Universal Converter Box

Brilliant comic on XKCD today (even more brilliant than usual, I mean).

But I knew the minute I saw it that it wouldn't be universal. With the plethora of incompatible connectors out there, most of them perpetuated by manufacturers for no good reason (I'm looking at you Apple), it simply isn't possible to cover everything.

I also had a sneaking suspicion that the artist would neglect the lack of compatibility between US and international standards. There it is down there, second from the bottom on the left, a 120V US style plug without a universal adaptor in sight!

Power outlet adaptors are one of those constant annoyances when you travel internationally. I solve the problem by taking a power strip with me, which I plug in using a single adaptor. Then I can plug all of my other devices straight into the power strip.

Tim Tam contraband

Coming through Customs in LA yesterday, the agent asked us if the food we had declared was Tim Tams and said he'd have to confiscate them because they had too many calories!

Tim Tams are distributed in the US by Pepperidge Farm and are intermittently available at our local supermarket. All the friends we've given samples to have loved them. Looks like the Customs agents in LA like them too!

Holiday in Iceland?

Since I live in Colorado and do a lot of international travel, I'm always interested in new international connections out of Denver. Right now we've got two* - British Airways to London which I've flown at least a dozen times, and Lufthansa to Frankfurt which I've flown once.

So I was sort of excited to hear that our options are about to increase by 50% with Icelandair to offer direct flights from Denver to Reykjavik. I say "sort of" because I'm not so sure what I'll do with this, other than take a holiday in Iceland, which I am sure would be fun - but only once.

Unfortunately Icelandair don't fly from Reykjavik to Dublin or this would be a really handy way for me to get to head office without having to go through Chicago, New York, London or any other congested and unreliable hub airport.


*I'm not including flights to Canada and Mexico; I don't consider those real international flights in the same way I don't consider Australia to New Zealand a real international flight. I think I'm conditioned by many years of long haul travel to expect an international flight to be 7 or 8 hours long, minimum!

Dinner with a show

The chef calls this one Mt Fuji!

Just one thing to get right

All a check in agent needs to do these days is get one thing right. When you print your own boarding pass and check in at a kiosk, all the agent needs to do is put the correct tag on your bag. Our check in agent today couldn't even manage that. It wasn't until our bags didn't arrive in DC and we looked at our baggage receipts that we realised that she'd put someone else's tags on our bag. Someone else who was going to Tampa Bay.

I've hated United so much for so long that I would have thought it impossible for me to hate them more. I was wrong. Very wrong.

Update 2.55pm, August 9
They give you a website to check the status of your bags (http://www.united.com/bagcheck) but all it tells you is that your bag has been found and is in transit to you. But you still have to call and talk to an agent to find out the specific flight it was put on and when you can realistically expect it. It's one thing not to have information on the website that they don't have, but what's the sense in having the website if it doesn't tell you the information they have and you want?

I officially do not understand airlines

Today we're flying from Ottawa to Washington DC (this post is brought to you courtesy of Ottawa airport's free wifi!)

We arrived quite early for our United flight so we asked about getting on an earlier United flight (same airline) only to be told that it would cost us $120 each.

We were also told that it was too early to check in for our original flight. So we had lunch and a cup of coffee and came back. At which time we were told (by a different agent) that we could get on an earlier Air Canada flight (yes a different airline) for no charge. In fact, because Air Canada does not charge for checked bags, we're saving fifty bucks.

I actually do understand what's going on here. It's all about the check-in agent. One decided to be helpful and the other one didn't. Simple as that.

No airline executives were harmed...

Recently I wondered if I would need to ritually sacrifice an airline executive in order to appease the airline gods.

I'm pleased to say such drastic action seems to have been unnecessary. Last week I managed to fly from Denver to Chicago to Ottawa to Washington to Los Angeles to Brisbane without a single delay or disruption. I even got the best seat on the plane (1A) on the Qantas flight to Brisbane!

A better birthday

Last year on my birthday I ended up at a South African Emergency Room. This year I went skiing. It's not hard to figure out which experience makes for a more enjoyable birthday!

I was out around 10am which was probably 30 minutes too early, so the first runs were hardpack, but by 11am it had softened nicely in a number of places. Best run of the day was my second attempt at Vagabond after the snow had softened.

Here's the GPS data.

Sydney airport deja vu

I'm sitting in my home office in Steamboat listening to the the radio from Australia on the internet.

The Australian Minister for Transport is currently talking about the need for a second airport in Sydney.

I have two words for him: Badgery's Creek.

That was the name of the second Sydney airport announced by the Australian Government in mid-1989. It was a political sop back then. I know this because I was part of the small team that put the proposal together to provide political cover to get approval to build a third runway at the real Sydney airport (whenever I land on 16L/34R, I like to think of it as "my runway").

It's still a sop now. There are very few cities that successfully run more than one major airport. New York, London, Tokyo, Paris and Chicago come to mind. All much bigger cities than Sydney.

One of the things the Minister was just rabbiting on about was that demand for slots exceeds supply. The best way to match supply and demand and to ensure a resource is allocated to its highest value use is via a very secret mechanism economists call price. In the context of airport slots that means auctioning slots off to the highest bidder. Of course that's not how it works. So I have zero sympathy for bleating about excess demand.

Angry airline gods

Clearly the airline gods are angry with me because in the past 2 months I'm 0 for 3 in terms of attempts to travel out of Steamboat without major disruptions.

In early February I attempted to travel from Steamboat to Dublin. It was supposed to be easy - direct flight from Steamboat to Chicago and then direct flight to Dublin. My flight out of Steamboat was delayed and I missed my connection in Chicago, so instead of the direct flight to Dublin I had to go via London which has the world's dumbest immigration process for transiting to Ireland.

In late February I attempted to travel from Steamboat to Washington via Houston. My flight from Houston to Washington was cancelled so I had to overnight in Houston.

Then today I attempted to fly from Steamboat to Washington via Denver. It was snowing hard as I left for the airport and half way there I received the email notification that my Steamboat to Denver flight had been cancelled.

Note that only this last disruption had anything to do with the winter weather in the mountains.

If anyone knows how to win back the favour of the airline gods, please feel free to comment. Do I have to ritually sacrifice an airline executive or something?

Update: 6.24pm: here's the report in today's paper on the storm and flight cancellations.

Before you ditch your other distribution channels...

For several years airlines have been squeezing their traditional distribution channels like travel agents and driving business to their own websites. American Airlines took it a step further recently and withdrew its flights from other websites like Orbitz and Expedia.

I'm not criticising the strategy. Just saying that if you are going to do that you probably need to be extra, extra, extra careful about making sure that your website works!

Good days and bad days

Yesterday was a good day - several inches of fresh snow in the morning and more during the day, and even with Christmas only a week away the mountain was surprisingly uncrowded. Best run of the day was definitely Shadows, top to bottom (i.e. including the section below Duster) for the first time this season. Here's the GPS data.

Today started out fine. We had a nice lunch with friends out in a very beautiful part of rural Colorado but had a slight mishap on the way home. I took a corner a little too tight and skidded on the ice right into a ditch.

Thankfully their was no damage to the occupants (except the driver's pride) or vehicle, but it's not much fun waiting around for a couple of hours on a cold snowy afternoon in the middle of nowhere for the tow truck to pull you out! Fortunately our wonderful friends Gerry and Kathy were traveling behind us so we could wait in their nice warm car.

Vuvuzelas

As I mentioned previously I was in South Africa for the 2010 soccer World Cup.

A few people have asked me what I thought of the vuvuzelas. This sums up my feelings on the matter perfectly.

What does guaranteed mean?

In the thousands of nights I've stayed in hotels I've never needed or wanted a room with two beds.Well once, about 15 years ago when I shared a room on a business trip with my good friend Raj, and he hasn't stopped talking about how restless I am (stillness is not my karma).

Hotel rooms are small enough without half the space being taken up by a bed that you are not going to use. So one of my pet hates is booking a room with a king bed and finding at check in that they only have rooms with two queen beds available.

This is annoying enough at hotels that primarily serve business travelers, but it is inexcusable at hotels that attract couples wanting a romantic get away, like the Fairmont Chateau Laurier in Ottawa which seems to have a constant stream of unhappy couples (yes, including us when we stayed there) checking in only to find that for 300 plus dollars a night (room only) they'd be sharing an old fashioned double bed instead of the king bed they'd requested.

One of the reasons I prefer Marriott hotels is that they track rooms with king beds and rooms with two queen beds as separate inventory, so that if they have a king bed room available when you make your reservation, they guarantee it.

Or so I thought. I received an email today from a Marriott that I was planning to stay at tonight saying "We wanted to let you know in advance that based on our occupancy, your bed preference might not be available today during your stay."

I'm sorry, but which part of guaranteed do I not understand correctly?

Hard drive fail

The hard drive in my work laptop crashed yesterday. For some reason it was the only one of the several computers in my house that wasn't backed up. Yes I know, dumb, dumb, dumb.

It could have been worse. It actually happened whilst I was visiting the office, so Jeremy our IT guy did a great job installing a new hard drive so I at least have a working laptop, even if it is without my data (fortunately the most valuable documents were stored online.)

The other silver lining is that after a not so good day, I got to come home to Steamboat (and Marie). That's always good. Actually it's good squared!

What a difference one letter makes

I've obviously been spending too much time reading and thinking about the Global Financial Crisis.

I say that because I was driving from the Gold Coast to Brisbane when I saw the following on a variable road sign: "Unsecured loads cause crashes."

My reaction was to ask "why is the roads department commenting on economic policy?". Because I read it as: "Unsecured loans cause crashes"!

World Cup Cappuccino

In the past two years I've spent a total of about seven months in South Africa. In that time I've tried plenty of cappuccinos (including a "cappuccino" with cream).

Until recently the best of them were merely OK (and the worst of them, you don't want to go there.) About three weeks ago I discovered a really, really good cappuccino - not quite as good as the perfect cappuccino I found in Rome - but close. Here it is.


And this is the barista Clarence who makes this excellent cappucino.


Where did I find it? In the cafeteria at the Woolworths department store in Irene Mall!

World Cup Fever

I'm not a big soccer fan - in fact I've been heard to say that I don't like soccer - but with two teams in the World Cup (Australia and USA) and being right on the spot in South Africa, well it's hard not to get caught up in the excitement.

Especially so when my colleague offered me a ticket to the USA-Algeria game being held less than 30 minutes from where I'm staying.


So for a few hours I became that rarest of beasts, rarer even than the fabled unicorn, a one-eyed Australian-American soccer fan.

However there was no shortage of fully decked out USA fans in the crowd. Even Elvis was there supporting the US team!


To top it off we had seats right in front of the goal where USA scored the winning goal in the final minutes.

A builder's truck

The place we've been staying at in South Africa for the past few weeks has been having some remodelling done. This is the truck the builder uses to carry his materials and tools and his workers to the site.


Back home in the US anyone who needs to carry more than a box of tools seems to have a great big F250 pickup truck. We'll this thing could fit in the back of one of those.

Leave home without it

If you have a US-issued American Express card and you're planning to attend the Soccer World Cup in South Africa in June, I strongly recommend that you bring another credit card with you.

South Africa is following Europe's lead in requiring a PIN rather than a signature for over the counter credit card transactions. Credit cards issued by US banks don't have PINs. The South African banks are supposed to cater for that by programming their point of sale terminals to recognise a US-issued card (you can readily tell which country a card is issued in from the card number) and not ask for a PIN for a card that doesn't have one. Based on my experience in the last week they've done so for Visa cards but not for American Express (I don't know about Mastercard since I don't have one to test).

Given that Visa is a Soccer World Cup sponsor it all seems a little too coincidental to me. I wouldn't be happy if I was American Express.

Will I be attending a game if I'm here in June? I'm torn between the fact that Australia and USA (I'm a dual citizen after all) have qualified and the fact that I hate soccer!