Airplane Post

Hours 1 - 6
So far I haven’t done a whole lot. I watched 20 minutes of the Dark Knight, but since I have already seen it 20 times, because it has been to only good movie on my flights for the last 4 months, that I couldn’t handle it. I went on to watch another movie, but apparently it was so memorable that I have already forgotten what it was. After that I turned on Numbers. It is an ok television show that typically keeps me occupied on flights, but again, I have already seen the episodes that they have. However, this turned out to be pretty good because I ended up sleeping for about an hour and a half or two hours. I woke up, watched 3 episodes of Ten Items or Less. Not a terrible show, but only once did I laugh at something that happened. I got up to get a sandwich and a soda. At this point I have started Quantum of Solace, but decided to boot up the computer, write the beginning of a post and listen to a few episodes of the Typical Mac User.


Hours 6 - 12
Not a whole lot went on. I slept for a little while, watched a few episodes of Friends, the IT Crowd, and I watched a movie called Twilight. Not such a bad movie. I knew it was in theaters a little while ago, but from the sound of it, it was really a teen movie and I wasn’t terribly interested. But, being stuck on a plane for 17 hours will make you do things that you wouldn’t normally do. But, lets be honest, I watch a lot of bad movies. The point is that even though I thought this movie would be terrible, it wasn’t. While I was sleeping and watching television in complete darkness and silence, people sitting in the window seats found it was necessary to open the windows from time to time to see what was out side the window. I felt like standing up and screaming that it is the same thing you will see everywhere while we are in the sky for this long. It was really quite annoying.

Hours 13 - 17
Did a bit of emailing with Emily which kept boredom away. as I write this there is about an hour and a half left in the flight. I am now watching Get Smart and hoping that it keeps me interested until they announce that we are on our approach to Houston. I spoke briefly to the guy in 6K, pretty interesting guy that, as it turns out, is a rancher from eastern Colorado. His son recently took a job with Emirates Airlines, so he was out to visit. Turns out that he lives in the same building or set of buildings as a buddy of mine lives in. We talked about what he thought of Dubai and what he was able to see while he was there. He got to go to the Dubai World Cup, which I watched on television.

I have added a picture of my remote control for business class. I had to because of how awesome it is. If it were easier to do, I would have gotten a picture of my tv screen and possibly the 14 seats around me. As it turns out though, people in Business class take care of the bathrooms about the same as the people that are in coach.

That all. I wrote this entire post as well as took the pictures from the plane. I hope that it was at least a bit interesting to find out what people do during a 17 hour flight.

Flying For Jerks

Some rules for flying:

1. If you cannot find your seat without the assistance of a flight attendant, you should probably not fly. This rule goes double for anyone who is holding an economy class ticket and slows down in business class just to make sure that their seat isn't there.

2. If you are flying in economy, act like it. I know it would be nice if we could all fly first class, but we can't nor do most of us pay for it. So, if you are sitting in economy, don't act like a jerk when the flight attendant tells you that they don't serve drinks prior to take off.

3. When the flight attendants ask you to put your tray table up and your seat in the upright position, just do it. It won't kill you to sit vertically for that first 10 minutes and last 10 minutes of a flight.

4. Be considerate of other people on the plane. Not everyone wants to hear your conversations, and some people are actually trying to sleep, so shut up or speak quietly.

5. When the plane lands, just stay seated until people start getting off the plane. From experience, you aren't getting off the plane any fast by standing up the minute the plane lands.

6. If you can't carry your bag, it isn't a carry on. Please do not board the plane with a suitcase, the overhead and under seat storage was not meant for all of your luggage, just a few things you would like on the plane with you or things that you might need should your bag get lost.

Thus ends the suggestions I have for people when flying, but let me put this suggestion out there. I think flying should work like a reality television show. If enough people find what you are doing to be annoying or distasteful, you should be voted off the plane. This would mean that you would be immediately evacuated from the flight by parachute, or possibly put in the luggage compartment.

Skywards

Emirates Airlines has a frequent flyer program. It is called Skywards. In the time since I left the US, I haven't flown anything but Emirates, with the exception of a couple of flights within the US.

About a week ago I got a nice package in the mail from Emirates that contained my new card. You see, I have flown so much since I got here that I have gotten to the second tier of membership. Some of the advantages are that I get more miles credited to my account for flying, I get to check in at the first class counter, and I can take a larger bag on the plane as well as check more baggage than is allotted. They also sent along with my new membership card two hard plastic (credit card like) baggage tags to put on my bags.

Today, I came to the office and found a second package from Emirates on my desk. I thought for sure this was a mistake, but my name was on it. Then I figured that they had inadvertently sent the card and tags a second time. I opened the package to find that they had sent me my card and baggage tags from when I first joined and I was just getting them. I am not sure what to think about that. Did Emirates forget to send them, or did the postal service not get them through for the last 5 months?

Macworld

Macworld should probe to be interesting. I don’t say that because of any specific product they might release, though I think there are a few that they will release that are cool. I have come to find that the Macworld Keynote is fun and entertaining. Regardless of the products that are released I am drawn to them for entertainment. The updates on iTunes and iPods are always interesting. There always seem to be predictions that are floating about for a week or so prior to the Keynote. Some are absurd, some are plausible, and some are down right stupid, but they are always fun. Someone should start a Macworld Keynote pool. Take all the predictions that are made and put them into a chart and let people buy squares for a couple dollars each, then you could also have a pool for what order they would come out in and what the … On last thing … would be. By my calculation, assuming 10 dollars per box, the winner could take home up to 300 or so dollars. That would be if there were 5 predicted products being announced (ie upgraded macbooks, Mac Minis, Mac Pros, Macbook Pros … )

I think it could be fun.

The Trip Thus Far

I woke up pretty early friday morning in order to induce tiredness so that I would sleep on the flight from Houston to Amsterdam at some point. In retrospect, this was a poor decision. The flight from Midland to Houston was easy. I had a three hour lay over in Houston during which time I corresponded with my mother via email from my phone. I don't know that I could have handled it otherwise. There was very little to do there. I also sent a few other emails as the opportunity presented itself, such as my email to Mark entitled, "worst food court ever".

The plane boarded about an hour prior to flight time in Houston, and as my travel agent had said, very few people sit near the galley. It must have something to do with the obnoxious flight attendants making sure that no one can sleep. It wasn't really that bad, but I feel like every time I thought I was going to fall asleep, one of them would open the curtain and shine a 9000 watt light bulb at my face. The point to be taken from this is that near the galley is comfortable and not many people sit there. There were two of us in row 24 with the center seat open, which allowed me and the Indian, proper Indian not the American variety, to spread out quite a bit and be comfortable. Bobby and I talked quite a bit at the beginning of the flight and near the end and for a while in the middle as neither of us could sleep.

As it turns out, Bobby and I had quite a bit in common, at least according to him we did. He is a diamond dealer. He was on his way to India to purchase diamonds and take them back to the US. He kept harping on this point, to which I continued to respond, "yeah", or "uh-huh". Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the company.

They showed a couple of television shows and a few movies during the flight to Amsterdam that helped out quite a bit with the boredom. Over all it was a good experience. I had a few beers and they served a pretty good lasagna for dinner and a cold "egg on a biscuit" for breakfast, and they were continually around asking if you needed somthing to drink.


In Amsterdam, both Bobby and i had layovers, so we grabbed a cup of coffee and talked for a little while longer. Interesting fact about Amsterdam, they don't worry about you stealing their coffee cups. I told the guy I might walk around, could I have a paper cup. He responded, that cup (the nice ceramic one) could go anywhere, just leave it on a table when I was finished. That would never fly in the United States because some dumb ass would steal the damn cup. After that, I went to my gate, where they screen you through security, and them make you wait in an uncomfortable room to check your passport, and then make you wait in an uncomfortable room to have your ticket ripped, and then make you walk down the jet way and wait in line again. There was a line in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy that I was reminded of, I think it was, "if there is one thing the English are good at, it is queueing up." I know I was in the Netherlands, but it reminded me of it anyway.

The flight from Amsterdam to Aberdeen is about an hour long. Nothing special happened, except that I noticed in Europe proper they call Diet Coke, "Coke Light".

My boss picked me up at the airport here in Aberdeen and brought me to my apartment. She seemed like she was in quite a hurry, so I kept telling her that she could leave and I would be ok, that we would talk Monday morning. She eventually did, and soon after I found out that my cell phone, that I was told would work here, does not work here. Following that I spent an hour trying to get a computer connected to the internet, for some reason the are still on the wireless B standard here, so the signal is bad, and it cuts in and out.

I woke up at 6 am Texas time yesterday and have still not really had any significant amount of sleep, so if mispelled a bunch of stuff or there are incoherent ramblings, attribute them to my lack of sleep.

Also, I roamed the streets here for quite a while and went grocery shopping. Two completely different experiences that I will write about at a later time. I also have some fun stories about my apartment so far that I will put up later too.

I have some pictures ready to go up, but I forgot my camera cable and my card reader, so I will put them up as soon as I get one or the other to transfer the pictures to my camera.

Airport Disk

I have, until recently, kept my iTunes library on an external hard drive in order to keep all of my music in the library. I have a lot of music that I don't listen to very often, if at all, but I like to have it there so that i have the option to listen to it.

When I found out that you could attach a disk to the new Airport Extreme Base Station, this seemed like a great idea because I would no longer need to mount and un-mount the hard drive in order to connect to my library while I was at home.

I am here to tell you that, even with instruction, and many days of futzing around with it. I am still unable to get the library to work over the Airport. I am a little disappointed about it. I can connect to the hard drive and move things back and forth. The only thing I can't do is use the iTunes library.

If anyone has any ideas about what I might do to get this to work, please, let me know.

Otherwise I have to say that, like every Apple product I have owned, the Airport works great. The speed of the thing is incredible. I can transfer files back and forth and open files from the hard disk really quickly, now if only my internet connection was faster.