After writing a few white papers on Human Machine Interface technologies, I recently wrote a paper that I presented as part of the 27th Digital Avionics Systems Conference (DASC). The event was being held in St. Paul, Minnesota, a town I had never visited. After travelling the world in my field for 11 years, and often going back to visit the same cities that I have seen before, it is a nice change to get to go to a new place. Here are some pictures that I took during my visit.

As I was driving on the Indianapolis highway after visiting a customer, I saw a big electronic sign for a gas station and saw the price change as I was looking at the sign. While I first thought that it was odd for the price of gas to change in the middle of the day, I soon realized that the price was changing back and forth between the price that you would pay with a credit card and a lower price if you paid cash. The difference was 4 or 5 cents a gallon if I remember correctly.

I guess it makes sense since credit card companies take a percentage of any sale charged to the card, but it still looks very strange at first and I don’t think I had even seen something like that before the prices went so high. Maybe they’ll start offering specials if we bring big barrels every time and buy in bulk Only time will tell.

After a relatively calm travel summer, I started travelling again this week for a few days. As I was checking in through the self-service system in Montreal for US Airways, I was surprised not to be asked if I wanted to check any luggage. When I got to the counter, I was informed that this is because US Airways has a new policy where there is now a 15$ fee for the first piece of luggage you check in. Yes, you read that correctly. They are not charging you only for the second one or because your luggage is overweight. They are charging you for the very first piece of luggage that you want to check in!

Thankfully, my Elite status with the Star Alliance network waved these fees, but I can easily imagine how hectic it will get in the morning or at busy times when everyone is trying to get out on trips and have to stop to pay for this fee. Not only that, but a lot of people won’t want to pay the extra fee and will try to bring bigger and bigger items with them on the aircraft. From what I have seen in the six flights I took this week, this means more crowded overhead bins and people frustrated when there is no skycheck on some of the flights. If it does not fit on the plane, then they are stuck checking it.

US Airways is not the first airline doing this. I know that American started the festivities back in June, and now United and Continental joined, if not more airlines.

My next surprise came when they announced that beverages were no longer to be free on the plane. Not even water! So you need to pay 2$, cash only, if you want a regular drink, and 7$ for an alcoholic beverage. The lesson here is that you should now always bring something to drink on the plane. If we could at least bring our own water from home. But of course, as you know if you have traveled in the past two years, this is not allowed for security reasons. Therefore, you have no real choice but to put your money in someone’s pockets: the airline or the concession stands at the airport.

Personally, I wish they would just add 20$ to everyone’s airfare and just be done with it, let us check our luggage and give us something to drink on the darn plane. It would bring some order back into a situation that I feel will just get more and more chaotic.

After keeping track of my travel on facebook for some time, I just decided to bring that information on my personal site. You will find a new map section that includes all of my travels around the world.

I flew from Montreal to San Jose in California yesterday to attend a conference organized by one of our partners and visit an office that we have in this area. As I was waiting for my flight in Montreal a little bit before noon, I heard a very interesting computerized announcement from WestJet come over the loud speaker: “WestJet flight XXXX will be boarding at 12:80 am.” A lot of people looked at each other with a very confused look on their face. It’s not April 1st or anything, so some computer was having a really bad day.

The trip to San Jose was quite uneventful, with all flights departing on time, except for a very strange announcement from the flight attendant when we landed: “Welcome to San Diego”. Again, a lot of confused looks and a couple of laughs from the passengers, and the flight attendant did not even correct herself. Given that the two cities are about 740 km apart, we were really hoping that we were in San Jose.

The last funny tidbit of this venture was going to pick up my rental car. The San Jose airport has a consolidated rental car center with a single shuttle line deserving it. After getting on the bus and getting close to the center, they announced that the first stop was for Avis (the company I was using on this trip), Hertz, and shuttles for off-site rental car places! I pity the poor folks who have to get on a second shuttle to get to their car rental. Can’t they just have two different shuttle buses passing my the terminal to save people time?

Like many airports around the US these days, the San Jose airport is expanding. They are building a brand new terminal, which looks like it will cater a lot better to large aircrafts. Coming in on United Airlines on a large plane, we actually had to walk down stairs out of the plane and walk into the terminal. I had not done something like that in a long time. At least the weather was fairly warm.

As most of you know, I travel a lot for work. I am actually currently in Philadelphia visiting a customer. When I flew in on Monday, I saw something that completely astonished me: adversiting inside of the little foldable trays! How could they stoop that low!
Here is an idea of what it looks like. This is not the ad I saw and I did not take this picture but it gives you a good idea:

As you can see, this is quite invasive. After all of the ads that we see on the airport walls, did we really need this?

I will try to post more of my travel adventures soon since I have been neglecting my blog a bit.

As I write these words, I am zooming down the railroad on board of a high-speed train (TGV) between Paris and Toulouse, first stopping in Bordeaux. The speed at which this train is going is quite amazing, as we can easily see with the landscape zipping by.

I was not able to post regularly as I was hoping while in Paris since I did not have the right connector to hook my modem to a phone line. Come Friday, I did go in to the office which is when I posted my first blog entry.

The first part of my trip in Paris went very smoothly, with the customer being extremely happy of the results by the end of the three-day course. I was also able to hook up with my friend Jord who lives in Paris and was one of my co-workers.

In terms of visiting the town, I was the Grande Arche de la Défense, Arc de Triomphe, Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris, Musée de l’homme, Tuileries, Halles and of course the Eiffel Tower.

On Friday night, as I was walking around town waiting to meet my friend, it was really nice to see tons of people having pic-nics on the sides of the Seine river, with a bottle of wine, bread and cheese or other things. There were a lot of young students but also older couples out for a small romantic escapade.

On Saturday, I visited a few of the historic monuments listed above and also went shopping to buy a few gifts. At Jord’s recommendation, I went to the Printemps and Lafayette stores. These are gigantic! Think about 7 to 10 times the size of a Sears or The Bay store in Canada.

All in all, a very full week but very successful. The only downside is being away from home and my family for so long. As well, I learned mid-week that I will only be back home for a week before leaving for the US for another class. So I will only have been home for a bit more than a week in June. Oh well, at least the vacation period is right around the corner so things should calm down and other people will soon be ready to give courses on the road. I guess we’ll just have to see people every week-end in July and August to catch up!

First day in France. As soon as I got onto the train to go from the airport to my hotel, I remembered one of the things I really hate about Paris: singers and other performers in the darn train. They just get on board at a station and start singing or making noise of some sort and then expect people to give them money for their “performance”. It just gets on my nerves, especially after an overnight flight on which I only slept about 2 and a 1/2 hours.

I got to my hotel without too much trouble, already knowing the Paris transit system, and was a bit shocked by the size of the room I got for 98 euros a night in a 3-star hotel. It’s not much bigger than by daughter’s room, with a small adjacent bathroom. I guess I’ve been spoiled by some of my other trip like New Mexico when my room was about as big as the two large bedrooms in our house plus the main bathroom!

Since I was not feeling too tired, I decided to go out on the town, do a little shopping, grab food and a few snacks. It was a really nice day to walk around. I also snagged some pictures which I’ll post when I come back in a couple of weeks.

Another month, another trip. This time around, I am going to be spending two weeks in France. I will first be in Paris and will then move on to Toulouse for the second week of my stay. I will try to post some impressions of my trip while I’m there.

Another year, more travels. I am currently on the road once again, this time giving a course at a US Navy research base in the state of Rhode Island. The course is going very well so far with two days already done and three more to go.

I flew into Providence on Sunday night and could not believe how quickly I managed to get off the plane and into my rented car. Within 5 minutes, we already had our luggage. 5 minutes later, I was walking out to get my car and was driving off the parking lot soon after. I managed to get to my hotel fairly quickly. However, there were a few times on the road where I was a bit puzzled by the lack of road signs in this area. I ended up just taking good guesses.

I am currently playing catch-up to the great science-fiction series Battlestar Galactica. Andrée watches it and I have been lagging behind for a while but by the end of the week, I should have caught up to all of the episodes. The story on this show is amazing and well worth watching if you enjoy sci-fi. On another note, we saw the movie Serenity last week-end on DVD and quite enjoyed it. The story was well written and the effects and acting were top notch. The only annoyance was the way that the lead actor kept chewing his words, making it very difficult for us to understand some passages. I still recommend it though.

A final note on this post to let you know that our friends Isabelle and Jean have given birth to a healthy little boy named Kevin Hamel. He was born on wednesday last week weighing more than nine pounds. The whole family is in good health and is now back home. Congratulations!