Back in CA, with internet service even!
Random observations on the flight back (written on September 9 while
crossing the country):
US-30 is not a particularly fast-moving road.
On the ground at PHL, the ground controller called out sequence
numbers and remarked that he would have sequence numbers for flights that
had not been called soon. Shortly thereafter, someone inquired about their
sequence number, to which the controller responded "As I broadcast earlier,
I'll have your sequence numbers as soon as the powers that be approave your
routes." Sure enough, someone called less than a minute later to ask about
their sequence, meriting this response: "I can't get approvals out of thin
air..."
Somewhere in Chicago Center, "United 195, current position? [...]
Reason I ask is, you've got company traffic [another United flight] directly
above you, so the computer can't tell where you are, you're 1000 feet below
them..." I mull over this a bit before realizing that we've been
accompanying 195 for nearly the entire flight (they departed PHL with us and
are going to LA). That other plane is us. How comforting.
Economy Plus, definitely the way to go. Unfortunately, it is not the
way I am returning. I hate the recline feature in airline seats
(and I'm not fond of passengers that recline their seats all the way without
so much as a warning to whoever is behind them, who might have had
a laptop, hand with drink, etc. occupying the space they want to recline
in).
Flightline has been pre-empted by a football game being broadcast out
of Denver, bloody hell. So I'm not really sure where on earth we are right
now, just mildly annoyed. How could football possibly be more entertaining
than ATC
communications??
luc helpfully did not charge its secondary battery, goodness
knows why. I should have checked this before leaving, and I really
should have checked this before pulling the primary battery from the system
thinking I still had a charge (for some reason ACPI does not report status
on the secondary battery when it wasn't plugged in on system startup, but
since I had just inserted it I assumed it was at 100%).
On top of that, I've just discovered luc is quite
uninterested in suspending these days.
Addendum: Comcast royally screwed up. According to the
technician that just arrived to investigate my internet outage, a pink
auditor tag was attached to my line -- they deliberately disconnected me
from their system over a week ago, probably because I have no filter and no
television service plan. He's going to mark my line with some sort of tag
that indicates the line is in use and cannot be filtered, so hopefully this
will not happen again. Meanwhile, I get to have a fun conversation with
billing tomorrow where I use words like "contract" and "service guarantee"
and "reparations". Idiots.