I got back from my honeymoon last week. Throughout the course of the trip, technology played a huge role, despite my not being “on the job”. Sadly, there were a ton of tech failures that simply should not have happened, which made the trip less enjoyable and relaxing. Here’s a roundup of those failures, and where they could be improved.
Keep in mine, the trip was awesome. To all of the great folks in San Diego, I love your city and can’t wait to return! The honeymoon was great, and my family had a fun time. This blog is not to imply that my trip stunk, it’s just a list of some of the really frustrating parts of my trip, which were tech-related. I may note, none of the things that bothered me on the trip did not involve electricity or machinery.
Airlines
Nearly everyone who has flown has a horror story about it. I’ve realized what is at the heart of these, and it is computers. I hate to say it, but airlines have really made flying miserable, and it is all thanks to the computer. With the computer, the airlines are now able to calculate routes down to the minute for optimum efficiency and profitability. Sadly, their algorithms do not take into account the reality of weather, personnell issues, etc. As a result, their algorithms produce “just so stories” that increasingly fail to produce good results.
Another failure on the airlines’ part, is in how they handle luggage. Ever notice when you check a bag in, you get a barcoded receipt, and that the bag tag is barcoded too? Guess what though… the airline does not actually scan the barcodes or enter them in except at “major airports”, and apparently, Charlotte NC is not a “major airport”. So despite all of the equipment and programming that makes it theoretically possible to locate a bag as precisely as UPS (if not more precisely, since the path a bag can take in the luggage transit system is so tightly constrained), the reality is, the airline has no idea where your bag is. Not only does this make you potentially miserable, but it has deep national security implications as well.
Hotels
The hotel I stayed at (Holiday Inn at Sea World, in San Diego, on Sports Arena Boulevard) was nice. Unfortunately, when we arrived, the WiFi signal was too faint to be connected to, and the in-room LAN was not working right at all. The next morning, I needed to call maintenance, and the tech they sent in (only a few minutes to show up at the room) needed a while to fix the problem. On the other hand, the problem was weird… not only was the LAN not working, but the phones weren’t either. It looked like the room’s wiring had been re-arranged by the previous guests, which was not surprising since it was a room designed for people traveling with children. I know my little one was all over that room pushing buttons too.
On non-PC fronts, the hotel was a bit of a dissappointment. You would think that in a room designed for people with kids, they would have a DVD player, or at least more than one kid-oriented TV stations (Disney Channel). When Jarrett goes a week without SpongeBob, both he and I suffer! Another oddity of the room was that the refrigerator was set to freeze everything, and I could not figure out how to adjust it. Speaking of “freezing”, when we checked in, the thermostat was not operative either (the unit needed to be reset, which I had never heard of), so our first night was rather chilly. And in stark contrast to the refrigerator, the faucet was more than happy to dispense water at a temperature capable of burning delicate skin; again, for a room designed for people with children, this is a big problem. There also were not any electrical plug safety covers. Overall, while I liked the room, it really needed someone to work out a few kinks, and the “designed for kids” concept really did not extend any further than putting a bunk bed in the room.
VMWare
VMWare is the application that keeps giving… me headaches. If you are going to install VMWare on a PC, do it on the initial buildout/shakedown period, not two years after the PC was assembled, trust me. Months after installing VMWare on my PC, I am still finding quirks with the networking, thanks to VMware’s installation of a new networking device. One of these quirks made itself known on my trip: Remote Desktop’s hole in Windows Firewall had been disabled. As a result, I could not RDP into my desktop. I had left Outlook running when I left, which meant that I could not even read my email on my ISP’s Web mail system. Ironically enough, another issue kept that mail from being picked up anyways…
FreeBSD
When I noticed I couldn’t get into the PC via RDP, I SSH’ed into my FreeBSD server to do some troubleshooting. Along the way, I decided to patch it and bring its installed programs up-to-date. Big mistake. You know those people who tell you that *Nix doesn’t need rebooting after patching? Well, they may be right on a technical level, but not a pragmatic one. Something that always bites me when I patch that server, is that I neglect to reboot it. Rarely a problem, though. In thise case, one of the updates stopped the DHCP server, but did not start it when it was done. This meant that as devices on my home LAN lost their leases, they could not renew them. Word to the wise: don’t bother trying to figure out what services need to be restarted after patching *Nix, just reboot the box!
GPS
The Hertz “Never Lost” GPS (a Magellan unit) was wretched. I’ve never used GPS before, so I have little to go on. But it annoyed me to no end. For one thing, it could never get a signal in the hotel parking lot, so I needed to guess which way to go, until we got on the road. When I got on the road, I had a 50/50 chance of being told to “drive to the indicated route”, but halfway there, it would re-calculate the route, sending me into more U-turn madness. The interface was miserable too. There is no way I would have used it without my wife sitting in the car to operated it.
Even worse, while less than 2 miles from the Mexico border, in a neighborhood I did not feel comfortable in, it told me to “go straight” when really it needed me to “bear right”. While trying to get back on track, I found myself wedged between two shady establishments offering “Mexican insurance”, with an “Econo Inn” that looked like a good place to buy crystal meth behind me. To make matters worse, the GPS decided at that very moment to start jumping around in 1/8 mile increments, including, at one point, thinking that the van was half a block from any street. Once I got on the main highway, it told me to “drive to the indicated route” and the arrows showed that I should somehow go north and south simultaneously on the interstate.
The Magellan GPS did a really good job at turning a nice time into a frustrating, scary experience. At the same time, having it with us let us feel comfortable enough to explore and visit restuarants and such. It’s a great idea, but the implementation I tried just wasn’t good enough.
Toyota Sienna
I had reserved a Ford Taurus. It appealed to the cheapskate in me. When we got to Hertz, my wife asked me to rent the Toyota Sienna (she’s wanted one for a while). I caved in, and I wish I hadn’t. The gear selector is mounted on the dash, below the AC controls, and does not feel natural to operate at all. The cargo capacity was far less than my Mercury Grand Marquis (unless I folded seats down, which would give it the same passenger capacity as my Grand Marquis). The visibility when backing out was awful; I did not feel comfortable with it at all. Even worse, the automatic headlights did not shut off on their own once (it seems that you need to “double click” the lock button on the remote to turn them off), causing us to need a jump start in Balboa Park. Overall, the Toyota Sienna did not make my life any nicer, except for the automatic side door (handy when wrangling a child).
Overall, it was a great trip. Sometimes though, being on the road can really highlight just how much further technology needs to come to really integrate seemlessly into our lives.
J.Ja
