For well over a year, I’ve imported the RSS feed from my blog to Facebook via the Notes application.  This particular feature has been flaky in the past and now appears to be completely broken despite cries to fix it.  I’m betting my bottom dollar that the poor implementation and maintenance of the blog import feature is deliberate on Facebook’s part: they want you to stay within their walled garden and keep all of your content solely within it.

Before last week, anything I posted on my blog would take up to three days to show up on Facebook.  Occasionally, I would make several posts and they would all show up out of order several days later.  To make posts show up immediately, I had to log in to Facebook and manually update the blog import.  Several days is an eternity for a service that depends on real time information, especially when I get 20 or 30 wall posts every hour.  Why should my blog posts be treated differently than wall posts?  Google has real time search for the entire internet, but Facebook can’t keep up with a handful of RSS feeds for new blog posts?  It’s obvious that Facebook could easily make an import feature that functions in real time and would allow you to import anything from anywhere.  So why haven’t they done this?

Now, however, the Facebook blog import feature appears to be completely broken.  After writing a blog post last week and then trying to manually import it, I got the following obtuse error from Facebook: “The blog/rss url you entered is not valid. “  I got no such errors from Feed Validator.  I also thought it could be because I had upgraded to WordPress 3.0, but a discussion thread revealed that plenty of people with other blogging services were also having trouble importing to Facebook.  After a week and a half, I have a hard time believing that Facebook would allow a bug like this to go ignored without some kind of acknowledgment or fix.  What are they up to?

My guess is that Facebook deliberately broke the blog import feature, thinking that those who used it would just forget about it and start posting to Facebook directly.  If true, it’s quite the subversive attempt to gain even more control over my information.  I’m certainly not going to abandon my blog just because I can’t import it into Facebook.  My guess is that the more restrictions like this that Facebook imposes, the more incentivized people will be to abandon their accounts.  Changing privacy policies at the drop of a hat may not be enough to convince Facebook users to leave, but I’m betting that restricting users’ control of their own data will be the last straw.

“Sooner or later, one of the bicyclists who refuse to use the bike path built along Route 5 is going to get hurt. This time of year the road is jammed with weekend motorcycle groups and other vehicles. Route 5 has a narrow shoulder that provides little room for cyclists when two vehicles are approaching/passing each other. Serious cyclists consider the bike path unsuitable, but that isn’t going to change the laws of physics when an inattentive driver spills his or her coffee while meeting an oncoming dump truck.”

I’ve heard that commercial driving schools emphasize “the laws of physics” by instilling in drivers that vehicles with greater mass have the de facto right of way.  This seems to be an excuse to allow some people to drive like morons just because their vehicles are larger.  It doesn’t matter whether you’re driving a semi or a tricycle, everyone has to take responsibility not to drive recklessly or hit anything.  The above comment was quickly followed up today with:

“I promise to never ride along Route 5 again. Obviously people who drive that route should not be operating machinery, such as a car. Please do not go to the other side of the county since that’s where I live and have children. The thought of someone like the person who commented recently on a road anywhere near my children scares me.”

The problem is that most drivers are like the first commenter: they are more worried about “spilling his or her coffee” than driving safely.  Everyone is too distracted by personal items like mobile phones, radios, and in-car DVD players to pay attention, so when something happens (a bike suddenly pops into view), they see it as a violation of their personal space.  In driving a manual transmission, I find it impossible to do anything but drive, so maybe a resurgence in manuals will make things better.  However, I really wonder if I’ll make it through my life without being involved in a serious car accident.  Whether it be biking, running, walking, or driving, I experience more and more close calls every week and one of these days I might not be so lucky.

In the book, Kurzweil says that soon computers will be everywhere, even in the walls.  Within the sensor network community, I’ve heard similar arguments dozens of times.  The real question is: why do we need computers in the walls?  What is the underlying motivation for having computing intelligence in your clothes, in your desk, or in your dishwasher?  What can sensor networks do to improve your life?  Right now, it’s really hard to say.

Another researcher in the sensor network community likened sensor network research ideas as “hammers looking for nails.”  That is, solutions are invented before the problems are defined.  With emerging technologies, its hard to say immediately what their benefits are.  An interesting quote from a guy in the augmented reality community depicts how a new technology can sound cool but has little practical value:

“The first movies that ran could show anything, like an elephant in the zoo,” Meier said. “100 years ago it wasn’t about the elephant, it was ‘that thing is moving!’ Eventually it became more about the content…”

I would say that the current state of sensor networks is much like the above movie analogy.  Computing in the walls sounds cool, but what can small, networked devices in your walls do that really matters?  Few research papers offer any practical applications, since most sensor network papers focus on small fundamental problems: radio interference and MAC protocols, routing issues, and primitive event detection with sensors.  The few applications that exist in research papers aren’t exciting: activity recognition with body sensor networks (e.g. sitting, standing, walking), vehicle detection and tracking, and human health monitoring.

A few of these sensor network applications have made it into the mainstream media.  Lightweight health monitoring sensors may sound boring, but could provide motivation to stay in shape when your daily living habits are compared online with your peers.  Another project aims to put health monitoring sensors in soldiers’ underwear, with the aim that the underwear can release drugs and treat wounds.  One idea from IBM promises to have a computer at road intersections notify cars to turn off their engines and save fuel at lights.  Lastly, the smart home concept promises to network household appliances together to notify users of energy usage and to reduce energy consumption during peak time periods.

Whether the above ideas are really exciting or constitute the limits of sensor network capability is another matter.  I’m hoping that some really cool stuff will emerge in the future.  My bet is on participatory sensing and peer to peer collaboration with mobile phone-based systems, but like most people, I don’t have any specifics.

Out of 746,369 fans, the Facebook API randomly selected my fiance as one of the 10 lucky fans to have his or her name, picture, profile link, and fan status broadcasted to the world on a website other than Facebook itself.  Or maybe it wasn’t random, but reloading the page selects a new set of 10 fans, and I don’t think I’ve ever looked at one of these before and noticed someone I knew.  How many of these 746,369 fans are even aware that by “liking” PostSecret, this information can be accessible to anyone on the internet and not just from Facebook?  Unclear and ever changing privacy policies are just one of several significant problems with the shift to trusting third parties for nearly all of your data.

Everyone is becoming increasingly reliant on social networking sites, cloud computing, webmail, software as a service, and content distribution platforms to handle their data.  Fewer and fewer people are storing their data on their own computer and instead are forking it over to third parties in droves.  Entrusting a third party with your data raises three chief concerns: reliability, privacy, and freedom.  First, how can you be sure a third party web service will always provide you access to your data?  Next, how can you be sure your data is protected by a third party according to its privacy policy?  Lastly, can do do as you please with the data you have submitted to a third party?  The answers to these questions are dubious at best, but there are some steps anyone can take to minimize the problems and regain control of your information.

Reliability

Gmail seems to have a lot more problems than it used to.  There’s been several occasions in the last year where I could not log in to retrieve my mail because of some server-side problem.  Furthermore, I’ve been getting that yellow “still working…” bar flashing across the top of the Gmail page quite a bit, making my mail experience all the more frustrating.  It makes me wonder, what incentive does Google have to ensure the integrity of your mail?  It’s a free service, so if Gmail goes down, it isn’t as if they are going to lose revenue due to paying customers pulling out.  Indirectly, ad revenue will decrease, but there is no direct motivation for Google to provide you, the user, with your email 100 percent of the time.

Without direct control over my email, I’m more or less living in fear of a sudden and long lasting outage, unable to read, send, or receive email.  What if Google, intentionally or not, decides to block access to my account?  A similar incident occurred to one Google Groups user who was locked out for three years until finally getting in touch with a customer service rep from Google after upgrading his account to a paid service.  With a direct incentive to provide reliable service, Google was able to quickly fix the problem in this case.   As with most web service models, users are not the customer, advertisers are, so you get what you pay for.

Privacy

When users submit data to a third party on the internet, privacy is anything but assured.  As evidenced by the latest Facebook scandal, privacy policies mean nothing and are changed at will.  Information thought to be private is sold to advertisers or suddenly exposed to the internet as was done with Facebook users’ likes and fan affiliations.  What would happen if Gmail decided to open users’ email accounts for all to read?  Users don’t have much clout to stop such changes from happening, especially without providing a monetary incentive for third parties to keep their word.   Incidents such as these show that third parties care little about users and their wishes as to how their data should be handled.  Users themselves are probably the only ones that can be trusted with their own data, for third parties see user data only as a commodity that can be bought and sold.

The worst case imaginable is a third party with an ax to grind against one of its users, deliberately ignoring its privacy policies to turn users’ private information against them.  Unfortunately, this happens quite frequently.  In the Duke Lacrosse incident, an unnamed source, most likely a Duke employee with administrative access to students’ email accounts voluntarily turned over to police an inflammatory email written by one of the lacrosse team members.  If a university cannot be trusted with keeping student emails private, than how can anyone expect a free web service to keep its word?  Even Mark Zuckerberg himself has been accused of accessing private information stored by Facebook users.

Freedom

While privacy explores the misuse of user data by third parties, another aspect defines the lack of control users have over data they submit to third parties: freedom.  While most social networking sites, webmail, and other web services assert that any user data stored on their services is still owned by the user, this seems to be anything but true.  Handing over data to a third party effectively gives that third party complete control over how that data can be used.  Anyone who has ever attempted to completely erase their Facebook profile can attest to how little control they have over their own information: it’s nearly impossible.  Ever tried to export from Facebook your status updates, wall posts, news stories, and photos?  That’s impossible, too.

Along with Facebook, the iTunes/Apple content distribution system also provides an excellent case study of how third parties effectively have complete control over user data.  As users invest more time, money, and more of their own content into such systems, the harder it is to switch to a competing system or quit altogether.  Like Facebook, the Apple/iTunes model prevents data portability and forces users to stick with Apple products even if better products exist.  Since users cannot move their purchased apps from one platform to another, they are forced to stick  with Apple.  To return to the Facebook analogy, Diaspora is billed as a completely open source and distributed social networking system.  This social networking service could be argued as being “better” than Facebook, but lock-in will keep users on Facebook.  There’s no way for Facebook users to export their friend lists, photos, and wall posts to Diaspora, so everyone will just stay on Facebook.

Any Solutions?

There aren’t really any clear cut solutions to this increasing dependence on third party web services.  The best move is to decrease reliability on such third parties.  I’ve tried running my own mail server, but outgoing email is blocked by my ISP in fear that I’m a spam relay.  Downloading mail with a client is an option so at least I have copies on my own computer of everything I’ve sent and received in case Gmail were to go down.  With respect to privacy, I’ve pretty much assumed that everything I post on the internet will be available to everyone, regardless of privacy controls.  Anything I don’t want out there, I don’t post.  To maintain at least some control over my own data, I host my own blog and ensure that I have a copy of everything I write and submit to sites like Facebook, Google Docs, and Dropbox.  My guess is that as the internet evolves, and especially with the new and annoying “cloud computing” buzzword, this reliance on third parties is only going to become greater.

Since the release of Windows 7, I’ve heard plenty of good reviews about this latest Windows version and I decided to give it a try.  A month ago, I installed it on my MSI netbook so I could travel lightweight and give a paper presentation using PowerPoint.  Shortly thereafter, Ubuntu released its latest version into the wild and after using both Windows and Linux for about a month, I’ve been able to come up with some strong and weak points on both.  Some of my comments apply to Windows and Linux in general and not just to these latest versions or distributions.

Windows 7

Pros

• A solid UI.  I’m a real fan of the Aero theme, system fonts, and improved start menu.  The taskbar really takes the cake by using icons and clustering multiple instances of the same program.  Hovering over the taskbar gives a cool preview of each open window.
• Fast.  My netbook with Windows 7 feels just as responsive as it did when it ran Linux.  Boot times are a little slower, however.
• Robustness.  I had no difficulty with the Windows 7 install on my netbook and Microsoft even provides a Windows 7 CD to USB image utility for netbooks.  Unlike my Ubuntu experience, there aren’t any weird hacks to go through in order to get your display or wireless connection working correctly following a fresh install.  Furthermore, I haven’t encountered any system crashes and Windows seems to keep any malfunctioning program from taking down the whole system.
• Good hardware support.  I plug in a camera and it’s automatically recognized and drivers are installed from the internet.  I plug in an external monitor or projector and the correct model is detected and my desktop is extended on to it with the correct resolution.  It’s great for presentations since there isn’t much fiddling with the projector or Control Panel settings to get everything looking good.
• Software availability.  Everything has a Windows version, even most open source software.  I find that most developers put more effort into Windows versions since that’s what most people are running.  For example, I’ve had fewer crashes and slowdowns with the Windows versions of Firefox and Skype.  The Windows version of Skype is also much more polished than its Linux counterpart.  Furthermore, many software programs are only available on Windows.  MS Office, despite its incredible price tag, is still far superior to Open Office, and of course, only runs on Windows.
• Games.  Most of the latest AAA titles are available for Windows, a few might be available for Mac, and I’ve heard of only one or two released right off the bat for Linux.  If you’re into PC gaming, Windows is the only way to go.

Cons

• Lack of a centralized software repository.  This makes it a real pain to download and  install software since I have to go to a separate website for each program I want to install, find the download page, and click through a bunch of installation dialogs.  Even worse is that nearly every Windows program I install runs a background process on startup that constantly checks for updates and bogs down my system.  Also because of this lack of a centralized repository, programs inconsistently install themselves in many different places.
• Difficult to configure system settings.  The Control Panel is a real maze of links, buttons, and dialogs which are dumbed down at the highest level and utterly confusing once I drill down into specific settings.  Some settings can’t even be accessed with the Control Panel: for example, I still find myself using msconfig.exe to remove unwanted startup items.
• Windows Update is still very intrusive.  A large number of updates require me to reboot and will display a nag timer forcing me to do so.  I really don’t like the OS to get in the way and nag at me.  Some of the system updates take quite awhile to install and can bring my system to a crawl.
• Libraries.  This feature, which wasn’t in XP, is similar to Unix symlinks.  A library clusters together files and folders from several locations in the filesystem, making it unclear where the files are really located.  I would prefer that all my music, movies, or PowerPoint slideshows be stored in a single location in the directory structure such that I can easily back everything up or find something via Windows Explorer.  Windows seems to want you to not have any knowledge about its directory structure and instead rely on searches and libraries.
• Developer Tools.  This is the exception to the software availability and quality rule.  I’ve been using Eclipse for Linux and Windows and it works well enough on both platforms with plugins for Subversion and LaTeX editing.  However, other tools such as a basic text editor, LaTeX compiler, and command line tools such as make are either lacking or nonexistent.  I find it much easier to work with the command line than a GUI when creating plots with Gnuplot and documents with LaTeX.  I can quickly switch from one thing to the next without clicking through a whole pile of menus and dialogs.

Ubuntu 10.04

Pros

• A centralized software repository.  This is the main reason I like Debian and its variants so much. “apt-get install” will give me any program I want and provide automatic updates.  Removal is just as easy.
• Fast boot times.  On my 3 year old laptop, Ubuntu is up and running in 30 seconds or less from the moment I hit the power button.
• Easy to configure and control.  Adjusting a system setting is easily performed from a GUI tool or from the command line.  Configurations are stored in well documented text files as opposed to the nasty Windows Registry.  It’s really easy to track down where a program’s install directory is located and tweak something.
• A customizable UI.  The sheer number of themes available is astounding, with Compiz providing some really cool desktop visual effects that rivals anything Windows has to offer.
• Enthusiastic user base (support).  I’ve found that tons other Linux enthusiasts are more than willing to help with problems on message boards and websites.  For things I’ve had trouble with, a quick google search or message board post will return tons of answers with other people who had the exact same problem and had already solved it.  With Windows issues, answers seem a lot more difficult to come by and the user base isn’t nearly as friendly.
• Developer Tools.  Just about everything under the sun is readily available for developers in Linux, including a plethora of compilers, text editors, and command line tools.  Working from the command line makes things a snap compared to painstakingly navigating through different dialogs and menus.

Cons

• New software versions take time to be added to the repository.  For example, Firefox 3.6 has been out for months but was only recently included in the 10.04 Lucid Lynx release.  Prior to that, I had to compile and install Firefox 3.6 from source.
• Installation headaches still persist.  With every Ubuntu release, something doesn’t work post-install.  With 10.04, it was my video drivers.  During the upgrade process from 9.10, the installer whined about my video drivers and supposedly aborted the install.  Upon rebooting my computer, however, it was clear that the install had not aborted and my display was completely messed up.  After rebooting again, Ubuntu downloaded and installed the required video drivers automatically.  Also, Ubuntu now tries on boot to mount a remote drive in my /etc/fstab for which I don’t have a saved key, halting the boot process until I manually override the mounting process.
• Software quality and robustness.  Productivity software, such as Open Office, isn’t nearly as capable or as featureful as Microsoft Office.  I’ve had trouble with Flash causing browser crashes and other programs crashing all on their own which run stably in Windows.  I’ve had a heck of a time figuring out why some fonts are rendered terribly and look blurry in some programs, among other things.  More effort should be placed on creating polished products in order for open source software to really take off.
• Lacking hardware support.  This goes with the above bullet: I plug in an external monitor or projector and I still have to fidget with resolutions and positioning to get everything to work.  Suspending to disk often borks the external monitor configuration and then I have to do it all over again.

In all, I can’t say that either the latest Windows or Linux versions are better.  Windows provides a more robust and polished solution, while Linux gives more power and control to its users.  I find Linux to be a better choice for development, but Windows is the clear winner for gaming.  Both Windows 7 and Ubuntu 10.04 run reasonably fast — Windows 7 does quite well on my netbook, but Ubuntu clearly takes the cake with boot times.  Until open source software takes quality up a notch and Windows provides a better development environment, I’ll probably be dual booting, running virtual machines, or using multiple computers with both operating systems.

For most of the time since its introduction, the suggestion feature did what it was supposed to:  recommend me people that I knew that I wasn’t Facebook friends with.  The suggestion feature occasionally listed someone I knew well, but usually listed people I knew of but was not good friends with.  Most suggestions were pretty understandable: people I had a few classes with or people that were track/cross country team members after I had exhausted my eligibility.  A few people in the computer science department were thrown in there as well.  For awhile it also recommended family members way out on some distant fork of my family tree.

Suddenly, within the past week or two, the friend suggestions have become very weird.  Now I don’t even recognize the names of the people it suggests.  Currently, the suggestions feature recommends 27 items: 2 groups and 25 people.  Of the 25 people:

• I know 0 (again, I don’t even recognize any of the names)
• 1 is male; the other 24 are female (do I not have enough female friends?)
• 13 have a hometown or current city in Virginia
• 2 have Virginia Beach listed as their hometown or current city
• 1 is on a collegiate sports team
• 23 have an affiliation with William and Mary
• 19 are undergraduates at William and Mary
• 12 have friends in common

Obviously, the intent is to try to match me with other people with the same geographic location, school, and interests/activities, but it isn’t working.  The school and geographic regions may be appropriate, but it isn’t enough.  The gender and undergraduate distributions are a bit odd, and only half have any friends in common.  I know there are plenty of better matches than the ones currently suggested to me, as evidenced by the suggestions made over the past months.  I do remember that a week or so ago, my profile suddenly changed after some kind of update with the way interests, work, and school items are handled.  The recommendation changes may have something to do with that update if some of those items are no longer considered in the suggestions algorithm.

My guess is that Facebook uses something like k-NN or Bayesian classification to figure out the friend/group/fan page suggestions.  Given a common set of feature vectors for each profile, Facebook may determine the k closest matches, where k=27 in this case.   It may even use the profile features of my current friends to figure out potential friends.  Nevertheless, it seems their algorithm needs improvement.

It is annoying, as well as a safety hazard, for bicyclists to ride along Route 5 when taxpayers spent $1 million per mile to have a bike path constructed. Cannot James City have an ordinance that bicycling on Route 5 is prohibited on all sections where there is a parallel bike path?

Yesterday, there was this response:

In response to the person complaining about bicyclists along Route 5, I’m sorry to have offended you. I didn’t vote for the bike path boondoggle, so please don’t crucify me for not using it. I am a competitive cyclist and find that the folks using the bike path don’t pay attention to what is going on in front or behind them. Also, the path is narrow, and riding at speed along it would create high risk. Thus I ride Route 5, which does have enough room for both cyclists and road vehicles, at least for folks who are competent at driving. I have a right to use the road, so please don’t yell out your car window at me anymore. As with many of the topics in the Last Word, aren’t there better things to do with your time?

This wasn’t me, but I have a good idea as to who it is and I completely agree with their statement.  While I haven’t been on Route 5/John Tyler in awhile, I have received plenty of grief from drivers in that area.  It’s as if the bike path serves only to make them angrier.

Monday 4/19/2010

On Monday I did my last run through the paths and trails behind KTH.  I caught up to another guy who was running at a pretty good clip.  We ran together for a bit, but then it was time for me to turn around.

The rest of the day was spent in a classroom at KTH set up by the faculty for those at the conference who were stuck.  In the room, I got some work done and checked the forecasts for the ash cloud.  The cloud had left Scandinavia for the time being, allowing Monday’s Stockholm – Chicago flight to leave, the same flight I was scheduled to take Tuesday.  Another guy I knew from the conference had stopped by and said his mom was able to leave that afternoon on an Icelandair flight to New York.  I took those two things as a good sign, but I was still skeptical that we would be able to leave.

Throughout the conference and the following days, I was quite impressed with the KTH campus.  The lecture halls were very nice with stadium-style seating.  Smaller classrooms provided large desks with plenty of workspace.  With 8,000 undergraduates and 7,000 graduate students, it accounts for nearly a third of Sweden’s university-level education.  It was quite larger than William and Mary, with many large lecture halls we used for the conference sessions, as well as large hi-rise style buildings.  Still, it was condensed into a space much smaller than many U.S. universities of its size.  I have no doubt that the excellent facilities were made possible in part due to generous government funding.

That night, my adviser and I ate at a Thai place down the street from the hotel.  When we returned, we packed everything up and noticed on the airline website that we were supposed to report to the airport by 7AM for check in.  Since it appeared that web check in was disabled, the airline probably wanted everyone at the airport early to check everyone in with plenty of time.

Tuesday 4/20/2010

On Tuesday I awoke at 5:30AM and miraculously discovered that Stockholm Arlanda was open and that our flight was still scheduled to leave.  I emailed Sarah back home that we were heading to the airport and she hadn’t even gone to sleep yet since it wasn’t even midnight.  My adviser and I left the hotel by 6AM.

The sun woke me up nearly every morning during the trip and we gained at least 30 minutes of daylight in the time I was in Stockholm.  There were automatic awnings that would cover the hotel room window in the afternoons and I realized that their purpose was to block the midnight sun during the summer months.  On the day we left, the sun woke me up at 5AM and the night before, it was twilight well after 8PM.

Another interesting note is that everyone in Stockholm seemed to follow the same schedule.  When we left for the airport yesterday at 6AM, there was barely anyone out on the streets.  However, during the conference the week before, when I would go out to run at 7AM, the streets were packed with commuters.  On the weekends, the city and KTH were deserted.  Even the university library was closed on the weekends and nearly empty after 6PM.

We made our way to the subway and then to the high speed airport train, which got us to the airport just before 7AM.  The international terminal had rows of check in counters, all but two were deserted: our flight and a Continental flight.  A TV crew was interviewing a few sparse passengers about the crisis.  Fortunately, unlike the massive Continental check-in line, our line was much shorter.  Apparently, many booked on our flight were Swedes who decided to stay home.

After being issued boarding passes, we hung out in the deserted gate area.  My adviser and I talked to a guy sitting next to us who worked for a company that produces industrial-grade robots and sensors.

Amazingly, we got on the plane and it left within 30 minutes of its scheduled departure time.  There were plenty of open seats and I was able to get a nice window seat with nobody sitting next to me.  There was plenty of legroom again, which made the 9 hour flight bearable.  The pilot announced that we passed over 100km from the volcano, but nobody could see anything out the window.  We passed over Norway, Iceland, Greenland, and Labrador, all of which consisted of rock, snow, and ice.  We passed over so much snow and rock, it made me realize how much of the world is probably uninhabitable and how fortunate I am to live somewhere relatively warm.

Though we left late, we arrived in Chicago only a few minutes after our scheduled landing time.  We had less than an hour and a half for our connection to Norfolk.  I rushed through immigration and customs and got on the train to the main United terminal since I had no boarding pass for the next flight.  Once in the main terminal, I tried to check in using an automated kiosk, which told me to see an agent.  After several minutes in line and little time left before the flight departed, I got to see agent.  The agents were interested to hear firsthand what it was like in Europe and Scandinavia.  When I got my boarding pass, I realized it was at a gate at a faraway concourse and ran with my bags for what seemed like a mile and a half to one of the last gates in the terminal.  With the clock ticking down, I raced around people in the jammed terminal passing gate after gate until I finally got to the Norfolk flight.

Oddly, when I got to the gate, my adviser was already there.  He had told me to go ahead after leaving the Stockholm flight because immigration might be slow.  Apparently, there was another check-in desk for United in the arrival hall for the international terminal, which would have sped things up for me.  Regardless, we both made the Norfolk flight, and by yesterday evening, I was home.

Sarah came to pick me up and on the way home I realized how nice the weather was: warm sun and leaves on the trees with green everywhere.  On the national news, there was coverage of people stuck in airports in Europe and in the United States, but more flights were running.

Overall, it was a good trip.  The conference went very well and I saw many good presentations relevant to my field.  I met a lot of new people from everywhere, and I saw a lot of Stockholm.  I really liked Stockholm — except for the cold, I could see myself living there, which is saying a lot since I don’t really want to live in a city.  The excellent infrastructure with subways, high-speed trains, fast and cheap internet, separated bike lanes, and large parks made Stockholm very appealing.  The people were very friendly and accommodating to visitors.

The getting stuck part was frustrating, but as evidenced by the news, it could have been much worse.  There are many others who are still stranded, but hopefully everyone will be back where they want to be soon.  I think a few things happened that really saved the day: 1) not booking any connecting flights in Europe, 2) using Skype to call the U.S. airline reservation number immediately after hearing the news about the volcano to get a new flight, 3) sticking to the rebooked flight and not attempting to take a train or bus to another airport in Europe, and 4) getting lucky with the ash cloud in Scandinavia.  Skype was a real help since we had no working mobile phone and international calls were cheap.

As my adviser and I discussed, this trip is one we’ll remember for quite some time.

Yesterday, we took a trip to the Vasa Museum, which houses an absolutely massive wooden warship.  The ship was built by Sweden in the 1600s in its fight against Poland and sank as soon as it put out to sea.  It was recovered in the 1950s and restored over a 20 year period before being placed inside the museum.

I’ve seen plenty of wooden sailing ships at home, most were very small, but the Vasa is a giant.  Its size was probably part of the reason for its downfall — the prevailing argument is that it was too top heavy and did not have enough ballast.  From the keel to the top of the mainmast must be well over 100 feet: the ship seems like the Spruce Goose of its time.

Last night I went out with more stuck conference attendees to a bar near the waterfront.  The average price was about $10/pint, but “pints” here are a noticeably larger 0.5L (16.9oz), not 12oz as in the United States.  The place I went to had a large selection of beers, but not too many I hadn’t heard of.

Today we went out to the Royal Palace, meeting up with Alexandra, but this time we saw the changing of the guard, toured the insides of the palace, and the crown jewels.  Interestingly, the woman operating the ticket office commented on my William and Mary ID, for it seems the concept of royalty has a different meaning in places that have monarchs.  The changing of the guard involved a military marching band playing a few songs and marching around.  The Royal Apartments were ornate, but were no Versailles, although a room in the Royal Palace was modeled after the Hall of Mirrors.  The Treasury, which contained some of the crown jewels, was most interesting, with a guide explaining the historical significance of different crowns, maces, and orbs.

Since Alexandra was also stuck here with a canceled flight, we walked back to the train station to see if she could get a ticket back in the direction towards her school.  She estimated the travel time would be about 30 hours.  The train station in Stockholm was packed, with the ticket office handing out numbers to those who wanted to purchase tickets.  The line was probably several hours long, so we just left.  More than likely, trains towards Copenhagen were sold out for several days.  It’s fortunate that Europe has the rail system it does, for if air travel was stopped in the United States for more than a few days, it would be much worse.

Later, we went back over towards where the Vasa museum was to find the zoo.  We circled around it but could not find a way in.  Finally, when we reached the entrance, it was 10 minutes from closing.  We walked back along the waterfront and I headed back to the hotel.

While I was out today, I ran into several people from the conference.  I saw one guy from the hotel who mentioned that he knew of people heading south into Spain or Morocco to fly to South Africa and then catch a flight from there to the United States.  I ran into some others from the University of Illinois in a grocery store who predicted the winds would shift just in time to allow their Thursday flight to leave.

At this point, we will wait and see what happens with our scheduled Tuesday flight.  If it doesn’t go, then we will probably start to think about alternatives.  A group from the conference is considering chartering a bus to Madrid, but their airspace has been closed intermittently and I’ve heard the hotels there are booked solid.  There is also a ferry that runs from Denmark to Iceland: we could take a train to Denmark, take the ferry to Iceland, and fly back home from there.  Surprisingly, Iceland’s airport is allowing flights to and from the United States.

If we do consider finding an alternate route home, we will have to consider the costs of leaving a city that we know well with residents that speak good English and are pretty tolerant of foreigners.  We also have to consider the probability of something else going wrong when traveling overland long distances, connecting on different trains or even buses.  Bus and especially rail routes are extremely packed because of all that’s happened, with many being sold out for days.  By the time we travel a week and a half to get home via land and sea, the airspace may have opened up anyway.

At this point, time is starting to pass.  I haven’t done any work and I really should, at least to keep my mind off of being stuck here.  My adviser and I may go to KTH to find an office and get something done.  At the end of the week I am supposed to meet with my fiancee and the pastor for our wedding but I might not be able to go.  I wonder what would happen if I were stuck here for months or even for the rest of my life (I’m sure this won’t happen, but I am thinking hypothetically).  However, my sister has lived abroad for quite some time, so I’m sure I could adapt like she has.