Month: October 2006

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Flight Delay

I corresponded today with one of the exhibitors from last week’s Paris conference. He wrote, “I hope that you had a safe flight back. We were stuck outside the terminal for over an hour because of a unattended bag, which they blew up outside the terminal. Besides that we had an easy flight home.”

I replied, “Did you get to see the bag get blown up, at least? That would’ve helped mitigate the delay a little bit.”

Alas, no: “Unfortunately I did not get to see the bag get blown up, but I did get to see the remnants. They just dumped the contents on the sidewalk: some clothes, lots of rice, and spices.”

* * *

It reminds me of the baggage carousel when we got back to Newark. Some luggage came out, but there was also a small pile of panties rolling along. I said, “Wow! Did someone get raped in the cargo hold?!”

It had been a long day.

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Mail call

One of the neat things about extended business trips is the gigantic pile of mail that awaits upon your arrival. I spent most of yesterday’s work-day going through mail, magazines, faxes, and the 154 pertinent e-mails from the week out of the office. It was laborious, but I was glad to get everything off my desks. And, since it was Columbus Day, there was no new mail coming in.

At home, it was a much quicker process. A medium-sized box of mail waited for us. This is the first time Amy & I have gone away for a stretch since we had our “subscribe to every magazine” run during the summer, so the stack of mags was truly impressive. We were only gone for a week, but for some reason, Dwell decided to send two different issues.

But the best thing in the mail was a card from our friends Cathi & Adam. They got hitched about 13 months ago and we’ve somehow failed to give them their wedding present during that span. Despite that, they sent a thank-you card, which included a couple of pictures from their wedding. Which is my roundabout way of introducing the following:

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You’re IT!

This conversation from BusinessWeek explores the question, “Does IT Matter?”

This article from BusinessWeek about the software problems leading to Airbus’ $6.1 billion wiring problem answers the question pretty handily, I think.

Both of our flights for this trip were on Boeings (767-200 and 757-200), and they were pretty smooth, except for the hydraulic problem I mentioned for yesterday’s flight home. When we touched down, I said to Amy, “Well, I guess the hydraulics worked, huh?” She joked that, when we looked back from the jetway, we’d notice that the plane had flat tires.

Followup: Airbus’ CEO quit after 100 days on the job, because he couldn’t get authority to make the sweeping changes. What’s BW say today?

The debacle has exposed a fundamental Airbus flaw. Far from the smooth-running pan-European group depicted in its public relations, its units in Germany, France, Britain, and Spain remain surprisingly balkanized, each clinging to traditional operating methods and cross-border jealousies. “It is still, in part, a juxtaposition of four companies,” Streiff [the departing CEO] told the French newspaper Le Figaro in the only interview he has given since resigning.

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Home!

In safe and sound, after a 75-minute delay in CDG because of problems with the hydraulics! Customs snagged our sausages, which we bought in duty-free as gifts for our fathers. This peeved me to no end. Amy was already peeved when the second security point at CDG took her jars of mustard and jelly from her carryon (we didn’t want to risk them breaking in the checked-in bags).

Anyway, I’m rolling down the street to grab us a pizza. Maybe we’ll watch baseball and be all American. Even though my Yankees got knocked out in the first round of the playoffs today. Grr.

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Fauxhawk Friday

Well, Amy said that on Fauxhawk Friday, Musee D’Orsay offers free admission, and I fell for it.

They charged for admission, but it was all worth it. Orsay’s a fantastic museum, between the collection and the crazy vibe of an antiquated vision of the future. (In a sense, I suppose that grotesque Centre Du Pompidou provides another of those visions, but it appears to be one circa 1975, a period that should just be avoided.)

Anyway, we both posted our new pix to our flickr photosets (hers and mine). They’ll likely be the last pix from this trip, since it’s raining cats and dogs outside, and we’re heading out tomorrow.

Fortunately, we got a bunch of shopping done today. I wasn’t able to find great stuff for everyone in my life, but we both found some pretty neat gifts (and some nice treats for ourselves).

How we’re gonna pack all this stuff, I have no idea. Thanks for checking in on these posts. I know I haven’t gone off and posted 2,000-word rants on “Paris & Yesterday’s Tomorrows” or anything, but I did receive some illuminations during the trip, which I hope to share with you, dear readers.