I'm currently holed up in the Renaissance London Heathrow on my way out to OSCON 2008 being held in Portland in Oregon, at the Oregon Convention Centre.
Unlike last year the journey was fairly pleasant, just over two and a half hours in a straight run down the east coast main line from Leeds, where I was watching my wife graduate with her doctorate, instead of a torturous seven and a half hour journey across a flood torn west country.
However I've got a four thirty am check-in tomorrow morning, so right now it's time to get some sleep. More from me when I hit Portland...
Update: We took off late from Heathrow due to the late arrival of the equipment, we lost more time in the air due to adverse headwinds, and yet more time racked and stacked over a fog-bound O'Hare. So while I'm now on the ground in Chicago, I'm here two hours later than I should have been. Fortunately, for various values of fortunately, my trip through US immigration was relatively unscathed, and my onward flight turns out to be just as delayed going out as I was coming in. So I'm now camped out in the newly rennovated Red Carpet Club near B18. I'll let you know how things go when, or if, I make it into Portland later today...
Update: Finally made it into Portland. My connecting flight out of O'Hare was delayed, delayed again, and then delayed again. Then suddenly moved forward by an hour without warning, to a slot only a few minutes away. Apparently our plane was still sitting in Toronto, and United had decided to give us a different one at short notice. Presumably some other people were now without a plane, however...
This meant that I had to run across the terminal. Although I made it onto the flight ahead of most people, who no doubt had retired to the bar, or just taken a nap secure in the knowledge that had at least another hour to wait.
I also made it onto the plane before the flight crew, who took another hour and a half to arrive after we'd fully boarded. The cabin crew were looking distinctly nervous towards the end...
Once the flight crew arrived, did the safety check and the pre-fight, we'd closed the doors and started to pushback, one of the cabin crew noticed we had an extra passenger. The plane was full, every seat was taken, but there was still one poor guy still standing in the aisle clutching a valid boarding pass, but without a seat. After a brief discussion about whether he could sit in a spare jump seat, they finally decided that they just weren't allowed to do that anymore, he had to go...
So we had to find ourselves a new ground crew, return to the gate, and offload the guy. At this point we were getting close to the point where our flight crew were about to go illegal. We didn't pushback, for the second time, much ahead of the point where they'd have had to find us a new flight crew. Considering they probably couldn't do that the second pushback, and subsequent take off, was expedited. I was listening in on to the tower chatter on channel 9, and from the sounds of things we ducked in ahead of a fairly big queue, and rolled almost without a pause directly from the gate to the end of 32L and into the air.
That said, I arrived into Portland only two and a half hours later than planned, and I got to take a minor supporting role in an excellently produced farce. You can't complain too much...
Showing posts with label US. Show all posts
Showing posts with label US. Show all posts
Friday, July 18, 2008
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Closing the iTunes divide?
So just before the press conference yesterday, Ars Technica reported rumours that the iTunes divide might finally be closed. It seems that movies and TV episodes might be coming to the iTunes UK store real soon now,
It can't be soon enough, I've been waiting for this since October 2005. Without those movies and TV episodes the Apple TV, while available in the UK, is a door stop not a functional product...
The question you have to ask yourself is, why this long?
Trusted sources inside the company have told Ars that Apple plans to introduce movies and TV shows to iTunes UK very soon—as in, a couple of weeks. Things are apparently all set up and ready to go, so it's just a matter of flipping the switch after the dull roar has died down about today's Apple event. - via Ars Technica
It can't be soon enough, I've been waiting for this since October 2005. Without those movies and TV episodes the Apple TV, while available in the UK, is a door stop not a functional product...
The question you have to ask yourself is, why this long?
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Heading home from OSCON
So I'm sitting in the lounge at PDX waiting for my flight to Chicago O'Hare and then onward to Heathrow. However I'm not entirely sure how far I'm going to get after I land back in the Britain. Looking at the news coming out of the UK the rail system doesn't look like its recovered from the heavy flooding last week while I was travelling to OSCON.
The BBC's flood mashup (via Google Lat Long Blog) looks a bit worrying as well. To get from London to Exeter I have to go through Reading, which doesn't seem to be in a good way right now, and with more rain predicted while I'm enroute to Heathrow I'm pretty much reduced to crossing my fingers at this point...
Update: Made it home in one piece, with the trains more or less running to time, unless you wanted to head north out of Paddington towards Oxford. In which case you were out of luck as the lines were still underwater. Although looking at the countryside as I passed through Berkshire, the best description I can come up with is "water-logged". It probably wouldn't put much more rain to start another round of flooding...
The BBC's flood mashup (via Google Lat Long Blog) looks a bit worrying as well. To get from London to Exeter I have to go through Reading, which doesn't seem to be in a good way right now, and with more rain predicted while I'm enroute to Heathrow I'm pretty much reduced to crossing my fingers at this point...
Update: Made it home in one piece, with the trains more or less running to time, unless you wanted to head north out of Paddington towards Oxford. In which case you were out of luck as the lines were still underwater. Although looking at the countryside as I passed through Berkshire, the best description I can come up with is "water-logged". It probably wouldn't put much more rain to start another round of flooding...
Friday, July 20, 2007
Enroute to OSCON
I'm currently holed up in the Sheraton Heathrow on my way out to OSCON 2007 being held in Portland in Oregon, at the Oregon Convention Centre.
I arrived here after a torturous seven and a half hour journey across from Exeter, stretched from the normal and much more reasonable two or three hours, which was all down to the heavy flooding in the South East of England. After being stranded in Bristol Temple Meads for two hours, First Great Western finally bundled me and about twenty other people on our way to Heathrow and Gatwick airports into a small fleet of taxis. That's 105 miles to Heathrow and 135 miles to Gatwick. Not cheap, but with almost the entire English rail system shut down, about the only way they were going to get us here at all.
I've got an early flight out of Terminal 3 tomorrow morning, so more from me when I hit Portland...
Update: I'm not alone, although probably slightly soggier due to the vagrancies of the British climate. I was excited by the possibilities of Gears during the launch at the Developer Day, so looking down the list of Google related talks it looks like I'll have to go to the Google Gears session to check on progress.
Update: I'm sitting at the gate in O'Hare waiting to board UA129 to Portland. It's been a long day. I caught a morning flight out of Heathrow, and actually got into Chicago about 45 minutes ahead of schedule, so I had lots of time to make my connecting flight to Portland. The queue for US immigration was about an hour and a half, not the worst I've ever seen, and I was only a few people from the head of the queue when the US immigration system crashed. The entire system, nation wide. No one in, no one out.
By the time it came back up two hours later, the luggage was piled to the ceiling in baggage reclaim, and the immigration queue behind me stretched back to the gates, and in O'Hare that's a long way. There were even people still stuck in newly arrived planes because there wasn't space to let them into the Terminal.
From having an excessive five hours to make my connection, I ended up having to jog to reach my gate, and that was with those precious extra 45 minutes. The people still stuck onboard their planes are probably facing seven or eight hours of queuing before they even see their luggage, let alone the light of day...
So, any bets on whether my luggage turns up in Portland?
Update: Unbelievably, my luggage turned up. Of course I ended up with the last room in the hotel, and it shows. I'm getting moved tomorrow but I'll have to suffer it tonight. It's that or accept a walk order for another hotel, as they are literally full here, and I'm just too tired to handle that right now.
I arrived here after a torturous seven and a half hour journey across from Exeter, stretched from the normal and much more reasonable two or three hours, which was all down to the heavy flooding in the South East of England. After being stranded in Bristol Temple Meads for two hours, First Great Western finally bundled me and about twenty other people on our way to Heathrow and Gatwick airports into a small fleet of taxis. That's 105 miles to Heathrow and 135 miles to Gatwick. Not cheap, but with almost the entire English rail system shut down, about the only way they were going to get us here at all.
I've got an early flight out of Terminal 3 tomorrow morning, so more from me when I hit Portland...
Update: I'm not alone, although probably slightly soggier due to the vagrancies of the British climate. I was excited by the possibilities of Gears during the launch at the Developer Day, so looking down the list of Google related talks it looks like I'll have to go to the Google Gears session to check on progress.
Update: I'm sitting at the gate in O'Hare waiting to board UA129 to Portland. It's been a long day. I caught a morning flight out of Heathrow, and actually got into Chicago about 45 minutes ahead of schedule, so I had lots of time to make my connecting flight to Portland. The queue for US immigration was about an hour and a half, not the worst I've ever seen, and I was only a few people from the head of the queue when the US immigration system crashed. The entire system, nation wide. No one in, no one out.
By the time it came back up two hours later, the luggage was piled to the ceiling in baggage reclaim, and the immigration queue behind me stretched back to the gates, and in O'Hare that's a long way. There were even people still stuck in newly arrived planes because there wasn't space to let them into the Terminal.
From having an excessive five hours to make my connection, I ended up having to jog to reach my gate, and that was with those precious extra 45 minutes. The people still stuck onboard their planes are probably facing seven or eight hours of queuing before they even see their luggage, let alone the light of day...
So, any bets on whether my luggage turns up in Portland?
Update: Unbelievably, my luggage turned up. Of course I ended up with the last room in the hotel, and it shows. I'm getting moved tomorrow but I'll have to suffer it tonight. It's that or accept a walk order for another hotel, as they are literally full here, and I'm just too tired to handle that right now.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Two dollars to the pound...
Reaching a twenty six year high the pound broke the two dollar exchange rate barrier today. Which possibly means that it's actually cheaper for me to get to New York than it is to get to London, and it'd certainly be cheaper to eat out once I arrived. Time to draw up a big shopping list for my next trip Stateside...
Update: Of course if you live State-side you might not be as happy about things, well, unless you're trying to sell your product in the UK. I'm sure if I'd done a lot more economics that I have done, the idea of using a fluctuating exchange rate to try and figure out what the demand curve looks like for your product wouldn't be such a novel idea. But as it is, I thought Joel Spolsky's derivation of his demand curve was a pretty cute trick...
Update: Of course if you live State-side you might not be as happy about things, well, unless you're trying to sell your product in the UK. I'm sure if I'd done a lot more economics that I have done, the idea of using a fluctuating exchange rate to try and figure out what the demand curve looks like for your product wouldn't be such a novel idea. But as it is, I thought Joel Spolsky's derivation of his demand curve was a pretty cute trick...
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