I’m Back

teh
Had a long day of traveling. I doubt I’ll be beer blogging until some time later tomorrow, if then.

I do have some travel observations though.

At the risk of coming across a little like President George Bush the First marveling at price scanners, I was enthralled today by the in-flight technology of the United Airlines Boeing 767 I flew in today. Now, it’s been several years (pre-9/11 in fact) since I’ve flown any distance. So maybe this isn’t all that new but I love the video screens built into the back of the all the seats of the 767.

And what’s even better is what you can see on those screens. In addition to a selection of movies, you get a number of TV rebroadcasts, NBC, Discovery Channel, Disney, and more. But my hands-down favorite is the ongoing flight information channel that rotates maps tracking where the flight is, statistics such as airspeed, altitude and estimated arrival time.

Wow! Info-junkies like me gotta love this. Thing is, I saw and heard a lot of more “normal” people using this information. A woman sitting behinds me was explaining a lot of geography and other things to her child as they monitored this feature.

My only other comment about flying is the total stupidity of making us take off our shoes. Gimme a break. One guy has explosive shoes and we all forever have to take off our shoes? I can’t remember where I read this but someone pointed out that we all should be grateful the shoe-bomber wasn’t wearing explosive underwear instead.