We travel for holidays and other times throughout the year. We have a 5 year old van. It has a DVD player.
We have some DVDs but not a ton, most media is digital. The van has no way to hook it up.
Here is what I do and this is a pretty good tip if you can do it.
Find a Redbox in the city you are in – Walgreens usually has one. Rent a few DVDs for one night, maybe 5 bucks.
Then at your destination – drop them off. Works every time!
This past week I went to the PASS Summit 2012 in Seattle (more on that in a later post). But I did something that I haven’t done ever. I went to Seattle without my laptop.
Now, if you have ever been to a tech conference, first off the wifi and network in the hotels are slow because you have thousands of geeks doing the same thing. 3g/4g slow too, so you are already hampered by that fact.
Next, you are up early, to breakfast/conference sessions all day, usually till 6:30 pm, and you then have conference events every night till 9, 10, 11 whatever, so you aren’t in your hotel much, maybe to sleep, shower, drop your bag off.
I found that I could “get by” without my laptop, but there were things that weren’t easy, and things I couldn’t do easily when I wanted to.
First trial was an email sent to me with a PDF that asked “can you sign this and get it back today”. Ok, let’s see. Download a PDF signing app and do it in iOS. Works. Little hokey to get the file back and copied and back in the email, but works.
Then, a couple of days later, “go here and fill this web form out”.. well, let’s cross our fingers it works in mobile safari or chrome without issue. It was clunky but worked.
I would say the biggest gripe though I had was this: lack of keyboard. Now I know with iPad (and things like Surface with the touch cover) you can get a keyboard, but I don’t have one of those cases for my iPad so I was just winging it with the iPad.
With no keyboard, it is *very* hard to sit down and bang out paragraphs at any fast type of rate. Blog post? Not quickly. It is just a slow down without a physical keyboard to type on. Other things like emails, twitter, web, whatever, work fine with just the iPad. And of course consuming/reading content is great. Just that typing something like this post here, I waited till I was at my desktop at home to write it. I think I would pull my hair out just trying to use the soft keyboard on the iPad.
Overall it got me by like I said, but there are still some gaps, at least for me, in what I need to do that can’t be handled without a laptop or physical keyboard. Maybe next year 🙂
Easy as 1,2,3. Well, almost. The hardest part was parking. I’ve never been to the airport alone, to travel, so that was a new experience. I got here way early, just to be sure, but parked, walked to ticketing, no one in line, so that was good. No on in line to check bags, that was good, No one in line at security, that was good. There were a few people there in security line, but yeah, easy.
One thing I would have to say is, the 3-1-1 rule, about liquids, is just stupid. One lady had her stuff in a bag, but one thing was like 3.6 ounces and they denied. Some guy had contact solution in his bag, they jacked it.
I had my shoes, laptop, and gum – no problems 🙂
One thing that sucks on the concourse, is the wi-fi isn’t free. They are running Boingo paid Internet, just a scam. Seems my phone won’t dial out or get on data either, not sure why, text messaging still works.
Just rebooted my phone, and now data works – sweet!
It is nice to be having a beer at 12:45 PM on a Wednesday with no worries in the world 🙂
Wow, I am in Rochester for work. I am at the Hawthorn Suites, and the suite I am in is like bigger than my apt. Two air conditioners, two tv’s. Unbelievable. If I had my guitar it would be just like home 😉
Steve Novoselac's Blog 