Decided to update the map again, so far my total is 64341 miles. I have done 9,755 miles so far this year. I see a lot more coming up next year. This year also took me to 3 new states and 4 new airports.
Fast Hotel Internet Service
Most of the time when you go to a hotel the internet service pretty much sucks, and if it is free it sucks even more. However this weekend I was greatly surprised by the service in the Residence Inn by Marriott in Charleston WV. In the room they had a DSL modem on the table. So I plugged in the laptop an to my surprise this was what speedtest.net showed:
I think this is the first time I had a ~3Meg connection in a hotel room. I was able to download stuff at over 250KB/sec from my house while there as well. So kudos to the Residence Inn for the awesome Internet connection.
The difference of 300 miles
This weekend I went to the southern part of West Virginia ( 37°38’15.41″N / 81°56’16.29″W , Mingo County) for a memorial for a Co-worker/Friend who passed away on October 21, 2009 from lung cancer (he was a non-smoker and only 33 years old.) This was the first time I had been to the southern part of the state (furthest south before that was Charleston). It was hard to tell that they had major flooding there back in May ( youtube video of floods). It is more of a shock to see how people live down there compared to where I live. Some of the most shocking is the sheer number of mobile homes (aka trailers) and the bridges that go over little creeks to their home. Those bridges look rather unstable to me. The other interesting sight was that in one small town I drove through there was a church that actually had a 6 foot tall fence around it with a fenched gate for the entrance to the parking lot. I always thought church’s were supposed to be an “open” place, but this present it as some what of a private church. Interestingly the house right next to it was completely fenched in as well. So I can only guess that it was a high crime area? Another site I saw, and didn’t get to take a picture of it, was a house that looked like it had caught on fire, but they hadn’t demolished it yet. It was leaning so far to the left it almost looked like it was going to fall on the house next to it.
The other weird thing is that the mountains are so steep in that area, that there is no cell coverage and it made my XM Radio cut out. And if you ever out for an adventure in driving, drive the stretch of road east on US-52 from where WV-44 meets US52. There is a reason they call it Horsepen mountain.
Probably about the closet video to represent some of what I saw is Jesco White Dancing Outlaw on youtube.
Finally just one to take a moment to mention that my Friend served his country for 11 years in the Navy. I had only known him for a year through work. He was a great person and will be missed, but never forgotten by any of his co-workers or family.
Thoughts on Southwest and Northwest Airlines.
Recently I had to fly to the Northwest of the US. Unfortunately the only flights out and back were on 2 carriers that I had never been on before. The first was Southwest, over all not to much to complain on but the main point I hated was their seating policy. Yeah it may be ok for the average size person, but if you are anything over 5’5″ it sucks. Being 6’5″ makes it extremely hard to sit in one of their seats for 3+ hours with some one elses seat in your knees. It also means that if you aren’t up ad the crack of dawn to “check in” online you get a bad seat. What makes this worse is that if you have multiple connections, you are SOL. I had to go through 2 airports to get to the final destination. Southwest has a policy that you can only have 2 Boarding cards at once. What they don’t tell you, is that you can only get the first one on line. The web site will refuse to let you print the other ones, until after you have flown the first flight. Which means the 2nd and 3rd flights you are stuck with the really bad seats. In fact, after I had flown the first flight they still would not print out the boarding card for the last flight. I ended up having to wait in line to get a card while the rest of the flight boarded. Only thing that lucked out on the final flight was that I got an exit row sit, even though it was a middle seat, it at least had more leg room.
Some observations of the flights, they like to taxi a little faster than most other carriers do. They seem to hit the runway a little faster and harder than most others do as well. After talking to some people it seems this is how they get their good on time rating. Other than that, they seemed to be ok. They even checked my bags through for me on the weird ass path I had to go through which was nice.
Next up is Northwest (or Delta?). My trip back was supposed to leave at 105PST. But about 30 minutes before our board time they changed it to 230PST. You should have seen the gate area. Every one was running up to the desk to try to get their tickets changed. The suck part was that for me, the only way I could get home if the flight didn’t go was to wait another day. So they then come on the loud speaker and said that the Pilot talked to the ATC and we were going to start boarding, Yeah!. But that was short lasted, we ended up setting on the taxiway for about 30 to 50 minutes waiting on a clearance to leave. Needless to say there were a bunch of pissed people. (I saw the guy across from me go through like 4 beers in a 30 minute period). So we get close to the airport and we are told to slow down and start circling because of weather and runway problems. (Don’t go through MSP if you can help it till they get their construction stuff done.) Needless to say we landed and I had 3 minutes to go from Gate C1 to C21, which is a hefty walk. By the time I get there the board still says the flight is on time and will be leaving at 720CST. So I ran to the desk and found out that the crew hadn’t even showed up yet. Great, at least I should make it home. But the crew showed up like 30 minutes late, and we were late leaving, which meant we were really late arriving. And then a 1.5 hour drive home.
I think that the airline industry has cut back to much on their staff, such that they can’t even get their own crews to the gates on time. The other thing is that if they know there is so many problems in MSP, why do they scheduled flights so close. Course it is probably not their fault but more of the travel agency’s.
But the “best” thing I saw yesterday, and I wish I had my camera in video mode shooting it, was when a baggage tosser was kneeling on top of a bag coming out of under a 737 from Delta that had just landed. He rode it half way down the belt and then stood up and acted like he was surfing. No wonder people’s bags are destroyed so much.
Weird Mac Problem
Has any one else seen this problem? Using a MacPro with Snow Leopard 10.6.1 on it, and it seems like everytime I go to shutdown the Mac (using Finder and holding Alt and clicking on shutdown) it shuts down, but then a second later it starts back up. (almost as if it was doing a reboot instead of a shutdown. When the login screen shows up, I click the shutdown and it shuts down and doesn’t restart. Any suggestions?