Updated: Never — Philip's Blog

11:09 EDT

You know you're in North America when breakfast comes with "choices". If I was asked to bring one aspect of North Americanism to Europe, I would answer "breakfast" without any hesitation.

How would you like your coffee?

How would you like your eggs?

How would you like your toast?

And most importantly: "how would you like your wifi?", "open and borrowed from the neighbours", of course!

You may be wondering why a FreeBSD developer is going to a Debian conference. Perhaps the talk I'm presenting has something to do with it.

Of course, the fact that they have good food in New York had nothing to do with why I submitted the talk.

Spending another day over the Atlantic ocean tomorrow. Hopefully the volcano doesn't interfere this time round.

My current activities occasionally need me to look at the kind of files GTKWave groks. Works well and all that, but this particular UI quirk is a little puzzling...

Mmhmm ... I'm sure this makes sense to the particular (special) kind of mind that writes GUI applications. Pretty amusing.

I tend not to blog much (or at all) about what I do to pay my bills (safer in terms of NDAs and probably only of interest to a very narrow set of people). My latest professional transition is a bit too interesting to leave undocumented though.

After spending nearly four years at Thomson hacking network stacks, I thought I'd take on something radically different. Since Monday, I'm consulting for QinetiQ (aka Verhaert Space) hacking on fitness machines to be used in space.

I don't think it's possible to make a more radical transition.

This may be my first project where all the calculus and physics I studied will come in useful. I'm surprised with how quickly it all came back to me.

The new commute will be a bit expensive in terms of books (I estimate needing two books a week) but I think technical thrills are worth that.

I'll go back to writing travel adventures and general complaints again now.

This time, routing around the volcano was a lot easier than last time. About the only thing that went wrong this time was the fact that my 18:40 flight from Toronto took forever to board because half the people on it were either in a wheelchair or in a stroller.

The good news was that Lufthansa seems to have "suffered" an equipment change for the flight and they were flying a three-class A340-600 instead of the usual two-class configuration. I was a bit grumpy about the seat-change to 1G because I'm not very fond of lavatory traffic. My mood brightened considerably when the lady told me it was a first class seat. Only business class service, but I can live with that. I think I passed out about twenty minutes after being airborne and slept until breakfast.

I broke a new record in Frankfurt yesterday morning: made a connecting flight in under 30 minutes. We were scheduled to land at 08:25 but we only made it to the ground at 09:00. As usual, there was no gate available and they parked us somewhere very far away from the terminal building.

Racing through the terminal and cutting queues, I somehow managed to make my 09:35 flight to Brussels. Miraculously, my bag made it too. I guess the bright yellow "HOT!" sticker they put on it in Toronto helped. Amusing detail: the plane to Brussels was parked two spots down from the plane from Toronto. Why did I have to race through the terminal? They could have put someone to check my passport on the bus and dropped me at my plane, saving everyone a lot of trouble.

I will now try not to do any flying before August. Maybe by then, they'll have switched their volcano off?

07:55 EDT

I don't seem to have much luck with volcanoes. At least this time, I don't have any visa constraints and to be honest: there are worse things than being stranded in Canada.

Last night at 18:40, I intended to fly from Ottawa to Heathrow, but just before boarding time, the flight was delayed six hours. While sitting it out would have been an option, it would have been a serious pain (and probably an expensive pain) to find last-minute accomodation around midnight. I quickly decided to reroute.

I am very impressed with Air Canada's treatment of other Star Alliance carriers' Gold status passengers. While they don't have ticketing desks in the lounge, the friendly lounge dragon gave me an Air Canada "super elite" hotline number which answered me on the first ring. The lady on the phone could immediately book me on a 21:00 flight to Toronto and today's 18:40 flight from Toronto to Frankfurt and tomorrow's 09:35 flight to Brussels.

Unfortunately, she could only "book" and not "ticket". I'm not sure what the distinction is, but getting it "ticketed" seems to have involved virtual money changing hands between Air Canada and Lufthansa (with whom my original itinerary was booked). The friendly lady at the ticketing desk in Ottawa spent about 45 minutes on the phone sorting that out for me and all went well.

Unfortunately, there's no status tier which allows one to reroute friends who are similarly stuck, so I had to leave behind a number of FreeBSDists who would have been on the same plane to Heathrow. I hope they get home well in short order.

In unrelated news, I discovered why I was getting the "intimate" treatment at security the last couple of times I've flown. Something in my shoes seems to be setting the beepy machines off.

If all goes well, I should be back in Europe on Tuesday morning.

I think it's time they turned their volcano off.

12:09 EDT

Could you please turn your volcano off? If you can't look after your geology, you shouldn't be allowed to have it.

Remarkably, I didn't have too much trouble with the volcano flying to Canada last Friday. A number of people here at the FreeBSD developer summit had very exciting flights though.

While there are many worse things in life than being stranded in Canada, I would actually like to go home at some point. Well ... maybe. :-)

I finally got home last night. Pretty smooth journey. If I had someone to travel with me, I'd probably do this kind of trip overland again, but I'm not ready to give up flying as my main means of international transportation.

Things got a bit iffy just off the ferry in the north of Germany yesterday morning. The train hit a sheep and the Polizei had to verify that it was indeed mutton and not an inconsiderate and antisocial suicide. As most people on the train had onwards connections, there was much unhappiness.

We eventually made it to Hamburg with about forty minutes delay. I was happy to discover that the train to Cologne had waited for me. It also managed to catch up on its delay (yay for high speed rail) so that I could make my Thalys later in the day.

I was very unimpressed with wifi on the Thalys. Whereas in Sweden, I had 600-1000ms round trip times, I had 6000-12000ms round trip times on the Thalys. Too much even for IRC! But it was only two hours and I was mostly eager to get home.

In the mean time, SAS has reminded me why I continue to collect miles (and retain status!) with them. My unflown segments will be refunded in short order (I opted for flight vouchers, I'm always up for a last minute trip to Copenhagen) and my "hotel" expenses will be refunded under their Care policy.

Of course, they are required by the EU to have this policy, but I was very impressed with the efficiency and courtesy of the refund process. I had expected a lot of hassle and silly bureacracy. Following this interaction, I'm more than happy to stay with them. Thanks!

Happy to be home... ...for a little while.

Uneventful train from Saint Petersburg to Helsinki yesterday. I shared a cabin with two Russian women and two kids. One of the kids had something wrong with the wiring and the other one (about 11, I think) spoke English remarkably well. They were possibly the only people on the train who had planned to take it. They were also on the ferry, starting their holiday in Sweden.

After Italian lunch with p2 in Helsinki, got to the ferry to Stockholm in good time. The terminal (and the ferry) was packed with people who absolutely did not want to be there. I have lost count of the number of times I've heard "frequent flyers" complaining to each other about how much this sucks. Get over it -- at least you're getting home. I'm sure there are plenty more of those fuming in airports, not getting home.

The weather is nice in Stockholm, so I walked from the harbour to the central station instead of taking the metro. During the walk, I realized that I'm missing my hat. I have no idea where I left it. It was a good hat. I will have to buy a new one. It's strange, I don't usually lose things.

Currently sitting in the station in Stockholm, again surrounded by people who really don't want to be here. When the queue gets a bit shorter, I'll pick up my tickets to take me to Copenhagen. Unfortunately, the train that would have allowed me to catch the night train to Cologne is full, so I'll have to spend the night in Copenhagen.

I have booked tickets on the 09:45 to Hamburg, changing trains to Cologne at 14:15-14:45. I have twenty minutes in Cologne to catch the 19:11 Thalys to Brussels.

Getting places. Not very fast, but ... who cares.

15:06 MSD

Over lunch today, I decided that flying home would probably not be happening. In a fit of hyperactivity, I found my way back to Finlyandsky station to buy tickets on the early Repin train to Helsinki tomorrow morning. This, at least, will make my visa problem go away.

Booking tickets took all the sign language I could muster and lots of scribbling back and forth on a piece of paper with the prototypical railway sales agent. First class is apparently full (I think that's what she was trying to tell me, I guess I'm not to only one who prefers to be in control of his fate rather than leave it to the airlines) so I will have to make do with an upper berth in second class. Why they have sleeper cars on a day train is entirely beyond me, but since the train is leaving at 07:17, I may be glad for the rest. Something tells me though that I'll be spending most of the trip in the restaurant car. I have a good book, I have a laptop.

After getting back with my train tickets and chatting on IRC about what to do in Helsinki since flights will probably be a problem for another couple of days, I figured it may be a good idea just to keep going in roughly the right direction with ground transport. If I'm going to be travelling for three days, it might as well be three days in motion rather than three days stuck in a little corner of an airport.

So I booked tickets on the 17:00 Silja Symphony to Stockholm, arriving 09:30 Monday morning. At 122EUR, this is cheaper than it sounds: it saves me a hotel (though admittedly, I could couchsurf) and it gets me a bit closer to home still.

There are two flights a day from Stockholm to Brussels. If they operate, it shouldn't be too difficult to get on one of those. Otherwise, I'll take the train to Copenhagen and the night train from there to Brussels.

I'll get home eventually, I'm sure.