never found either that was in the mile or so radius of each other, shocking. Finally managed to get some tram tickets, not the ones we wanted but whatever, got us out of the rain.

Then it was onto a tram heading towards the Central Station, looking for the Magna Plaza shopping centre. We’d missed the stop so had to fetch another tram going back the opposite direction to get back, we did that a lot today .  After the Magna Plaza, we wandered the entire length of Nieuwendijk Street shopping area.  Ok, HOLY CRAP that’s a lot of places to go in and out of.  There must be 500 stores in about 1/2 a mile.  We finally decided to stop for lunch, the kids were starving, we were too to be fair.  We wanted to get some of the Holland pancakes.  Right, this is where our day starts to take a major shit, pardon the French but you’ll see why.

(Continue reading… it’s a beaut)

So, we go into this place called “Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner”, not the most creative of resaurant names to say the least but it looked ok, it was busy which should, by most accounts suggest it’s half decent.  Right, we get ourselves sat down at a table, it was some cramped, I’m glad I’ve lost all that weight, we’d have never gotten in.  Next to us was a table of 5 girls, they finished up and cleared out.  We asked the waitress if we could move to that table as it had more room.  There was a hesitation on her part suggesting it might be a great inconvienence to her and the planet if we moved, but she said fine, just bring our own cutlery from the table we were at already (they hadn’t yet layed out the new table, only wiped it down), no problem.  Whilst at the first table we’d caught a whiff of what I thought was either dog or horse droppings.  Figured it was coming from outside through the open window.  The number of dogs walking around on leds in Amsterdam is quite impressive.  Anyhow, after we moved it was still there.  Anyhow, we get our lunch, which was alright I suppose.  The pancakes were really only crepes with our selected toppings, the kids had those.  I had a club sandwich, which was average and Yuki had a plate of chicken wings and chips.  Right, not long after getting our food the waitress notices a big turd on the floor near the 2 seat table next to ours.  She says, get this, … Is that yours?  Dead straight I might add.  I’d have considered saying yes, I’m often in the habit of pinching a loaf in the middle of a crowded restaurant, but figured it might well have been lost on her.  We answered, no, it most certainly wasn’t ours.  Now, this having been my first trip to Holland and admittedly not being fully versed in the local customs, she then accuses our kids of shitting on the floor.  Is it normal for children in Holland, or the parents of children in Holland to allow their kids to drop their britches and shit in restaurants? I’d really like to think it’s not.  Anyhow, now having noticed the aforementioned turd on the floor, it took the staff a good 8 mins to clean it up.  We’d finished up, only just, and Yuki mentions to one of the girls that was doing a fanstasic job with a mob to really spread it around the floor, she must be a farmer because a John Deere couldn’t have spread it better!!  Yuki askes her for the bill.  The women snaps back “Can’t you see I’m cleaning up your mess”  well shit (pardon the pun) that was a red rag to a bull for Yuki, she lost it a bit.. but rightly so.  She demanded to see a manager.  Things go from bad to worse now.  The women snaps back at Yuki to her demand to know who the manager is, she says “Ok, fine then, I’m the manager”, I’m guessing not.  There was a battle or words about how it WASN’T our group that crapped on the floor.

I spoke to a guy that was dressed quite nicely and asked who the owner or manager was, he claimed to be manager.  I explained how unimpressed I was about his staff member accusing my children of crapping on his floor and demanded to know what will be done about the bill and we weren’t happy.  He said “Ok ok ok no problem, it’s finished, no problem” I asked if that ment we don’t pay the bill and we can go? “Ok, no problem, you go”.  Right, with that we leave.   He then chases us down across the street demanding payment.  WHAT THE FUCK?!?!  We have a discussion about the incident.  He’s demanding we go back and pay the bill or he’ll “take me back” hmm I said “No, phone the police and I’ll speak to them about the matter”  He kept saying no to that idea.  After he phoned for 2 heavies to come and help back him up I decided it best if I phone the police myself.  There’s no way that’s going down.  Anyhow, the police turn up.  We explain everything to the cops, one goes off and speaks to the now 4 people (2 staff from the shit hole and 2 heavies).  He comes back to inform us we have to pay, the law is the law.  They were completely unwilling to listen to reason.  Fine, I fork over 42 Euro for what will amount to be the worse lunch of my entire life ANYWHERE.  I handed the money to the cop and told HIM to give it to the guy I wasn’t speaking to him, the cop looked upset by this, but at this point I didn’t really give a shit (because apparently earlier we already had).   They returned my change and we finally went on our way.

That experience alone has just about put me off this country completely.  I’m sure it’s isolated and we might not ever encounter something like that again, but geezus, customer serivce and respect for the customers?  ZERO!!!

Right, back to the rest of the day.  We continued our quest for the shops.  We’re very wet (it’s not really stopped raining much of the day), were pissed off at how we were treated, not only by the staff but by the cops as well I think, and just generally in a unhappy state.   Eventually we made it back to the hotel to chill out and warm up for a while before heading out looking for dinner.  I’d found a number of places close by using Google Maps on the phone, awesome application BTW, if you haven’t got it on your smart phone GET IT!!!  However, it failed to remind me it was Monday and most of them were shut.

We finally found a very nice Indonesian place called Desa (selected it from the 2 listed on that page).  It wasn’t busy really, but there was a large party that arrived with near perfect timing of all the food hitting the table so as to prevent them waiting about.   We selected one of the sort of all inclusive meals for 2, they said it would be more then enough to include the kids (free), boy howdy, they were right too.  It was like 12 or 13 dishes of food that came out with 4-6 pieces in each dish, but combined it was massive.  We brought heaps back to the hotel.  Well, anyhow, Yuki mentions to one of the servers that it’s Lisa’s birthday, expecting maybe a free ice cream or something but the waitress brought around a couple of gift bags (pics on flickr once we get back to a proper internet connection, free wifi works but only just), and inside each bag was a few little toy things for the kids and a load of sweets.  These looked to have been made up before hand to give out in these sorts of occasions.  No free ice cream but the kids didn’t care, did I mention they have one to each of the girls?  They were over the moon haha    Well that experience was a good start to making up for lunch, certainly the meal was 100000% better for the value, which BTW was only 8 Euro difference, shocking.

Back at the hotel the girls got into their bags to see what they had.  I have an un-bagging video which I’ll get up later at home haha

And with that, the day is pretty well over.  Going to check emails and what not then get to bed.  Sorry for the long winded posting today, but there was a lot to say for sure.

Once on-board we made out way to a window seat near the front of ‘Food City’ close to the kids play zone. We had breakfast on board then the kids disappeared to the play area only to return for nibbles and drinks and the occasional potty break. Just after lunch a magician came out to the kids play zone and put on a show for about and hour… He was like the pied piper, kids from far and wide appeared to watch his magic and balloon tricks.

The arrival and disembarkation was uneventful, as was the drive to Amsterdam, well mostly. A couple of wrong turns due to clarity issues of the GPS coupled with the giggling at it speaking road names of infinite length.

We attempted to get to the hotel to unload the car, that failed as there was no where to stop for blocks.. Literally. We decided to just got the Park and Ride at Olympisch Stadion. Here can park for just €6/day (24hrs). That comes with a free tram/bus pass to and from the PnR. We made it to Albert Cuypstraat on the tram and stopped to feed the kids at McD’s. Then it was about a 10 min walk to the hotel.

I failed to notify my over zealous bastard of a bank, who might I add will shut down my credit card at the very thought of a foreign purchase, shut down my card when the hotel attempted payment. A quickish call to them and several insults at them later had my card restored to service.

That pretty much brings me to now as I am typing this blog entry… Lisa is sleeping, Emma is fussing about and Yuki is on my laptop and that leaves me on my phone to blog that pretty much does it for day on in Holland. Stay tuned for the results of day 2, tomorrow.

Posted by Wordmobi

This was the posting that provided the answers that worked for me

http://epongebleue.bluesponge.com/?p=154

Rather then using wp-cron to check for email, I’ve decided to use the
systems cron process. Less load on the server I think.

Thanks very much.