#rollerblading
Travel Log
25 November 1998
The following was composed throughout yesterday.
The Willard Airport (part of the U of I Institute of Aviation) is beautiful. It's also the size of a car-dealership (they have Saab's:)), but what do you expect froma tiny town like Champaign. In front of the airport terminal is a nice pond. The airport makes me proud of UI.
I learned my driver's permit expired last December. For some reason I don't care. I should probably get a new one and then eventually get my driver's license. If oudn this out at the ticket counter.
I expected trouble at the security checkpoint. I carry a large multi-tool thing which I assumed to be the cause of my being beeped. The swiss-army knife that I also carry is quite loaded with metal as well. The wand found nothing. The bag I carried also had miscellaneous things like a modem, a caller ID box and various cables, etc. Showing them the modem made them feel better. I'm glad I don't have to go through security at DTW where they have it very beefed up.
I sepnt $20 on this legal pad and legal pad holder. I should have just purhcased this device from Cross that is an electronic legal pad that allows you to transfer stuff from your pad to your computer. I bet the OCR would not be able to read my writing, though.:)
I often wonder about the future, this would make me a futurist.:) I wonder what technology we use today will exist 50 to 100 years from now.
- Groundcars - we may be able to create hover cars, but nobody is trying to mass produce these things. Currently we are concentrating on low to zero emissions. Even if we do see a hover car, it won't be common place. Not until we can reduce the hell out of hover car emissions, which I would imagine to be harder. Much more, I doubt we will see hover cars that suspend themselves several stories of the ground for quite a while either.
- Telephones - even if we do have videophones, not everybody is going to want to use them. I mean, do you want to see everybody you talk to? Probably not. Do you want everyone to see you while they talk to you? Probably not. Not everybody at least. What about telemarketers? Nazi's? Robots? Video also takes a high ammount of bandwidth, but that can be solved in the future. What'll end up happening is we'll disable video on videophones as often as possible.
Daniel will be happy to know that I'm riding a SAAB-340 aeroplane. It's not that comfortable, but it will do. I've never been in a tiny plane, and have never had to climb into a plane except in India where planes are tragged by high-speed elephants until they reach a fast enough speed to fly into the air. I feel like killing air-hostess, Krystal. She has a voice that sounds really irritating. Traces of Southern, black and that annoying Mexican-gangsta-woman accent that purposely sounds annoying.
People complain about the take off on small planes. It's not that bad. I kinda like it. Wow, IL is all corn fields, and stuff. I forgot to bring batteries with me. I'm so used to using other power sources for my cd player. I should have taken Stinky's batteries. I may have to buy some at DTW if there is time.
Sitting next to someone with a PalmPilot has made me realize how untechno-savvy I am. Well I'm making a list of things I want.
- A thinner CD player w/ better skip protection.
- A portable MP3 player.
- CrossPad XL even though it's a bit smaller than a legal pad.
- PalmPilot III or the Razor
- Gatway's Fireant because it has a cool name, and then I'd have a DVD player.
The flight from CMI to DTW went well. It seemed very short. 10:25 to 12:55 minus one hour for Time Zone ... half an hour? WTF? Neat! This flight is about 1:52, a lot longer, oh well. I quickly went from sector G to sector C14 of DTW and I had a few minutes to call my mom, buy some batteries and board the plane in which I am sitting. Despite what the person sitting next to me thinks, this DC-9 is roomy compared to the tiny aeroplane I was in 45 minutes ago. Now I can finally listen to the songs in my head.
Okay one more technology thing:
- Email - this or some variation will last forever. I mean, we've had letters, and telegrams and fax machines and now email, this is just such an easy to use quick form of communication that it will perhaps never end.
If I were at UI, I'd be doing laundry and hanging out waiting for my CS lecture... or I'd be researching my draft for Speech Com which is due Monday. I'm hungry. I'm always in the wrong Time Zone when it's lunchtime. It's lunch in the Time Zone in which I was just in and where I am going... but not here. Crap.
I'm sorry, what I purchased yesterday at IUB and on which I am writing is a bifold writing pad according to NWA's gift catalogue.
We are flying over Minneapolis. I saw a Jesus fish (anybody know where this is?), the three towers of Minneapolis which look very small from up here. I see a Yellow building which is on the road that goes along side Lake Calhoun when coming from Excelsior avenue! That's really cool. I'm looking for... and I just saw the Lake Harriet Bandshell. Reminds me of all the fun we had this summer:)
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