Left-handed Complement

MUDGE’s Musings

Flew out of O’Hare this morning headed to Boston for a conference.

We all complain about air travel:

The “Transportation Security Agency” that doesn’t look or act like it could secure its way out of a paper bag.

The airlines who cram people tightly together into smaller and smaller aircraft, and can’t raise prices fast enough to cover their high altitude fuel prices so they’ll soon be charging you to check your luggage (what’s next? air fares denominated in dollars per pound of passenger weight? if it comes to that, guess I’m driving to Boston next time!). And of course, by charging for checked baggage, American (soon to be followed by all the others) are merely incenting hapless travelers to resort to larger and larger carry-ons, for which there is already too little space on those smaller and smaller aircraft they insist on using.

The air travel system in general, with too many of those small airlines crammed into too small terminals, resulting in “weather related” delays and, in some really ugly cases hours sitting on taxiways without food or drink or ventilation.

But, today, I can’t complain.

Oh, sure, security was its usual hassle, exacerbated by the requirement for yr (justifiably) humble svt, encumbered still by his pneumatic cam boot, which, of course, with the other foot’s boot, was required to be removed for x-ray inspection, along with watch and belt, removal of the laptop computer from its case, etc. I don’t often travel cum laptop, and it’s just as well, since I’m not so important that I have to deal with email and the like while in flight, and the vulnerability of that laptop, rolling down the conveyor — to be picked up at the other end by whom? — has always been a concern. And, of course, something in my duffel required hands-on inspection. My boxer briefs?

Okay, guess I complained. But, after security, 25 crummy minutes of my life I’ll never get back, the rest of the flight was beyond smooth. Left on time, got in 15 minutes early, no luggage so within 10 minutes of seat belt release I was climbing into a cab for the very short ride to the conference hotel.

Hotel is very nice, although it seems off the beaten track in what Boston is calling its Seaport district (don’t know, but reclaimed industrial neighborhood is my guess). I would feel worse about having nothing much to walk around and see nearby (a few other shiny new hotels and a conference center, mostly), except that my partially torn, not nearly healed enough after months and months and months of babying, Achilles tendon has pretty much put paid to recreational walking this trip (recreational walking more than likely being the source of said injury last year).

So, the conference begins in the morning. It’s called Enterprise 2.0, and its four days of seminars and presentations is meant to inform corporate IT and corporate management how to apply this newfangled social media phenomenon of blogging and wikis and Facebook-like personalization to the buttoned down reality of the typical, hierarchical, American corporation.

Should be interesting. Watch this space.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

—MUDGE

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 8th, 2008 at 5:33 pm and is filed under Business, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.