See

http://www.changingthewayyoufly.co.nz

AirNZ have announced a bunch of new things.

Highlights from where I sit.

1. All domestic flights including smartsavers now acrue status credits. THis is something I have advocated for sometime. I've never been super fussed on whether I get points for smartsaver fares but missing 0out on status credits really isn't great for encouraging brand loyalty. Very pleased to see this.

2. New Space+ seating on domestic flights. Forward rows on the NZ733, NZ766 and NZ320 aircraft will have new seating and more room. Againa bit bonus for those of us who *need* to spend timwe on the laptop doing emails on the plane. This was always a sore point for me becuase QF has heaps of room in those seats. A +ve change.

All in all very +ve.

Went paddling and mountain biking in Idaho today.... had a blast.

Photos here:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=13989&l=97e3a&id=585345751

That *should* be a public link....

Stuff has details on the refloating of the fishing vessel Kotuku.

Looking at the photo you can see what looks to be a Liferaft still strapped to the roof. Most vessels have the straps setup with hydrostatic releases so the lifeboat is released automatically if the boat sinkz. I wonder why this one did not.

Looked at my mobile bill last month and there was a $64 10 minute call from Aus to NZ......

Yes... that is like $6 per minute.... from Australia!

Turns out my phone had decided to roam on Optus instead of Vodafone for that call.

While AU-NZ on Vodafone AUS is $.49/min making the same call on Optus or Telstra is a mind numbing $6 odd per minute!.

Moral of the story is work out how to show the carrier name on your mobile... and make sure you look before you leap!

Just organised a car with Avis- I'm in BNE for the day next Thursday. Not only were they about 30% cheaper than Budget, my usual rental place, but once I completed the booking they had a link to download a vCal... that just ROCKS- that's what I call trying harder

I'll be a happy repeat customer from here on in!

There is this old lady @ my gym who wears entirely nasty gym gears... then I found ths picture in a shop in the Venetian in Vegas... I sooo thought of her. I've attached some of the other cool poster pics too.

So I sent Friday night and Saturday morning in Grand Forks, ND. I was visitig a custer and we went out Friday night t watch some COllege Hockey. It is amazing how much Americans are 'into' their College sport. Grnad Forks (popn. about 50k) has a $120 million Hockey Stadium. My customer has season tickets, front row right behid the goal.

We had a real blast. It was the finals for the Western Region.

1st game was Holy Cross vs University of Minnesota (the Gophers). THe Gophers were higly rated but were beaten in extra time. THis was like North Otago beating Auckland for the Ranfurly Shield. Of curse, North Dakotans are not great fans of the Gophers so the stadium went totally nuts.

2nd game was the home side, the might Sioux playing Michigan. They thrashed them.

Here are some photos and videos of the game.

The stadium

The Cheerleading Skating Chicks With Nice Legs.... and the inside of the stadium

The Airlineshave done a GREAT job of driving down the cost of flying. Particularly trans tasman, the fares are not really well priced.

Can't say the same for the stinking governemnts and monopolistic airports. $226 of taxes!!!!! Is it any wonder that all the major airports in NZ seem to have been doing themselves up of late- monopoly rents if ever there was an example.

Traveller details booking help Here is your itinerary. Please review, enter details for all travellers then CONTINUE.

Wellington  -  Sydney  Return Flights Departs Date Time Arrives Date Time Stops NZ 0141 Wellington Fri 12May 6:40 AM Sydney Fri 12May 8:20 AM 0 NZ 0144 Sydney Fri 19May 6:15 PM Wellington Fri 19May 11:25 PM 0 Total cost 1  Adult fare(s) @  NZD   $258.00 NZD  $258.00 Total surcharges, airport & government costs - detail NZD  $226.01 Total NZD  $484.01

So mch for my regular blogging... But, I promise to live blog from Mix!

A number of others such as Rod and CJ have been having travel problems recently- I hope I don't catch that bug!

I'm in DUD at the moment, then out to MEL via CHC tommorow until next week then back to WLG via CHC. Then off to TGA for two days.... then it all goes a bit pear shaped and I travel to Singapore via MIX06, the Game Developers Conference and Fargo North Dakota. Something like:

OK... so the fundamenta principle of agency is that someone else endeavours on your behalf.

Such it is with travel agents. We are in an increasigly agent hostile world but I still get HUGE value out of using my agent- he thinks the way I think- craftily!

Here is todays clever piece of work.

I'm booking a round the world fare for next month- easiest way to hit LAS,SJC,FAR,SIN in the space of two weeks.

On the way back I'm stoping in Syndey and maybe Brisbane. The agent is like:

“As we have miles left you could use.....we could call Wellington a stop on the way back to Auckland or Christchurch...ie: BNE-WLG-AKL For the cost of the ticketable taxes (about $19) you'd get a flight from Wellington to either Auckland or Christchurch.....this would be date changeable and valid for up to a year from when we issue the ticket.

Which do you want? (AKL OR CHC?)”

So I'm just about fully confirmed for my Trip to MIX06. If you have been on another planet recently you may have missed out on learning that MIX is a conference about the next generation of the Web. MSFT are sponsoring/organising it, but it's gonna be really different to most other MS cons from what I can see.

I'm going there with anoter NZ ISV who I'm doing some architecture and strategy consulting with at the moment. We're going to hit the Game Developers Conference in San Jose on the ame trip so it's gonna be a CRAZY week.

There is a good http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=156677 that sets out some of the things that are going to be covered @ MIX.

It's kinda exciting for me because I've kind of eschewed 'the web' for the past few years and I've focused on Smart Clients. Funnily enough I wrot some of the first bits of published work on the sort of tenology that is now know as AJAX/ATLAS etc... (see my chapters in Practical XML For The Web)

I know I'm sure as hell looking orward to being part of the conversation.... be sure to keep a look out for my red shoes in Vegas. Come and say hi!

Oh... I'll be in Singapore the following week (Vista stuff)... so keep an eye out for the Red Shoes there too.....Gonna be some serious bum in a plane seat time put in over those to weeks!

Well.... I had high hopes... but unfortunatly ViewTrip is HOPELESS...

When you download to your calendar (using some shitty 3rd party app rather than plain old vCal entries) it does everything in a single timezone.

Thus I am flying SFO-YVR before I even start on my WLG-AKL-SFO leg of the journey. What a HEAP of SHIT.

The useless inert nothing who devised this shitty implementation would be fired on the spot from my software org. I mean that's just hopeless.... how hard would it be to do this properly with plain old vCal entries.

Sheesh!

Looks like Rod is travelling shortly too.

I'm off to TechReady2 in the US (a big MSFT internal conference) to present on Windows Workflow Foundation. Leaving Friday. Spending a few extra days there... may go skiing if the weather is great and I'm not feeling too poor!

Anyway, I was about to fill in my Iteinerary into Outlook- which is a royal PITA and started my usual bleet about how airlines should send me vCal entries for all my flights and shit. Then I remembered that my friendly travel agent (Toby Mann @ Edinburgh Way FLight Center in Dunedin who is FANTASTIC) had sent me some details about this thing called ViewTrip. It turns out that Rod was thinking exactly the same thing at the same time....

ViewTrip talks directly to Galileo which is a big trave agent booking system and contans all your itinerary information along with the ability to d/l to your calendar. Marvelous!

See a sample here it includes rental cars and hotels and all that crap.... VERY cool!

From the FAQ:

11.  What information is transferred from the ViewTrip itinerary to my electronic calendar?

Confirmed air segments will transfer as appointments into your calendar. Car and Hotel segments will transfer as events into your calendar. These appointments and events can be opened for further reservation segment details.

I needed a good pad to stay at in Christchurch last week and found a place called Livingspace. It looks like it’s designed primarily as long term student accommodation but they leave some of the studio rooms available for general hotel type use. It’s really central in Lichfield St. It’s actually built in an old building that used to be the flat of a friend of mine in Christchurch. Brought back some crazy memories of weekend Chch benders.

Has the cheapest hotel broadband I have ever seen. Cost me $2.68 for two nights worth of my usual work. Had CNN. No Gym but they assured me one is coming.

Hope we’ll see more of these sorts of places cropping up. At $85 per night it was perfect for my needs.

*This post was written a while ago... just posting it now.

So I’m travelling from Picton to Wellington at the moment. Schedules meant that the best option was to sail on the MV Santa Regina with Bluebridge. I can’t remember if I ever blogged about my ‘Freaks and Geeks’ HNL-YVR Redeye with Air Canada, the one where all the cabin crew were 60+ and they ran out of seatbelt extenders (due to too many fat Americn passengers), but anyway, this is the maritime equivalent! No that’s a bit harsh but it is certainly arguable that cheap air travel has altered the average demographic of the ferries. It’s actually not that bad a boat and the Disney movies, Modern Day Cinderella and Freaky Friday with the hot wee chick off Mean Girls, help to pass the time.

The boat is full of passengers of the fury kind and they make the whole boat stink- they parked a whole load of stock trailers straight under the dining room… I guess most of the fury critters are headed for North Island farms (god knows why we interisland bloody livestock) although I think some will also be destined for Aro Valley and West Auckland and at least one looks set to get straight off the ferry and take himself and his blanket to Cuba Mall.

Anyway. What a bitchy post. It’s actually not at all bad. The schedule time was really convenient. It was well priced and it’s comfortable enough- great to see some competition on the route. I’ll be sure to consider the Bluebridge when I head back to the Coast for some boating later this year.

United, bless their souls, have a set of 'Premium' Economy seats in the front of coach. These are not paid for extras but are instead dished out on a first come first served basis.

If you are flying through to a US destination on NZ/UA combined you should ring 0800 747 400 (press 1 then 1) and they will generally be nice and stick you in this section of the plane

Bless them all, Microsoft put us up in the new Sky City Grand Hotel for Tech Ed this year.
Thought I'd pen a quick review of my thoughts on the place. I was there for 6 nights - had sessions on Fri, Tue and Wed.

General thoughts are that it was a bloody good pad. Room was comfortable, king size bed, seperate bath AND shower.
There was broadband in the room but I thought the cost was exorbitant going on extortionate. $33 per day is a bit rich in my mind.
The Gym was fantastic. A full suite of brand new equipment.
2 Treadmills, 2 Exercycles, 1 Cross Trainer, 1 Reclined Bike. All these were fancy new Technogym units so they integrated with my Polar HRM strap and also had built in Polar Own Zone adaptive training. i.e. resistance changes to keep you in zone.
Good set of weights machines including a lat machine, bench press machine and a more general cable machine. For legs they had quad and hamstring machines. I couldn't get the hamstring one to work- but I think that was ignorance as much as anything.
It would have been nice if they'd had a few more larger size dumbells- they topped out @ 10kg.
Anyway had a few good sessions in the gym.

Had room service a couple of times. Top quality but a bit rich and hard to spot the health options. My mussel chowder was VERY creamy and the corn fritters I ordered were done in a deep fried 'bannana fritter' style. Well presented, top quality, but a coronary waiting to happen.

Well I should get a good nights sleep tonight because Air NZ, bless their souls, have decided to let me sit in 2K on my AKL-SFO leg...So I can only conclude that Rod and I are not really getting 'First Class' but rather sitting as Business passengers in first class seats.

Still... I'm not complaining.... closest thing I'll get to the Lie Flat Businessman for a good wee while yet