SuperSatellite ||

Well, I got back safe and sound from my trip to Rochester.  I already have my next trip planned.  Atlanta for Thanksgiving.  Let me tell you how much I [don't] look forward to flying over a holiday weekend.  Woo.  Anyway, the trip left me tired and sore, but I was smart this time and will fly non-stop to Atlanta.  No layover = t3h w1n.

But this comic at Penny Arcade this morning was quite well timed for stuff I’ve been joking about lately (click for full size):

See, I just don’t get it.  It’s all right to use portable electronics during taxi and in the air, both times when the airplane is highly reliant on communications and instruments, but during ascent and descent, well, the laws of physics are suddenly bent and my iPod will apparently crash the plane.  I call FUD on that.  Sure, I could maybe see the problem with laptops and cell with all their wireless signals they pump out.  At least there is potential there.  But by god I will use my iPod so long as I like.  Electronic Sudoku is not a navigational threat, I assure you.  But I promise to turn off my portable VOR.

Which leads me in to other things.  Have you ever noticed that when you are sitting on the plane, you will read anything?  It doesn’t matter.  You know as well as I do that the barf bag says "Occupied" on it.  You don’t know why it says it, but be damned if you don’t know it, because at some point you pulled that bag out and read it.  You’ll sit there and read the nutritional facts on the mini pretzels they gave you, you’ll browse the Sky Mall for over-priced wearable 44" TV displays, whatever you can find.  At some point, you actually finding yourself looking for other things to read, like the covers of books people next to you have, which are always romance novels or something by John Grisham.  You look up and try to read the no-smoking sign, but that’s just a little icon.  Despite the fact that smoking has been banned on aircraft for something near 30 years or so.  As if somewhere, there is a commercial jet where you can smoke.  Where the flight attendant welcomes you to light it up in the bathroom, because the smoke alarm in it is just for show, so tamper away!  If I were a pilot, I would just turn off the no smoking sign occasionally, just to see if people lose their minds when they can’t figure out why it’s off.  Like a rift in the fabric of reality lifted them into a Langoliers universe.  Where they can smoke on a plane.  But just in case you do happen to forget, they always remind you that this plane, like every other one for the past million years, is non-smoking.  So there’s a little lit up sign by every chair.

I had to eat breakfast at the airport before leaving Rochester.  I spent something like $23 on a smoothie and cup of yogurt.  Naturally had I walked another 50 feet towards my gate it was a much better deal.  Like $21.  It’s almost like the cost of gas, you know?  But what I don’t get is how you pay your $23 for your smoothie and yogurt, and the girl working there, she clearly doesn’t care.  She’s not rude, but she’s not a happy young lady.  So you give her the $23, and look down, and there’s a tip glass on the counter.  Haha, I don’t think so honey.  I just gave you $23 for a smoothie and yogurt, I’ll be damed before I shell out another 2 dollars to your unhappy ass.  But what blows my mind is that the glass was full!  Someone actually stood there, thought "hmm…she’s trying awfully hard, what’s $2 more after spending $23?" and plopped down the cash.

This is why I shouldn’t fly.