Flight 014: O'Hare, By Day Or Night

This is what O'Hare looked like when I arrived there at around 3pm CST for my departure. The security line at the United terminal was one of the worst I'd seen lately, and then I had to walk the long walk to Terminal C afterwards. Please, O'Hare, please enter the Clear program so I can use my awesome FlyClear card next time!


In contrast, the picture to the right is O'Hare at around midnight - utterly empty and calm. I love this picture of the Kids' area at O'Hare, all I wanted to do was crawl into the womb of that plane and sleep there for a few hours. There was something really peaceful about just walking through the terminal that late and seeing the last few travellers still waiting to head out.

I don't particularly like O'Hare - I think the terminals are too far apart and each process is often delayed. I also hate trying to find a plug for your laptop. They've got a bank of seats with outlets in the middle of the terminal but it's not at all obvious and there's often a line of people waiting.

Flight 013: Home Sweet Home

I've gotten the chance to play with some new applications this week in my time off the road. The first is Wix - a really cool site that allows you to create Flash sites through their own UI. While it's still currently in beta and has a ways to go in offering all the touches needed for creating a full custom site, it has a pretty fun and intuitive UI that can definitely help you get a basic site up and running in just a few days. They also state that search engines will still be able to scrape the contents, a big problem that most Flash sites are facing today. I've started a redesign of my personal site through it so we'll see how it goes. I gotta say that it's a hell of a lot more fun than opening up HTML-Kit and starting from zero. To the right is a screenshot of the UI.

The other product I'm looking at is Woopra. Since readership here is still a bit low right now, I don't think I've gotten to experience all the cool features. However, one way it distinguishes itself from all of the other web analytics applications I've seen is that it has a real-time view of who's on your site in that moment. For example, the image on the left shows that 1 visitor is on my site. Sadly enough, it's just me! :) I've read that it's even cooler for those who are on Wordpress though - the plugin will automatically display the name of who's on your site if they are logged in. Cool and creepy, eh?

Flight 012: Garbage In, Garbage Out

There are few things more sad than eating Taco Bell at midnight with your coworker in the lobby of a nondescript motel in the suburbs of Seattle.

This was supposed to be a longer post about nutrition but I think the above says it all. Well, that and the consumption of 3 bacon cheeseburgers in 2 days.

I've decided to get my health back on track though. I've been trying to play tennis consistently for the last few months, and I think I'm going to bite the bullet and join a gym as well! My sister just joined one so hopefully it will be good motivation to have a workout buddy.

I feel like I've been running around nonstop all weekend trying to do everything and I just hit a wall sometime between last night and this morning. I woke up in the middle of the night with a painful sore throat and couldn't fall back asleep for a couple hours because it was so uncomfortable. I suppose this is what I deserve for treating my body so poorly. My main priorities for this week are now to catch on sleep, vitamins, and nothing else.

As of now, I have nowhere to travel this week! I'm scared to say it too loudly for fear of jinxing myself. It's pretty damn exciting though, especially when I'm already feeling under the weather. There's nothing more I want than to come home every night to my own apartment.

A sad thing happened tonight. My one and a half year-old nephew was looking at the magazine I was flipping through and saw a picture of a plane. He pointed to it and said my name. I guess that's how he thinks of me, the aunt who's never around because she's always on a plane! To top it off, his dad told me that he saw a picture of my Blackberry Curve in a magazine and said my name too! Depressing.

Flight 011: Southwest Airlines - "LUV" Is Not In The Air

I am now at the Westin in downtown San Diego for the night. I flew down earlier today on Southwest for a meeting. It was a pretty strange flight. The crew made a point of repeatedly saying that we weren't allowed to put beverages, electronics, or big books in the seat pocket. I think it was stressed more emphatically than any of the safety rules. I tried searching on Google to see if this was another silly measure imposed by the FAA but didn't come up with anything. Therefore the only thing I can think is that the crew didn't want to have to clean out as many seat pockets between flights. This reason seems absurd. I can understand that the cleaning is probably the least pleasant aspect of the job, but it's still part of the job. And isn't the purpose of the seat pocket to store things during flight...such as water bottles, ipods, and books of all sizes? I'm interested to see if it was isolated to this one flight crew or if I'm going to have to hear about how dangerous the seat pocket is through all my Southwest flights now. Next stop is Austin tomorrow so I'll find out soon enough.

In happier news, I've decided to write about at least one new thing every week that pleasantly and surprisingly delights me. The inaugural find is a greeting cards website called Someecards.com. This site is, without a doubt, one of the most hilarious sites I have ever come across. Here are just a few of the gems I found:



As someone who has to create a new expense report every week and tape all physical receipts to pieces of paper, I can truly relate to the sentiment and find it damn funny.



I think anyone who has to create presentations on a regular basis feels the pain here. I sent this to a coworker recently who spent hours preparing for the wrong topic because it was miscommunicated by her manager. Fun fun fun.

I think my goal is to communicate via only these cards for a whole day and see how many people I can offend and entertain simultaneously.

Flight 010: Too Much Information

On my flight from Minneapolis to Chicago O'Hare yesterday, our pilot came on the intercom at the end of our descent to mention that we might have noticed that the plane switched runways at the last minute. He then went on to explain that it was because he was notified at 5 miles away that there was debris on the runway we were initially assigned to. Now, I'm obviously very happy that we switched runways and that the debris was noticed by someone. However, I then had images of debris ripping through the fuselage...and well, you know the rest. It got me thinking about the topic of TMI - too much information. I'm the type of person who wears her heart on her sleeve, which has gotten me in a fair amount of trouble in the past. Even so, I recognize there are many situations where you can provide too much information.

I made this mistake at work about a year and a half ago when I let the head of another business unit know that I was not interested in moving to a position on his team. I went on to explain that I felt it would be a step backwards for me. I thought it was a civil conversation that resulted in a mutual understanding. Little did I know that it would turn into a gigantic clusterf*ck resulting in me sitting with 2 execs chastising me for acting entitled and disrespectful to the "chain of command." Honestly, the phrase "chain of command" was used more than once. I couldn't believe I was hearing this at a company with less than 40 employees at the time. Talk about disappointing.

I've also seen the perils of TMI in my personal life. Take, for example, the case where you find out that your friend's significant other is less than perfect. Had you asked me 10 years ago where I stood on this issue, I would have been adamant that honesty is the best policy in every situation. Since then though, I've seen friendships fall apart over bad relationships and experienced it first-hand myself. I had an interesting conversation with a close friend about this issue recently and she made a great point: if your friend already knows her boyfriend or husband has done questionable things in the past, what's the point of raising it again? Clearly some comfort level with his faults has already been established so isn't it just damaging to your own personal friendship to aggravate a sore point? These days, if I have a concern, my policy is to just say it once and never again. Is that right though? I have no clue - I think it balances my need to say something with my wish to keep the friendship on an even keel.

Flight 009: Decompression...and another Destination

Because I'm away from home so much, I often feel like I have to make the most of my personal time once I get home. What does that mean? Well, sometimes it just means spending a lot of time at home sleeping and relaxing. More often than not though, it means that I want to go out with friends and stay out late getting drunk and silly. Is it fun? Yes. Is it healthy? Hmm, not sure. I had a big night out on Friday, and while it was a great time and exactly what I wanted, I was more tired and worn out on Saturday than when I initially returned home from traveling. I guess the upside is that I definitely stayed in and did nothing Saturday night except catch up on expenses and watch some good old mind-numbing TV. But the source of wanting to go out really stems from this desire to shake off the work and meetings of the week. It's hard to delineate between business and personal time when you get home from a trip and open up your laptop again in the living room. I find that I need to go out and be away from my computer and emails before I can really shut things down.

I flew first class on United for the first time today out of necessity because there were no other seats left. It was an interesting experience since it's always seemed like such a special treat for the few elite, but in reality, it's not all that different from economy and you're still on a plane for the same amount of time. Now if somebody could make first class go faster, I would definitely shell out more money for that. What I did like was boarding first, getting some free snacks, and getting off the plane first as well. However, combine Southwest's A-List with Jetblue snacks and you've got pretty much the same experience. I don't think I'll ever fly first class domestically for personal travel because I can't see how the perks are at all worth the cost. However, the experience did serve to remind me of just how warm and fuzzy great service can make you feel. The flight attendant who was serving us in the first class area used our first name any time she said anything to us. For example, "Gary, would you like any fruit?" "Tom, are you connecting to another destination today? I can tell you which gate you'll be flying out of." It's such a little touch but it goes a long way in making somebody feel a little more memorable, and consequently, special. I usually try to use people's first names in meetings so that they know I didn't forget them, but I'm going to try a little harder moving forward.

I'm sitting on the ground at Denver airport now waiting for my flight to depart for Minneapolis. I'm conflicted about this airport. The pros are that it's clean, has moving walkways, free WiFi, and many food choices. However, the cons are that it skimps on electrical outlets (thus the sitting on the floor), requires trams to get to baggage claim & ground transportation, has offsite car rental, and is incredibly far from the actual city of Denver. Oh well, just a few more minutes here and I will be on my way to Minneapolis for a whopping 20 hours of fun & business.

Flight 008: Pat-Me-Down Tulsa

It's a great feeling to make a flight that gets you to your destination hours earlier. There's only one direct flight from Tulsa to San Diego, but it leaves at 3:35pm and my meeting didn't end until 2:30pm so I figured I had no chance of making it. I decided to just check the status after my meeting though, and it was delayed an hour! While my coworker drove us back to the airport, I was able to cancel my Southwest refundable ticket and book myself on the ExpressJet flight using my handy Verizon broadband card. I love the flexibility of Southwest refundable tickets - I probably end up changing my flight at least every other week.

Because I booked my flight so last-minute though, I had to go through the special pat-me-down security aisle. I think Tulsa's got the most stringent pat-down process I've seen in any airport. The woman before me was seriously unhappy - she had on this long, flowy skirt so it was hard to run the scanner around her body and between her legs. By the time the TSA lady asked her to put one leg out to make it easier, she started yelling and looking kinda psycho, saying "fine, why I don't I just hike my skirt up for you," which she then proceeded to do. Yow, I saw way too much in that instant! She had a nice little audience comprised of the TSA lady, the TSA male supervisor, 2 TSA cops and me by the time she was cleared through.

Anyway, Tulsa was brief and very cloudy. If you ever find yourself there, I would highly recommend staying at Hotel Ambassador. It's not much to look at from the outside, but the rooms are really nice inside. At the end of the day, hotels matter a lot to me because they make the difference between my getting sleep or tossing and turning all night, which in turn impacts how my meetings go. So I don't mind having my company shell out a few more bucks so I can be more comfortable :) Things that are important:
1. cleanliness - I have a deep fear of encountering bedbugs so I have to do a pre-inspection of every bed...kinda obsessive, I know
2. comfortable bed
3. room service - the last thing I want to do is drive around a foreign city at 10pm looking for fast food
4. toiletries - not a big deal, but I love the W Hotel's Bliss products
5. WiFi - not so important anymore now that I have my broadband card but I hate hotels that don't offer WiFi