Smalltalk with James Robertson

Well, it's better than no connectivity, but not by much: this is what I get at 30,000 feet:

Technorati Tags: wifi

When you self fund your travel, you start to pick up on things that you just don't notice much when "the company" is paying. For instance:

• Eating dinner at a restaurant is expensive, especially if you order any alcohol
• The "big two" car rental companies are not cheap
• You save a lot by staying in hotels that offer free btreakfast and have laundry facilities
• The biggest one is this: make those flight reservations in advance

I didn't get around to arranging my flights at the beginning of my holiday break, and when I did get back to it, oof - the direct flights to Dallas that I prefer had skyrocketed until I got three weeks out. So - the next two weeks I have the joy of making connecting flights. After that, I have flights planned for a bit, and I have nice, direct - and inexpensive - flights laid out.

It's a whole different world when it's your own nickel :)

The Good News - I'm on my way home, with wifi. The bad news? I drove to the airport, and left my home car keys in a bag in Dallas.

Doh.

It's been one of those travel days. I arrived at DCA in good shape - taking the metro down instead of driving the full way was pleasant enough - but that's when the fun ended. I was immediately confronted with a 3 hour delay, and we came very close to the DCA curfew for the size plane I'm on - had things gone just a bit more wrong, I would have been headed home, and then back to DCA for a very early flight.

Ironically, I have better connectivity here than I do at my hotel :)

Well, there are delays here at dca. I'm supposed to depart at 9:37 now, and get into dfw after midnight. Since I'm trying to save money, it also means a late dinner - I got an upgrade, so I may as well wait for the free meal up in 1st.

So... Looks like a late night and something of a tiring day at work tomorrow. Maybe I'll get the work laptop :)

I just went to flightstats.com to check out the state if my flight. It's supposedly on time, but here's what the site says about the airport (DCA):

Yay?

Oh my gosh, this is so true :)

The backpack I've been carrying my laptop in ripped, so I delved into my vast collection of laptop bags - some from machines issued to me years ago, some from trade shows, one larger rolling bag I bought myself. I finally settled on an old Dell bag - it's in good shape - seems I barely used it - has lots of pockets for wires, and a pouch my iPad will fit into nicely.

There was a surprise waiting for me though - when I opened it up, there was an old Toshiba Satellite Pro sitting in there. If I had the time, I'd boot it up - gosh knows what rev of Windows is on the thing, what the machine specs are, or how many megabytes (it's that old) of disk space it has.

Memories :)

The TSA might be run by the dumbest people on the planet. Consider: they're current idea of security involves either a privacy destroying fully nude picture of you, or a grope level pat down. No word on what they'll do if some bad actor decides to ingest (or otherwise internally conceal) an explosive - at this point, I wouldn't put it past these idiots to recommend cavity searches.

It gets better though: now they are supposedly considering a WiFi ban, because WifI could be used to detonate something. That's fascinating, because I guess the TSA hasn't pondered simpler things, like mechanical timers. Never mind though - in the realm of security theater, the TSA is all about puppetry. It's just a great time to start traveling for work again :)

Technorati Tags: stupidity, tsa

Behold the next bad idea in air travel - the worst seat ever.