The Lion's Den

En route to Florida

Friday, October 1, 2004 12:35pm
Houston Texas

En route to a conference near Miami Florida something happened to me that I am rather surprised has never happened before (given the number of trips I take in a week): The plan aborted the landing. We were over the runway about to touch down when the pilot suddenly gunned the engines and pulled up. Having a window seat I was curious why we had aborted but could not see any reason. The attitude of the plane suggested that it was calm and controlled though so there was probably nothing mechanically wrong. After regaining altitude the pilot came over the intercom to tell that the plane in front of us had not cleared the runway by the time he made it in so he took us around for another pass. All in all the jostling and shifting from the first attempt followed by the ups and downs of the second left me feeling a bit motion sick. Having a spot of lunch now before my next flight and am hoping the time on the ground with the added food and bit of beer will settle me down before I take to the air again.

4:06 PM
Aboard a Boeing 575 more than half way to Ft Lauderdale I look out the window and onto the wing (of course I am over the wing, exit row seats are life savers for tall people like me) and remember learning the physics of flights in college. I am generally not afraid of flying, but when I stop to consider that the only thing keeping these thousands of pounds up in the air are little turbulence eddies along the wing. well lets just say that I choose to stop thinking about it.

Time to test the notebook batteries and see how much of a movie I can watch on 90% charge.

5:25 PM
32 minutes of movie plus some wirting and other futzing around with the laptop brought battery power down from 90% to 58%. Assuming power consumption is generally linear this suggests my laptop does not pack enough juice to watch a full movie. Yay verily that does sucketh.