Archived entries for
AAirpass
Wow, this would make a great Christmas gift. But while this definitely would be cool I don’t think it’s really priced all that attractively. A quick check shows that an average round trip first class transcontinental fare is around $7500. So for the $3 million you break even if you fly around 400 times in a lifetime. But that doesn’t include lost interest on your $3 million! Assuming you put the money in secure investments that yield a long term average of 6% interest and assuming you fly 15 times a year at $7500 per ticket, you will actually travel for *free* forever! Your average yearly travel budget will be around $120,000 but your average yearly interest income will be around $180,000. You’ll even have enough to pay Uncle Sam every year. So 60 years from now you’ll have flown in international first class 900 times, paid over $3.5 million in taxes, collected millions of frequent flyer miles that you can redeem for free hotel stays, and still have your original $3 million!
The Lost One
I need to go to CDG so I can meet this man. It’s one of those stories that is too weird for anyone to have possibly made up. I know it’s not made up but I think my kids won’t believe me unless I have a picture.
Live from Washington, DC
I’m on vacation this weekend to Philadelphia and DC. I’m having a good time, but not an amazing time. It’s one of those vacations that I sort of felt obligated to take while I’m living in the east. It’s not really worth flying all the way across the country to see an old building and a broken bell, but driving a few hours is not a problem.
I must say the Old City area is a great place to hang out. There are so many restaurants and bars. We stumbled into this colorful and trendy bar with huge glass windows during happy hour and I had a great Ketel One Tangerini for $3. And of course, Cuba Libre was amazing! We happened to be there on first Friday, where on the first Friday of every month all of the independent art galleries in Old City stay open late and offer food and drink. Most people just hang out in the street and talk so it turns into a big block party. Altogether this part of Philly is very unique. As an aside, I heard the new Real World starting this week was filmed in Old City.
Certain aspects of DC are very impressive. There is so much to see. The scale of some of these buildings is amazing. In addition to all the historical @#$!, there is a new downtown area that is surprisingly hip. And there are a bunch of different neighboorhoods that are worth spending a half day seeing. The metro is reasonable in cost and utility but unfortunately doesn’t have enough stops. So we’ve been walking a lot.
Other aspects of DC are much less impressive. The difference between good and bad neighborhoods can be as little as one wrong turn. I also expected DC to have a downtown area with like, office buildings. It was substantially different than New York in the amount of economic development I saw.
I was surprised to find that both of the hotels I’m staying in have WiFi in all guest rooms. Free at the Omni in Philly and $10/day at the Hyatt in DC. So that’s pretty cool and hopefully the beginning of a nationwide trend.
Travel Gear
Been thinking about a tour of Western Europe, hopefully for 3 weeks or more. Preliminary planning is for sometime in May or June. The WSOP is scheduled for 6/3-7/15 but I don’t know what the event schedule is.
Hopefully I can make it to the Rio for a $1k event or maybe a $1.5k event before leaving the country. Obviously I’ll be playing satellites. Anyways I’ve been thinking about what gear I would want to take to Europe. I have a 4MP Casio Exilim that takes great pictures in bright light but mediocre pictures in poor light. It’s tiny though and this is a definite plus. Let’s assume I find a better picture setting and it starts taking great photos in all conditions. Then I would definitely need a larger SD card. I get about 65 photos on a 128MB card but I could easily take that many each day. So get a 2GB card.I’ll also need an extra battery because access to electrical outlets might be sporadic. And I’ll need a battery charger because I won’t be able to dock it. For a carrying case I can use the Timbuk2 iPod case and attach it to either my bag strap or my belt.
And for the iPod I’ll need plug adapters.
Smart Travels
This show is neat. I already have episodes 4, 7 and 11. Now that I have the new 6208 firmware I can finally back these up to DVD. Sweet. NJN is broadcasting in HD from 8PM-12PM but their program guide info is still screwed up. Their HD broadcast schedule should clear things up.
Update: Recorded, backed up and burned episodes 5 and 10. But when I viewed them in VLC player the quality looked a little blurry. And I noticed the ones I downloaded were around 3GB whereas both the captures I made ended up at 2.4GB. So there still may be an issue with the firewire output from the cable box.Update: Recorded an episode on KCTS-DT Seattle and it wasn’t in HD! Huh? Apparently there is a KCTS-DT AND a KCTS-HD, see here.
Philadelphia
Hotel options for Saturday the 28th:
Courtyard Downtown ($140) (Reviews)
Embassy Suites Center City ($150) (Reviews)
Marriott Downtown ($180) (Reviews)
I’ve stayed at two Marriott Courtyard’s and enjoyed both. But the Embassy Suites offers free full breakfast and a suite for the nearly the same price. The Marriott is probably the nicest. Click the link for a travel guide.
CDMA Phone as a modem in OS X
This is a nice feature to have when traveling. The data cable is only $20 from cellpoint and Verizon doesn’t charge extra for 14.4 access. Plus, the v60s is compatible with iSync so I can manage my address book and calendar from my Powerbook.
Update: Umm, nevermind. The V60s is apparently the only model that doesn’t support the standard V60 data cable, see here. That’s crappy.
Hiking in the Northeast
Found this awesome page while googling for info on Sugarloaf. I’m thinking about organizing a hiking/camping trip for later this month. This guy has taken some amazing shots!
