This blog has been slowing down recently– blame other social media. My daily internet habits have shifted to checking the following (in order of priority) 1) My Google home page that shows my email, news, weather, Tweeter updates, my stock prices, and my Google Reader. 2) Gmail 3) Google Reader 4) Facebook 5) Tweeter (most of them I get to upon clicking a link on my home page). I check that page often but I seldom spend more than 1 minute on it as I jump from task to task. I get a luxury of actually reading something on the internet in the evening only when at home. When it comes to publishing any kind of content, my Tweets and Facebook updates are the only micro-mini-tiny time commitments that I am able to maintain on any kind of regular basis.
Needless to say, it gets a little challenging to let go of this little web addiction which I still did this past weekend when BK and I went to Monterey along the Highway 1 in a shiny Lotus Elise. The motoring part of the weekend was really fun albeit a bit scary — the car is tiny compared to the rest of the vehicles and it feels that one of those trucks will simply not notice you and run right over. But it definitely knows road and sounds much bigger than it looks.
Gina on the 17-mile drive in Pebble Beach
After seven months in San Francisco, we finally were able to explore Central CA coast and I have to admit I am in love. But I am a bit confused how many golf courses people need and how all these surfer dudes manage to hang loose all the time without an apparent income source. I am also amazed how one can be 20 miles outside of San Francisco and be surrounded by Redwoods forests and farm land without any kind of civilization in sight. BK looks fast driving through Big Basin Park
This week I was ’selected by my airline for special security screening’ - and was totally cool with it. I went through the screening twice in fact, due to being stuck in Chicago over two days. As a frequent traveler with oft changing plans, I’m surprised this doesn’t happen more often. And for the record, I am happy to comply with the screening, and in fact, I’ve registered with Clear, which required a significant amount of personal data and a background check, just to more easily get through security. While I’m usually very wary of the “I’ve got nothing to hide” slippery slope, when it comes to my 2 to 4 times weekly air travel, I’m willing to give a little to get a little. I’m a good guy, and want to see air travel secure, not just feeling secure.
So, why was I ’selected by my airline for special security screening’? Well, I was on a one way ticket, changed departure airports, and changed flights twice in one day. All for very good reasons - there was bad weather in the Midwest, needed to switch departure airports, couldn’t make the hoped for flight, etc, etc. This sort of thing happens when there is bad weather. This sort of thing exposes the weaknesses in the rules based systems implemented to select individuals for special security screening. When I went through security at O’Hare, just while I was in line at just one of many x-ray machines there were 4 other people waiting for ’special’ security screening. And you know why? Because the day before 80% of the flights were canceled and hundreds of people were re-booked. The rules based system that has been implemented clearly takes in to account too few attributes to be useful and results in far too many false positives (and likely too many false negatives). For example - I flew out on a multi leg one way ticket (on the same airline) since I didn’t know from where I’d be heading home. How about the frequency with which I fly. How about the fact I bought my tickets with an AMEX registered to a Fortune 500 company. How about the weather, and booking and changing through AMEX travel services. There are dozens of other attributes, and most would seem to point to stranded to business traveler rather than nefarious guy.
I work in fraud prevention, where pattern recognition and model building are critical to our success, and with the quality of models implemented for this special screening, well, I’d be out of business. If we really want something useful, let’s bring some meaningful attributes to the models and reduce the false positives. That’s all I’m saying, let’s apply some better models.
And I’m bitter. I have no proof, but it worked fine before I was ’selected by my airline for special security screening’ (a whole post to come soon) and didn’t work after. When dealing with the ’special’ screening, it takes a bit of effort to keep an eye on one’s bags, but traveling with two computers (one of which I am fond of) and being unreasonably attached to my Tumi luggage, I make a special effort to keep them in sight, and let me tell you - there was some rough loving for the Mac (and the Tumi luggage too, but Tumi is designed to, take it bitch).
When I got home and booted my Mac it looked like it was in photo negative color. There is a setting to do this, but the setting was correct, and connecting to an external monitor via DVI looked just fine. The only conclusion was that the display is fried. I took it to the Apple store in SF, and many of the Geniuses there commented that they had never seen anything like this before.
So, works fine, rough loving from TSA, not working anymore. There could be another explanation, but it would be great if they were a little more gentle with expensive computer equipment. Now I am stuck without my beloved Mac for 3 to 5 business days and a $300+ repair bill. The Mac may not be coming with me on trips anymore - I miss it, but too many opportunities for damage. At least until I get a MacBook Air, at which point not taking it seems a crime.
I just booked our one-way air ticket to San Francisco. It is finally sinking in. The excitement and the fear, sadness to leave our friends, joy to avoid the winter, concern of being lonely in the new city, anticipation to live by the ocean again — it is all becoming more real. More real, more immediate, more in my face and on the list of things to worry about. Despite the mixed bag of emotions, it’s a good thing. It is time for us to move our excellent adventure to the City by the Bay.
We’re Internet superstars! Good folks from the Free Hug Campaign were filming one of their videos in Zagreb and we happened to walk by. Watch the video: we walk into the scene about two thirds into it. The music and the video picture the spirit of that day completely — good friends and smiling strangers, great town, fantastic memories
Amazingly, with all my traveling, this is the first time this has ever happened to me - I got stuck over night. The good news is that we are stuck in Amsterdam, one of the more interesting and accessible cities to be stuck in (far better than say, Detroit).
So, for whatever reason our AMS-MSP flight was delayed about 18 hours. Rumor has it that there were delays and the crew required their down time. All fine and good, but we do loose a day converting to US Central time, but we got to explore Amsterdam for a few hours. One cool thing about this town, the public transportation is great, so it only cost about 12 Euro for the two of us to get downtown.
…..we’re about ready to head back home. When I say ready, I don’t mean we want to, or are psychologically ready to do this, but we know we must.
We’ll have some pictures and more detailed information from both B and G in the days after we return, but for now, let’s just say we skipped a day in Venice to spend more time in Croatia (big thanks K, Sanjin, et al
At any rate, we will be home soon and have some time to write up some of our experiences (and request comments from our co-travelers for more color/perspective).
We haven’t had a lot of time during our trip to post anything here - we’ve been having too much fun. There will be more when we get home and have a chance to go through the photos, touch them up and explain where they are, but here are a few.
For your viewing pleasure, I have decided to download some higher resolutions photos to Flickr. Clicking onto the thumbnail should take you there– then click on “All Sizes” to see a bigger pic.
