Okay, I’ve finished my Gnomedex talk, and so can begin to chill out after an extremely nutty 72 hours. A few random notes from the past few days:
- Big carry-on bags are one of my air travel pet peeves. It seems like about a third of all travelers bring a bag onboard that, according to the rules (which seem to never be enforced), is too big. On my flight home, somebody was trying to wheel a rolling bag down the aisle, and it was too wide! That ought to be a clue that’s it’s over-sized. Is the 15 minutes wait for your checked luggage that vital to your life?
- Kudos to the local MacStation. On Tuesday, I bought another MacBook to replace our other aging PowerBook. I brought it home with a busy evening of work planned. I turned it on, and it was totally b0rked. Hilariously, when I started it up, it just played the Mac startup tone over and over and over again. Even when I closed the laptop. I was in a big hurry when I returned it the following morning, but the folks at MacStation took care of me and swapped laptops (and my added RAM) immediately for one that worked.
- A big thanks to Ianiv and Arieanna for giving me a lift down to Seattle. We had a two-hour wait at the border, but I brought treats, so it was okay.
- I was surprised to feel quite sentimental about coming back to Vancouver. The day after arriving, I woke up early and walked downtown over the Cambie Street bridge. It was a joy to look at a textured, cloudy sky, smell the cedar from the docks under the bridge, and hear the cries of seagulls. I felt more sentimental in part, I think, because Malta is far more different from Canada than Ireland was.
- I haven’t had a Slurpee or sushi yet. I must get on that.
- Yep, the urban planning of Seattle still licks.
- Yep, those are cows behind me. It’s actually a country road, because I made an awful joke about John Denver, related to this project.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
Re: the carry-on baggage. I will preface this comment with the disclaimer that I do use a carry-on that fits within the maximum allowable capacity, so I don’t actually break the rules, though I do stuff it as full as I possibly can. That said, it’s not about the wait time to check my baggage, but about Air Canada’s propensity to lose luggage. I have had it happen so many times that I avoid checking my bags unless I absolutely have to take more stuff than I can fit in my carry-on. So, er, try to be patient with the poor passengers. I kind of think it’s the airlines’ fault for being so disorganized and making us fear checking our luggage!
Check out this lost-luggage story:
http://www.bluntmoney.com/the-luggage-chronicles/
I think the carry on is one of the less annoying aspects of flying. I would rather wait the few minutes for the large carry on then listen to the baby cry for many hours on end or have the back of my seat banged constantly.
I tried the MacStation link but received your 404 error page. Just to let you know.
Glad your trip home was a good one. I to get nostalgic when visit places I have not been in a while.