Stephen's Untold Stories

Here are two very interesting lists that I recently found. One is for travel and the other is for finding great free music online. Summer is a busy time at work, so any travel I do won’t likely be until fall, but I always have time to listen to good music.

• 31 Places to Go this Summer
• 60 Great Sites that Provide Free Music Online

Anybody else got any good ones?

Not bad considering I took this while sitting in the passenger seat of a moving car.

Larger version here.

I’m in Las Vegas for the week, and we took a drive to the dam yesterday.

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Interesting story about a traveler who had to miss a flight because the security people didn’t realize that his MacBook Air was an actual computer.

They pull my laptop, my new laptop making its first trip with me, out of the flow of bags. One takes me aside to a partitioned cubicle. Another of the endless supply of TSA agents takes the rest of my bags to a different cubicle. No yellow brick road here, just a pair of yellow painted feet on the floor, and my flight is boarding. I am made to understand that I should stand and wait.  My laptop is on the table in front of me, just beyond reach, like I am waiting to collect my personal effects after being paroled.

I’m standing, watching my laptop on the table, listening to security clucking just behind me. “There’s no drive,” one says. “And no ports on the back. It has a couple of lines where the drive should be,” she continues.

A younger agent, joins the crew. I must now be occupying ten, perhaps twenty, percent of the security force. At this checkpoint anyway. There are three score more at the other five checkpoints. The new arrival looks at the printouts from x-ray, looks at my laptop sitting small and alone. He tells the others that it is a real laptop, not a “device”. That it has a solid-state drive instead of a hard disc. They don’t know what he means. He tries again, “Instead of a spinning disc, it keeps everything in flash memory.” Still no good. “Like the memory card in a digital camera.” He points to the x-ray, “Here. That’s what it uses instead of a hard drive.”

The senior agent hasn’t been trained for technological change. New products on the market? They haven’t been TSA approved. Probably shouldn’t be permitted. He requires me to open the “device” and run a program. I do, and despite his inclination, the lead agent decides to release me and my troublesome laptop.  My flight is long gone now, so I head for the service center to get rebooked.

Behind me, I hear the younger agent, perhaps not realizing that even the TSA must obey TSA rules, repeating himself.

“It’s a MacBook Air.”

I went up to Nashville with a buddy to watch the Titans play the Chargers. (He is from San Diego originally). I had not been to Nashville in several years, and it was nice to see the city again. I’d like to go back when I have more time. It’s a beautiful area.

Oh, and the Chargers won in overtime.

Each photo is linked to a larger version. Click here for the entire set.

Shelby Street Bridge – It crosses the Cumberland River

Nashville Skyline

Pre-game warm-ups. The guy in the light blue in the center of the photo is Titans quarterback Vince Young.

View from our seats. Yes, we were in the top row!

Amazing stuff here.

Link to gallery

I actually have a couple of good ones I took myself in San Francisco if you’d like to use one of them.

There are some really good ones here!

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We’re heading over to AT&T Park for the A’s/Giants game in a couple of hours, and we fly back tonight. It’s been a great trip, but we’re ready to get back to the land of peaches and pollen.

We decided that Friday afternoon would be a good day to walk across the Golden Gate. I believe this will rank right up there with the coolest of things I’ve ever done. If you haven’t been to San Francisco, I highly recommend that you try to make it to this wonderful city.

The conference ended earlier today, and the overwhelming sentiment is that the conference was a huge success. We did have a moment of extreme rudeness today when one of my colleagues was doing a presentation and a representative from a company chimed in and essentially began doing a product pitch. Her badge clearly identified her as a vendor, so I’m not sure what she was thinking by doing that. We did capture her rudeness on tape, and it will be shared with the conference organizers.

This would be a good place to send pushy vendors.

COSN continues to be an amazing conference. I promise to write more detailed reviews when I get back, but I will simply say that the sessions have been amazing so far. (so has the food!)

Today’s highlight was getting to hear Marc Prensky talk about technology in education. I also sat in on a very nice session about how principals in Minnesota are using data driven data decision making to improve their schools.

Oh, and the weather has been great!

Not a bad view from my hotel room.

Our flight got in LATE last night, but we had a nice day at the conference today. We attended two great workshops, and then we walked all over downtown for about 3 hours. I got some great pictures, but uploading them is going rather slowly. The hotel does not have free WiFi, so I’m having to use my cell phone as a modem. It’s okay for surfing, but uploading is taking some time. I’ll post some when I get a chance. The main conference kicks off tomorrow, so I’ll be pretty busy. The blog will be updated, however!

Only a few more days until I get there…

Thanks so much to Thomas Hawk for all his great photos!

I found out the other day that I will be able to attend the annual Consortium for School Networking Conference in San Francisco next month. I have been hoping for a chance to get back there after my trip last year. I’m going with a colleague, and we are going to be able to attend the Giants/A’s game on March 31st. Not only will the conference be a great one, but I’ll get to spend some more time in a fantastic city.

Here are the photos I took last year. I got lucky in that the sun came out around lunchtime the day I got to do some sightseeing.

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I don’t remember ever hearing about this, but it’s one of the neatest things I’ve read recently.

With unbelievable restraint, Captain Eric Moody addressed British Airways flight 009 as his Boeing 747 drifted inexorably down towards the Indian Ocean.

Displaying the stiff-upper-lip spirit that built an empire, he uttered the words that are every air passenger’s worst nightmare: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get it under control. I trust you are not in too much distress.’

Minutes before, while cruising at ten kilometres above the sea, Captain Moody had instructed his first officer to send a Mayday call to ground control in nearby Indonesia. The date was June 24, 1982, and this extraordinary flight has since gone down in aviation history.

Read the rest here.

The Atlanta Journal posted this today. Very helpful if you’re going to be coming through during the holidays.

Click here for larger version

All you frequent travelers should enjoy this one. I wish I did more traveling so I could enjoy it with you!

From top US airports like Atlanta Hartsfield International to smaller airports like El Paso International, we provide the most complete listing of wireless Internet access, service providers, airport coverage areas and Internet subscription pricing plans available. With TravelPost.com’s guide to airport wifi, travelers can easily determine which airports offer wireless Internet access and which airports offer free wireless high speed Internet access.

Some good free cities include:

• Las Vegas
• Phoenix
• Birmingham, AL
• Orlando
• Pittsburgh (I got to use theirs a couple of years ago…it worked great!)

Airport Wireless Internet Access Guide

I made a special Bubbleshare album of just the photos from the Zoo.