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Dispatch from an airport terminal.

By jstemwedel on November 5, 2008.

Holy smokes, an airport where the WiFi is actually free! (If only San Jose International were more mass-transit friendly...)

I'm going to be offline for much of the day since I'll be in transit on my way to PSA 2008. I'm hoping Pittsburgh's weather will not destroy me. (The temperature ranges predicted as of yesterday don't seem too frightening, but California can do things to a person.)

My symposium session is in the first time slot on Thursday. Between now and then, I need to condense my talk to 15 minutes (eep!) and construct a correspondingly concise Powerpoint presentation, since there's reason to believe the room won't have an overhead projector.

Yes, I am a tremendous Luddite, but this morning I feel pretty comfortable with that. The airport shuttle had one of those speaking "right turn in point-five miles" navigation systems which gave wrong directions from the freeway. Luckily, both I and the shuttle driver recognized this, since the directions weren't just a little wrong, but manifestly ending-up-miles-from-where-you-need-to-be wrong. And the little voice was persistent! At each correct exit, turn, or straightaway that did not conform to the navigation system's instructions, the voice would offer instructions on how to get back "on course" to oblivion (or wherever we would have ended up had we followed its route). I swear, the voice actually got petulant by the time we were a mile away from the airport. "When you can do so legally, make a U-turn!"

Me? I like actual maps.

It's pretty early here, so the security line moved swiftly. From the looks of it, the bottleneck that consumes significant preflight time for most travelers is the Starbucks line.

I think I can resist it.

More from Pittsburgh!

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Passing thoughts
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