Gnurple dot Net

DAY 3
* Woke up to the sound of some guy swimming at 07h30.
* Worked on my PC for a bit, did some packing. Discovered too late for anything useful that it’s sunny outside. Meanwhile, I heard from my colleague in Ottawa that there’s snow everywhere and traffic accidents.
* Hunted down breakfast, changed into my booth persona, finished packing and checked out.
* Headed down to the exhibiting hall for the third and final round of watching the same 10min. clip of Top Gun over and over again.
* As usual, the final stretch is slow. At least it isn’t a long stretch (none of them were, winning this show my Cakewalk Tradeshow award).
* We packed up our booth in all of 10min., snickering as the forklift delivers 5 shipping crates for Falcon Technologies’s booth.
* Checked in at the airport in plenty of time. Settled in at the gate lounge, we chatted with the guy from the booth across the way (not Top Gun guy, though!).
* Knowing we’d have no time in Chicago, I hunted down a sandwich for the flight.
* Our flight from MSP to ORD was late out of Denver and we left the ground a half hour late. Things were looking bleak for the 45min. we originally had for our connection. Thoughts of purchasing tents and sleeping bags from the Sky Mall (with ionic action!).
* Luck was on our side. The flight crew expedited the flight and we caught up some time, plus our connection was in the same terminal so just a 5min. walk instead of a half-hour hassle with cross-terminal journeys and with re-clearing TSA security.
* I even had a couple of minutes to visit the washroom and take a couple of pictures.

On Our Way Home at ORD

* This Ottawa flight is from the same gate C1 as my last Chicago-Ottawa flight. Oh, the nostalgia: sitting in that same gate loung at dawn having been awake all night flying, eating a danish and drinking coffee and - surprise - writing in my weblog.
* As I write this we are about 20min. out of Ottawa and about an hour away from home sweet home and my favourite (and considerate!) blue devil.

UPDATES:
* Arriving in Ottawa, we disembarked and herded through customs.
* In Ottawa you talk to the Border Services guy who stamps your declaration card, pick up your luggage, and finally hand your card to another BSA guy on your way out.
* As we’d been doing all along, I manhandled the booth bin out while Bill rolled our bags. Trying to move my own luggage plus the booth bin results in fitful displays of awkwardness.
* I handed my card in and was told to head to the right. Bill, on the other hand, got sent to the Left. Taking my luggage with him. Note to self: handing the card in is not merely a formality station. At this point Bill fervently hopes I’m not running drugs.
* Bill returns from latex gloves land and we drop the booth off at the office before heading home. sweet. home.

UPDATE: Geek equipment review

Shure E3C

On the flight back I listened to music with earphones I bought about a year ago (which are now semi-permanently wired into my eVest).

We all know that airplanes are horrible for listening to music. They give you these cheap foam covered over-the-earphones and expect you to enjoy their in-flight muzak in the small frequency range that isn’t drowned out by ambient white noise from the engines and the airflow and, well, the flight. Your brain adapts to the constant white noise of the flight and ignores it, but the noise drowns out a significant chunk of the audio signal, leaving you with crappy tinny-sounding music.

This is where the in-ear style earphones shine. They don’t block all the noise (hey, those are big engines out there!) but they do reduce most of it by a fair bit. I could hear bass and low-spectrum sounds that I’ve never enjoyed in-flight before. I guess it’s about as good as listening to standard earphones would be on the ground without white noise - a very significant difference. When I took one earphone out to listen to in-flight announcements, the people conversing around me sounded tinny, as though I were hearing them through airline earphones!

One drawback to the earphones: they come with a multitude of different-sized swappable buds (a good thing!) but they come off a little too easily (bleah), especially when you’ve got them in the SeV’s little earphone pockets. After I lost one I CA-glued them on, though if I did it again I’d try loctite instead.

In other traveling news, the eVest is really handy for getting through security screening. Since my wallet and coins, cellphone, MP3 player and other metal bits are already in pockets, all I have to do is take my watch off and stick it in a pocket, then put the vest in one of the grey bins. I walked through every metal detector without registering (note: it also helps to wear loosely tied shoes that you can slip on and off quickly and to wear pants that you don’t need a belt for). While other people were getting the metal wand treatment or re-packing their coins, wallets and cellphones, I just slip my laptop back into its case, don my vest and walk away.

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