Rocket Science

Here’s my current list of Where in the U.S. and World have I been…I’ll be keeping a Where in the World page updated with future travels.

Where in the United States…

I’ve visited 38 states (76%).

Where in the World…

I’ve visited 22 countries (9.77%).

I’ve been looking to find a site to do this for a while now, I finally found one I liked! I’m using Douwe Osinga’s sites to Create your own visited map of The United States and Create your own visited map of The World. I also thought about using World66 and TripIt.

I’m halfway through my marathon two-week, around the world trip. I’m not dead yet, but I think I flew over it sometime on Saturday/Sunday.

I gave three presentations (2009 Technology for Education Workshop, Microsoft Research India and IEEE Computer Society Bangalore Section) while in India, basically the same one–but in three different durations. First was 20 minutes, then 5 minutes and then an hour. Needless to say by the third one, I had things down pat.

My presentation to the IEEE-CS Bangalore Section was also the best presentation of the three–I was able to spend the time to present the material, and got great questions from the audience. I’m really annoyed at myself that I didn’t record the presentation, it would have made a great slidecast.

I’m embedding the first presentation, the one with a slidecast, below.

Update: They’re now called Patriot Taxi! And kudos to Justin for picking me up after mixups, twice!

I found Frost Transportation: Taxi Cab & Livery Car via a web “>search. Over on Yahoo! Local, I found a large number of positive reviews, so I thought I’d try them out today (well yesterday now) to get to the airport.

Two thumbs up.

Updated: Oops, made a little mistake.

So I was updating a spreadsheet where I keep track of the states I’ve visited the other day… I’m now up to 40 (out of the 50 plus the District of Columbia). I got a couple of the states on a trip to Maine in 2007 and also on my drive from Logan, UT to Lexington, MA earlier this year.

Map Source: Wikipedia

States I've Visited

I’m still missing: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota and Vermont.

Of the 40 I’ve spent at least one night there (usually in a hotel) in all but Iowa, Montana and New Hampshire, where I was just driving through.

I’ve been in hotels in a couple countries that have electrical outlets that accept plugs from multiple countries/regions. Why don’t all hotels have them?

Photo Credit: Brandon

Mexico Hotel Power Outlet

In Mexico, the one’s I’ve seen accept European un-grounded and American grounded and un-grounded plugs. In China, the one’s I’ve seen accept European un-grounded, American un-grounded plugs. At right is a photo of the plugs in Mexico. Unfortunately I didn’t take a photo of the ones in my China hotels.

In Mexico, because of their proximity to the U.S. and the likelihood that all American electric items work there, the outlets probably do accept both ~120V-60Hz and ~220V-50Hz electrical items. I didn’t check in China, but even if the wall outlets only accept items that run at ~220V-50Hz such as laptop power adapters and shavers, which come capable of operating at multiple frequencies, it’s still a plus. In both cases for Europeans and American’s that’s one less adapter to *have* to carry around.

I just wish that countries in Europe adopted the same plug. Though probably they’d have dumb Americans (mostly) plugging in items that won’t work with the local electrical systems and burn out their devices or something.

As an aside, the Chinese also have great power strips that accept both European and U.S. plugs–since they make most of the goods for the world anyway, why aren’t they exporting those things as well???