Rocket Science

This is all Tom’s fault.

(And this might help as folks prepare to fly for the holidays.)

Here’s a nice writeup from the Wall Street Journal on The 10 Rules of the Road for Air Travel .

(Here’s another related article at CNN.)

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.

Photo Credit: zonagirl

Privileged Cattle to the Front Please

An old joke about the boarding process on Southwest Airlines is that the passengers are like cattle, mooooo.

Now, apparently, well-to-do cattle can pay $10 to board sooner.

Welcome to the nickel and diming of the the airline industry. With the industry earning $1.15 billion from baggage fees in 2008, they continue to come up with a variety of fees to annoy their passengers.

So, as you know by now, I travel quite a bit, and try and fly United when I can.

One step forward two steps back.

It looks like United has finally implemented a digital in-flight media system. From the mid-1990s through late-2008 they typically used a tape-based system (it looked like Hi8 or maybe some other 8mm format tape) that required manual operation by the flight attendants. The new system appears to work in a nearly automated fashion. The purser/flight attendant enters an access code, the duration of the flight, and the system takes over. I’ve wondered why, as other airlines have moved to on-demand systems and integration with new technologies such as USB ports at seats, the ability to play iPods via entertainment systems, why United has taken so long to adopt these “new fangle technologies”.

Things aren’t all peachy. The problems with fully automated systems…

Photo Credit: vividhsiddha

Well, at least it's open source

It’s more of a, “Push the button and hope for the best.”

“Restart” If the system needs to be restarted, it has to start over at the beginning. On a flight in June, someone noticed that the wrong movie was playing. Apparently the purser selected the wrong programming (they were going to show the westbound programming on an eastbound flight—which means I’d have to watch the same movie over again, it wasn’t that good the first time through). The purser reset the system, but we had to watch the lead in short feature before the movie, even though the prior programming was queued up to the movie.

“Commericals” The system automatically inserts commercials in the short features and movies. For TV shows, this isn’t so bad, they’re designed with commercials and are intended to have interruptions. For movies, the system seems to pick bad times to insert the commercials. The commercials don’t seem to be programmed in, but inserted randomly. So if there’s a dramatic moment, or a action sequence, expect a commercial to interrupt the flow of the movie. By contrast when movies are played on TV, the broadcasters usually do a much better job of breaking up the flow of the movie. Or perhaps United needs to pay someone more money to select better spots for its commercials. Now that I think about it, hey, what are “commercials” doing in the middle of a movie. that’s new too! =(

/sigh

Photo Credit: kvitsh

Free Shampoo

Actually, for most people, this is probably a good idea. Hey, I’ve done it myself. I started accumulating soap, shampoo and the nifty personal hygiene items from the “nice” hotels that I stayed in. I put them in the guest bathroom of my house. But remember, I travel a lot. Pretty soon I was accumulating too many of them and I had to stop. (Here’s an article on CNN about taking hotel amenities.)

You may be wondering, why don’t I use them myself? Well, there’s a reason.

Have I said that I travel a lot? One of the things I’ve decided to do is to take along my own bar soap and shampoo to try and retain some semblance of normalcy when I travel. It’s a small thing, but being able to use the same items helps all those hotel rooms feel a little more like home. And, while I haven’t done it yet, I have thought about taking a pillow case with me too for the same reason.

So for me, “I say no! to free shampoo.”

(And for Tom, yes this is another one of my travel tips.)