One less excuse for not blogging

Finding time to blog with all the travel I do is tough.

But I am posting this FROM AN AIRPLANE!

Air Canada is having a trial of In-Fight Internet access. And so far anyway, IT'S FREE!

How cool is that?

It's only on selected flights so it may not improve my efficiency all that much.

But it is a start.

What's next - tweeting?

Does anybody know what "openDNS" is?

From the "a little learning is a dangerous thing" file, I know just enough about computers to almost get it.

(Note: this has nothing directly to do with cars; only with this blog).

For the last couple of days, every time I tried to access almost any web site, something called "openDNS" would pop up, saying that access to that web site was blocked.

It's not like I was looking for some porn channel or something. Google; yahoo; thestar.ca - just about everything except my anti-virus software was being blocked.

I had no idea what openDNS was, or how it got installed on my computer.

I tried e-mailing the openDNS support people, asking what the heck was going on. To their credit, they did respond, saying that I could change my IP address to avoid the problem.

Um, sure... Not quite enough learning, as it happens.

The support people said it is not downloadable, so I didn't do anything to invoke it. They said it might be part of my "ISP" - Internet Service Provider (I DO know that much). I use the Rogers' Rocket Stick USB key internet access thing, the only semi-high-speed system I can get out here in the boonies.

So I still don't know how or why it openDNS was there.

All of which to say that this is why I haven't been on my blog for the past couple of days - it seems to be working today, so we're back at ya.

I also know I'm WAY behind on Comments; I have a bit of a busy first half of the week - drive to New York City for a Bentley event Monday, then back Tuesday night for a presentation at Georgian College Wednesday morning.

But the rest of the week looks fairly OK, so I'll try to start catching up then.

Thanks for your patience.

Ain't the Internet wonderful?

I met Anatoly Fomin yesterday.

The automotive journalist from Moscow and I were sharing a shuttle at a BMW event in Marseille France.

He said, "Ah, The Toronto Star! I read Wheels on the Internet! I remember your story on the Chinese battery-powered cars at Detroit this year. I was at that show too."

As much as I love newspapers, the chances of Anatoly ever picking up a print edition of Wheels in Moscow are pretty slim...

Having trouble e-mailing me?

I know just enough about this computer/Internet stuff to be dangerous.

I mean, in a previous lifetime I actually WAS a computer geek, but those days are long past me now.

But I did figure out in the relatively early days of the Internet and e-mail that having an e-mail address that was tied to my ISP - e.g., aol in those bad old days, or sympatico now - meant that if I decided to change ISPs, I would have to tell the entire world that my e-mail address had changed.

So I got my own domain (jimkenzie.com, the best eight bucks I spend every year - thank you, GoDaady.com) and use jim@jimkenzie.com as my main e-mail address.

This effectively acts as an "alias" - I simply point it to my "real" email address. Then if I change ISPs or whatever, all I have to do is change the pointer, not the address.

Everyone keeps sending mail to jim@jimkenzie.com, I keep getting the messages.

Works a treat.

Except this past January, something went wrong with my domain registraiton, and jim@jimkenzie.com got temporarily suspended. I thought I had fixed it, but just this past week I discovered that it had gone south again.

The worst thing is, of course - I didn't know! You can't react to e-mails that you never receive.

I THINK it's fixed again, so if any of you have tried to contact me via that e-mail address in recent weeks, please try again.

I suspect any messages that were sent there during the time-out are lost in cyberspace for ever - my apologies...

Comments on this blog have been coming through OK though - keep 'em coming!

Big, apparently satellite-free, Sky Country

I'm on a press event in Montana, within spitting distance of Yellowstone National Park.

They call this Big Sky Country, and at night, the stars are brilliant.

The problem - if there are satellites which enable Internet connectivity, they must get lost up there, and access is a major issue. So posting to this blog has been a problem.

I hope at least this apology gets through.

I'm back Wednesday night and will get right back on it.

OK, I'll hit "post", and let's hope...