I spent the last few days at RFID World in Orlando, FL. We booked my tickets on cheapoair.com (not kidding) and drove to Buffalo to jump on the plane that was a LOT ceaper than anything flying out of Toronto. After all, I do work for a startup company. We were a little late getting to the airport, but I dropped my colleague off at the terminal while I parked. Over half the large lot was Ontario plates. It was a very large parking lot.
Meeting up with MB in terminal, I find out he has already checked my bags under my name direct to Orlando on air-i-have-never-heard-of-this-airline-before (not free to check a bag-$25/bag). Wow, try that at YYZ. Flight time was in 20 minutes. MB apologizes for the middle seat as that is all that was left. Moving into my seat, I find out that it is a middle seat, but an exit row seat. Not bad, eh? Again, try that at Air Canada.
Now, MB is the king of doing everything cheap, or it is all about the deal. He books hotels on Priceline (www.priceline.com). So, I never really know what to expect every time I travel with him. For $60 US he scored us a place in Orlando near (more like IN), the Florida mall. I was really glad the GPS brought us to within a mile of the hotel as it was listed as the mall address. It still took us about 30 minutes to find the 12 story hotel, and yes, even though we are guys, we did call the hotel for directions. Turns out this is a 4 or 5 star place. The room as large and the bed was a huge large king size. $60/room. Check out the web site. Did I mention it was $60/night?
RFID World was petty cool with just about every gadget to track you or your things down to the last meter no matter where you are on this planet. Some RFID tags are so small, you will never know you have one on you (attached to those new clothes you just bought as an example).
We also visited a supplier that deals with moving chips of silicon wafers and installs them where ever you need them. Some discussions got to the point that we were using measurements down to 250 nanometers.
One other supplier we met with was JD Teck. JD Teck builds some really neat cell phone boosters to improve you cellular coverage at the cottage or in your basement as an example. We use their products for some of our commercial products. A very well run organization.
The flight home on Saturday was on Jet Blue. Again, booked on CheapOAir, this time with a stop in JFK on the way home. Just after checking in (you CAN check in online, but it costs $25 to do that...no kidding) and dropping our bags, I notice that there is a direct flight to YYZ leaving in 3 hours. We find out that we can move to that flight for no charge, if we go standby. Turns out the flight is half empty as well. We make the change.
Get this....after making the change, we are told our bags will go on to JFK. What happened to the fact that the bags have to go with the passenger??
Once on the direct flight to YYZ (which Jet Blue just about messed up on us by somehow forgetting us even though we do have a standby boarding pass), we are sitting just in front of the exit row in the seats that don't recline. These are the worst seats on any plane. There are 2 free seats in the exit row behind us. The door closes on the plane and MB and I jump into the exit row.
Wait... not so fast. As the plane starts to taxi, the stewardess confronts us and says we can sit there, but for $25 more each. WTF??? Who every heard of that. She almost makes us move while the plane is taxiing. After take off, we move to the empty back of the plane.
Sure enough, after getting to Buffalo, where it is almost snowing, we find out our bags did go the JFK route and do show up an hour later. MB's warm clothes are in his luggage. I had a jacket with me.
LP sent me a link to some of the coolest pictures I have seen (and I've seen a lot of pictures). Look at the massive ash emission from the Eyjafjallajökull eruption late in the evening. Make sure you spend a few moments paging through them. Many thanks to http://www.swisseduc.ch/stromboli/about/index-en.html for posting them.
