Power on Airplanes

I spent the last two days flying to Lund, Sweden for meetings here. During the flight from Salt Lake City to Paris I spent most of the time working on a presentation I will be giving during the trip. Fortunately my laptop has a seemingly never-ending battery that lasted the entire flight. However if I had needed it, I could have plugged in my power supply and charged the battery. There is a universal power outlet on most International flights. It will either be between the seats in front of you or down behind your knees.

I started my trip in San Francisco and the young lady sitting next to me had a phone with very little battery life left. She looked at the funny blue light above the outlet on the seats in front of us and asked me if it was a power outlet. After all, a universal power outlet will accept most plugs and so it doesn't look like your standard outlet you would find at home. I told her should could use it to charge her phone which she did.

Not all planes have the outlets and so you can't rely on them being there. However if your plane has them, you should not hesitate to keep your electronics topped up. Almost all of my flight experiences are restricted to Delta, Alaska, and Southwest. My experience is that most Delta planes have the outlets. On Alaska about 60% of the planes have them. Very few, if any Southwest planes have power to the seats. Your mileage may vary.

Dog vs. Technology

Sometimes technology is no match for a good old dog at your side. Yesterday I headed to the Salt Lake Airport to catch my usual Monday morning flight to the Bay Area. A lot of other people seemed to be gathered at the airport yet the security line moved fast enough that no significant line existed. The secret is that TSA is using dogs in one of the terminals instead of those insanely expensive body scanners. All of the lines merge into one section where passengers have to walk past a dog with his handler. Then it is like going back in time 15 years. There is an X-ray machine for baggage and a metal detector for the passengers. No need to remove shoes. No need to take your laptop out of the bag. Consequently the line moves incredibly fast.

Engineers think they can solve problems with technology and sometimes they are right. Other times you just need a cute-slobbery pet and life is better. Now I wish all of the airports would switch from expensive machines to furry and lovable dogs. Airport congestion will improve greatly and anyone who travels will appreciate that. Oh a word of advice: don't pet the dog.

Airport Flight Delays

I am at the Los Angeles International airport waiting for a flight back to Salt Lake and it is delayed by 2 hours. This whole trip has been plagued by travel delays and so I find myself in the airport wondering how best to spend my time. When I left Salt Lake on Monday afternoon, I finished my ham radio magazine due to a delayed flight. Last night I patiently waited an extra 2 hours for my wife's flight to arrive from Salt Lake so we could spend today at Disneyland. Fortunately I had a car and could drive to get some dinner nearby. I ate at the same coffee shop where they filmed a scene for the movie XXX with Vin Diesel and the food tasted amazing. I recommend it highly.

Even before I headed to the airport this evening I knew that this flight would be delayed simply because it is the last flight of the day and my experience with Southwest is that evening flights are almost always delayed. Unfortunately you cannot plan on the flight being late because if it isn't and you miss the flight, the consequences can be expensive and uncomfortable.

So how best to spend my evening? I have 2 smartphones and a laptop with a full battery as well as my PlayStation Vita. My first thought included using my laptop to write this blog entry. Unfortunately the free Internet connection at LAX is only good for 45 minutes and so I am trying to write quickly. Experience has taught me that when the 45 minutes is up, my network connection gets screwy and requires a fair amount of work to get reconnected. When I am done here I will take care of my work e-mail on one of my smartphones. Then I will pull out my Vita and play some Lego Hobbit. If I still need to entertain myself after that, I will probably be too tired to do anything more than listen to Spotify, Pandora, or stored MP3 files on my phone. Hopefully I will remain entertained.

Enjoy Life

I have been traveling a lot lately and so I took last Friday off from work to help with the Salt Flats 100 ultra marathon. It is something I help out with every year as it is organized by a good friend of mine. Besides it is a great excuse to get away from work and do something adventurous. Don't worry, I am not crazy enough to run in the event, I just provide radio support to ensure that runners stay safe.

There is no need to go into too much detail about the event other than to say that it takes almost the full weekend and requires me to drive around on goat trails not suitable for almost any passenger vehicle. I would venture to say that a stock Jeep would have trouble in sections and a lifted Jeep with oversized tires is a must.

This year I decided to keep my involvement to a minimum and just help with a single aid station. In the past I have helped with two. That can be rather difficult and makes for a really long weekend. It is a good thing too because we did not finish with the last racers through our station until after 8pm. Then we packed up our Jeeps in the rain and made the technical drive from the far reaches of the course back to civilization. I thought I had managed to get through the difficult part until the constant rain soaked the seemingly gentle dirt road to the point of becoming a giant mud field. Getting stuck in axle-deep mud well after dark is not something I wanted to deal with and felt great relief when I got back to the start/finish line after several scary sections at around 11pm. I almost had to go all the way back as we feared several runners were lost. Fortunately they staggered into an aid station shortly after midnight while I helped a bring gas back to my buddy in his Jeep after he ran his tank dry pulling SUV's out of the mud. I didn't get home until 2:30 am the next morning and had given the event all of my energy.

Sunday afternoon I sat with a number of neighborhood friends and asked if anyone had done anything exciting over the weekend. One guy noted that he mowed his lawn while another attended a soccer game for his twin daughters. Both are noble events but I felt guilty as I thought about my exciting adventure. Now as I sit in front of my computer thinking about technology I feel I have to encourage others to get out and enjoy life. Technology makes it so we don't have to spend all of our waking hours hunting and gathering food for our families. Let's use that time to do something worthwhile and fun. I spend my weekdays playing video games and doing boring things. Perhaps that is why I feel the need to get outside and go skiing, sailing, or driving over rough terrain in a Jeep. Hopefully you do too.