Scareport

I'm back in New York now. I crawled into my apartment a little after midnight, after a grueling 16 hours of travel. I was good boy, though, and didn't sleep on the flight. Pretty easy to do, since I was traveling in cattle class. I think I'd have more leg room in a Fed Ex document envelope, frankly.

I've done the trip twice, and I can say this much

Munich airport GOOD.
JFK airport BAD.

I hate JFK airport. Maybe it'll be a nice airport in 2153, when they are done with the renovations, but during my lifetime it's a place to be avoided. I'd rather do Newark any day.

A great example of a JFK headache is catching a taxi. It's a total crap shoot, though every time I've done it, I get snake eyes. Luckily I live smack in Midtown, which is well serviced by some other mass-transit airport transportation. As I stood in the 50 deep line for a taxi, the Manhattan Airport Shuttle bus pulled up. So besides being cheaper ($13 flat, instead of $35-$45 for a yellow cab,) in the circumstance it was faster. But what really made me nuts is after getting on the bus, we hit a few other terminals. The next terminal had a queue of taxis waiting, and no people.

Mind you, at each of these terminals, there's a "dispatcher." I suppose these dispatchers don't use any form of advanced technology, like a radio. Go figure. I made a mental note, though. Next time there's a line for taxis, get on the terminal shuttle bus, and ride around until you find a terminal with a surplus.

Or, perhaps the true lesson of all this is: don't fly into JFK.

I actually think I prefer the bus for going to and from the airport. The drive is smoother, there's an almost zero chance of a psychotic, talkative driver, and the buses use radios to avoid traffic. The biggest drawback is I don't get dropped off at my door, but 2 long blocks away, at Port Authority. I thought I might be lazy and grab a cab, since they are usually tons of cabs around Port Authority. In the end, I couldn't bring myself to (a) be so lazy and (b) get the dirty look of the taxi driver for such a shitty fare. Luckily, my luggage is on wheels.

Now that I'm back, I'm up to my eyeballs in work. On top of that, I have all this little chores which have piled up because I procrastinate twice as much as usual when Conny is here. And still on top of that, I have some new personal projects I want to do, which get heaped on the pile of unfinished old personal projects.

The only saving grace of some of the new stuff I want to do is it shares a lot of code with the unfinished projects, so the new motivation may help the old stuff get finished. We will see. No one talks more and gets less done than I do.
posted 2:06 PM | link |