I’m back in California for a few days after visiting New England. Look for a piece later the role of technology issues in the New Hampshire presidential primary.
I can tell you that technology played a helpful role for me. It saved me from some travel misery. And it was entirely routine — which is the main point of this story.
I always check the Weather Channel’s Web site when I’m traveling. On Tuesday night, it showed a storm brewing in the Midwest, with serious snowfall expected in Chicago on Wednesday afternoon. That storm looked like it would move into New England on Thursday morning, when I was scheduled to leave Manchester, New Hampshire, for San Jose via Chicago. I have a don’t-miss meeting in San Jose today, so I figured I should get out while the getting was good.
So I rebooked my return trip, and left New Hampshire on Wednesday morning. The plane from Chicago left around 1:30 p.m., just as flurries were beginning to hit the Windy City. When we arrived in San Jose — quite late (but who cares?!) due to strong headwinds — the captain informed us we’d escaped just in time, that all kinds of delays and cancelations were affecting Chicago air traffic Wednesday afternoon.
Checking a Web weather forecast is now part of my travel routine. Consider making it part of yours.
Dan Bricklin
It’s always a pleasure to see Dan Bricklin. He’s one of the technology industry’s truly great talents and, more importantly, a fine human being. He’s a Boston-area resident, and when he noticed (via this eJournal) that I was in the area he dropped me a note. We ended up getting together this week to compare notes on a number of topics. Here’s his write-up of our meeting.
As Dan discusses in his essay, he has been using bold type to help readers pull out the gist of his writings if they’re simply skimming. I like what he does a great deal, and plan to start using this technique more often, too.
This medium is still new, and we’re all feeling our way through it. That’s part of what makes it so much fun.