Technology Blog

It’s interesting reading US weblogs when they wax
enthusiastic about Ryanair, typically on the foot of this
BusinessWeek article.

Here’s the thing — flying Ryanair is a deeply unpleasant experience. I’ve
heard rumour that their staff are paid commission based on how many
discretionary charges they can pile onto the basic fare — leaving you feeling
nickled and dimed at every turn — and that certainly matches with my
experience. I mean, I’ve had better service in train stations in Uttar
Pradesh.

In our case, our “no more” moment was after a trip to Spain earlier this year,
where we were humiliated for attempting to shift around luggage instead of
immediately paying the charges liable once you exceed 15 kilos (33 pounds).
(Naturally, there’s no weighing scales until you get right in front of the
check-in desk…) Once it became clear we didn’t want to pay the fee, the
check-in person screamed at us, and sent us to the back of the check-in queue
– like bold schoolchildren!

This level of service is pretty standard, going by local word of mouth.
Several of my friends have, like me, vowed never to fly them again, even
picking more expensive flights to more distant airports to avoid it.

It’s certainly not comparable to JetBlue,
or any other low-fare airline I’ve had the pleasure of dealing with — this is
a level below. The BusinessWeek
article ends with:

American long-haul discounters aren’t likely to go to the extremes Ryanair
has gone to sell basic services, but they’re paying more attention to
Ryanair these days. “They’re on the cutting edge,” says Tad Hutcheson,
vice-president for marketing at AirTran, which recently assigned two
marketing staffers to spend a week flying on Ryanair. “Charging for Cokes or
snacks, blankets or pillows–I’m not sure Americans are ready for that.”

Well, I certainly hope not, for their sakes!

Tags:business cluetrain ryanair service travel

This post was written by Justin, source: The nightmare that is Ryanair

I’ve been running around all day like a chicken with my head cut off, but have still managed to:

1. Finish the slides for the CSCW tutorial, identify some good articles to include, turn everything into PDFs and use the wonderful little free OS X utility “Combine PDFs” to turn them into a single document that I could print on our copiers.
2. Hand-staple the color covers onto the 25 packets generated by the above process.
3. Grade 32 student websites, then take advantage of the wonderful integration between Excel (where I do the grading), Word (where I create the nicely formatted gradesheet to give students based on the Excel fields), and Entourage (which, it turns out, Word can “merge print” to, making it possible to send each student his or her own gradesheet with a single click! w00t!)
4. Spend far too much time in an email exchange with a student who refused to accept that he could lose a point for not including a link to his assignment in the place I expected it to be.
5. Made a reservation for the shuttle from Calgaray to Banff tomorrow (thanks to a reminder from my co-presenter).
6. Attended a two-hour training session on diversity that’s mandatory for people serving on search committees
7. Wrote two practical exams for my two sections of intro to multimedia, printed them out, and got them to the office for my TA to pick up Monday.
8. Met with four students who wanted help prepping for the practical exam.
9. Bought the rest of the yarn I need for a gift afghan I’m about to start on.
10. Found out a paper deadline that I thought was this Monday has been extended to the 12th! Yes!!

All that’s left for me to do now is pack, which is pretty manageable. My flight leaves tomorrow at 8:10am, and I get back to Rochester on Wednesday at 8:15am (redeye flight…ugh). Since I’ll be in Canada, my Verizon broadband card isn’t coming with me…I’d have to pay roaming data charges. I’m expecting the hotel (which looks incredibly beautiful!) will have high speed access. If not, you’ll have to wait ‘til next week to see the pictures, and hear about the event.

(And yes, I plan to post the handouts from the tutorial, but probably not until after the conference is over.)

source: pre-trip frenzy

This was my third trip to Monterey for Internet Librarian, and usually I have barely enough time to wander down to the wharf, let alone to explore the area. This year, however, since I’m traveling to Seattle rather than Rochester, I have a late afternoon flight out of Monterey—which leaves me enough time to do a little sightseeing.

Last night I had dinner at a lovely waterfront Mexican restaurant, with a former student of mine (Katie Giebel, who I wrote about last spring). She’s in graduate school here in Monterey now, and thriving. When I mentioned that I had the morning free, she offered to come pick me up and take me for a drive along the coast…how could I possibly say no?

So this morning we’ll take a scenic drive, and she’ll leave me at the Monterey aquarium, which I’ve always wanted to visit, before her midday class. From there I can walk back to the hotel, and catch a cab to the airport.

(I’ve started recreating the missing entries from the blog; two down, several more to go. The sad thing is that I apparently lost a really lovely comment on the entry about my ex-husband’s death—written by an old friend of his who shared memories about things they’d done together.)

source: a day to play in monterey!

I haven’t done much traveling since I’ve been back in Rochester, but the fall conference season is heating up, and I’m headed out of town on Sunday (which also happens to be my 4-year blogiversary!).

First stop is Monterey, one of my favorite places, where I’ll be doing the closing keynote at Internet Librarian—a conference where I always end up learning a ton of new stuff, and seeing a lot of old friends.

From there I head to Seattle, where I’m on a panel at the Blog Business Summit—unfortunately I’ll only be in Seattle for a scant day and a half, arriving Thursday evening and leaving again on Saturday morning. But it will give me a quick fix for my reverse homesickness, and whet my appetite for a return trip in early December. Part of me would love to stay longer, but I’ll have been away for a week at that point, and I know I’ll be missing my family (and they’ll be missing me).

As usual, I expect my blogging output will increase temporarily—travel and conferences both tend to give me a lot to write about.

source: october travel plans

We pulled into our driveway a little after 1pm, and found a neighbor and two of Lane’s friends waiting for us on the front porch.

It’s good to be home!

Time Warner says it could be ten days before our local phone, cable, and broadband are installed…eek! The phone’s not a big deal, since they seem to have put in a new tower near here—we’re finally getting decent signals on our cell phones. And while Gerald and the boys will miss the TV, I never watch, so that’s not an issue. But ten days without network access? Eeek!

Happily, I’ve got the EVDO card. And it appears that we’re picking up a faint but usable open wifi network from one of our neighbors. Hurrah for ubiquitous wireless!

Now the unpacking and settling in begins. A lot of work, but more fun (and rewarding) than the packing and moving out.

source: cross-country trip day 11: home at last!

We made it past Toledo today and were still feeling fine, so we decided to push on past Cleveland…meaning we’ll be home early tomorrow! (Gerald and I were considering just heading all the way home tonight, but Lane vetoed that idea.)

So we’re spending the night in a Fairfield Inn just east of Cleveland, and we’ll try to get an early start tomorrow morning. Woohoo! Almost home!

source: cross-country trip day 10: madison, wi to willoughby, oh

This was, without a doubt, the strangest place I have ever been. I’m glad I went, but I don’t think I want to go back.

It took nearly four hours to tour the whole thing, which included going through twisted passageways and up and down spiraling ramps, all in dim lighting, often with strangely discordant music emanating from the self-operating musical instrument displays.

I took a few photos, all up at Flickr, but there’s really no way to capture the utter bizarreness of the place.

In other news, Lane and I had an enjoyable breakfast with a number of folks from my WoW guild this morning, at the Original Pancake House—which was one of the best breakfast spots I can remember eating at. Highly recommended if you ever find yourself in Madison.

source: cross-country trip day 9: house on the rock!

We’re in Madison tonight, after a few hours of parental suffering in the Mall of America, and a relatively uneventful drive down I-94. Dinner plans fell through, so I took the kids out for dinner while Gerald relaxed, and I’m now drinking a glass of chardonnay in the “Highland Club” that our “premium room” gives us access to. A nice perk, but they’ll be kicking me out in 4 minutes (we’re on central time now, so it’s 8:56), which means I have to type fast.

Tomorrow, breakfast at 7:30am at the Original Pancake House here in Madison, with a bunch of games & learning friends (well, actually, they’re really WoW friends. but it’s the same thing). Then we head to the House on the Rock, and back here for another night in Madison—I expect there will be some interesting photos from the day’s adventures.. Friday morning we’ll start back on the road home.

source: cross-country trip day 8: eagan, mn to madison, wi

(The boys have taken over the PC laptops for gaming, so I’m using my Powerbook tonight…thus no Streets & Trips image. Happily, it was a route simple enough for even Google Maps to display.)

Today’s drive was boring, the only decent hotel near the Mall of America that wasn’t fully booked up only had a smoking room (ick), and I just spent four hours in a mall/amusement park with two kids. Not my favorite day of the trip, but the kids loved it.

Tomorrow we’ll go back to the mall for more rides, and the kids will get to spend a little money now that they’ve window-shopped. (The extended visit is for them, since this is the only place they’ve actually asked to stay longer at.) Then we’ll get back on the road and see how far into Wisconsin we can get before Gerald and I get worn out…which means tomorrow’s entry will be equally boring. However, Thursday morning we plan to hit the House on the Rock, and Thursday evening I hope to spend visiting with friends in Madison.

Friday we’ll shoot for Toledo, which means we’ll get back to Rochester on Saturday, assuming no other delays or distractions. (My original prediction of Friday was based on a futile hope that I could convince the boys that they really weren’t that interested in the Mall of America. Silly me.)

source: cross-country trip day 7: mitchell, sd to eagan, mn

Alex was greatly recovered this morning, so we got on the road at around 9:30 and headed east. It was a busy day, which started with the famous Wall Drug Store in Wall, SD, where we drank deeply of their famous ice water, bought a few souvenirs, and gazed upon the jackelope and T-Rex in the backyard.

It was a good thing we drank plenty of ice water—and carried cold drinks in our cooler—because it was HOT HOT HOT in the Badlands. I took a picture when my car’s outside temperature gauge showed 106 degrees, thinking that was as hot as it would get. I was wrong. At one point it actually went as high as 109. As a result, we kept our stops very short, took some photos, and got back into the air conditioned comfort of our cars. Still, it was spectacular.

We arrived in Mitchell, SD, at about 7pm (local time; we crossed from Mountain to Central time along the way). After settling into a lovely suite at the Hampton Inn, we headed out to see the Corn Palace, which was everything I expected. The boys were only able to tolerate about 30 minutes of it, after which we grabbed KFC for dinner and headed back here to relax.

Oh…and we got great news today. It seems our tenants decided to leave a week early, which means we’ll be able to move right back into our house as soon as we arrive. So we could arrive back in our house as early as this Friday, if all goes as planned. Yay!

source: cross-country trip day 6: rapid city, sd to mitchell, sd

I’ve learned a few things this week about using my computer for travel planning. A few sites that have become indispensable for us as we do our day-to-day reservations (we didn’t want to book too far in advance because we weren’t sure how far we’d get each day):

• TripAdvisor, which has the greatest number of consumer reviews of hotels, and has helped us avoid hotels that people said were particularly dirty or unpleasant. As a result, we’ve had no terrible experiences with hotels.
• Orbitz, which let us see at a glance which hotels have free wifi, free breakfast, and a pool—three things we like on road trips.
• Priceline, which let us book a hotel even when all the other sites (Expedia, Orbitz, and the hotel chain sites themselves) said there weren’t any rooms available.
• America’s Byways, which provides photos and maps of the scenic byways if you want to avoid the boring interstates.

For offline computer-based planning, I’ve found that Microsoft Streets & Trips is significantly more useful than any of the online mapping tools. It allows you to specify your typical driving speeds and frequency of rest stops, your daily start and stop times, and waypoints—including the length of time (in hours or days) that you plan to stay. This has made it possible for us to reroute along the way, and get accurate, detailed estimates of time for each leg of the trip. I have the GPS unit that’s supposed to work with it, but after a few months of flawless operation it stopped working.

Our Garmin GPS, however, came back to life—just in time for us to embark on this trip. Hallelujah! It really is useful to have, especially when you take a wrong turn, or decide to leave your original route for a scenic byway. Another nice feature is that it provides your elevation, which was fun to track as we made our way across the Rockies. (I think the highest point for us was leaving Yellowstone, where our elevation was over 9,000 feet.) The unit we have was the most economical one we could find, and except for the unexpected refusal to work for the first two weeks of July, it’s been a great investment.

And while it’s not computer-related, our AAA membership continues to be a good investment. The guidebooks and maps are great, and if we’d stuck with our original routing, the TripTik would have been useful as well.

source: tips for the techno-savvy traveller

Lane’s first reaction upon seeing Mount Rushmore from the road? “I didn’t expect it to be so small.” To be honest, from far away it did look a lot smaller than the postcard photos make it seem. When we got closer, however, we were properly impressed by its grandeur. Unfortunately, we made the mistake of taking the .6 mile path around the base of the monument, and while Gerald and Lane and I all drank our bottles of water, Alex didn’t. When we got into the car, my outside temperature thermometer read 104, and by the time we got down the road to Custer State Park and stopped for lunch, Alex was exhibiting signs of heat exhaustion. So, Gerald took Alex back to the hotel, and Lane and I drove around the wildlife loop at the park, where we saw burros, deer, and herds of bison.

(We got a lot closer than that, but this photo fit best in the entry.)

The interesting thing about South Dakota is that the view from the interstate (at least here in Rapid City) is really deceptive. From I-90 (and our hotel) it looks flat as a pancake. But go 20 miles south and you’re in the mountainous Black Hills area, with twisting roads running through hilly terrain. These are the hills that spurred the phrase “there’s gold in them thar hills.” You certainly wouldn’t know it if you just drove through on the interstate.

This evening we’re hanging around the hotel so that Alex can recover. Lane and I went out to dinner at the Denny’s across the street and had a great time…he’s such good company when it’s just the two of us. Now that we’re back, we’re sitting in the hotel lobby where Lane’s watching the big HDTV and I’m soaking up the free wifi, while Gerald does the laundry (hey, I offered to do it, but he insisted).

I’m hoping Alex will be feeling better enough for us to leave Rapid City tomorrow…he’s sleeping right now, and hasn’t thrown up in a few hours, so if we can get some liquids into him tonight we should be fine. In that case, tomorrow will be a South Dakota tourist day—Wall Drug, followed by the scenic loop through Badlands N.P. (we’ll stay in the cars, since it’s supposed to be pretty hot again tomorrow), and ending up in Mitchell, home of the world-famous Corn Palace.

—

Update, 8pm: Alex has woken up, and has energy and an appetite. I’m greatly relieved, and it looks like our original travel plan for tomorrow holds.

source: cross-country trip day 5: rushmore, bison, and searing heat

We left Cody at around 9 this morning, expecting that today’s drive would be somewhat tedious. We were totally unprepared for how astoundingly beautiful the Shell Basin in the Bighorn National Forest would be. The road winds through gorgeous rock formations, with lots of places to pull off and gaze wonderingly at the creek rushing through the gorge below, or the incredible layers of rock visible on the sheer cliff faces. I took a ton of photos, but Lane is currently using my Powerbook and I don’t (yet) have an easy way to get the pictures off my camera and onto this PC laptop.

Now we’re settled into the Holiday Inn Express Hotel & Suites in Rapid City, SD, where we’ll stay for two whole nights. (Point of information: it’s very hard to find a room in a decent hotel in Rapid City on a Saturday night in July. Happily, even though the Holiday Inn site and Expedia both claimed this hotel was fully booked, Priceline managed to find a us a room.) Tomorrow is tourist day…we’ll be visiting Mount Rushmore, Custer State Park, and Wind Cave National Park, returning to Rapid City via the Peter Norbeck Scenic Byway. On our way out of Rapid City on Tuesday, we’ll stop at Badlands National Park, on our way to the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD.

source: cross-country trip day 4: cody, wy to rapid city, sd

(I couldn’t get Google Maps to map this the way we went; I’ll need to grab a screen from Streets & Trips on my PC laptop sometime tomorrow to replace the shot above. But this is close enough for now.)

(Streets & Trips does a much better job of showing the routes we’re taking than Google Maps, particularly when we take detours, so I’ll be using it for the illustrations.)

I took photos today, but not one of them captures even a fraction of the beauty of Yellowstone. It was, I think, the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. If I’d been traveling alone, I would have pulled over 50 times today to soak in the views and take photos to remember them.

For the boys, the highlight of the day was definitely seeing Old Faithful. We got there just in time to see it spout, and it was fun to watch. For me, it was the incredible views of rivers, rocks, mountains, and lakes. We saw bison by the side of the road, and watched an osprey grab a fish out of a stream and swoop past our car. Driving the scenic byway from the park to Cody in the early evening sun was heartbreakingly beautiful. I think I’m in love with this region.

Tomorrow, South Dakota…including Deadwood (since Gerald loves the show), Mount Rushmore, Wind Cave National Park, and Badlands National Park. I suspect we’ll need to spend two nights in Rapid City to do it all, but we’ll see.

source: cross-country trip day 3: butte, mt to cody, wy

Yesterday was a long driving day—nearly 500 miles. Lots of beautiful views from the roads (and one impressive but slightly scary view of a big wildfire in Montana), but we didn’t stop to take any photos. We crashed at a Best Western in Butte, with a nice pool & hot tub, free wifi, and a free breakfast.

I’m actually finding myself energized rather than drained by the trip, which is why (despite the time change) I find myself up well before Gerald and the boys. If I come out to Seattle again next summer, I’m definitely driving. In fact, I wouldn’t rule out renting a convertible to do the drive. (Weez, we should do it together! LIke Thelma and Louise, but with a happier ending!)

Today we’ll be heading into Yellowstone from the west, stopping at lots of scenic overlooks and visiting Old Faithful. We’ll exit on the east side, and spend the night in Cody, Wyoming. So tonight’s entry (or tomorrow morning’s) will definitely include photos.

source: cross-country trip day 2: winthrop, wa to butte, mt

We left Bellevue late this morning, and set out on the first leg of our cross-country adventure. On the nights that I have internet access (and energy), I’ll try to post about our day.

Today’s drive was nothing short of spectacular. We took SR-20 through North Cascades National Park, and loved every minute of it. We took our time, stopped for a picnic lunch along the way, and ended up at our destination—the delightfully quaint “old west” town of Winthrop, Washington. We’re staying at The Virginian, in a cute little cabin that has air conditioning, separate beds for the boys, and even—much to our surprise—free wifi! Everyone’s in good spirits, though we’re a bit tired from driving and walking.

Tomorrow will be a longer driving day, with an as-yet unknown stopping point (I’m guessing somewhere around Butte, Montana, but we’ll see how we do during the day).

source: cross-country trip day 1: bellevue, wa to winthrop, wa

We moved out of the boat this morning (another gray and damp morning, so I wasn’t too sorry to leave), packed the cars full of our “can’t ship it, can’t live without it” stuff, and headed back across Puget Sound to Bellevue, where we’re staying with friends until next Wednesday. (I’m speaking at the MSR Faculty Summit on Tuesday, so we can’t leave ‘til after that.) I’m glad to be in more spacious quarters, and the boys are particularly happy to be with their friends for a few days, and to have cable TV and easy wifi access. But it’s still not home.

The next few days will be busy. I have to get my presentation put together for next week, there are a series of goodbye dinners and parties to attend, we’ve promised the boys a trip to Leavenworth or the San Juan Islands before we leave, and then there’s the conference on Monday and Tuesday.

Wednesday we’ll start the cross-country trek home. Since we’re taking both of our cars, it means Gerald and I both have to drive the whole time. On the plus side, it also means the boys will be in separate cars, which will make the trip significantly less stressful for everyone. (After a few hour with both of them in my car this morning I was almost ready to dump them by the side of the road…)

source: back in bellevue

To amuse myself when it rains (and when I can wrest connectivity from the kids), I’ve been looking for interesting places to visit on our trip back home. The Roadside America link that Alice Yucht wrote about in a comment here has been extremely helpful in finding the most unusual spots.

I also just finished reading the amazing book American Gods by Neil Gaiman, in which the roadside attraction House on the Rock in Wisconsin figures prominently. I was delighted to find that it’s not out of our way, so that’s a definite stop on the tour. We’ll also be making stops at the Corn Palace in South Dakota, and the Spam Museum in Minnesota. While in Minnesota we’ll also pay a visit to the Mall of America.

That’s in addition to the national parks and monuments we’ve already tagged for visits…North Cascades NP on our way out of the state, followed by Yellowstone NP , Mount Rushmore, Wind Cave NP, and Badlands NP. Alex will get new stamps for his passport, and we’ll get to see some beautiful areas that none of us have visited before.

I suspect that I’ll be in less of a funk when we’re moving than I am here—it won’t feel so much like we’re pretending to be at home while we’re on the road.

source: roadside attraction agenda

We figured it would be safe to spend two weeks on the water in July. But the skies have been gray for two days, and even at noon the temperature’s only up to 58 degrees today. Over the weekend we may break 70 again, but then they’re predicting clouds, rain, and chilly temperatures for the rest of the week.

Blech.

It’s cold and damp and I’m feeling quite out of sorts. If we have to be in transition for a month, was it so much to ask that the transtional period be enjoyable? The first week was dominated by illness and far too much driving (I went back to Seattle again yesterday to drop off two of four kids, and with ferry wait times added in it took nearly 8 hours round trip). Now that we’re inching towards a better healthy adult to child ratio, the weather turns rotten.

Okay, that’s the end of my self-pitying rant. I’m sure it will get better. We have books and movies and music and computers. There are far worse places to be stuck inside. I just wish I’d brought more sweatshirts and fewer sleeveless tops.

source: does seattle ever get summer weather?

Wow.

I’m sitting at the kitchen table on the 43’ yacht we’re renting for the next two weeks. The new Verizon broadband access card is plugged into my new Sony SZ240 notebook, and I’m online on the water. Amazing.

I was expecting this to be spectacularly unsuccessful, because today has not been a good technology day—from the Garmin GPS unit in our car inexplicably going dead to the home printer refusing to print Google maps to the Pharos GPS unit that I got with MIcrosoft Streets & Trips once again refusing to talk to my computer.

But Gerald, who has been incredibly, outrageously wonderful all week—handling every detail of packing, cleaning, and prepping to leave—sent us on our way at midday, and once we cleared the city (not so much fun waiting for a ferry on the Friday before the 4th of July…) things started looking up.

The boat is lovely, with enough space to comfortable house us for the next two weeks, and a lovely breeze even though it’s a pretty warm day. Gerald’s bringing fans when he arrives tonight, so I think we’ll be comfortable even without A/C.

We’ll be setting up a wifi network on the boat by plugging the Verizon card into my Powerbook and then sharing the signal over the Airport card—which means no fighting between the kids (or the mom) as to who gets to be online when we get tired of sunning, swimming, boating, and soaking (in the hot tub on the top deck).

That sound you hear? It’s all the stress rushing out of me as I slowly come to the realization that I am on vacation. Ahhhhhhhhh.

source: boat blogging!