The art of searching

The Internet is available to a wide audience for at least 15-20 years now. And you'd think that younger generations wouldn't have any problems using it. It has an answer for every question you could possibly ask. Whether the answer you find is right or wrong, well that's another thing, but rest assured someone already asked the question and somebody came up with the answer already.

Then why is that, people cannot utilize this amazingly huge source of information? I graduated from the University 7 years ago, and I remember phrases like 'Google it!' or 'Google is your friend!' were quite common even such a long time ago. And since then Google become much better finding stuff. And eventually search mechanisms and algorithms evolved a lot in general! So when you're limited to an information that is only available on a wiki not open to the public, therefore Google didn't index it, but it has a search engine, why on Earth don't you try searching for the answer?

As I see younger generations don't get the art of searching at all. Like it doesn't even come to their mind as a possibility. Even though modern search engines talk English! Like I can search for 'Find barber shops near Palo Alto, CA' and I get a God damn map with all the barber shops listed in Google Maps or Yelp or Yellow Pages, or whatever.

All they can do is share their embarrassing personal information, nude pictures and videos etc. on the web... And like anything that comes their way...

So when I ask a question: Is it possible to set access restrictions on a type instance level in our beloved eCommerce system, and I give you a week to find the answer, and you come back with, no its not possible, and we already started to write custom code to make it possible, then a huge question mark appears above my head as I raise my eyebrow. Our beloved eCommerce system is market leading for God's sake, how on Earth doesn't it support that?! Is this client of ours so special?! No way! So, what do I do? I doubt your findings and log onto that above mentioned wiki site, type in the search box 'access rights' (Gee, rocket science! I would never ever could think of that! OMG! Genius! Pff...) My first result is the documentation page of the latest release explaining the access rights in the system. The title of the page: 'Access Rights'. What a coincidence, I was looking for exactly this! After the first paragraph which is called 'Introduction' and what I scrolled through, there's a detailed list with explanation on the different level of access rights - which are only four - supported by the system out of the box. The third one says: 'instance level', and its description says it is possible and also comes up with an example at the same time. Research time, 45 seconds, got the answer.

Dumbasses! ;)

Re: Sir, your flight is cancelled

Good news. I wrote to customer service. I've received a pretty long email answer, and I'm honored with the MQMs for the flight I didn't make plus I'm getting 19k bonus miles as compensation for my inconvenience. The email was pretty polite contained standard text as well as customized parts, too. Now I feel bad for the language I used in my complaints (even though it was polite!).

My new creed

Yeah, we're watching the That '70s show on Netflix...

But come on, Red has a point here!! I decided to be a father like him. Maybe not that strict but will try to follow his footsteps. Now, I just have to have children and we're all  right!

Local old timer car show

Well, there's not too much to write about this one. I love old timers. My all time greatest love is a Dodge Charger from between 1971 and '74. Everyone likes the 1969 one because of General Lee. To me it has too sharp edges. The ones made between '71 and '74 more curvy and groovy.

So the Credit Union that owns our credit on the Charger had an old timer show this weekend. It was a typical American small town get together supporting the local schools and having hot dogs and watching cars.

And here I share the pictures I took with you:


You can see my favorite, too in the compilation above. Unfortunately it was not presented very nicely and it was not restored to its original form. But was very nice!

Last night in Oakland

Americans are isolated indeed. The four sources to get their news: Internet, radio, television and newspaper.

Internet
You can go to any of the big television network's webpage or to a major newspaper webpage to get the latest news. You'll end up having more or less the same you'd see on TV. Maybe they're fresher or more detailed, but the coverage is the same.

Radio

Forget about it. News on the radio doesn't even exist. It is more into things like if Mattress Discounters or Sleeptrain has special offers this week. It seems that Americans only have problems with their mattresses. Everything else is just about fine...

Television and Newspaper
To me they are very similar. Same freshness (at least 12 hours delay), and same content.

And what is that content? "And after this, your local news!" News are called local news for a reason. While the USA is a huge country, there's no real nationwide television channel. Networks like CNBC, ABC or Fox work as a franchise company. There're local TV stations (KTVU for Fox here in the Bay for instance) having their own little programs and the programs of their franchise mothers. And news are usually (well maybe except for CNN and Fox News) made locally. In most cases this is the only thing that's being produced by the channel's local team. And people here want, or for some reason all the editors think this exclusively what they want: local news.

So a guy in living in the Detroit area will see something totally different then someone living in Northern California. The overlap I believe should not exceed 3-5%.

So you can here about what is happening around you and you can learn about America's wars. That's all of it. For anything else you need to go to bbcnews.com or CNN. (But you won't. On CNN they talk 3 hours long about the same thing looping the same video over and over again. There's not that much news around here.) The content of a typical morning news  show here is about 80% of the time about Oakland. Oakland is probably one of the worst places to live here in the US. (According to Wikipedia: "During the first decade of the 21st century Oakland has consistently been listed as one of the most dangerous large cities in the United States.") So we hear about gang wars, domestic disturbance and so on. The next 15% of the content is a bit more pleasant. I remember seeing on TV the Hungarian national news from the 50's and 60's (repeats! not live :D) was something similar. When they went to next-door-lady/guy and asked his/her opinion about something totally unimportant. Like, in Sunnyvale there're too many mosquitoes, and some citizens are deeply worried about the chemicals city officials are about to deploy to lower their numbers. And in the meantime even a cat stuck on the tree next door... The last 5% is about Iraq or Iran.

Wonder why Americans know so little about the world? Blame their news!

My typical morning news at home was about Budapest, the country, Europe and rest of the world. What Sarkozy said, what Angela Merkel said. If Tony Blair agrees with them and Obama disagrees. Etc.

But here even that's different, because everything needs sugar coating:

It's a sugar coated apple: candy apple

Sir, your flight is cancelled

In this country, you have to know your rights, and when you know the other party made a mistake, you have to act tough and you'll get what you should deserve. Otherwise you get sh*t and you'll be ripped off. I did get $6000 discount on the Mustang after all...

I'm getting better at this! B-)

This week I went to a client in Philadelphia. Well, they were cheap and booked us on connecting flights, and in a hotel an hour away, and I got in bed at 1am and was at their place working at 8:30am. But that's another story. But I was damn tired and wanted to come back home. But the flight on the way back got cancelled. We were taxiing for an hour, and our plane was literally the next one to take off when all the lights except for the exit signs went off. So the captain decided to take the plane back to the gate. I had a connection...

Well, not anymore.

When British Airways left my luggage in London 4 years ago, I got a $100 Visa prepaid card (with ATM code so I could cash it in) to buy clothes and toothbrush etc until they get my luggage over by tomorrow. When my flight got cancelled because of the Icelandic volcano eruption last year, Lufthansa put me on another flight a week later (as I chose). They didn't have to, it was a vis major. They could just refund my ticket (about 19€, the other 150€ was airport fees and taxes) and the rest is my problem, but they didn't...

Now that's customer service, isn't it?!

Need help? Fight for it, otherwise you ain't getting one!

Delta seems to treat its passengers/customers as livestock. If it was a mayhem, i could sleep in the airport and be happy if they put me on a standby list on any of their flights. But this time, it was their fault, so I'm in the winning position. The law backs me up!

So we had to get off the plane, people were frustrated. The flight wasn't cancelled yet, however we were said that it didn't look good. I've missed my connection in Minneapolis, so I was aiming for the re-booking right away. I need to mention that I have a Gold/Elite status with the airline, and this is the treatment what I got. Imagine somebody who's not even part of their loyalty program!

So, I acted though, so the guy at the ticket counter didn't even try to put me on a standby list. Another passenger next to me in the other line, who was not that loud, got a standby list ticket, on a flight the next day ad 6am. I bet he didn't sleep much that night and I bet he didn't make it :-( So I got a U.S. Airways confirmed ticket to San Francisco, the next day. Direct flight. So did my colleague, thanks to my acting. Accommodation? "The hotel is full, sir." Well, this is a freakin' international airport. Within 10 minutes there're at least 20 hotels, inns and motels. I was advised to call the 1-800 number on the information card. I did. The lady was really helpful, and told me she cannot give me a hotel reservation, but she'd be happy to redirect me to Delta Reservations, and they'll book something for me on hotels.com and I'll get a discount. I asked how I do I get my money back then. The answer was that she gives me a corporate number where I can submit my receipts by fax, and I may get reimbursed. I'd like to emphasize the may here. This is exactly how she put it... I told her this is not enough (I ain't trusting these bastards), and that they are required by law to provide me accommodation in this case, so she redirected me to the gate agent.

$10 at the airport is not much

I went back to the fine gentlemen at the gate, who I think was neither friendly nor helpful at all. I told him, the 1-800 decision. He was annoyed but so was I. He repeated that the hotel has no more rooms, but he gave me the hotel and the meal vouchers anyway. Before that I've checked on my hotels.com app though, that there're at least a dozen of hotels within a couple of miles who still sell rooms for that night, so if the hotel is sold out as he claimed, we still have options.

At the hotel, we got our rooms without problems. They had plenty. After all of us there, the hotel still wasn't full. Now, why the gate agent thought the hotel has no rooms left? Beats me! I bet nor he and none of his colleagues confirmed that information with the hotel... I think they just wanted to be cheap, and save some money on us.

Buy the time I've checked in my hotel, my Delta app, notified me, that even they sent me a message half an hour ago, that the flight is officially cancelled, it did take off 3-4 hours after its scheduled departure time to Minneapolis. Well, without me.

I got a nice long flight back the next day without any problem, and I'm also glad that the electrical problem, however serious it was, happened on the ground. No airplanes stick up in the air, now don't they? All of them come down, the only question is how... This one was certainly less painful.

Customer service? Delta could definitely improve on that one! Passengers in trouble, please learn from me ;-)

---

In unrelated news, if somebody realizes that I'm a foreigner, and I'm not just a tourist but I work here, why is the question 'And when are you planning to move back?' is the first thing they ask right away and all the time??

An American Rhapsody

'An American Rhapsody' is a Hungarian movie made in 2001. And I never heard about it until recently. The story is about a family who escapes through the iron curtain and makes it to Los Angeles leaving their smallest daughter behind who has to wait 6 years until she can reunite with her real family.

Some said the movie is full with cliches and it is, but Americans do it a lot of burger. Suburban life is the same as the movie presents it. Strange but it seems that nothing really changed in the last 50 years here. The cars are more modern that's for sure, but the rest didn't change at all.

I met a couple of Hungarians here already. Well. no real friendships but we did meet. And many of them didn't speak Hungarian anymore, or they said that their parents came from Hungary around/before 1956 but they themselves never learned Hungarian. And I never really understood it. If I'll have children while I'm living abroad, I will teach them Hungarian. Even though we decide never to move back to Hungary. And still I'll try to make Hungarian the primary language in my home. I've seen a German family once, where the parents talked to the kids in German and they replied in English...

So after seeing the movie I now understand that people who had to escape from the country had a certain hatred towards their home country and they came to America where they had a hard time fitting in, and they've tried their best and in order to achieve that they had to loose the language. It is sad that so many people had to go through this, but now I think I understand.

I appreciate it!

This sentence is as creepy as the 'Hi, how are you doing?' one. It simply means thanks, nothing more nothing less. If I translate this phrase into my language, it means a whole lot more. We only say it when we really mean thank you: someone saved your ass, someone shares something personal with you to show he/she trusts you, etc. Americans appreciate things like you hold the door for a lady.

I think this is all connected to the habit and tradition of small talk. People step in the elevator they start talking. And not just on the 'What a nice weather we have today, don't we' British level. They talk about everything. And because of that they really seem to be nice. And Americans are nice in general. They have to. If the cashier doesn't ask you if you found everything you needed, or if you need help to get the bags to your car, they could probably loose their jobs. On the spot. So in a certain way and to a certain extent Americans are forced to be nice, and to a certain extent I think this is a good thing.

So I appreciate ;) you guys coming back, and visiting my blog even though I don't write as often as I should be, but right now I don't really have too much to share unfortunately.

Excuse me, what is this 'kerek' (round)?

-Zsömle, te barom! (Bread roll, you moron!) (Hofi)

So there's a phenomenon that we can call Hungaro-Americans (Amerikás magyar). It seems that it is in our genes that if we leave our homeland, and we end up in California and we over 60 years old and female, we turn into Zsazsa Gabor:

America makes us to forget our mother-tongue even though we're still not able to speak English very well. Even if we spent the last 40 years here under the blue skies of California...

The recent picnic we went to was a really unique experience. "I present you the Hungarian csikós in the csikós outfit!" Well, the lángos definitely was worth it, but I don't like when someone tries to forget where they came from, forget their roots and pretend to be somebody else. Yes, you should adapt to the local culture, and follow the rules and traditions, but you should keep your own, too. Otherwise you can pretend to be somebody more than what you are at home, and here that you're more of an American than any of the Americans here, too... But the result will be that you don't fit in none of the environments, and you become a laughing stock.

On the road...

This entry is a result of my frustration I gained during the labor day weekend. I was driving around 1100 miles to get to San Diego and back. I love driving. And I definitely enjoy driving my Dodge Charger! So don't get me wrong, please!

So the route:

• Down to Santa Cruz on CA-17
• From there CA-1 and later U.S. 101 down to L.A. (Hwy 1 is freakin' awsome, I'll go back at least one more time to enjoy each vista point and so on!)
• From there I-5 down to San Diego.
• On the way back I-5 from San Diego to L.A.
• Venice Beach, Walk of Fame, Hollywood Sign
• U.S. 101 and I-5 and CA-152 and U.S. 101

A couple of tips to my fellow drivers on the road and people responsible for managing traffic and roads:

• Cruise control is an awesome thing I agree. But if you're driving on a freeway with 70mph speed limit, and your cruise control is set to 65mph, then get the f*ck out of the inner lane!
• If your cruise control speed is set just a couple of mph-s above 55mph (truck speed limit) set it to 55mph and stay in the freakin' right lane! The difference between 55mph and 57mph will not save you hours on your route, but you can avoid a couple of strokes by following this simple rule. Choose a truck you like, and stay behind it!
• Slower traffic keep right! Even when there's no sign telling you that explicitly! Left lane is for passing only, nut cruising in it.
• Trucks, if all of you must not exceed 55mph, and you will not driver slower either, how come you need to pass each other from time to time?! Stay in the freakin' right lane, you'll need 10 minutes to pass anyways!
• Officers, if you put down a couple of flares because it's dark, and there's a vehicle/accident/whatever in the right lane, and the freakin' road is curving a lot (CA-152), then put down the torches before the curve would hide them from the driver's eyes, and give enough space for drivers to slow down or to change lanes. Even though the happening is in a truck lane, the speed limit there is still 65mph, and trucks never use that lane anyways. People who'd like to drive at the speed limit, and are tired of passing the idiot people staying in the left lanes way below speed limit are using the truck lane. And Dodge, selling a 2010 model year car without ABS I think is a crime. You did good, when you sell Chargers with ABS from 2011, but why only from 2011?! God bless nothing happened! And I was freakin' tired by then...

(Flares are not common in Europe I think. Before I moved to the US I never saw anybody using them. But for an illustration for those readers who're unfamiliar with this thing please find the picture below:)

• Caltrans: add a 3rd lane to I-5 between Los Angeles and San Francisco all the way in both directions. Make CA-152 a divided lane highway all the way to U.S. 101, please! Traffic requires it!
• Caltrans: If there's a traffic jam on the highway, and you are using amber alert to inform us, try to do so before I get into the trouble. And 'use alternate route' does not help much, set up dedicated detour and use signs, so we can take the detour on time! Or do you want us to start jiggling with the navigation while driving on the highway, highway speed, and where traffic would require our attention the most?

Thank you!