smiles of the travel gods
my 2009 travel has started auspiciously; i'm headed down to dallas via CLT, and in first class all the way. i got the notification email for my rdu-clt upgrade a couple days ago - early enough to select a non-bulkhead seat - and had managed to snag an exit row aisle on the long clt-dfw hop, so things were starting off well.
USairways pads their rdu-clt flight times, so the 30-minute ground hold on the way out wasn't much stress - we still landed on time, and the complimentary glass of wine helped with the stress avoidance. :) i even had time to grab a quick, yummy dinner at phillips seafood before heading to my next gate...
where a small miracle occurred. the agent wasn't busy, so i wandered up to ask if there was any chance of a gate upgrade. she started to send me off with a polite version of "no way" - and then looked down to her right and asked to see my ticket. bingo! a fresh new boarding card for seat 1A. (this almost never happens to me - if i don't make the advance upgrade, i'm usually SOL.)
so i'm writing this on my treo (reanimated after the weekend's reboot-loop/repeated-hard-reset/tech-support-call-to-palm debacle) via the new-to-me LJ mobile client, which i like very much, after reading stephen brust's my own kind of freedom; (free firefly fanfic ebook), which i also liked very much, and i'm about to check into the westin, which i have liked very much on previous trips, for a good night's sleep before a day in our lab with one of my teammates, who i... you get the idea. :)
also, the air travel world is very small. as we were gathering our bags to disembark, a guy in the row ahead of me caught my eye and asked if i was in IT security... apparently we met on a flight many months ago; i was wearing my "go ahead - blame the firewall" tshirt[1], and he remembered me - or, more likely, the shirt, because he mentioned that he never got a chance to try to solve it. i got his card and will be emailing him the debug info forthwith. yay for friendly fellow-travelers!
it's been great to be off work, to visit friends and see family and drink & dine & explore & celebrate... but it's good to be back in the saddle, too. fireba11, i seem to have bogarted all the good travel karma for this round - i hope it apportions itself more equitably on your way home!
1: a memento of the interop '07 NOC - it's violently pink, with netscreen debug output on the back, and i have a standing offer that i'll buy a beer for anyone who can accurately diagnose the network problem represented by the debug data.
USairways pads their rdu-clt flight times, so the 30-minute ground hold on the way out wasn't much stress - we still landed on time, and the complimentary glass of wine helped with the stress avoidance. :) i even had time to grab a quick, yummy dinner at phillips seafood before heading to my next gate...
where a small miracle occurred. the agent wasn't busy, so i wandered up to ask if there was any chance of a gate upgrade. she started to send me off with a polite version of "no way" - and then looked down to her right and asked to see my ticket. bingo! a fresh new boarding card for seat 1A. (this almost never happens to me - if i don't make the advance upgrade, i'm usually SOL.)
so i'm writing this on my treo (reanimated after the weekend's reboot-loop/repeated-hard-reset/tech-support-call-to-palm debacle) via the new-to-me LJ mobile client, which i like very much, after reading stephen brust's my own kind of freedom; (free firefly fanfic ebook), which i also liked very much, and i'm about to check into the westin, which i have liked very much on previous trips, for a good night's sleep before a day in our lab with one of my teammates, who i... you get the idea. :)
also, the air travel world is very small. as we were gathering our bags to disembark, a guy in the row ahead of me caught my eye and asked if i was in IT security... apparently we met on a flight many months ago; i was wearing my "go ahead - blame the firewall" tshirt[1], and he remembered me - or, more likely, the shirt, because he mentioned that he never got a chance to try to solve it. i got his card and will be emailing him the debug info forthwith. yay for friendly fellow-travelers!
it's been great to be off work, to visit friends and see family and drink & dine & explore & celebrate... but it's good to be back in the saddle, too. fireba11, i seem to have bogarted all the good travel karma for this round - i hope it apportions itself more equitably on your way home!
1: a memento of the interop '07 NOC - it's violently pink, with netscreen debug output on the back, and i have a standing offer that i'll buy a beer for anyone who can accurately diagnose the network problem represented by the debug data.