85 lines
5.4 KiB
Markdown
85 lines
5.4 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "Week 13, Wednesday: Zurich to Barcelona"
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date: 2024-10-23T21:55:00+02:00
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---
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{{< image frame="true" width="17em" float="right" src="/img/headline/cosmicgate.png" alt="Credit: Cosmic Gate, YouTUbe" >}}
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This afternoon we'll be on our way to Barcelona and I feel pretty good about that. Apart from a bit
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of a stuffy nose and a nasal voice, I feel fine! After a quick breakfast with coffee, I take some
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time to clean my basement. Although, now I have a Roomba so I can auto-clean, or at least
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auto-vacuum my room, and IPng's serverroom too. As the iRobot, which I've called _Suckel_, is
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zooming around, I clean up cables and optics and various bits and pieces from the maintenance I
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performed for IP-Max yesterday.
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After lunch, I connect a bunch of new users at [[FrysIX](https://frys-ix.net/)], a small internet
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exchange that I operate together with my buddy Arend. The users come online in the quarantine VLAN
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and start configuring their kit. Two of them have a bit of an issue, they are a _reseller_ customer,
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with its supplier transporting the FrysIX via a switch to their router. Unfortunately, that switch
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is sending ethernet frames (perhaps spanning tree, or LLDP, or some other traffic), so I cannot move
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those two new members to the peeringlan. I'm sure the reseller will eventually figure it out, so I
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move on.
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Marina has some news - she (and I) are avid users of a program called _Stocard_, which allows us to
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store our loyalty cards like from Migros, Coop, Safeway, and so on. When we walk into the store,
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thanks to geolocation it pops up the card automatically. It's a lot easier (and leaner for your
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wallet!) to make use of an app like this. And I liked _Stocard_ because it is _just an app_, by
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which I mean: no need for complicated accounts, logins and all of that. An account in _Stocard_ is
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optional, in case you want to make a backup of your cards in the cloud, which can be useful if you
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change phones. I myself did not have that feature, because I still have the original card of course.
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{{< image src="/img/dollar.png" float="left" width="6em" >}}
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Stocard betrayed its users. It sold itself to _Klarna_, some Swedish fintech company that provides
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online financial services. I'm sure the Stocard people made a lot of money. Klarna has now put a
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butter bar on the Stocard app (both for Marina on Android and for me on iPhone) that you **MUST**
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register with Klarna. They also inform us that our application will be destroyed in fourteen days.
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When logging in, they want _waaaay_ too much personal data: phone number, e-mail, age, gender,
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address, country, and what-not.
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Hey assholes: I don’t need another loan service, I don’t want another credit card, I don’t want
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unnecessary ads for stores that I don’t even know or use. And I have no idea why they decided it
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would be a good idea to get rid of the option to add loyalty cards to my Apple wallet or a widget.
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A good alternative is SuperCards, Catima, or the one I chose [[Mobile
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Pocket](https://www.mobile-pocket.com/en/)] -- which, once again, is just an application for which I
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do not need to hand over my entire online history to some random fintech jackass company. Just look
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at this utterly embarrassing "privacy" statement from that fintech bank
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[[ref](https://www.karmanow.com/privacy)]. I recommend you *never* use Stocard or any Klarna
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application, if you value your online identity and privacy.
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At 15:00 we make our way to the Zurich Airport. I'm still very pleased that we settled in
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Brüttisellen, which is to the NorthEast of Zurich city, and about 8km (5mi) away from the
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airport. It's easy to get there by bus, train, car and bike. I've even jogged to and from it from
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time to time, it's that close!
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We have some time to kill before our flight at 18:55, but I make good use of it by writing my
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journal entries for earlier this week. The flight boards on time, leaves roughly on time, and makes
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it to Barcelona smoothly. We land there at 20:30. Instead of taking a car, Marina has scouted out
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how we might use the metro. Our hotel is in _Upper Diagonal_, which is just a few minutes walk from
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the terminal station of the T9 subway train, which goes from the airport directly to _Zona
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Universaria_ without any changes.
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It is a one hour commute though, and it seems SpongeBob is a bit nervous. He gently pops out his
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face from within my shoe from time to time. There's nothing to fear, little spongebuddy, and we
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arrive at 21:30, perfect time for a spot of dinner. We don't have to go far, because our hotel
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itself has a little restaurant in it. We settle down and ask for just what the Doctor ordered:
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tapas with red wine.
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Our hotel room is gorgeous, a king bed with a terrace! We got lucky on this one, I think! Tomorrow
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at 09:00, the ESNOG two day conferrence starts. Marina will be hanging out in the city as she has
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(pre-)bought tickets for the Picasso museum. She will visit a few museums and take in the
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architecture, while I nerd out and practice my Spanish a bit at ESNOG'32.
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## Pictures of the Day
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{{< gallery-category >}}
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{{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-23/IMG_2165.JPG" caption="Zurich Airport as seen from the inside." >}}
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{{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-23/IMG_2170.JPG" caption="Spongebob socks, he is so cute <3" >}}
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{{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-23/IMG_2171.JPG" caption="Our hotelroom in Upper Diagonal is not too shabby!" >}}
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{{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-23/IMG_2173.JPG" caption="Our dinner is tapas and wine - a staple for us when in Barcelona" >}}
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{{< /gallery-category >}}
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{{< gallery-modal >}}
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{{< gallery-script >}}
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