The Ultimate Email Attachment; a Screaming Johnny

From Paris

I won't go on for too long about the Internet ... most of us (yes,including me) are all pretty bored with the amount of press coverage and hype. I work for the company that specializes in hype. It would be our main product if we could figure out how to sell it. I mean who wasn't singing START ME UP when Windows 95 launched.

Thinking back to the launch. (Egads, this is one of those "where were you the day Kennedy got shot questions" within our company. Sick... ) I was in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the 3rd biggest city in the world, where half, probably more, of the people live in something no better than a cardboard box. But I went to the launch.

It was downtown and traffic was backed up for hours with people trying to get in. The LIVE event (synchronous with Redmond, Washington) was with 500 reporters and that was followed by the main event which was a black tie affair. Really, can you imagine an orchestra playing Start Me Up? Which was followed up by the theme song from Star Trek.

When the General Manager for Microsoft presented, the 3,000 Brazilians went crazy. We then watched the taped show from Redmond. I laughed real loud to Jay Leno jokes which nobody else seemed to get. But nonetheless, it was just a rip roaring time. I walked out of it with a completely different perspective of Microsoft.

But let's get off the Microsoft advertisement. I want to talk for a brief moment about the Internet. Yes, before I get into my husband's trip to the emergency room and the trucker strike that has the country frozen like a big snow storm. Before all that I want to talk Intenet. Beyond all that hype, just in my little corner of the world ...
I work a project where we encourage people who love Microsoft products, who know a lot about Microsoft products to teach on the Internet via virtual classrooms. Now I was sort of yawning through one of these meetings one day back in Redmond when the team that builds this stuff started talking. They told me about some guys in Canada that do half their business in the Far East and they have never been out of Canada! Their customers were in countries I have never even heard of.... my mouth just about popped out my head. Yes, yessssiirrrreeee, embrace this technology. START ME UP!

My mind works through all sorts of strange combinations ... on using some very talented (and cheap) guys in Eastern Europe to do the training for the rest of Western Europe. (I just hope we stay out of too many wars in EE. The phones don't work so good during the wars.)

Ahh.. I will stand up in front of a zillion Danish guys in a week or two and tell them they have access to the best. No more waiting around for their local training centers that can't seem to find their way through a manual ....

Later that evening I am busy reading through one of my zillion emails I receive in a day. I read about an African web site. It's all in French because those boys speak French in North Africa. And they are going after all those French Canadians ... and all those real French guys who live in France. All from somewhere in northern Africa... from some little hell hole with a phone line that sort of, kind of, sometimes works. They are going to do Internet development and support and anything else you want from Africa. I love it...

I am interrupted in my pondering on the future of the Internet by a a trip to the emergency room. My husband comes home with this mangled upfoot: he was out climbing with some new climbing buddies he found through the web (of course) and he jumped off a rock and didn't quite realize that just below the surface of the sand was a rock. So he nails his foot ... and now he's at home hopping along like some strange creature from a freak show.

I drag him off to the Emergency room, armedwith my dictionary. We bring the check book. I bring my Microsoft cardkey, as if that might do something for us. We don't know that there's an American hospital here in Paris to serve the 58,000 Americans who live here so we go to the French hospital right down the street.

The charades begin.... "Pied, Pied, Pied." (Foot, Foot, Foot.) We hobble Kevin to the ER room ... and we sit in the waiting room. We don't fill out any paper work and so Kevin sends me off to find the paperwork. I can't figure it out. He can't figure it out. Finally someone comes to rescue us from this room full of howling kids who all need some sort of stitches. (I think that ER rooms were built for people with little kids with big nasty gashes.) We get a doctor who sort of kind of speaks English and we get him to realize that Kevin wants an Xray. Yes, just a simple Xray. Kevin gets wheeled all over the hospital .. me following with the ski poles and people looking at us like we just came off the slopes. (Yes, it's a 5 hour drive down to skiing but some how they glare at us like we had some sort of skiing accident.)

Eventually, after several technicians and doctors all hand wave us through, he gets this XRay, gets his forms, and even gets a handful of prescriptions. The prescriptions range from pain killers,to real crutches (I guess they didn't think the ski poles would quite do) to some sort of cream which I tell Kevin is probably just for smelly feet. But Kevin is fine ...

It's raining so it's a great time for him to be patient for a few days. It's Thanksgiving weekend, but I didn't have the extra days off because pilgrims celebrating with American Indians just don't mean much to the French. Instead it's time to paralyze our world with a trucker strike.

If you read the news, which I do on occasion, you know that small towns are being left without gasoline. People are stranded. We can't travel outside the city because you won't get beyond the metro lines. And then(I love this) Air France goes on strike to sympathize with the truckers! I sure wish they would sympathize with the 24 general managers for Microsoft who are all now stuck in Paris, in a paralyzed world, because they can't fly out.

I laugh when one of the general managers, the one from Finland, says, "I am never going to fly Air France again!"

I say to him, "I have said that about every carrier. And you know, if I held it to be the truth, I would never get out of Paris again." I laugh.

He's not amused by any of it. His wife, his kids, his millions of action items all are waiting for him in Finland. How nice to spend 2 days in an airport hotel or the airport pleading with all the airlinesto let you out. Please oh please.

Now, if we could only figure out how to transport people via the Internet. Like one big attachment and just a few minutes later they are on the other side of the world. It would solve the Air France problem and come to think of it, the trucker strike too.

For whatever sick reason I think of divorced couples who share kids from across the world."I sent Johnny to you via email. He was on a massive tirade and I decided it was your turn to deal with him. Did you get him?"

Days later the father checks his email. Egads, Johnny isn't quite screaming any more.

Well, I suppose we have a few bugs to work out with my plan. Maybe we can get some help from those striking workers from Air France. Oh yes, they are too busy sympathizing with the rail workers. But surely, there must be an easier way to send my husband home to his mother to take him with his busted foot. Surely, something easier than standing at an aiport for 3 days while he waits for someone to decide that we can fly out of Paris.