Early Mornings, Late Nights, Those are the Best Flights

I definitely prefer early morning and late night flights, all the better for getting your work done at the client before heading home. They also seem consistently more reliable than middle-of-the-day flights that get bogged down in air traffic delays. Since I commute mostly from San Francisco to New York, this basically means the red-eye there and the last flight back. At the airport yesterday, I noticed that United is adding one new flight between San Francisco and New York every day, an early morning departure from SFO to JFK and one late night return from JFK to SFO.

The new morning fligth leaves SFO at 6:05am and gets in to new York at 3:30pm and the return departs JFK at 8:40pm, arriving back into SFO at midnight. The morning flight should be nice to get into New York at a reasonable time, although it's pretty much means your day is shot froma work & meeting standpoint. Going East with the time difference, there's nothing that will fix that. The return flight, however, is very appealing.

The 8:40pm departure from New York is a huge improvement on the past when both AA and United's last flight from New York back to San Francisco departed at around 6pm. This was a ridiculously early departure that required you to leave Manhattan at no later than 3:30 to make the plane. It also departed at the peak hour from JFK for all flights, resulting in huge waits to take off. Last week, after we pushed back from the gate at 6:45 (late), we inched our way to the runway where the captain announced we were number 75 for take-off. An 8:40pm departure should be smooth(er) sailing by comparison.

Stealth Price Increase At The Rental Car Lot

In this day and age of high competitive intensity and prudent corporate purchasing, it's hard for travel suppliers to push through price increases, but here's one that Hertz and Avis are getting through: increased charges for gas.

I don't mean the charge for refilling the tank, already outrageous, I mean the charge for using a gas guzzling SUV they gave you as a free "upgrade" the last time you rented a car. As a frequent renter at Hertz, I often my car has been "upgraded" to a gas guzzling land yacht or SUV, sticking me with tab for extra gas on a car I didn't want and can't park anywhere.

While you can always go back to the Hertz gold lot and try to exchange the car, that's valuable time you're wasting. They are, no doubt, counting on that.

Economist Skewers Lying Airlines

About a three months ago, I got reprimanded loudly by a not-very-clever air marshall. As the plane descended towards the runway, I switched on my Blackberry in violation of the airline rules. The air marshall, who happened to be sitting next to me, told me that use of use of WiFi is not permitted on board. Telling the air-marshall that the device was not WiFi did not improve my standing. How much I enjoyed to read in last week's edition of the Economist a sarcastic editorial containing a much more truthful variation of inflight announcements. Since the Economist has deemed this article as one of the ones they don't share for free on the public web-site, I'll just share a few selected quotes and you'll have to visit their site to read the rest. My favorite:

"Please switch off all mobile phones, since they can interfere with the aircraft's navigation systems. At least, that's what you've always been told. The real reason to switch them off is because they interfere with mobile networks on the ground, but somehow that doesn't sound quite so good. On most flights a few mobile phones are left on by mistake, so if they were really dangerous we would not allow them on board at all, if you think about it. We will have to come clean about this next year, when we introduce in-flight calling across the Veritas fleet. At that point the prospect of taking a cut of the sky-high calling charges will miraculously cause our safety concerns about mobile phones to evaporate."

Another good one:

Once we have reached cruising altitude you will be offered a light meal and a choice of beverages—a word that sounds so much better than just saying ‘drinks’, don't you think? The purpose of these refreshments is partly to keep you in your seats where you cannot do yourselves or anyone else any harm. Please consume alcohol in moderate quantities so that you become mildly sedated but not rowdy. That said, we can always turn the cabin air-quality down a notch or two to help ensure that you are sufficiently drowsy.

The Economist has just reminded me again why it is the best newspaper in the world.

Strange Rituals

I went to the doctor this morning for my annual check-up. In fact, today, I had everything fixed. I started with the most important stuff, my car. I had it dropped off for service this morning at 7:30am. I then proceeded on to the dermatologist and then to my GP (General Practictioner).



Both my dermatologist and my GP like to poke and prod and see lots of skin, if only to determine that I still don't have skin cancer. The thing I find odd is that they both leave the room for you to undress and then come back in. Then, after they've seen stuff that I don't get around to viewing, the leave the room so you can dress again. This is a utterly perplexing ritual I mean, just stay while I get dressed. You're not going to see anything new.

Seriously: How much does it really cost to go to New Jersey?

Every time I get in a cab and go to New Jersey, I get a completely different fare. In the last month, I've been told:

• It's a flat fare
• It's meter and half
• It's meter plus $23
• It's meter plus $15 and tolls to/from the destination

On Friday morning at 5am, on my way to catch a flight, I finally got fed up. Not only did the cab driver charge me meter plus $23 but he took the slowest route I've ever seen and kept strictly to the speed limit. It's not until someone actually drives the speed limit that you realize how freaking slow it is, especially at 5am. So, how much does it cost to go to New Jersey? 1. To Newark Airport: Meter + $15 + round trip tools 2. All other destinations: subject to negotiation

Where did I learn such incredible wisdom? The New York Taxi & Limousine Commission website.

Concorde - RIP 2003

Too rich for my finances, but I could always enjoy the idea that the Concorde would be around for me to fly on it. Wikipedia has a wonderful article on the history of this great plane. One day, we're told, there'll faster planes. In the meantime, we'll be cruising below the speed of sound.

One amusing thing I found out about this plane is that in the US, briefly, it served domestic routes between Dallas and Washington for Braniff, though it was not permitted to operate above Mach 1 in the US

Metricom Wireless - RIP 2001

Before 3G, before EVDO, there was Metricom, a metropolitan wireless service that covered the SF bay area using unlicensed spectrum for just $30/month.

Metricom had two lives, first as SF metro service in the late 1990s and then again as a multi-city service in 2001. The original company that provided the service, Metricom, went bankrupt and has since been resurrected to offer the service in Denver and San Deigo.

Connexion By Boeing - RIP 2006

Another wonderful service, Boeing's high performance satellite based internet service will be disconnected later this fall. For the entire flight, $35 was a great deal. You could get a full day of work done at speeds that rivalled DSL.

I've used the service on Lufthansa several times and it turned a long flight into a very productive flight. Apparently, however, there are not many people who feel the same way because Boeing was unable to sell the service or make any money on it after investing over $1 billion.

What happens when you don't cross the chasm - you fall in it

Most of the time, great technological products "cross the chasm" - they gradually go from niche solutions to blockbuster mass products. Sometimes, instead of crossing the chasm, however, they fall into the chasm and great technologies disappear.

Earlier this week, I boarded a flight and found out that the Verizon Airfone, my dependable ally that helps me be in 2 places at once, disappeared. The phones on board the United aircraft where all shut-off. Although Verizon's license continues until 2010, they decided to shut-off the service early after losing the bid for the next generation on board services. So, we'll all have to wait probably another 3-4 years while airlines promise to provide us the next generation of on-board cell-phone and data service.

In honor of the death of Verizon's airfone serivce, I've collected a few other technologies that fell into the chasm instead crossing it and I'll post them this week.

1. Verizon Air Fone



The original airfone providing domestic service for just $0.10 per minute for Verizon Wireless customers. In it's earlier incarnation as the GTE Airfone, they used to offer a deal - $15 per call, unlimited time. For me, that meant 9.6kb dial-up from New York to LA on one call.

No such thing as sleep deficit?

There's more and more research that suggest that sleep deprivation is real and that people who accumulate sleep deficits need time to recover from a lack of sleep. This explains how I spent labor day weekend.

For now, the only known cure for sleep deficits are getting extra sleep, something that's hard to do as most people short on sleep are not staying up late watching movies. I liked this article on sleep very much, although it was hard to stay awake to finish it.

Lots of Life Left in the PC Biz

This last weekend, my home desktop PC started making all kinds of obscene noises. Suddenly, my hard drive sounds like a piece of heavy machinery with a bolt loose. Despite this incredible racket, the system continues to chug along performing it's mission critical tasks: recording TV shows and saving them for me.

Nonetheless, I have seized upon the opportunity to buy a new PC and have started searching for possible options. It's very easy to run out of "name brand" players in about 5 minutes. Lenovo does not offer a media center PC. HP and Dell both offer Media Center PCs, as well as Alienware (part of Dell) and Gateway.

I kept looking, and, to my surprise, found at least a dozen other PC makers offering up customized Media Center PCs. All these other PC companies seem to be focused on the high end, with prices started at $900 and rising well above $3,000 for decked-out gaming systems with multi-core processors.

Clearly, someone is making money in the PC business, and all this little niche players are showing the way forward. They invariably offer high end performance, sleek product cases and form factors that are closer to a bulky VCR than a desktop PC. They are earning premium pricing (and presumably margins) from all this customization.

Miracle on Wall Street

Last week on Sunday night at 1am, I left my Blackberry in a cab at the corner of Wall Street and William street in lower manhattan. On Monday night, my Blackberry had been returned to the hotel front desk. Wow!

California Wine Country

I spent the long labor day weekend sleeping and eating up in Mendocino county. No, this is neither the famous Napa valley nor the newly famous wine country of Santa Barbara (thank you Sideways).

Mendocino country, and specifically, the Anderson Valley, is a great part of the less well known but not entirely undiscovered wine country of Northern California. The Anderson valley is known for it's great pinot noir grapes that make wonderful wines and sparkling wine (shhh...don't say Champagne).

My favorite places in the Anderson valley include the Boonville Hotel which serves amazing meals, the Goldeneye Winery, and the Scharffenberger and Roederer estates.

Battle of the High Tech T-Shirts

It's summer time and that means that one short trip in the New York city subway will leave you dripping with sweat and sticky just in time for your important meeting. In search of something better, the ultimate t-shirt that keeps you cool in the summer and warm in the winter, that wicks sweat and never smells, I tested some of the different high tech t-shirts. Here are the results:

1. The Best

SmartWool: A wool T-shirt for $50? Am I crazy. I must be because they actually do what they said and they never smell bad after a long day. I also used one as my running T-shirt on a business trip, wearing it on each run without washing inbetween. After a week, it still had no smell whatsoever.

2. Pretty Good

Columbia Titanium: These shirts are very comfortable and although they are polyester, they do have anti-bacterial and odor fighting properties that keep them fairly fresh. The only t-shirt I could find in an entirely neutral white.

Arc'teryx: Another excellent running shirt, unfortunately none of the colors were suitable for wearing under a collared business shirt.

Patagonia: Great shirts, they do eventually get that polyester odor, but not quickly. Very comfortable and very good at keeping you from becoming too sweaty during the day. An odor-free version is promised for this fall.

3. Not acceptable

North Face: Very comfortable shirts, great breathability, but they reek after just one use. You can smell one of these shirts across room, unfortunately.