Europe Virus, European blog update

I think I picked up a virus in Sweden.

Not that.  NO.  I mean I used a wifi server to open my blog page, somewhere by cell phone, and now it's getting tons of incoming hits from an icky website and I have to go through it and see if I got something contagious.  If I open the site at retroworks.blogspot.se (Sweden) it opens ok, but .com opens something different.  Don't go to the website tao of bad donkey, it may have infected the Radisson hotel website (run by ESM).

Europe has not been easy for wifi.  Most of the free wifi sites require you to enter a EU cell phone number and then a text is SMS'd to you to enter and validate.  I've got no EU phone, had planned to make all my calls on internet while here.

I've got another Europe travel blog started but have to make it to the plane.  I see a huge drop off in all visits to the blog in the past few hours except for my own and the SPAM icky site, so I hope I don't have to start over.  I'm in Sweden by the way.

I can't say anything really meaty yet about this week's meetings with Interpol staff in Lyon or meeting former Basel Convention sec staff in Geneva and Fribourg, or today's meeting with Hurricane Joe Benson at Heathrow (my first such honor).  There is a lot of meat on the stove.  This was a big, big trip.

From the desk deck of the Scandilines ferry, facing west, it occured to me that a road trip in Europe, not by train or Ryanair or Virgin express or Easyjet, has been unique.   I've driven from New England to Arkansas many times, and from Arkansas to Mexico, but this is my first multi-day (5 driving) trip through 6 countries in Europe.

Our Dane friends, the French family, the Swiss, the Dutch, etc. who I've spoken to it's funny how everyone things my road trip, by car, from Copenhagen to Perpignan and back, seemed a very American way to travel.  FrWhat I can say is that it's the least American road trip ever in Europe.  I meet no Americans, no one but Europeans, in the gas stations, on the roads, in the restaurants.  I stop in tons and cities whiech either cont have trains or no gare close to the highway

OK, have to go rescue the car from European parking ticket spiders.  At 9 AM they crawl out of alleys and behind bushes and simultaneously parking ticket 100% of street parked cars.  Kidding, actually I haven't gotten a parking ticket.  I don't think I got a speeding ticket on the autabahn, either, but my wife says they have speed cameras (like in Arizona two years ago) and snap you and mail you the ticket.  If that's true, I may break the European banking system.

Possessions and Politics: Sorry, But Someone Hates Us

Corporate Skullduggery and Competition in E-Waste

About 25 years ago, I was hanging out in the University of Arkansas (Fayetteville) student union cafeteria.  I'd returned from Peace Corps (training contractor in Cameroon), and was headed for an MBA program in Boston.   We had an impassioned conversation with hippy-ish friends about my plans to change the world, fight for the environment "from inside the system".  At least one of my pals was incredulous, said it would be impossible.

I'm still optimistic about my choice, even if most of my contributions are deflecting friendly fire from other environmentalists (ignorantly aimed at African, Latin American, and Asian "geeks of color").  But sometimes things get a little scary.

In the past 4 months:

1) Someone reported us anonymously to the state Fire Marshall for not having an inspected fire system.   Our QA/QC VP is an emergency medical EMT, and has it inspected religiously.  Shrugged it off, but when we asked the Fire Marshall to test our furnace for CO, he wrote the CO report as a "response to complaint" (evidently it counts as complaining on yourself in Vermont when you ask to borrow a CO monoxide meter).

2) Someone reported us to R2 Solutions something on ebay.

3) Someone listed our website as a blacklisted spam sender. - RESOLVED... This is Network Solutions own "report spam" tool, when you get spam in your Netsol mailserver box, do NOT use the Network Solutions own "report spam" button, because if you use the same server to forward your mail, your mailserver gets listed as a spam server.   Network Solutions, hello?? (JUMP TO BOTTOM if you are looking into this MXToolbox issue.)

4) Someone reported us to a major credit agency collector for non-payment of a bogus bill which had been paid (that competitor we know).

5) Someone reported us to the R2 inspector, saying that a maquiladora is export (we have letters stating it is NOT export, and the CRTs that fail testing and are shipped back to the USA are considered our property.  This is the equivalent of telling Sony or Panasonic that if they have new CRTs assembled in Mexico, and one of them fails or breaks, that Sony or Panasonic are "exporting for recycling" even though they bring the rejected tube back to the USA).

There's more, actually, that I can't disclose here.

There is one competitor we know for sure hired a corporate intelligence person, and when I contacted a New England private investigation service (largest) they were "conflicted out" (i.e. already hired by a competitor who listed us as a target).