Travel

Civilized Travel

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I don’t want to jinx my trip (i am currently in the air) but so far Jet Blue knows how to make air travel civilized. They had automated check in Kiosks. That isn’t new. Plenty of airlines have them. What was nice is that they have a ton of people around while you use them. Twice while I was at the machine I saw someone who could help me if I needed it. As I waited to hand in my checked luggage I saw 2 others who answered some quick questions for me. Total time at check in (including the line for handing my luggage) maybe 10 minutes. And I d mean maybe that long. Security was quick, but since I was there at 9AM on a sunday even the worst airline would be quick.

I found some breakfast, bought a book, a few magazines and some snacks and then went to the gate. As I read before I got there, they do have FREE WIFI. A big center area with power adapters and everything. I got a quick sync of my email done before I boarded. I also got the latest news feeds onto Netnewswire. It was nice. Like I said civilized. Well thought out. I am sitting here now writing on the powerbook, but I could be watching Superman on A&E, something interesting on SCIFI, MSNBC, or any other of a dozen channels. They did have some issues with the system at take off. A few resets seemed to fix it.

And no, I don’t work for the airline. I am just (finally) happy with an airline that thinks about its customers. This is a far cry from my last Delta experience.

Clean Up

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I got a bunch of misc. items done today and yesterday in anticipation of my week in Vegas next week. I will be out at the Cisco Networkers conference. Unfortunately they hold it in Las Vegas:) So I will have to suffer.

I sat with Bob yesterday and discussed the project plan for our major new site redesign. It sounds super interesting. It will be just stressful for me and my team. I keep telling myself I will be bored if we were not as busy as we are. It is still hard having a queue of stuff to get to, and some of it won’t get worked on for months.

Kai and I are both out next week. he is on vacation and totally unavailable. I will be reachable, so that is good, but the team will be short handed by 2 next week.

James was off today so I ended up doing some grunt phone configuratin work. That meant besides working on the Definity I had to go under desks doing some wireing. Not fun, but I got everything that needed to be done taken care of. I have to repeat what I have said before, working on the Call Manager is so much easier and straight forward than working on the Avaya Definity or any other Avaya switch I have worked on.

Travel Essentials

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As I said the other day, I don’t travel anywhere near as much as I used to. Just because I don’t go out of the office that much doesn’t mean that when I do I want to be any less connected. I did a quick overnight trip Monday-Tuesday. I (bored on the train) now write about what I relied on during the trek.

While in transit nothing says keeping in contact with the world like a Blackberry. When you can’t or don’t want to bring out a laptop it is essential. I hate it for everything else, including the stupid direct connect. I find that if I want to hold a conversation I might as well call the person than have a 20 minute conversation on DC. For email nothing beats the Blackberry, yet.

My powerbook was the laptop of choice this trip. My thinkpad is acting funky, and I don’t want to wipe it since I am getting a new one next week. So the powerbook stepped in and performed flawlessly (so far). I used it to watch some tv shows I recorded last week. Checked mail, did work, blogged, etc. All over Wifi!

Without the iPod I would not be sane. It makes train trips, and quiet hotel rooms that much more tolerable. It also is a great portable hard drive to store said TV shows that I watched on my powerbook. I say YES to plug and play!

My Treo is great (always carry it), but this trip it was used as it normally is. Still great, and a must for travel. What I used instead was Extension Mobility on Cisco Call Manager. It is the ability to log into any CCM phone and your extension moves with you. That coupled with the Cisco WIFI cordless phone make working in a different office just like I was in NYC, even when I was running around between 2 floors.

My new Omega X-33 watch was also a must this trip. I use my watch as an alarm wherever I go. I took my timex (broken band and all) along just in case the Omega didn’t do its job. It worked fine. I almost fell out of bed with the loudness of the alarm this morning. First impressions is this watch and I hopefully will have a long friendship!

Lastly I loved my Broadvoice VOIP phone, & Skype. I didn’t use broadvoice this trip, but I used its voice mail. I got all my VM emailed to me so I stayed in touch with everyone. I would never have checked my NYC VM without it. Skype is great since I can use it on my powerbook with my Sony Ericsson HBH-65 bluetooth headset from anywhere I have an internet connection. For this trip it was free calls from the hotel. I didn’t even need my cell phone for it. If I had broadvoice soft-phone I wouldn’t even need skype.

I have talked (praised) most of these items before, but when you use them all together you have a very smooth travel experience. I will most likely be using most if not all of this gear on my next extended trip. Now if only Amtrak could accommodate a nice ON TIME trip and travel would be painless.

The train is approaching Penn now. About an hour and 15 minutes late. So I will wrap this up so I can put the powerbook away. More mobile reviews when I use the stuff and have time to write about them! This post was written on Tuesday afternoon 5-17-05…

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Travel Day

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I don’t have many of them any more, but today was a travel day (sort of). I used to consider a “travel day” a day where most of what I did was travel from one place to another. Now that I don’t travel as much (and am much happier for it) I don’t have as many as I used to. Dam, the last time I was on a plane was September. Most of my travel is train travel now a days.

I am at the hotel now. I got hear relatively early. Normally when I stay here (my companies other office) I am usually at work late. Today was different. I needed to be here for 2 days while work went on during normal business hours. That means I got to keep normal hours, well sort of.

I learned that getting to the hotel at 6PM means dinner at 7, 7:30. After checking mail, making calls, etc, I am bored and it is only 8:30. So I sit here on the bed with my ipod listening to toons, while I write on my powerbook. I will try to goto bed early, but I don’t know if that will happen.

I had the surf and turf at the hotel restaurant again tonight. I had it the last time I was up with Jayson. it was good, and only $3 more than the normal steak I get. I had a drink and felt nice and relaxed. I didn’t have more, since it was really early and I didn’t want to be tired and out of it the rest of the night. that was just in case I decide to be productive later.

Don’t Mess With The Guys Holding The Gun’s

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I was in Penn station today waiting for my train. Just an ordinary day. Until I hear commotion behind me. Some dude (homeless or just mental) is arguing with a cop or national guardsman at the police booth. The place where the cops hang out giving out help. There were EMT’s there so I assume someone called them about this guy. He didn’t seem to want to do what the cops wanted. The next thing I know there are several cops and military guys around this dude. He still didn’t want to do whatever the cops were asking of him. The next thing you know the guy was yelling at the cops, and what looked like he was acting erratic and crazy. The next thing you know the guy was being “detained”. That means he was put up against a wall (forcefully since he didn’t want to go) then the EMT’s were looking at him.

It was a bit of excitement for my morning. All I have to say is I don’t know how crazy, drugged or otherwise out of it to not listen to like a half a dozen guys with semi-automatic machine guns standing around me. That situation (to me) clearly states get on your knees, and put your hands behind your head while you say in as many languages you know I will do whatever you guys want.

I give the cops and troops credit. They got a bit rough with the guy, but I think it was well warranted.

The next thing I know the train I was going on got called, the line moved and I was away from the craziness. The rest of the day was much less exciting than the first hour or so.

Oh, if someone thinks they know what incident I am referring to, and in some future date they think that this guy will sue I have one thing to say. I am no use to you. I TOTALLY think the cops were in the right here, and didn’t use any unnecessary force. That and I have not so great vision and was a few feet away! I mention this story as a nice anecdote about what not to do when the police ask you to do something.

Cisco Network Conference

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I got my reservations for the Cisco Network conference in Las Vegas this year. I made my reservations and called everyone I know that is going. I will hopefully meet up with Joe out there. He is taking Karen, so hopefully we can get together for dinner one night. I hope to also meet up with one of the Cisco engineers I know. I still have to set my schedule for the conference but with tons (200+) things to do I will have a hard time picking just a few stuff to do. I am really excited to go. I get out of the office that much and this really sounds like an interesting conference. That it is in Vegas has no bearing on my happiness on going!

I also spoke to Sean about the trip. I am hoping to hook up with him on the sunday I fly in. It has been a while since we got together. I hope he and Kelly have some free time with the baby and all. More news as it develops.

Busy Day

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Today was at times very busy and very easy going. What do I mean? We finished our work upstate early, so we decided to head home. But as we were doing that others had problems that were ongoing. Jay and I decided to hit the Walmart on the way home. I needed food.

After loading up on food and a new watch we headed home. When we rent cars and go upstate we usually fill up with gas at the last gas station in New Jersey on the palisades parkway. Well it was closed for construction. We had no choice but to get fuel in the city. Have you seen many gas stations in Manhattan? I haven’t either.

After dropping my groceries off at my place we headed off to find fuel. Jayson knew of a place near his house (which BTW was near the rental car return place). By now it was after 4pm on a friday in NYC. traffic was horrible. it took us 40 minutes to get to the gas station. then we had issues with it being too crowded and we were unable to get a pump on the side where our truck had the gas cap. After a fit of frustration we were going to drive into queens to find a station and then come back (we were right by the 59th street bridge anyway). knowing that would take forever we doubled back and the original gas station we went too was less crowded. 20 minutes after we originally showed up to the station, we got fuel. Another 20 minutes (to go 3 avenues and 8 blocks) we dropped off the rental car.

I was then off to the Apple store. I wanted the latest OS (10.4) and it just went on sale. See next post for details.

Switch Move

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Jayson and I are off to Kingston Thursday. We are bringing up some gear and covering for chris and kai who will be doing a move of our Core switch to its new home on the first floor. We christen the 1st floor telco room Thursday night with moving the core downstairs. Besides acting as the core for the entire office it will act as the switch for all users on the first floor.

Hopefully nothing goes wrong since it is (dare I say just) a hardware move. Of course when you are dealing with large, complex, & expensive hardware nothing is simple.

Jay and I will stay overnight and cover the Friday day shift to also ensure that no problems ocure after the move. Lets hope all is well…

The West Side

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If you haven’t figured it out yet, I live in Manhattan. To everyone else in the universe that means New York City. I have lived in NYC most of my life, but only last year moved to Manhattan. I live on the east site (exact location: classified). Last week while walking with Jay & Gretchen I found this interesting almost imaginary place called the West Side. I never imagined there being life past 6th ave. I went back again today to return something from a store. I am still amazed at the West side. More specifically I am amazed how I (and most of my friends) never goto a place that is less than 3 miles from where I live. I spend most of my time on the East side. I barely goto Queens anymore, and when I do I grumble that it is far. Yet I used to commute every day for years.

Just something I thought about when I was on the subway returning to the good old East side. I never thought of myself as one of those snobby people who thought NYC was the center of the universe, but maybe deep down I am? Probably not, but outsiders may think so!

Road Trip & Softball Games

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Went upstate on a road trip with Dan today. I had a bunch of things to take care of. Dan wanted to leave to head back to NYC by 3:30PM to make our first softball game. Being the realist I am I said we would never leave on time, and we would never make a 5:45PM game. I was right on both accounts. We didn’t leave until around 4PM. We missed all but 2 innings of the game.

We ended up getting lost getting to Roosevelt Island. Yahoo maps gave us the wrong exit name, and the stupid exit was not numbered. once we drove past it we knew we missed it, but it took tons of time to turn around. The rest of the directions were good though. Thanks to David for emailing them to me, and thanks to the Treo 650 and T-Mobile wireless data for bringing up the directions on my phone and actually working! Tech that works is priceless!

We lost by 1 run. It was tied until the last inning. At least it was not a blow out! Went out for a drink after the game and then headed to J & G’s for dinner.

All in all it was a good but busy and travel filled day.