We are finally at a hostel in Amsterdam with free internet. Unfortunately the keyboard I am using sucks a lot, but let's see if I can get more journal copied down anyway. Also I am posting this directly to LJ rather than writing it on my Linux box and then posting because my Linux box seems disconnected from the internet right now, so I'll have to copy the stuff down later. (Note to self: "The 'public' item IDs used in URLs are internal item id * 256 + anum".

Alright now. I'm only about 2 weeks behind...

2007-05-28

Dreams:

• Heather wanted to switch bedrooms with me (she was currently in computer room). Computer room's floor was slightly higher and there was a window into the red bedrooom so you could look right through it to outside.
• Working at a place where Rayovac used to be. Pondering different bike routes to work. Working on tiny computer, though it was a huge box during development. One guy was the soldering expert. A-Day was working on something in a concrete tube outside. I got him distracted and when boss came by we had to make stuff up.
• Ben's house. Fight with beer-ball guns. Had to drink a lot of beer first so I'd have a mug to defend with.

Non-dreams:

• Ate hotel breakfast, filled out postcard to my folks.
• Visited Bi'nai (?) temple up north.
• Red-lined south and visited Chinatown.
• YC was looking for something in a bakery but couldn't find it.
• We wandered around and looked at Snake+Pig statues.
• Red-lined back north to hotel to get our gear, then red-lined to Jackson, blue-lined to O'Hare. There wer goofy kids on the train with us.
• YC had to catch a bus at 5, so we were in a rush saying byes at terminal 5. I don't know yet if she made it or had to wait for the 5:30 or 6:00 bus.
• I went through airport baggage drop-off and security. ISA guy there was a jerk and yelling at people.
• Waited around at terminal for a while, went to bathroom, looked at Chicago-related art and pictures on the walls.
• A-Day showed up and we looked at maps and talked about losing Eurail passes.
• Boarded plane.
• Ate served food, paid small attention to 'Norbert', looked at books and took pictures of the windows and interior of plane.

There's a guy waiting to use this machine, so I'll get off now.

2007-05-29 (Tuesday)

• Arrived at Dublin airport
• We had had several foods on the plane
• Getting into Ireland was much easier than getting out of USA
• Tried to turn some $ into single .s (for using the bus), but they gave us large bills.
• Used a bus-ticket machine that gave us change anyway
• Bussed downtown, weren't sure where to get off.
• Were confused, wandered around a bit, found Kinlay House hostel, dropped off stuff, wandered more.
• Back to hostel, napped.
• More wandering, found Aldi, Londis. Bought bananas, carrots, bread (from bakery), carbonated water (because it was cheap and I wanted to try it).
• Finally found a green area near a church to have picnic and write. One of my pens died.
• Dublin's not terribly exciting. I think we're going to stick around for another day, check out some pibs, and then move on to cork or somewhere and maybe do some biking.

2007-05-30 (Wednesday)

• LJed dreams about shifted erf.
• Checked out of Kinlay house after toast + OJ breakfast and some re-packing.
• Walked to bus station, put stuff in a 10. locker that also ate another 1.. That was dumb.
• Went south of river, wandered around at Trinity College + some park + St. Patrick's cathedral. Also stopped at gift shop to get postcards and a doll for Heather.
• Went to the post office to send postcards, felt stupid while talking to package-sending guy. Apparently post offices in Ireland won't help you pack anything at all, so we had to go a couple doors south to buy packaging tape from Eason. Got the doll and the postcards sent.
• Weren't going to make the 16:00 bus, so went and bought soup and pesto and Guinness.
• Bussed to Cork
• Guinness is alive inside?
• Green walking man
• Red/yellow standing man
• Black on orange dancing with shovel man

"Stand clear. Luggage doors operate."
- Irish buses

Throughout the day I took picture of A-Day taking pictures. This is to prove that he really did take pictures, as his NSLU is supposed to delete the pictures he has taken off his camera (recognized as the one and only A-Day cam by it's unique usage of "DCIM" in file paths) just before it b0rks the hard drive.

After we got into Cork (about 22:00) we checked into a nearby hostel and got a 'private' room in order to try and get the NSLU stuff working. The guy at reception didn't understand "electrical outlet", but a gal from NY told us that yeah, the rooms do have outlets. She's here studying something, or something.

We spent some time trying to get the NSLU working. First we burned out the outlet in our room, then we burned up A-Day's power strip, then we had this hokey setup with wires between the bathroom and the hall going on, and the NSLU booted, but things didn't really seem to work. We decided to buy some CD-Rs and burn our pics onto them, instead. And ship A-Day's electronics back to Milwaukee.