Trip to Saratoga, NY

Flying out of Asheville today for 2 days in Saratoga, NY. Doing a gold level legacy data collection for Saratoga County Sheriff's dept. Waiting in the Asheville airport at 4:45 pm for my 5:20 Delta flight to Cincinnati, then from Cinci on to Albany. Pick up an avis rental to drive to the hotel in Saratoga Springs.

I'll spend all day Tuesday and Wednesday at the site, collecting their data (SQL), gathering screen shots, collecting reports, and getting familiar with how Saratoga uses their data.

Weather in Asheville is absolutely gorgeous. I'm using the open wireless network provided by the airport. Weatherunderground says its currently 74 in Albany. The high tomorrow is listed as 60. Good thing I brought my jacket. We leave for Morocco in about a month. Our plans are starting to come together.

Getting throught security here was fine. I pushed through the laptop, and a 300GB external hard drive without a hiccup. No one wanted to see my liquids. Did have to remove my shoes. What a pain. I'm always afraid I'm going to forget something when I'm re-assembling on the output side of the Xray. Other passengers' stuff keeps pumping through. I'm trying to move my stuff out of the way, get the laptop back in its case. Re-stow the hard drive, grab my shoes, don't forget my keys and wallet! Arggghh... And this is little old Asheville.

This is the first Gold Level Data Retrieval trip. Chris goes to Pennsylvania next week. The hard drive arrived in Asheville today. Took about an hour to format 300G. Yowza! I'm set to download the whole 'net. Or, at least store a heck of a lot of podcasts.

TTFN!

6:55pm
updating from Cincinnati. Err....well, actually I'm sitting in Kentucky..in the Cincinnati airport. Huh? Did I bang my head? Don't I know where I am? I had to ask the flight attendent to make sure Monie hadn't booked me into the 'wrong' Cincinnati. Turns out that the city of Cincinnati, OH sits on the north bank of the Ohio river, while the Cincinnati airport rests across the river on the south bank. Since the river is the boarder between OH, and KY, you land in KY to fly to Cinci.

Wow..what a mouthful. And, I'm trying to get to NY state. The flight to Albany is currently overbooked. They're asking for 2 passengers to give up their seats for compensation.

This airport is a zoo. Landed at terminal A. Took a shuttle over to terminal C for departure to Albany.

Got a pretty good view of Cinci on the final approach. Very smokey. In fact, the last 20 minutes of the flight were very hazy and smoggy. The rust belt is hard at work polluting North Carolina's air. Very smooth flight. The pilot said take off to landing woudl be 45 minutes and damn, if he didn't nail it. 45 mins exactly. Every seat was taken. Basically a lear jet. They had to ask a guy to move from the front 5 rows to the rear to help 'balance' the aircraft. Personally, I think its some sick sociology experiement to see who has the guts to stand up and move, announcing to the flight...I"M FAT, but I'M going to move to keep you guys safe!

11:34 pm
Saratoga Springs, NY. Flight out of Cincinnati was delayed over an hour as it was overbooked. I went up and talked to the clerk but the arrangement was too far fetched: They'd pay your hotel room and put you on a flight to Albany....at 3pm the next day. Or, they'd fly you to Atlanta tonight and um...uh..they'd do something.
Watching Katt Williams throw down on how life is too mf'n short!