Archive for February 20, 2003

Arrived...

Got in at roughly 9:30 - flight was in early, no bags, cab waiting - zoom to the hotel. Bandwidth or bed they asked. I'll let you guess what I chose.

[Update: 06:18 02/21/2003 - I think I made the wrong choice. The bandwidth is spotty and the foot of the pullout bed was a mangled twist of metal that resulted in slope of about 18 inches from head to base...I think I slept. Elliot says that this would be a quick and fun trip. I'm glad that it will be quick because he's only half right on the rest so far.]

The Long Trek In

Since 9/11 I've had to make it a habit to show up at the airport 90 minutes before departure regardless of my destination. Yeah, yeah, I know - minimum 120 minutes for flights to the US, more if you are flying elsewhere in this little world.

This just isn't so anymore though. I remember right after the Twin Towers fell that it would take at least 2 hours to get through security. I figured that on this trip to DC that I would be getting a double-witching whammy - US is at Code Orange and I'm flying directly into the heart of DC - Reagan National.

I'm sitting in departure lounge U writing this less than 20 minutes after getting to the airport - and that included a five minute stand in line for a bottle of water just past the first set of scanners. That doesn't sound too impressive unless you've been to Terminal 2 before and have figured out that there are no letters past U in the Air Canada alphabet. It is the end of the line for departure lounges and you just don't get any further away from the firt check-in unless you are flying regional and are forced to jump on one of those shuttle buses to one of the mini-terminals that spot the tarmac.

20 minutes from start to finish in medium traffic. Not bad.

I also found it interesting that no one asked me to turn on my laptop, digital camera, pocket pc, cell phone, battery charger or MP3 player at any of the 4 different security checks that I had to go through. They checked my bags but once and left everything else to my word. I can't say that it bothered me as it really sped up the walkthrough, but it doesn't seem to say a lot about the diligence that Terminal 2 security is demonstrating. Maybe they have some sort of super-secret scanners that I don't know about.

BTW - I noticed a couple of days ago that the eph key on the laptop is working just fine. Strange. The best idea that I can come up with is that either a) the thought of being shipped back to the manufacturer just scared the bejesus out the poor little unit and it shaped or, b) that one of the springs that made the eph key work simply popped back into where it should be. A little of both I suspect. Anyways, I've vetoed the RMA, the unit is here to stay. I'll try and put together a mini-review if I have a few minutes over the next few days. I have been very impressed with the unit despite the eph key dysfunction during the early days of our relationship.

Please Stand By

I'll be off the air for a while. I'm off to DC for the ICANN Registrar Constituency meeting.

I'll be keeping extensive notes as the day progresses tomorrow and will definitely post as I get the chance. Unfortunately, the meeting room isn't wired, so I'm not sure where the pipe and ping will come from.

I'm free!

The albatross is off! At one point, we were doing three conference calls per week - two to three hours each. Agh.

Believe it or not, I actually enjoyed the work - it wasn't easy, but it amazes me how well things turned out given the passionate, sometimes acrimonious positions put forward by a lot of the participants - including myself.

The real credit for moving the ball across the line and up to the board has to go to Marilyn Cade and Bruce Tonkin for making sure that the community did in fact agree on key points when it counted the most.

Abril on Board Elections

Amadeu has posted his thoughts on the upcoming board election to the GNSO Council list.

Summary: He won't be running again and he urges the council to proceed with caution.

"In summary, my advice is that;

The Council spends some time figuring out not just how many votes a successful candidate needs, but what sort of candidates, what sort of “message” is the GNSO as such sending to the new Board. The process is carried at Council level, not only at the constituency level (with the Council “just” voting).

You keep three main goals in mind, besides the usual ones of honesty, energy, dedication etc....

• Renewing the Board, not only re-legitimating it as a goal in itself
• Increased DNS-specific (technical and “market-wise”) skills added to the Board
• Commitment to have the Board really working, and not just approving staff proposals"

I couldn't agree more with him. Sorry to hear that he won't be standing though.

Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.

5 Months 1 Week 1 Day 7 Hours 50 Minutes 29 Seconds ago, I decided to quit smoking. Money saved: $1,371.28.

2 Months 3 Days 22 Hours 50 Minutes 29 Seconds ago, I had my last cigarette. Cigarettes not smoked: 1319.

The difference between those two events was that it actually took me three months of trying to quit before I actually could, did. I never really fell off the wagon hard, with the exception of my trip to China during which I smoked two packs of cigarettes over 4 days or so...the rest of the first three months was spent taking baby steps and then losing all willpower not to smoke, having one and then re-quitting. I stayed on the patch the entire time against everyone's well-intended advice which eventually allowed me to put down the weed permanently - or least put it down for more than two months.

Its getting easy now. :)