Pigs might fly.
Written on the plane on Nov 2nd.
Airports are interesting places. As a man who’s rarely travelled abroad they posses a curious attraction. I hate security, I really hate being put though all the things that they deem necessary to make sure that you’re not a terrorist or maniac. Being entirely mad I always wonder why they let me through without question, the world is most certainly a strange place. As I write this I’m directly over Belfast, or so the GPS tells me, Several thousand feet above it I admit, but still above Belfast, I don’t feel anything special because of this, I suppose I should really.
I know a fair few people who’re scared of flying, I am not. I’m not really scared of airports, turbulence, flying meals, Dutch, or English security; what gets me is American security. I dislike being bullied, I dislike being made to feel scared and suspect, I dislike American airport security. My experiences have, on the whole, been OK, I’ve never been shot or had anything confiscated and I’ve never seen anyone shot or confiscated; my gut feeling dislikes being involved with people who refuse to look me in the eye and carry a gun while looking rather bullying. It’s strange, I’ve never actually had anything bad happen but I just don’t like their attitude.
I don’t like DVDs which contain advertisements telling me not to download them and I don’t like people requesting to ‘mark’ my receipts. I am not a thief, please stop treating me as such
I’m somewhere around half way through the second flight now, I don’t find it the most enthralling pastime but between watching the in flight TV and considering life my time has passed reasonably well. More fortunately I have no worries about my laptop giving out as I have two extended life batteries and three standard ones, today a long time of computer life tomorrow the world! It also helps that I’ve done a lot of work on making my laptop as energy saving as possible, It currently is using around 8.4W, this includes some (a little) disk usage and a fair bit of keyboard usage. I have all my cunning plans to create marginally better laptop yet to implement, the unfortunate fact is that the X31 only has one PCMCIA slot and one CF (CompactFlash) slot; this is a perfect amount for one GSM/UMTS modem and one GPS device, leaving no space for a CF boot card. Other cunning plans have involved putting my swap space onto CF or moving my log and tmp directories onto one, this all relies on a CF card and I like my GPS. Some of you may suggest a USB based solution, but this would also eat power and eating power is bad.
Still, around eight watts is a sensible usage and provides me with many hours using my dock and spare batteries, what’s more I have TuxOnIce working nicely and can switch between batteries without even bothering to reboot! Life is wonderful, well, maybe not wonderful but at least mediocre.
I’m currently passing over Greenland. I love the Dutch and their language, and their airlines. They’ve provided me with a ‘vegetarian pasta’, I didn’t really mind what the pasta had eaten, but it tasted very nice. KLM food generally is nice, they provide me tomato juice and pepper to go with it, they provide hot towels - i have to provide the hands to use them, they provide a nice meal with real cutlery. In fact I’m not that sure that I’m that far from being at home and in comfort. That is if it weren’t for my nose. My nose feels like it is likely to explode, and my neck on the same side is echoing the emotion, I presume this is some issue with the pressure up here.
To distract myself I’m analysing the scientific impossibilities within the dramatisation of Harry Potter, I personally have preferred the spin-off comedies.
Tags: Computers, Flying, KLM, Linux, Mobile computing