Tag: travel

  • Missed Opportunities – Photography

    Missed Opportunities – Photography

    Damn Shame – Photography edition

    As part of the migration to Lightroom CC, I have spent a lot of time mucking around my photo collection. Lots of good memories, and some retouching (for some reason, I am terrible at having level horizons), and I noticed an oddity.

    In 2006 we took a three week vacation to Italy, starting in Rome and headed south. Unlike our earlier visit, where I was shooting film, this time, my main camera was my trusty Canon EOS 20D, my first DLSR.

    So far, so good.

    The camera uses the ol’ workhorse of storage, the Compact Flash cards. At the time, all I had were less than 1 gigabyte. In fact for this trip, I purposely bought 2, very pricey 1GB cards, for the trip.

    Hippodrome of Domitian
    The ruins of the Hippodrome of Domitian, in Rome, Italy

    The 20D, when shooting RAW format, each image is about 8.7 megabytes. A 1 gigabyte card can only hold 115 or so RAW images. Naturally, I wasn’t going to be shooting RAW. So I was shooting JPGs. Unfortunately as the time went on, I was running out of cards (I traveled without a computer to offload cards). So, instead of full resolution images, I had to downshift to medium resolution.

    And it shows with the resolution of the images.

    Oh well, c’est la vie.

    Cefalu, Sicily
    View east from the water in Cefalu, Sicily. A wee bit o’ processing.

    Today, fortunately, this isn’t as much of a problem. Yes, I am shooting with a newer (relatively) camera, the Canon 5D “classic”, whose RAW files are about 12 megs each, and a 4 gig card delivers about 277 raw images. But, 16 gig cards are about $20, and I travel with a laptop to offload. My other camera, a Canon G12, has a 32 gig SD card, and it gets well over 1,000 RAW images (also at ~ 12 megs each), on the card.

    2006, a lost opportunity.

  • The Drive

    Over the 4th weekend, I took a couple of days off (Thursday and Monday) to drive my dogs from Tucson, where they were staying at a pet lounge, to our new home in San Jose, California.

    The drive was fine, we rented a big Dodge Grand Caravan, as we wanted there to be enough room for the boys, and all the crap they need (beds, food, water, our bags, etc). Although Barbara was worried that it would not have enough room, it was surprisingly cozy in the back, with well partitioned areas for the boys.

    Chillin' in their rented van. This is the life
    Chillin’ in their rented van. This is the life

    We settled in to an easy lope across Arizona. Starting later than I had hoped (surprised? Ha, you don’t know Barbara very well, do ya?) we made pretty good time. A stop at the junction of Gila Bend to top up the tank (we had been driving the van around all week) and to potty the boys, grab some Subway sandwiches, and off we went.

    Smooth sailing until we hit Quartzite. One of those famous Arizona monsoon pattern dumps, we ended up parking in a Chevron lot for 20 minutes until the deluge passed. I will miss that.

    Barb takes over driving, and we head to California. As we were approaching Palm Springs, and it was already 6:30 PM, it seemed like a good time to find a place to stay. So I pulled up my trusty iPhone, searched for dog friendly hotels, and the top recommendation was the Best Western Date Tree Inn. Setup the navigation, and we are 20 minutes out. Cool.

    (more…)

  • News from the Road

    I am in Europe for a few days (almost 2 weeks, really), and as usual, there are some petite observations.

    In Austria, a lot of people smoke. You almost forget how it used to be, but a trip here has reminded me of smoking in restaurants and bars. Oh joy. I guess I will not wear this Sweater again on this trip.

    There are two types of trips:

    1. Those that over schedule you: every minute of every day is planned. Of course, reality settles in, and some appointments will shift or be missed. These trips are hectic, often 5 countries in 4 days, no more than one night in a hotel, and guaranteed chaos.
    2. Those that spread it out too much: Plans change, schedules don’t align, and you find yourself with some downtime. I honestly don’t mind this, because I often can be super productive in these times. Often without internet access, being time shifted so that there is little overlap with the home country. It can be a good thing.

    Of course, regardless of the type of trip scheduled, the local team will feel like they failed you if they don’t keep every minute packed.

    In all my years of travel I have yet to find a sure fire way to quash jet lag. This time, I was up for 36 hours, and slept great my first night. I felt great the first day. Then last night I was tossing and turning until well past 2:00AM.  GRRRRRRR. Alcohol, melatonin, sleeping aids. All tried over the years, and all failed.

    Good food though. I usually push to eat local specialties and (usually) am surprised. Here in Austria and Germany, I will eat much meat.

    I rarely get to do any real sightseeing. I try to enjoy the weekends, but often I am so frazzled that I collapse in my hotel and just do work. This weekend will be an exception. I will be in London, and I will do some walking around. I have never spent any real time here, just flown in, and then headed north or west depending on the trip.

    Shopping. I am not a big shopper. Not much into the kitsch, and souvenirs. I don;t have kids, so no demand to carry stuff back.

    Well, it is almost Bier time, and I believe tonight we will be eating schnitzel. Yummy

  • Travel Horror Stories

    Product management and product marketing are two fields where you can expect to travel often. Unlike sales, who usually have a territory, we cover the world and are called to travel widely.

    Horror StoriesEvery one of these jobs I have been in has advertised 25% of travel. And every one of them has underestimated the percentage of travel required.

    Pro-tip: If they tell you while interviewing that you will travel less than 25%, they don’t know what product management is.

    Yes, we travel a lot, to a lot of places. Our IRL friends often think this is glamorous, and it was the first couple of years. But then it becomes a grind.

    Fortunately, most travel is innocuous, and you are more likely to die of boredom waiting for planes, trains and automobiles than have a hair raising experience.

    Thus, when something goes wrong, it will be a disaster:

    Travel Agent Insanity

    Today, most of my domestic travel I handle with the web based reservation system. It is usually efficient, and I have some control.

    However, it hasn’t always been like that. When I first started in this career, we were at the mercy of the corporate travel agency. Being people, and having an “interest” in how they processed our travel, they would direct us to their preferred carriers and hotels (nb: places that gave them a commission or kickback)

    Today it is better, but incompetence still rules the day. Some blunders:

    Tickets not issued: this really happened. Circa 1999, I was flying to Japan in February to present a paper at a technical conference (I used to be really really smart). I booked the trip in November once I knew the paper had been accepted, knowing that I needed to be in Tokyo. At this time, I was quoted a pretty good fare (I don’t recall ever spending more than $800 round trip from SFO to NRT until 2006 or so).

    So far so good.

    I get to SFO on Saturday to catch my flight. I check in, and the counter agent sees my reservation but it wasn’t ticketed. apparently the agency didn’t ticket it because they thought I might not travel. So, it is Saturday, about 90 minutes before boarding time, and I am on the phone (on hold) waiting for an agent. Mind you this is in queue at the check-in counter, as I had no cell phone then. Then I get the message that I had been on hold for the maximum time they allowed for customer satisfaction purposes, that I could leave a message and an agent would get back to me.

    Excuse me, I am at the airport, 90 minutes before my flight, I have a reservation, but the ticket was never purchased, and instead of answering the fucking phone, you dump me to voicemail?

    Fortunately, I called our group administrative assistant at home, who got on the priority line and got my ticket purchased.

    Today, I would just whip out a card and buy the ticket, but back then, if it wasn’t charged to the corporate card, it wouldn’t be reimbursed.

    Going home wasn’t an option, as we co-wrote the paper with a large semiconductor manufacturer whose name begins with ‘i’, and is the largest IDM maker in the world.

    Stupid routing: Once I was traveling to Busan South Korea from my home in Tucson Arizona. The way the ticket worked was that I flew through LAX to NRT, then switched carriers to get to Busan. I thought nothing of it when I booked the ticket.

    I get to the airport to check in, and I get my ticket to Tokyo, but since the carrier from Tokyo to Busan was different, I needed to check in there. No big deal.

    Except that it was a big deal. Apparently, you can’t check in more than 24 hours in advance, and I missed that by about 3 hours.

    So, I get to Tokyo, needing to catch a flight to Busan, and I have 45 minutes between flights. A legal connection my idiot travel agent swears.

    What I had to do: Land in Tokyo, go through customs, pick up my bags, go to the check-in counter at the other airline, check-in, go through immigration control and security, and board my plane. All in about 45 minutes.

    Yes I made it, but the stress was incredible. And the irony is that the travel agent didn’t understand why it was stupid. And his fault.

    Botched Instructions: One time, I was on a trip to California. I was in meetings, and supposed to return on Thursday. But I needed to extend the trip a day. So I called the travel agency and had them change my flight out on Thursday to be Friday. Seemed clear to me.

    bzzzt: Wrong answer. The doofus travel agent canceled my return trip, and canceled my flight to Austin, TX the following Monday. So I had a trip with a flight into San Jose, and returning from Austin the following Friday (and I was already in San Jose). Nothing in the middle.

    When I called up livid, he said he thought I wanted to cancel my return from San Jose and my flight to Austin.

    I asked him if he thought how I was to get from San Jose to Austin, he thought I would just drive. Just 1,716 miles by road. Idiot.

    Ended up re-booking my return, and my entire Austin trip. Of course < 6 day advanced notice meant that my return from San Jose was $800 (when my entire ticket was $250 before), and my trip to Austin was $1,400 (when it was $300 RT before he messed it up).

    Naturally my boss wasn’t amused. Neither was I.

    Canceled Flights and missed connections

    Nothing is worse than that sinking feeling when you are going to miss a flight. Perhaps a meeting ran long. Or traffic snarls prevent you from getting to the airport. Whatever the reason, it can be a sucky day.

    Those are things that you ultimately have some control over. But there are a class of insanity that will screw you even if you do it all right.

    Canceled Flights: It used to be that flights were never canceled unless there was a DGR (damned good reason). A DGR would be a Typhoon headed for your destination. Or a plane crashed on the runway at an airport. Rare, and special.

    But now the carriers are maximizing their revenue by ensuring that seats are filled. All too often, an underutilized flight will be canceled, and the luckless passengers will be crammed into the next flight. This happens all the time now (cough US-Air cough, cough United cough). Last month I got my ass out of bed at 3:30 to catch a 6:30 flight to be in San Jose by 8:30. Of course, they canceled my 6:30 flight due to “mechanical” troubles (the trouble being that it was only about a quarter full), and instead crammed us all into the 8:30 flight. Got to San Jose at 11:30 (one stop instead of non-stop).

    This used to happen a lot when I lived in Tucson. United would get you to Phoenix, then cancel the last flight to Tucson at night, so you would end up renting a car and driving the 2 hours home.

    Even Southwest, a carrier that almost never canceled flights is getting into the game.

    The worst one for me was a flight to Dublin (via London). British Airways, direct from PHX to LHR. Departs at 9:00PM. Except that when I got to the airport, it was delayed 6 hours, and wouldn’t depart until 4:00AM. Of course, that fouled up my connecting flight, so I got to stay in the LHR hotel, and get up at 4:00AM to catch the first flight to Dublin. Fun.

    Once, I was flying to Taiwan. There was a Typhoon, but as I checked in for my first flight to Tokyo, the agent said all was well, that the Typhoon wouldn’t interfere. Lies. The typhoon camped out on the Taiwan island for several hours, so I got to spend a night at the Narita airport, before getting on a plane at 5:00AM specially for us to get to Taiwan the next day.

    Missed Flights: Of course, since flights are fuller, and the advent of baggage fees means that people are trying to carry on way too much baggage, this makes for fun if you happen to miss a flight.

    It used to be (and as an elite traveler) pretty simple to get on another flight later. But this is no longer true or applicable. If you miss a flight, it will often take 5 or 6 hours, and as likely as not a bizarre connection to get home. Oh, and if you miss an evening flight, I hope you enjoy the hotel they put you up in.

    This usually means that you get to spend some quality time at the customer service desk. It can be entertaining to see the people in front of you reading the riot act to the customer service personnel, but it really isn’t helpful to yell at them. They didn’t make the plane late, or decide to cancel the flight. They are victims as much as you are. Be polite to them, and they may give you an extra meal voucher.

    Summary

    When you put as many miles on as a typical product manager, you are bound to experience the best and worst of travel. At one point I flew so much international United Airlines flights that I got free upgrades to business class almost every flight. That was choice. Of course it no longer happens.

    With the advent of telepresence and webcasts, the demise of the need to travel has been foretold, but in the end, a good fraction of what I do requires making personal connections, and that means going out to visit customers in their native environments.

    As long as I will be traveling, I am certain I will continue to amass horror stories.

  • A kudos to Courtyard

    As a road warrior, I spend a lot of time on the road, sleeping in hotel rooms. I have learned to deal with loud ice machines, obnoxious families with kids tearing up and down the hallways at all hours, lumpy beds, and loud air conditioners. Doesn’t matter if it is a $90 La Quinta, or a $300 Hilton room, they all have warts.

    Courtyard by MarriottUsually the one thing that grinds my gears is the  bed in the room. Usually it is either stiff as a board, or completely worn out. Regardless that leads to a poor night of sleep, and a lot of discomfort (that getting older makes much worse) due to bad posture in bed.

    However, I have to congratulate the Marriott Courtyard in Campbell, CA. The bed is perfect in my room. Supportive, comfortable, and I have had two good nights’ sleep in a row, a real rarity!

    I will stop complaining about the slow as molasses in January elevators in Courtyards if you can make sure that all the beds are this perfect.

  • White trash hotels

    I recently took a new job, a couple hours from my home.  While we are house hunting and preparing to move, I have been staying at a budget hotel (I have to pay for it, so it is really cheap).  This has been going on for about 8 weeks, and it works well.  Up on Monday, return on Friday afternoon.  

    However, it seems like I am always in a room next to a fighting couple.  One night around 2:00AM, it was loud.  This morning at 5:30AM.  

    Please, leave your domestic discord at home, and let a traveller get some rest…

  • Marriott Courtyard Hotels

    When I do domenstic travel, I usually try to stay in Courtyard hotels.  It is not because of point, or miles.  It is because it is a decent room, at an acceptable price.  Just be sure you are not near the elevator or the ice machine, and it is as good as a room that goes for $50 more a night.

    You get a comfortable bed.  There is a decent breakfast at a reasonable price in the morning (although I am as likely to go for a starbucks and a pastry), and the internet is included.

    The wrinkle is:

    Marriott Courtyards have the slowest, crappiest elevators.  New properties.  Old properties.  Properties they bought and rebranded.  Doesn’t matter.  Shitty elevator.  Slow.  Rickety.  Budget.

    Makes you wonder…

  • Travel Notes – Ridiculous Air Conditioning

    Livign in Tucson, I thought I was used to AC set low.  Some people keep their offices/homes cold enough to hang meat.

    I just got to Austin for the ITEXPO conference (had to give a media interview, and will be participating in a panel discussion tomorrow), and I think I need a parka here.  BRRRRRR.  It is a comfy 104F outdoors (hey, I am from Arizona, that is comfortable to me), but it feels like low 60s indoors.  I have been in server rooms that were warmer.

     

     

  • Travel Foibles: Part 8 (of too many to count) – “Premium” Seats

    Since when was an aisle seat or a window seat “premium” and worth $15 to $40 more?  I understand the psychology of airlines, and their addiction to the nickel and dime charges that travelers are willing to outlay.  But, come on.  Tomorrow, I am flying to Austin Texas.  American TUS to DFW.  2;05.  I have a center seat.  eh, I can deal with it, because it is not a long flight.  But, you would think that I have a center seat due to the fact that the plane is overbooked, or ful.  

    You would be wrong.  There are aisle and window seats available.  I just have to whip out my AMX card and buy the seat.  Sorry, not gonna do that.  

    To me, a “Premium” seat is in a different class of service.  Like First Class, or Business Class.  It isn’t just a seat with only one other traveler next to me in it.  

    Airlines, I would be willing to pay $40 for a seat with an extra 6″ of legroom.  I hate being cramped in a seat that should really have an OSHA limitation to be sold only to double, above the knee amputees and not have ergonomic issues.

    Ah well, I guess I am tilting at windmills.

  • Travel Foibles: Part 7 (of many) – Hotel “green” initiatives

    You have probably seen it, you get into your hotel room, and there are placards that describe how you can help them “save the environment” by any of a number of actions that include:

    • Not changing the bedding daily
    • Reusing your towel
    • Turning off lights and television while not in the room

    All great things, and I do all of them (in fact, I virtually NEVER watch TV in my hotel room.  Just got out of the habit years ago and forget that it is even there anymore).

    The one that bothers me the most is the reuse of towels.  I alway hang them on the hook to signify that I will use it again.  At home, I typically wash my drying towel once a week, so two or three days of use is neither “gross” nor a problem for me.

    However, probably 90% of the time, the cleaning staff replaces the towel anyway.  So much for environmental consciousness. It makes you wonder what else they are not doing.

    (For the record, the best experience was the Shiodome Hotel in Tokyo.  There is a card you put on your pillow to signify re-use of the bedding, and in return you get a “You are so AWESOME” card.  I have one taped to my office door.)