26 september 1973 - Concorde slashes Atlantic flight time

Concorde has made its first non-stop crossing of the Atlantic in record-breaking time. The French model of the supersonic airliner flew from the US capital, Washington, to Orly airport in Paris in three hours 32 minutes.

RO & BG vs. United Kingdom

Okay people! Its a fact!

We and the Bulgarians will join EU within 1st January 2007. I’ve read a lot on this theme today and I am starting to feel frustrated. We do not want to emigrate to UK … And all that we want is to be respected! Right?

You can read some comments from the BBC News websites just to see what some EU members thinks about Romania and Bulgaria integration. Enjoy!

Go to BBC page

Yahoo! Customer Care - are they stupid or are they stupid?

I want to use Yahoo! Voice Out services. I’ve bought credit of 10USD.

I got this e-mail:
“We appreciate your recent purchase of Yahoo! Phone Out.

To protect you from unauthorised credit card usage we first need to verify a quick fact before we can turn your service on. We recently added a small credit to your credit card account (it’s between $0.01 and $1.99). As the credit card owner, you’re the only one who has access to this transaction amount — so we need you to verify it.”

But it happened somethign strange: I’ve entered the amount three time … and it got blocked.

So I arrived to talk with the a Customer Care person:

Julius has entered the session.
cristi: I have bought some credit for Yahoo! Voice - 10 USD. And there is that small amount of money blocked by you on my credit card. Yahoo! asks me to verify the amount of money blocked and to insert the sum in Yahoo! Voice verification page. My card is a Mastercard …and its in EURO. My bank can’t say me the precise amount of money you blocked in USD. How we fix the problem?

Julius: Thank you for contacting Yahoo! Premium Voice Services Support! Please wait a moment while I review your issue.
Julius: Thank you for waiting. According to your records, you are currently in our Verification Process. This will verify your credit card that was used to activate the service.
Julius: You will need to verify first the small Mystery Credit or verification amount before the system activates your account.

cristi: I have tried to verify … but on my account is saying 0.78 EUR, this means something like 0.99 USD

Julius: It could have been that the Yahoo! Verification amount or Mystery Credit has not yet appeared on your bank or card statement.
cristi: it is there … the yahoo mystery credit …of 0.78 EUR
Julius: Depending on the bank, it normally takes three to five business days before the small amount appears on your bank or card statement.
cristi: Please stay with me and understant that the Mistery credit is already on my statement. Yahoo! Voice - 0,78 EUR

Julius: Alright. I submitted the 0.99 amounts and confirmed that it was not your verification amount. The Yahoo! with Voice system rejected it.
Julius: I stornly suggest that you wait for a few more days like after three to five buisness days because the verification amount does not appear on a user’s statement immediately.
cristi: IT IS ON MY STATMENT SIR!!!!!! IT IS THERE ! I CAN SEE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Julius: 0.99 USD or 0.78 EUR is not your verification amount
Julius: Please wait a moment…

Julius: 0.99 is your amount but I can’t figure out why the website does not recognize it!

Laptop revolution!

This is the second post today that has nothing to do with flights, planes and airliners. )) Strange!

Today I’ve made a complet format of laptop’s hard-drive. It was necesary. This also gave me the posibility to put some order in all the data mess that was on the drive. And because I wanted something new on it … I’ve searched for some new softwares that would be useful to me.

I installed a new music player (SongBird), and two new extensions for Firefox.
SongBird

Songbird is a media browser and Web player built from Firefox’s browser engine. Songbird is open source and supports user contributed, cross-platform extensions.

If you use Firefox on more than one computer, you’ll want Foxmarks. Install Foxmarks on each computer, and it will work silently in the background to keep your bookmarks synchronized. As a bonus, log in to my.foxcloud.com from any computer anywhere to access your bookmarks.

FoxyTunes is an Extension for Mozilla Firefox that supports the Mozilla Suite and Mozilla Thunderbird. It allows you to control your favorite media player without leaving the browser. The controls are positioned on the status bar or one of the toolbars, so no extra space is wasted. FoxyTunes has several nice features. You can control the playback, adjust the volume, and see what’s playing. Many more features are in development, among them advanced music-related searches.

For those of you that wants more Firefox extensions click here.

Hotel Rwanda - not just a movie

I’ve watched last night Hotel Rwanda. It’s a story about what happened ten years ago, when some of the worst atrocities in the history of mankind took place in the country of Rwanda; and in an era of high-speed communication and round-the-clock news, the events went almost unnoticed by the rest of the world. In only three months, almost 1 million people were brutally murdered. In the face of these unspeakable actions, inspired by his love for his family, an ordinary man summons extraordinary courage to save the lives of over a thousand helpless refugees by granting them shelter in the hotel he manages.

The movie made me wondering myself: who the fuck are the most developed nations on the erth to decide who should die and who should not die? And what are the base of some of their decisions? Maybe I’ll never get an answer to this. But I know for sure that out there, in Africa, there are people who has bigger problems than we have here in Europe.

Orange Concept Store - Not another phone shop

Maybe you have asked yourself what are those outdoor ads from Orange Romania saying “share”. Or, what “Not another phone shop” means? It’s a new Orange smooth rebranding of some services they have. If will be how it was in Polnad, Netherlands and U.K. then there will be a change for their site webdesign, some new and improved services (e-mail, music store, subscriptions and many more). A part of the new strategy is a new look for the Orange Shops.
You would be stumbling on this new shop on Victoriei Street in Bucharest, that will be the only one of its kind in Romania (for the moment at least!). The “not another phone shop,” will open on Wednesday, September 20th and probably will be the place where you can try out working phones and talk to salespeople who are both intelligent and patient - surprisingly rare (as I coud found them in most Orange Shops arround).

In Poland one of the workers told me that they’re not paid on commission and are rewarded for positive feedback from customers… So, now I am wondering: How they will act with one of those angry Romanians that have talked on the phone for lots of money but they are not able to understand why they have to pay such a big bill.

Aviation “gadgets” (II)

I’ve received today two aerophilately envelops made for a specials events:

- 1991, TAROM - first flight Bucharest - Calcutta, operated with Ilushin 62 aircraft
- 1995, TAROM, special flight to Bologna for Fiera Campionaria

Aviation “gadgets” (I)

As I am crazy about pins and plastic airplanes model, recently I’ve started to search arround for some old aviation products. I found some at okazii.ro and because they were not expensive I’ve decided to order some of the things there. Below you can see one photo (from three) and a pin, that were in the first pack I received.

1. Pin (from somewere betwen ‘75-’77) with LAR - Liniile Aeriene Romane (RAL - Romanian Airlines) symbol. Formed in 1975 as the charter subsidiary of Tarom. It ceased operations in 1992.

2. On the back of the photo is written:
07.08.963. Looking at this photo you will think about me, as I am always on the move, in both meanings, properly and figuratively. Miky.