Note to self: do not gloat over not flying on the day of a nor’easter, because the day after’s likely to be just as bad. For those that are curious, the Jeep I procured from Thrifty proved to be mostly unnecessary – but was not a bad drive at all, as did an early exit from the MIT Forum, because the storm that dumped better than two feet of snow on Boston and the most snow ever on NYC’s Central Park didn’t really get going until Saturday evening.
And although the pictures might indicate otherwise, the storm did not generate the same snow fall in Maine that it did further south – we got maybe 4 or 5 inches in spots – but the storm was no less brutal for the lack of white stuff. By the time we awoke on Sunday morning, the wind was up to 30 or 40 mph, and the lady friend and I were joking that there’d be no accumulation because th was being blown perfectly horizontally at 40 mph, and therefore never had a chance to land. Visibility was maybe a quarter mile, and the wind had serious teeth. The good news? We’d made plans to do pretty much nothing on Sunday, and had secured provisions ahead of time. Apart from a quick, frigid trek around the compound to make sure all hatches were battened, etc – we didn’t really leave the comfort of the cabin all day. No work, no internet, no TV – just books.
Monday, however, was a different story. Flying out of Logan last night was an illustration at once of how nice it is to fly on JetBlue, and how many problems they can have as a smaller airline. On the down side, the situation in Terminal C yesterday was pretty much total chaos: there were 20 and 30 people waiting in line at their customer service counter, even the pilots were overheard bitching about the wait times to get through on the phone, and in the space of about 10 minutes I went to flying from C36 at one end of the terminal, to C31 on the other, and then C34 – right back where I started. All of that is to be expected, of course, given the difficulties of dealing with major disruptions to flight schedules – but things were unusually chaotic, and the staff seemed pressed and short handed. This despite the fact that their CEO was working the gate on my outbound flight from Denver last Thursday – which prompted a thunderous round of applause from pretty much the entire plane. Case in point: the first leg of my trip, an outbound to Dulles, was delayed for over a half hour not because of ATC or mechanical issues, but because they couldn’t decide how to divide up the open 6 seats on the plane amongst a greater number of customers. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me: just pick some means – check in time, status with JetBlue, whatever – and make it happen.
On the positive side, however, they were very concerned about me making my connection to Oakland – and upon finding out that there were 5 other passengers on my flight trying to make that same flight – they held the Oakland connection for us for over a half hour. I’ve had that happen once or twice before on other airlines – Continental’s got an algorithm for deciding that, I believe – but it’s not common, and saved me an overnight stay in DC and a wasted hotel night in SF. On a completely unrelated note, it’s been a while since I did the full coast to coast flight, and having been spoiled by being sort of halfway by being in Denver, it felt loooong.
Anyhow, as I got in late I’ve felt a bit sluggish at the first day of OSBC, but have met up with folks like Optaros’ Stephe Walli, Eclipse’s Mike Milinkovich (who must be sick of seeing me by now), and Sun’s Jim Grisanzio and Terri Molini. I also was able to compliment Sleepycat’s Mike Olson and Rex Wang on their recent news in person – and I’ve promised Mike I’d have my Q&A out on that soon. Hoping to meet up with a bunch of other folks in a bit, and am sitting on a panel with Zend’s Mark de Visser, MySQL’s Zack Urlocker, Splunk’s Patrick McGovern – to be moderated by Dave Rosenberg – in about an hour.
Will obviously have more on the show as it develops. Meantime, those wishing to get a hold of me should give me a holler at 617.320.9757. There’s talk of a dinner following the Sun and/or Town Hall events tonight, but given that it’s Valentine’s Day I’m not sure what kind of restaurant we’ll be able to get a table at.
