First off, let me apologize to Columbus, OH. I tried to make it there. I drove from Ft. Lauderdale, where I was meeting with Citrix, up to West Palm International (about $100 by town car) to catch a flight that took me to Cleveland on a Embraer 130x. That’s a little plane with about 50 seats. A real Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.
Anyway, we should have landed in plenty of time to catch a connection (an even smaller Embraer) over to Columbus. They loaded us on the plane, drove out on the tarmac, and sat there for about an hour and a half before giving up and canceling the flight altogether.
Flight control was telling us that there were some wicked storms between Cleveland and Columbus. In Florida, we might have made a go of it. But not Ohio. They responded to the thunderstorms the way that we probably would have responded to a slight snow fall.
Anyway, 40 folks gathered for dinner and a talk and the talker (me) never showed.
My apologies, Columbus. I did what I could. By the time they let us off the flight, I didn’t even have time to rent a car to make the 2 hour drive. I ended up sleeping in a Marriott Courtyard and catching the 8:55 AM (delayed until 10:30 AM) for the long flight home to Tampa.
CA plans to make it right. And they have been pretty good about keeping their word lately.
Earlier in the week, I spoke about Data DNA to a small room at the Warwick Hotel in New York. My flight (Air Tran) got in late to Newark and, of course, my bag was no where to be found. AirTran chose Monday night to cut over to a new application. It was still down the last time I checked. Apparently, there was no disaster recovery plan.
All in all: a bad week for travel. But, in NY, one lucky guy won a video iPod, which I guess is the cool giveaway of the moment.
I hate iPods, I’m sorry to say. They are the first step on the road to Macs, which I also have no use for — though my lab guys are buying the dual boot laptops in droves. At their insistence, I gave one to my son as a high school graduation present. (Jeremy told me that Max needed it because of all the video work he does.)
But no iPod. I bought Max one after his Phillips MP3 player died twice shortly after his birthday last Fall. He returned it twice before giving up. Gasoline to drive back and forth to Best Buy exceeded the value of the unit, 20 GB micro hard drive and all.
The iPod, despite the hype, seems to die all the time. Everyone I know has replaced theirs at least once.
Based on that experience, I will not buy a video iPod. I would really prefer to have my own kind of iPod to carry with me. The one in my dreams:
No, it doesn’t fit in my pocket or on a convenient lanyard. But it plays vinyl, picks up non-satellite radio as well as black-and-white and TV broadcasts, and has a screen that is not too little, not to big, but just right.
Oh, and it runs on tubes.
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