Well, after being on the road for nearly a month, I'm now back in San Francisco for the next few weeks. I started out with a vacation in Belize for the third year in a row along with a bunch of friends. Didn't dive as much as previous years, but really enjoyed the trip, others learned to dive, and it was quite relaxing. From there I took a red-eye back to San Francisco to attend Collective Intelligence FooCamp down at Google Friday and Saturday. It certainly was interesting, though much more focused within academia which provided a different view than most of the events I'm at. It might be cheesy to say my favorite conversations and sessions (including one on net neutrality) were with Larry Page, but it really was true; he definitely is smart and knows what he is talking about! From there I took off to Tokyo on Monday to spend some time in the Six Apart Japan office and announce the formation of a Japanese chapter of the OpenID Foundation. I think Tokyo and London are my two favorite cities outside of the US.

From Tokyo I had a day back in San Francisco, dropped some Tokyo Bananas off at the office, and then flew down to San Diego along with Anil. Monday I spoke on a panel at Graphing Social Patterns about feeds within social networking. I then stuck around for O'Reilly's Emerging Technology conference which I had never been to in the past. There were definitely interesting sessions and the conference was an energizing mix of alpha geeks (toting Asus Eee PCs) with business people enamored with new and major technological shifts. Tom Coates launched Yahoo! Fire Eagle (a location service supporting OAuth), Larry Lessig talked about political change, Nathan Eagle on interesting trends in how people relate online and data extracted from their interactions, and the list goes on with talks around mobile games, human-computer interfaces, and other interesting stuff.

Friday, Anil and I hopped over to Austin for SXSW. My flight ended up being one of the "nerd flights" as it started in San Francisco, picked a whole group of us up in San Diego, and then ended up in Austin. All in all, probably a dozen or so people on the flight that I knew. I had never been to SXSW before, so it definitely was an interesting experience. I spoke yesterday on two panels, A Critical Look at OpenID in the morning and then Portable Social Networks in the afternoon. Had a really great time on both panels and judging from reactions afterwards in person, via Twitter, and through blogs both of the panels went extremely well! I remember someone describing SXSW to me as "Most conferences the geeks try to blend into the business people, at SXSW the business people adapt to be geeks."

Just landed in Denver, have an hour before Blaine Cook and I continue on to SF, and am glad that I'll be back home for a few weeks. Will be down in Mountain View tomorrow speaking at the Emerging Communications conference, if you're around you should check it out as they've put together a great group of speakers!

Getting back into the spirit of personal blogging, I'm taking about two weeks of very much needed vacation right now. Of course this really means I do less work each day versus a real vacation with no computers. Met Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb yesterday for lunch and a walk with his dog around Mt. Tabor in Portland which was a lot of fun. Definitely the type of "work" that I enjoy during a vacation!

Spent a few days this past week in Sun Valley along with friends from high school. After a ten hour drive which included playing 20-Questions via walkie-talkies between the two cars, we got to our friend's house. The next day I took a crack at skiing for the first time in about ten years. Ended up being what we've decided to call "an adventure". After getting to the top of the mountain, my friend Jamie (who quite graciously stuck with me the entire way down) quickly realized that I was in above my head. The reality is that I should have gone to Dollar Mountain as a beginner. So I fail at winter as it took me about five and a half hours to make it down Baldy. On the upside, I don't totally suck at ice skating.

On a plane right now headed to Phoenix. A few years ago I worked on Simple Machines Forum, a free open source PHP forum, along with a team of volunteers around the world. They're having the first team meetup and I'm joining them for the last few days in the Grand Canyon. Should be really cool as I've never been before and from what I'm told its really pretty right now all covered in snow!

Writing about social network fatigue around the world on O'Reilly Radar - http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/12/decentralizing.html

If you're wondering when to fly on United (or probably other airlines too) take a look:

I can only hope they need extra seats in Y and I get bumped up to C.

Just booked my flights for BarCamp Berlin, Web 2.0 Expo Berlin, and the Eduserv Foundation OpenID event in London. Wondering if anyone would be willing to let me crash on a couch in either city while I'm there?

Arrive in London at 1pm Friday November 2nd. Dinner on me if I can crash at your place. :)

Fly to Berlin 7am that Saturday.

Arrive in London at 9pm on Wednesday November 7th.

Fly back to San Francisco 1pm Sunday November 11th.

Any takers? :)

Numero uno:

Hi,
Just wanted to let you know that the captain and crew on this flight were one of the best domestic crews I've had on a United flight. The crew was extremely attentive and friendly all around (not just one or two great flight attendants like many flights) and the captain took the time to welcome the first class cabin personally.

Thanks,
--David

Numero dos (55 minutes later):

Unfortunately I've now had one of my worst United experiences...

Upon arriving in Denver I turned my phone on and had an Easy Update showing that my flight to Tulsa (UA 6556) was departing on time from gate B81. This left me with about an hour from when we landed. I walked to gate 81 and figured I was still early when there was no gate agent there (which is reasonable for an hour before departure for a Skywest flight). Awhile later I decided to check the status and it turned out the flight had moved to gate B56. At that point there was about 15 minutes until departure. When I got the the gate the door was closed (the agent was down at the plane) though the plane was still open with the jet bridge attached.

A customer service counter was next to the gate and I explained how I trusted the Easy Update (I guess a mistake) and had been waiting at 81. Despite the plane still being there with the door open, they refused to let me board the flight. As far as I could tell from their comments this was due to having to re-do paperwork versus not having a seat (I was booked in 1A).

The best they were willing to do (after pulling the flight up on the computer and noticing the gate had been changed four times today) was book me confirmed on a flight four and a half hours later and standby on the next flight two hours later. When asking if I could get my regional upgrade certificate back, they told me I had to call mileage plus. When asking if there was anything else they could do, all they said was "no". This is not the sort of customer service I expect as a 1K and is the same sort of scenario which made me stop flying Alaska Air.

This is incredibly frustrating to me:
- Why was an updated "Easy Update" not sent letting me know about the gate change?
- Why was the customer service agent unable to do anything but book me over four hours later?
- Why did the customer service agent tell me to call mileage plus; this is completely the opposite of how if I called the 1K mileage plus number the agent would have made sure my issues were resolved instead of just transferring me to someone else?
- Why didn't the RCC agent, who asked me how I was doing, ask for any specifics to find out if she could have helped me after I answered that I was frustrated since one flight today was great, but the second is now horrible?
- Why do RCC agents randomly ask for my photo ID when not asking others, is it impossible to believe that that a 21-year old white guy with a fro is a 1K with a RCC membership?
- Why can't United have a consistent experience between airports and staff?

I realize I should have just looked at the monitor, but Easy Update messages are supposed to be correct.

--David

Down in San Diego for a few days for VeriSign's Technical Symposium. Seems United figured out someway to lose my bag between SFO and SAN. Guess out of the ~190,000 miles I've flown with them the past 14 months that this isn't a bad time for them to lose it (first time from all of my trips). Back up in San Francisco Wednesday night and then hoping for some diving this weekend!

Just got to my hotel in Seoul, was a busy day, and read niftybitch's post about the earthquake in Japan. So now, wasn't in Japan today, but hopefully it didn't hit Tokyo too bad. I need to catch up on some work, sleep, and then have a 9am flight back to Tokyo.

Flight was easy, only about nine hours and we got in about 45 minutes early. Took the Narita Express from the airport and managed to find my hotel without too much trouble. Weather is a bit humid, though I seem to be getting used to it. Ventured out to find the VeriSign Japan office which is about a fifteen minute walk from where I'm staying. Ended up surprising people since they didn't expect me until Friday, but turned out alright since it was their once a month "pizza and beer" party. Got a bunch of maps printed and then ventured to Shibuya to meet Deni, a friend from high-school, for dinner. Turns out a few friends are currently in Tokyo, so trying to setup dinner with everyone next week.

Friday met Joi Ito for lunch out in Roppongi which required some subway and JR navigation. Hardest part though was actually finding the restaurant once I made it out there. Seems Joi got a picture of me mid-sentence. :P Some crazy fountains and the Mori Building which I guess has a nice view out over the city.

Afterwards, ventured back to the office for some meetings through the afternoon and early evening. That night they hosted a dinner party for a variety of new employees as well as one person who was leaving the company. Had my first experience with shoe lockers; was pretty nice not wearing shoes. Food was wonderful, a nice assortment of sashimi, cabbage and bacon, beef tongue (tastes like ham), a sauce for each type of food (did you know there is different soy sauce for sashimi and maki rolls?). Afterwards ventured with some co-workers to an "American Style Bar", though I was certainly the only American the Texas Bar in London is more authentic.

Today went to the Apple Store since I forgot my iPod charging cable. Pretty much the same as others, though found some cool things not in the US. Was impressed by the number of different drinks the stores carry and the $1.30 each tangerines. Subway system is crazy, can't make sense of the station maps, but I was doing better than another American couple I saw who couldn't figure out how to buy a ticket. Still just choosing a random exit to leave a station and then hoping for the best once I find the street.

Went over to Akihabara and found crazy electronics stores. A fully aisle dedicated to mice and underwater camera housings. At this point the store's security guard told me to stop taking pictures. Saw crazy street dancing (video), before the police came and kicked her out. Got some bubble tea and then found a shop in an alley which sold unlocked cell phones. So now I'm the proud owner of an unlocked Nokia N73 which is quad-band GSM and 2100Mhz CDMA along with a 3.2 megapixel camera, video conferencing, etc etc.

In other news, technology still sucks. iPhoto keeps crashing, VPN doesn't stay connected, the Treo sucks, FaceBook limits you to 60 photos per gallery, resizes them too small, and no easy way to link to all my public albums, I'd have to pay Flickr to just upload one day's worth of photos, LiveJournal's photo hosting hasn't been touched in at least a year, bleh.

Need to figure out what I want to do tomorrow, might try to go see a parade tonight, and then Monday I fly to Seoul for the day.

So during my Japan trip, I'll be headed to Seoul on Monday the 16th. Been working with Andy Kyoseok Song from AhnLab and Ted Cho formally of Opinity and now at Google on setting up meetings and interviews. So if you're in Seoul and want to chat about OpenID, drop me an email!

New July map:

I'll be in Tokyo the 13th (well really the afternoon of the 12th) through the 20th of this month to talk to a whole variety of people about OpenID. VeriSign's Japanese office, along with Six Apart's, have been great in helping me setup meetings which I really appreciate! If you're in Tokyo and would like to chat, feel free to drop me an email.

In other travel news, after Tokyo I'm headed straight to Portland for the O'Reilly Open Source Convention. I'm speaking along with Simon Willison as part of the Radar Executive Briefing as well as we're giving a 3-hour OpenID Bootcamp tutorial Tuesday morning.

July:

Been awhile since I've written non-OpenID stuff...

Went hiking this weekend organized by niftybitch along with scsi, brad, erinearl, and others. Was out like 20 minutes past Oakland in the middle of the forest, was pretty much awesome. Was about a 4 mile hike and the weather was great.

Was out in Dulles, VA last week and the whether was crazy. First two days were humid, thunder storming, and hailing. Third day was sprinkling rain like what I'd expect up in Seattle. Got about 45 minutes of sleep on my red-eye flight out Monday night, so Tuesday was largely powered by Red Bull. Conor Cahill barbecued so had dinner at his house along with Paul Madsen, Eve Maler, George Fletcher, and others which was also quite fun.

Been playing Super Paper Mario for the Wii the past week or so. Really liking this game. Is a good balance of traditional Mario with some cool new twists. Good balance of mind puzzles as well in terms of thinking about how to get through a level beyond just the traditional timing jumps.

Headed to FooCamp this weekend, so will be in Sebastapol for the first time. Thought about buying a tent today for camping there, though choices at REI were overwhelming. Thinking I'll do some Amazon.com research tonight and see what I can find.

Been playing with Dopplr.com since crucially sent me an invite a few weeks ago. Really like the concept, they do one simple useful thing which is showing if you have overlapping trips with your friends. anildash has usability issues with it, though I'm hoping it will improve since it is just alpha. Does illustrate how powerful it is to have open source software since if Dopplr were, then all the geeks which are using it could scratch their own itches. For now I just leave you with a screenshot.

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So turns out the consular in Geneva is gone this week, so couldn't even get a passport issued there if I wanted to. Have an appointment with the San Francisco office 9am Wednesday, so hoping they can turn one around by Friday evening since I leave Saturday for Munich. Will end up with an ePassport as well I assume.

Weather here in Geneva is awesome!

To whom it may concern,
I'm literally getting off the flight right now in London (left SFO on the 21st) and wanted to let you know this was the best crew I've had on a trans-atlantic flight. Through the entire flight everyone was quite polite and attentive, delivering an exceptional level of service.

Keep up the good work

So got to Geneva, SFO-LHR was actually the best trans-atlantic flight I've been on I think. Got an upgrade at the last minute and slept about 6 hours on the plane. Got through immigration with no passport problems, though a few comments along the way.

Got a new work phone on Thursday, same number and all, but different SIM. Seems it doesn't have international roaming enabled so need to try to Skype Cingular or something today to try to get that sorted out if I don't want to wait until Monday San Francisco time.

No clue when others get in or where people are staying, figure if nothing else I'll just see people at the ITU in the morning.

Edit: Despite my past issues with Skype, bought some more Skype Out credit, called Cingular, they found the problem, and now my phone works. :)

Well, it doesn't seem actually that bad. Cover color is faded a bit and no longer has clean edges. Pages are all intact, including the lamination on the first page where my picture and info is. Stamps are all there, some a bit faded, though the Belize bled through like two pages. So we'll see how it goes, taking birth certificate, and as many other forms of picture id that I can find with me. Then hoping embassy in Geneva can issue a new one on Monday.