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Adventures on the way to TechEd

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Boston. The Cradle of Liberty. Home of TechEd 2006. The city that’s far, far away from Redmond J

Someone had a brilliant idea to start TechEd on Sunday afternoon, which given travel time and time-zone differences meant that I needed to travel on Saturday to get there. Oh well.

On Friday a friend and I had a heated discussion on SOA taxonomy, software architectures composition models, and the separation of error handling from the main-path flow of the business logic. As those things usually go, we started arguing ... I mean discussing this at midnight and talked until 4am, so I got no sleep at all before my 7:50am flight. This meant that the 5 hours flight from Seattle to Newark was mostly doze-off time. Easy J

When I got to Newark I leisurely made my way to my connecting flight from the far-most end of Concourse C to my connection at Concourse A. When traveling between terminals you need to exit Security and re-enter. I had ample time and so when I saw the thing I’m going to tell you about next at the Security checkpoint for Concourse A I could not resist checking it out J

SENTINAL II is the most Sci-Fi security device I’ve ever seen. I chose to walk through it just for fun. There were 2 lanes with no one in line, one through the device and the other bypassing it, and my geek instincts made the choice very clear. The best way to describe this device is “a high-tech security walk-through booth”. You step inside, put your feet on the 2 yellow “stand here” markings on the floor and a female voice says something like “commencing scan”. Little jets of air shoot out from multiple nozzles positioned on the curved inner walls of the booth, “brushing” you from top to bottom. The machine then analyzes the air for traces of dangerous chemicals while a little head-high mounted screen counts down the few seconds required for the analysis. When you are done, a little gate in front of you opens and lets you go through. Call me a geek, but that was pretty cool! J

Obviously, the machine “found something wrong” with my scan and I got “the full experience”. A small built-in printer plotted out a chart for the security person, and I was taken to the additional-screening area where I got a pat-down and had all of my belongings swabbed and checked with the higher-accuracy machine only to find that there’s nothing wrong. The security person conducting the examination was very nice and we even got to chat a little (could have been part of the screening, but it was very genuine), which made the whole experience a pleasant (as opposed to annoying) one. They are still working out the kinks in those systems, but this sure does seem like the future of airline security. Watch for more of those popping up in an airport near you.

While I was waiting I got to see something interesting in terms of Security. Someone was delivering a cart full of water bottles and magazines to one of the shops in the terminal and needed to pass through the screening gate. All the bottles of water (24 per carton) and shrink wrapped bundles of magazines went through the x-ray machine to be scanned, the guy went through the metal detector, but the cart itself was obviously too large and so they let it pass through. Now, I might have seen too many action movies (and apparently the security woman who let the cart through didn’t see enough) but if someone was trying to get a something through security it would probably be taped to the bottom of that cart. What’s my recommendation here? Mandatory action-movie training for TSA employees J

This little adventure (and the inter-concourse travel time) brought me to the gate a few minutes prior to boarding time. I then got on the fairly empty flight to Boston and wrote the rest of this post while waiting for 16 connecting passengers that did not make the departure time. One of the reasons for waiting for them was that one of them was the plane’s captain J.

I guess that this delay, combined with some weather issues in Boston resulted in us waiting on the tarmac for over 30 minutes, making wait time longer than actual flight time. Talk about “hurry up and wait”. Well, when life gives you lemons you make lemonade. I guess I can always use more email time J

Eventually we took off, caught a great aerial view of all the New York landmarks on this clear, brisk day, and 40 short minutes later we landed in cloudy, rainy Boston. A short cab drive under the city (it’s all tunnels here) got me to my hotel and after a 45 minute discussion with the concierge (40 of them were about Salsa dancing, and the history and value of art – the guy is an Art History student and a Salsa dancer) Roger Wolter and I went to have dinner at Bar Lola (try the Solomillo al Cabrales – it’s phenomenal).

That’s it for one day. See you at TechEd tomorrow!!!

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