Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

Well, the September of Three US Trips is over, and I'm home for the foreseeable future.

Thanks to saffronrose and ocean_song for coping with my panic when I got to the car that was to take me to SFO and realised I'd left my passport and travel documents at saffronrose and mr_kurt's house (and to the Black Tie driver who took me back to collect the documents). Thanks also to saffronrose and mr_kurt for putting me up for the night in their comfortable guest bed, and for conversations about code, music and many other things... (I also got to hang out with vaccuumboy and rowanf - it's good to get to go to places where I know so many people).

I also got to catch a couple of episodes of new season TV. "House" is looking good, with a bigger role for Cuddy, but I'm worried about "Boston Legal", which seems to have had an almost complete secondary cast refresh. I'd grown to like most of the old cast, so it'll be a bit of a slog connecting with a whole new bunch of fictional lawyers...

Virgin Atlantic had their usual efficient service (and usual full 747). It was interesting to note that SFO seems to be piloting the US-VISIT exit checks, and pretty much everyone on our flight was getting passports scanned and the usual biometrics recorded at the kiosks that have appeared at all the gates in the international departures hall over the last few weeks. The machines spit out a 2D bar code on a receipt - it'll be interesting to decode one and see what information they're storing - especially as there doesn't appear to be any reason for giving you the receipt. I was told to throw it away when I got to the UK. I wonder if they're planning on scanning these as part of the boarding process in the future...

Next time: if I'm in San Francisco on Thursday and need to be in Santa Clara on Monday, remind me not to go via London. Sure, I got to see films on the plane I'd missed in the cinema (and Drew Barrymore is the new Meg Ryan), but the back-and-forth jet lag thing just builds up...