Sunday, July 31, 2011

A Reunion in Boston, and a Sloan Fellow

A dollop of stage-setting is required for this story!

For two academic years, from mid-1974 through mid-1976, Joan attended what was then named the Institut International de Glion, now renamed the Glion Institute of Higher Education. Primarily a hotel and hospitality school, in that era it also had a tourism track which attracted many international students from countries interested in growing a tourism industry. Joan was enrolled in this tourism curriculum.

The school is located in Glion, near Montreux, and thus in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Glion is near the center of the map below.


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Classes at Glion are conducted entirely in French. Joan's French was very good; she spent her junior year of college living with a French family in Nantes. Some of the international students, however, had only a six-week crash course in French before being thrust into classrooms. Joan became good friends with a student from Malaysia, Latiff, who needed help with his French. Having already had some real-world work experience he was able to help Joan with many of the technical terms and concepts being taught in the classes. It was a successful partnership; Joan graduated #1 in the class, and Latiff was #2. Here is a grainy snapshot of Latiff on graduation day, from a scanned 35-year-old slide.

While Latiff was at Glion his second child, a son named Khalid, was born in Malaysia. Later, in 1980, when Joan and I visited Latiff and his family in Malaysia, we met a 5-year-old Khalid. Now, in June 2011, Khalid was graduating from a one-year Sloan Fellows Program in Innovation and Global Leadership at MIT, having been sponsored by his employer, Petronas, the state-owned petroleum company. Latiff and his wife, Balkeesh, were coming to the United States in a whirlwind to see their son's graduation, visit one of Latiff's work contacts, and see a small slice of Boston and New York.

We came to Boston for a few days to have a reunion; we had not seen Latiff, Balkeesh, or Khalid for 31 years.

Khalid and Latiff met us at the airport, as a surprise, and dropped us off at our hotel, the Kendall, to check in and get settled before the evening's outing. (This photo is from later in the visit, just after a rain shower.)
The Kendall was perfectly located for our purposes, being a short walk from the MIT campus, from the Charles River, and from the apartment in married-student housing where Khalid and his wife Shahida lived. The front part of the hotel was originally a Victorian-era firehouse, built in 1895, and came close to being demolished until the Kendall began renovations in 2000.

Our first activity with Latiff, Balkeesh, Khalid, and Shahida was a boat tour on the Charles River that evening. The boats come up to the back of a huge shopping mall, the Cambridgeside Galleria, through a small canal and basin.
We rested and chatted for a few minutes waiting for the next tour.
From left to right are Balkeesh, Latiff, Shahida, Joan, and myself. Khalid took the photo, and we'll see him momentarily.

Boston was enjoying a day of cool, dry air, and evening photography on the Charles River was beckoning to everybody.
There were a great many pictures taken of each other. Here are Balkeesh and Latiff at the stern of the boat.
A closeup of Latiff.
A flash photo of Khalid. Doesn't he look like a younger version of his Dad? A chip off the old block.
 Khalid and Shahida at the bow.
 The three ladies: Shahida, Joan, and Balkeesh.
Daughter-in-law and Mom. They do seem to enjoy each other's company.
There is never-ending activity on this stretch of the Charles. Private sailing docks, MIT docks, other institutions, tour operators, all going strong until dusk. This photo is of a "duck boat," a boat with wheels that can come onshore to load and unload.
Sailboats.
Practicing for a dragon boat competition.
Individual sculling.
We turned around just upstream of the John J. Weeks pedestrian bridge, connecting parts of the Harvard campus.
A downstream view headed back towards Boston.
The light is almost gone (for photography) as we draw near the "Leonard Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge." Aren't cable-stayed bridges lovely?
By the time we docked it was 8:30 or so and definitely time for dinner, and then to rest. Latiff promised us a big Boston tour on the morrow.

The Kendall is just one block from a stop on the Upper Deck Trolley Tours line. This outfit offers on-and-off privileges for two days and advertises the most sightseeing stops. The Malaysian clan met us at the Kendall after breakfast, tickets for everybody in hand, and we boarded the trolley. Here are two views of the trolley from later that day.

A front view.
The first portion of our outing was divided into three parts: first, take the trolley as far as the Boston Harbor stop, then get off for the harbor tour, and then resume the trolley tour.

I didn't try to take pictures through the bus windows that day. The trolley made a brief stop for everybody outside Fenway Park, the shrine to Red Sox baseball. There is a statue for the four Teammates, Ted Williams, Bobby Doerr, Johnny Pesky, and Dom Dimaggio.
Because of his great concern for and philanthropy regarding children, Ted Williams also gets his own statue.
I'm not a baseball fan, but it was fun to see these legendary locations anyway.

By noon the day was heating up, although the air was still not humid. Many people waiting for the harbor tour opted to find some shade from the bright sun. A couple of small ferries to outlying islands came and went, and then it was our turn.
Mom made certain to snap pictures of Khalid in the different sections of scenic Boston. Who wouldn't be proud of their Sloan Fellow son? Latiff now refers to himself as an "MIT Dad."
Waterfront living is available if you have the big bucks.
There was a large variety of watercraft enjoying the harbor on such a fine day. Here is the Liberty Clipper, which does day trips and extended excursions. Believe it or not, it's a replica of the Baltimore Clippers of the California gold rush era. Ships this size sailed around Cape Horn to California with a reputation for speed and safety!
No tour of the harbor can be complete without passing by the berth of the Constitution, known as Old Ironsides. She is still a commissioned warship of the US Navy, and the oldest such, launched in 1797/98. (The oldest commissioned warship in the world is Nelson's HMS Victory, launched in 1765. But it is in dry dock, so the Constitution is the "oldest commissioned warship afloat.")
We also sailed by more modern vessels, such as the Coast Guard's Seneca.
After the harbor tour we resumed the trolley tour. We passed by many historic locations and buildings, and I must compliment our drivers on their friendliness and knowledge. If Bostonians are by nature gruff, we never saw it! The Freedom Trail and Old Ironsides would both be worth a second visit to Boston. The only photos I have to offer of this segment of our visit are of the Massachusetts State House.
We were there during the Stanley Cup finals, and zooming in, we could see that the State House was participating.
A closeup of the sign in front along the sidewalk.

We all know that plans sometimes do not work out, especially if you are a few days away from moving all your possessions halfway around the world. This afternoon Latiff told us of two developments. One was a promised and much-postponed last dinner with friends of Khalid, so Joan and I would be on our own for dinner that night. The true spanner in the works was that the movers hired to box all the stuff that Khalid and Shahida were sending back to Malaysia had gotten the promised date wrong, and now tomorrow was the only day they could tackle the job. Our Malaysian foursome invited us to a home-style Malaysian lunch tomorrow at Khalid's apartment, but for the rest of the day they would be consumed by packing, packing, and more packing.

When the tour trolley reached the Cambridgeside Galleria stop, it was time to part ways for the remainder of the day. Our friends would squeeze in some final shopping, while Joan and I transferred to the tour trolley for Harvard Square. It was late enough in the day, and we were tired enough, that Joan and I were happy to drink in the Harvard Square tour from the trolley, without disembarking for a student-led tour of the grounds. It didn't hurt that we had the most charming and enthusiastic driver/guide that I've yet encountered.

For dinner that night we repeated our visit to the restaurant of the night before, the Legal Sea Foods practically across the street from our hotel. Being so close to MIT, there was plenty of interesting eavesdropping to be done at the restaurant. Discussions about student problems, using a better solvent ("Amides generally do better with hydrogen bonding solvents"), and the proper use of liquid nitrogen were in the air. Back at the hotel, we had earlier seen a man carrying a binder for a course in nanotechnology engineering.

After the meal we took a walk along the Charles River. There is a bicycle and walking path (sometimes more than one track, sometimes wider and sometimes narrower) for miles along the river, between the riverbanks and Memorial Drive, and it is only a few blocks from the Kendall. It allowed us to stretch our legs, admire the sailboats and skyscrapers, and observe the wide range of dog walkers, joggers, runners, and casual and serious cyclists. It appeared to me that there were more female joggers than male on this path; perhaps it is well regarded for safety.

The following morning we went to the MIT Museum. The second floor in particular is full of wonders, given the long and illustrious history of MIT, including the history of the unit of measure called the smoot. There is a gift shop with many items available only at MIT. On this third day of the visit, Boston was clearly warming up, with a high above 90 expected.

We walked to Khalid's apartment at the appointed hour. The lunch was spicy and delicious, and we appreciated the effort that Shahida and Balkeesh made to prepare it at such a chaotic time. After we arrived there were six adults plus two or three movers in the one small apartment, which had a fan but no air conditioning. (I don't recall if it was broken or not present, but I believe the condition was uniform in the married student tower.) One of the movers asked Khalid, who seemed immune to the heat, how warm it was in Malaysia. His answer was, "This is about as cold as it gets."

It was good to see everybody again, even if the circumstances were distracting. Eventually we returned to the hotel, to do some preliminary packing for the flight back, and then had dinner there as well.

That evening we walked through the MIT campus and explored further downstream on the riverside path. One of the areas of the campus that we examined was Ray and Maria Stata Center, designed by Frank Gehry, known for his unusual architectural style, examples of which include the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. It was difficult to find a single good perspective for photography, so I shall inflict several photos on the reader. Also, they are the only pictures describing this evening!
I will note that MIT filed a lawsuit in 2007 over many problems they found with the design and construction (leaks, falling ice blocking exits, and the like). Gehry blamed cost-cutting measures in construction, and in any case, the suit was reportedly settled in 2010.

The next and final day was a short one, because we had decided on 12:00 noon as the time to head for the airport. We visited several galleries on campus, including the Hart Nautical Gallery. There were several special exhibits and art works for MIT's 150th anniversary year. On loan for one year is the statue The Alchemist, by Jaume Plensa.
We also visited the MIT chapel, which is very unprepossessing on the outside, but striking on the inside. It is of course non-denominational.
Then we returned to the hotel for our luggage and took a taxi to the airport. Standing in line to check in, my cellphone rang. It was Latiff, who had called twice earlier, probably while the taxi was in tunnels or otherwise did not see a T-Mobile signal. He was on his way to see us at the hotel before we left for the airport. I explained we were already at the airport, and handed the phone to Joan so she could say her goodbyes.

We hope it will not be another 31 years before we see them again! 

Let's end this account with a video of our takeoff from Boston Airport.

Saturday, July 30, 2011

WOW DTA (Digital Terminal Adapter) Poltergeists

This is a report, the third, on our experiences with the WOW (Wide Open West) digital transition (the dropping of analog signals for all except local broadcast channels). The previous entries are here (to start) and here. This entry is prompted by recent odd behavior by our DTAs (devices that convert the digital signal to analog for our analog TVs and VCRs).
 
Spontaneous Deregistration
One day last week we turned on the TV in our bedroom to discover the WOW digital terminal adapter (DTA) insisting that it must be registered before it could be used. This was odd, because it had been registered in March and worked fine ever since. Fortunately using the WOW web page for DTA registration satisfied the device, and all was well. The other three adapters had continued operating normally and were not disturbed by the re-registration.

I left a comment on the WOW Buzz blog (now defunct), in the technology section.
Today one of our DTAs stopped working — blinking power light, and the message on the TV that the device has to be registered to function. Odd, since it had been working for several months!
Re-registering it over the Internet worked fine.
I was wondering if WOW de-registers DTA equipment that has had no activity for some period of time? (30 days? 45 days?) This DTA was the least-used of our four, although it was always left powered on, and we were recently away for three weeks.
The author responded with clarity, consideration, and lots of information.
Ben:
Great question. I posed this to Gary Nilsen, our VP of Engineering (aka: “king video guru”), and he indicated that the DTA devices are strictly “one-way”, so the head end systems would not have any idea how long one had been on line (or off line). He suspects that your experience may have been a fluke associated with multiple power-down/brownout experiences associated with the storm activity we’ve had in the midwest this year. Certainly a power outage that might have occurred during video maintenance could also have caused this situation. Odd, though that the other DTA in the house were unaffected. Bottom line, if it becomes troublesome, he suggested swapping out the DTA for a new piece of equipment, and we’ll be happy to do that for you.
Steve
We certainly live in a part of town that has more than its share of power glitches, especially of the one-to-three second variety. But this is not the end of the story ...
 
The Big Freeze
Poltergeists must be inhabiting our house. Joan had scheduled some movie taping on our analog VCR, and Saturday (July 23) she went to inspect the results. They were not what she expected. There were six hours of one video frame, an “Executive Producer” credit, on the tape. The credit was still showing up on the TV, and the DTA would not respond to the remote – it would not change channels, it would not turn off. Oddly, the power light was off although the DTA was clearly sending a signal to the TV. Unplugging and replugging it cleared the problem.

We inspected our other three DTAs, and two were fine and one was frozen at the exact same channel and credit frame. What makes an explanation difficult is that two were on battery backup (each on a separate UPS) and two were just plugged into the wall, and of the ones on battery backup, one was frozen and one was not. Of the ones plugged into the wall, one was frozen and one was not. The only commonality between the frozen DTAs was that they were tuned to the same channel (AMC) and showing the same frame. The DTAs that did not freeze were not tuned to AMC.

The frozen DTAs were not the deregistered DTA. This means that we've had “events” on three of the four DTAs in the past 10 days or so.

Go figure.

Again, I left a message on the WOW Buzz blog, and another quick response came back:
Go figure indeed. Odd, though that two different DTA’s would freeze on the same channel in the same place. Almost seems like something coming from AMC froze the equipment, but there would be no technical explanation for that that I can think of. May run this past our video guru to see if he has any ideas, but in the meantime, the poltergeist explanation is as good as any!
Steve
There have been no further glitches (it's been one week). My advice to DTA users is, if you have set up unattended recording, to check the state of the DTA as close to the time of the recording as you can. The more complex your video arrangements are, the more points of failure there are.

Addendum 02/12/2012
The DTAs continue to be susceptible to spontaneous de-registration, but with no observable connection to events such as weather or electrical glitches. Last night we missed taping a movie because just one of the DTAs spontaneously deregistered.

Addendum 05/04/2015
The DTAs are susceptible to glitches after they've been powered up for a long time. We had one that refused to change the channel until we removed the power (unplugged the power adapter), waited a couple of seconds, and then turned it back on. Another lost all sound -- the video was fine -- again until it was turned off and back on. So if you're using one of these things, and experiencing odd difficulties with your setup, one of your first steps should be the power off/on drill.

Addendum 09/15/2015
I called WOW today to return one of my DTAs (no longer needed). In the past they've sent me a mailing label; I would box stuff up and send it back. Now they want $50 to that. I'm supposed to drive to the closest WOW office instead, for which there is "no charge." Just time and gas ... but because I'm paying $2.00/month for the gadget I have no choice.

Addendum 10/28/2015
Our final DTA stopped working last week -- it insisted that it needed to be activated, but activation, both by me and by customer support, didn't work. Swapped it for a new one which works perfectly so far -- it didn't even need activation once I plugged it in!

Friday, July 29, 2011

Island Odyssey: Sark and Guernsey

Our first destination on this last day aboard the Explorer was the island of Sark, one of the Channel Islands and much closer to France than to England. In the map below, it is the larger unlabeled island east of Guernsey.

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Sark has a long, fascinating, and complicated history. Along with the other Channel Islands, it is a dependency of Great Britain. However, it is a Royal Fief with its own laws based on Norman laws, and its own parliament, even though its population is just 600. The currency is the Guernsey or Channel Island pound, which is pegged to the UK pound. (The Lindblad staff advised us that any Channel Island change we might receive would not be accepted back on the mainland.) The parliament became democratic rather than appointed in 2008, to comply with European Union regulations on human rights, largely due to a lawsuit brought by the Barclay brothers. To quote a snippet of an extensive Wikipedia entry:
Sark also exercises jurisdiction over the island of Brecqhou, only a few hundred feet west of Greater Sark. It is a private island that is not open to visitors. Since 1993 Brecqhou has been owned by David Barclay, one of the Barclay brothers, co-owners of The Daily Telegraph. They contest Sark's control over the island.
The Barclay brothers, fabulously rich, appear to have been troublemakers since purchasing Brecqhou. Perhaps they hope to replace the traditional Sark government with a plutocratic one.

Since the early 20th Century Sark has been known as a tourist destination. Except for farmers' tractors, no motor vehicles are allowed. It recently qualified as the first dark sky island.

This was our view of Sark as the zodiacs were being lowered into the water.
The choice of landing dock is dictated by whether the tide is high or low. Here we disembark at a high-tide causeway.
The road from the dock to the central part of the island is narrow, steep, and dangerous for pedestrians due to the possibility of encountering a bicycle or a tractor. Everyone was encouraged to take the arranged transportation.
It was well organized, showing Sark's experience as a tourist destination. There were tickets for the drive up, for the round-trip cart ride to the La Seigneurie Gardens, and for the drive back down. This might be a way of tracking tourist volumes, and it keeps visitors honest who, unlike us, are not prepaid.

At the central point we were distributed among the horse-drawn carts. Our driver, a young woman just back from higher education on the mainland, told us that at Sark's peak of tourism a couple of decades ago the island had 70 such carts, but could muster only 20 or so now.
The island has handsome horses.
Here is the superhighway on the way to the gardens.
Thelma and Louise pose on our friendly horse as we disembark for the gardens.
The La Seigneurie Gardens are the formal gardens on the estate of the Seigneur, who holds the island as a fief from the Crown of England. On Wednesdays the wife, Diana Beaumont, of the current Seigneur leads a guided tour, but we were here on a Monday. In addition to the gardens, you are free to poke around the exterior of the estate (there is an entrance fee of course). Naturally, there is a bistro and gift shop as well.

The main building, La Seigneurie, rises behind the chapel as we walk towards the garden entrance.
The gardens are laid out in sections (soft fruit, orchard, flowers) with a long east-west walkway connecting them.
Here is a montage of some of what we saw.
This is the dove-cote, or pigeon house. In earlier times the privilege of owning pigeons was strictly limited to the Seigneur.
The battery contains an old grist wheel as well as cannons from different centuries. Part of the original terms by which Queen Elizabeth I granted the island to the first Seigneur was that he be able to raise 40 armed men to defend the island.
After a while the carts returned to deliver a second shift of Lindblad guests and take us back to the central village.
Joan and I chose to follow a footpath to a headland called Hog's Back.
The headland still has a cannon, although it has not been fired in a long time. The Germans, who occupied Sark during the Second World War, did not disturb it.
And there was a truly great view.
From Hog's Back we could see the causeway that links Great Sark to Little Sark. Before the walkway with rails was constructed, children from Little Sark going back and forth to school on Great Sark would often crawl across the causeway on their hands and knees to avoid being blown off into the sea below.
And I do mean below.
After returning from Hog's Back -- nothing is that far away in Sark -- we had time to browse a bit. In one shop we bought some Sark chocolate. No, the cacao beans aren't grown on Sark, but local dairy can be used, and the different ingredients are brought together here. There are also at least two bicycle rental shops on the island, and one was located in a very small plaza with a dragon out front to lure the curious and inspire the admirers of dragons.
Then we took a tractor cart down to the low-water dock and returned to the Explorer, where lunch was served while we sailed over to Guernsey.
Guernsey is much larger than Sark, and in some ways diametrically opposite. It has about 65,000 inhabitants, one hundred times more than Sark. The main city, Saint Peter Port, is a bustling business center with traffic problems. Many corporations have headquarters here due to an extremely low tax regime. On our walk, Joan and I saw modern office buildings with shiny brass plaques that said (I paraphrase) "for a list of tenants please inquire inside." And lots of men in neatly tailored suits.

But we arrived by zodiac.
The Explorer might have been too large for the harbor, or, given the rapid turnover of ferries, there might not have been a berth for us.
 At the top of the dock we were greetly warmly and handed some Guernsey maps and tourist literature. Because we had only the afternoon to explore, Joan and I needed to prune the list of things to see. Our first stop was the Castle Cornet, visible from anywhere in the harbor, and located at the tip of the southern harbor causeway.
On our way over, it was clear that the tide was out.
The Castle Cornet has several museums, including one about the castle, about maritime history, about the local RAF squadron, and so forth. But it was already almost 3pm, the Castle closes at 5:00pm, and the admission was £9 (almost $15, now it's £10.50). You can get in for £1 between 4:00 and 5:00, but then how much would we see? Joan and I both greatly enjoyed the book about the German occupation of Guernsey in WWII, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and the PBS dramatization of the occupation, Islands at War. So we walked briskly down to La Vallette Military Museum, a museum of the military history of Guernsey with an emphasis on the German occupation.

Here is a view of the exterior of the museum from the causeway to Castle Cornet. There isn't much to see: it is housed inside an underground German facility from the war.
The Germans created a series of concrete-reinforced tunnels for what they intended to be a U-boat refueling station.
Four large tanks were installed, but only one was filled with fuel before the Germans abandoned the effort. One was left in place for the museum.
The museum has many souvenirs and mementos of the war, including old German equipment and posters that announced various regulations and punishments.
One display case showcased several extant examples of homemade radio sets from the war, among other items. In the this picture, note the yo-yo near bottom left made from scrap.
After spending some time in La Vallette, Joan and I decided to walk into town rather than spending a brief interval at Castle Cornet. Along the way we passed this tidal swimming pool, which refills itself with each high tide.

Our goal was to find a high viewpoint from which to look down on the harbor. I was the pathfinder, with the map of the downtown area in hand, with the notion of passing by Candie Gardens on the way up. But the old downtown roads are a twisty bunch. We ended up walking too far west and not enough north to hit Candie Gardens, but it didn't really matter. The entire area is much too built up to find a good view of the harbor, unless one could climb to the top of a church or clock tower. We did see the tip of the gardens on the way back, after we had walked off the map and then come back down the hill past St. Andrew's Church of Scotland (on the map again!) and the Old Observatory.

Again at the level of the docks, we came across a small plaza next to a Swiss bank (UBS). Did I mention that banks pay only a 10% tax in the Channel Islands? In the plaza was a statue and a diorama dedicated to Otton de Grandson, a Swiss nobleman who became the right-hand man of King Edward I of England. The local connection is that he was appointed Governor for life of Guernsey in 1277. He did not visit much, however. In the plaque, the archaic spelling of Othon is used.
The diorama was fascinating, cast in metal, and depicting several scenes from the major events in Otton's 90-year life.
Then it was time to reboard the Explorer. It was our last night aboard ship, and there was the Farewell Reception to attend, then dinner, and then repacking everything that had exploded across our cabin over the last eight days, in ways suitable for airline security and baggage compartments.

On our arrival in Portsmouth the captain discovered that a ferry was still in our assigned berth; we docked half an hour late. The couple who had intended to leave in a taxi even earlier than our early departure ended up traveling with us, making about 10 in the small van heading for Heathrow airport. The driver was cheerful and conversational, which was valuable during a long delay when traffic was funneled through a small town to detour tunnel construction on the main highway. Joan and I got off at the van's first stop, and boarded our flights back to Philadelphia and Columbus without any difficulties. I hope the couple who originally planned to take a taxi fared as well.

Once home, we kept busy with deferred chores. We knew there would be only 19 days until we flew to Boston.