Octogenarians, beware! ... the headphone buffer ... Shure noise cancelling headphones ... like the first time you got in an isolation tank ... blow up an immense number of things ... riding in a Russian MiG ... vomit comets ... the ''gross'' tag ... tales from Switzerland ... well-dressed beggars ... 6 francs for a tiny cup of coffee ... trying to find local cuisine ... German potato miracle workers ... 160 dollars a day in Geneva ... a traditional Christmas in India ... 19 lanes of traffic on a 2-lane road ... ''dirty'' ... but you get a bottle or water with admission ... but my wife's name is Petunia ... I'm no Sherlock Holmes ... Holmes: ''you know I only said that once'' ... At work, I made it through tribal council ... skype video interview ... office hours over instant messaging ... savant - not burned at the stake ... I tried 3 languages and it never worked ... oh, my god, my German is gone ... defaulting into French ... I'm speaking ''Foreign,'' come ON ... do you speak gibber? ... take pity on me and speak English ... weekly pick: Avenue Montaigne ... painting in the nude ... the first blogger ... the French sex movie conundrum ... stumble.com redux ... eBay bought the cool web properties ... weekly pick: Skype phone ... a lot of free Internet access in my neighborhood ... precise cell phone location ... concerns over lack of transparency, accountability ... weekly pick: Corey Doctorow, ''Scroogled'' ... weekly pick: Columbia spf shirts ... salumbra - tailored spf shirts