Hertz Neverlost, I'll Follow You Anywhere

At some point early on in my travels, Hertz's Neverlost navigation was upgraded in my mind from an accessory to a necessity. The first thing I do now after I find my rental car slot # on the Gold board and slip into my seat is type in my destination. I did the same last Thursday when I arrived at John Wayne airport (SNA). As it calculated the route, I got into drive and started following the woman's voice telling me to get on the 405. I heard the familiar double-beep to exit and then followed accordingly. Looking ahead, I realized Neverlost had led me to....a paid parking lot with no other exit. Oops!

On a separate Hertz note, my broadband card fell out of my bag inside my rental car and I didn't realize it until after I'd gotten through security and was sitting at the gate getting ready to board. I'll post updates on how torturous this process ends up being. I also just reached Five Star Gold status with Hertz - I have a feeling that I'll never see any benefits, but hey, I'll reserve some optimism and see what happens.

Sorry, Mother Earth

I just read this story comparing the greenhouse gas emissions from driving vs. flying. Apparently every time I get on a roundtrip long-haul flight, I'm using nearly 1 ton of carbon dioxide emissions. How appropriate since I am getting on a flight from SFO - BOS tonight...

The Things They Say

The whole concept of public vs. private seems to be lost in airports and airplanes. I once heard somebody blurt out to a complete stranger that she just found out her husband cheated on her that morning as we touched down in San Francisco. The airport with the consistently spiciest chatter is Las Vegas.

Today, though, I got to hear my seatmate gab about how angry she was that her boyfriend didn't introduce her to his ex-girlfriend. Her rationale was that even the married man she previously dated used to introduce her as his girlfriend.

Wow. Enough said?

Betablue: BUST

I found myself on the Betablue plane last Wednesday morning from SFO to JFK. I was psyched to try out WiFi on my cross-country flight and get some email taken care of in that 6-hour void. Apparently it's making headlines that Betablue is now also offering access to Amazon and corporate email. That was already in effect in my flight, as you can see from the screenshot to the left.

Imagine my disappointment when I clicked through to check my email and got the following message:

I got this error message in every category I tried in both Firefox and IE. I think I tried 3 times during the flight with no luck. Has anybody else gotten it to work before?

Below are the rest of the screenshots I took for those interested in seeing what Betablue would offer if it was working...

Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down

This will be a quick one but I know I've been slacking big time.

Thumbs Up for Southwest Airlines: I love your new comfy chairs with dedicated plugs. You're the only airline that is still doing anything above and beyond for customers!

Thumbs Down for FlyClear: I still love skipping the security line, but why can't you read my right thumbprint properly?!

That's it for now. In Seattle and flying down to Irvine tonight. Can anybody help me find sleep? I seem to have misplaced it.

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?