Christian Renaud's Blog

Santa Fe Wrap-up

After two days at the ARCS workshop at the Santa Fe Institute, as well as two more days at the annual Business Network meeting, my 'buffer is full', as we say in the computer business.  It was an excellent combination of specific/deep (ARCS) and broad (BusNet) meetings. 

All in all, my favorite presentations were those of Norman Johnson of LANL, and Martin Nowak of Harvard.  Dr. Johnson's presentation was entitled "Pandemics: The Emerging Threat, Biodefense & Biosecurity- Global View", and walked through the history of prior pandemics, the societal conditions that existed at those times, with the contrasting societal conditions now and the impact of a comparable pandemic.  It was a very effective and chilling augur of the coming pandemic(s).

Dr. Nowak of Harvard had an equally excellent presentation on cooperation.  He went through his slides quickly, walking through the five distinct modes of cooperation and the prisoner's dilemma.  He covered more material in his brief presentation than I have absorbed in >10 books on the subject.  If he had been a professor of mine in my undergraduate years, I would have quickly shifted my focus from business and computer science to evolutionary dynamics.

Hopefully, the Santa Fe Institute team will post the slides from the BusNet meeting soon, so I can update this post with links to those presentations.

I also was able to wrap up my last two days in Santa Fe with back-to-back morning runs, including a new personal record for the mile (10.06) as well as prolonged distance without stopping (about two miles).  I am glad, as I sit in the Frankfurt Airport, that I ran those days, as international travel provides a good opportunity for those tired muscles to heal up in preparation for some good runs in Nice and London this week. 

Going to head for my gate now, where it appears that the European air-travelers are equally unthrilled with the liquid/gel regulations that are causing travel delays worldwide.  More from the Cote d'Azur.

In Santa Clara this week

I'll be in Santa Clara this week attending the Digital ID World Conference. If you are at the show, feel free to look me up!

Flying from and through Heathrow

I've received a fair number of questions from colleagues regarding the logistics of traveling through Heathrow after the recent terrorist events, so I thought I would post quickly regarding our experiences (captured in brief in previous posts) in the hope that it will help others.

I'll break it down to the discrete stages of: 1) Physical Access to Heathrow, 2) Ticketing, 3) Carry on restrictions, 4) Security

With regards to (1), the airport WAS (on 17/8) very accessible to our hired car at  0545.  There was much less congestion being dropped off than at our little Iowa airport here, and considerably less than I am accustomed to in Washington D.C., Raleigh, San Jose, San Francisco and the like.  Due to the terror events, we anticipated a long-delay in ticketing and security, so we planned extra time and were too early in the day to use our return tickets on the Heathrow Express, although I am told that the H.E. was a big pain as they had closed the lifts to the departures level altogether and people were asked to go out to the parking elevators to get to departure level.

Ticketing was made much easier due to e-tickets/electronic checkin.  We dropped off our bags at the British Airways bag-drop, tussled a little with the counter clerk with regards to the size of our carry-on bags, received plastic bags for our daughters to carry with our excess items, and were on our way.  Total time elapsed,  fifteen minutes.

Carry-on restrictions.  I am told that the size restriction is still in effect at Heathrow, and that the ban on liquids and gels is being considered as a permanent fixture.  I could be cynical and attribute this to the fact that BAA makes 50% of all profits from concessions at Heathrow, and this has been a goldmine for them, however lets give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that it is for our safety.

Our own personal experience was simplified by our shipping many items ahead on our trip from London to the states, so as to have fewer contraband items in our carry-on bags.  As it was, we were asked to drink from our children's 'sippy cups' at security, but not pour the liquids out.  To my personal credit, an impromptu Academy-award- winning-performance of drinking my daughter's chocolate milk was enough to misdirect the security agents away from my seriously oversized carry-on backpack.

Security was prompt and efficient, with the exception of asking even my two very young daughters to remove their shoes and sweaters.  We were through security in an additional fifteen minutes.  By 0630, we were sitting in the terminal drinking excellent hot chocolates and eating croissants and pointing out aircraft to my youngest child.

My prior blog post was entitled 'Much ado about nothing', in reference to the amount of preparation we did for the airport, which went surprisingly well in retrospect.

One final note, days later when we were transiting through Heathrow from Oslo, the security was slightly stricter, with all passengers being frisked and all liquids being tasted or tossed-out.  Once again, this wasn't as strict as it could have been, and my wife was waved on without a pat-down when my daughter began crying. 

All in all, an inconvenience but not as bad as it was trying to get back into the U.S. after 9/11 from Mexico.

Hail Mary!

Wow, talk about a connection to beat all connections.

For starters, we learned Saturday evening that the Sogndal airport cancels about 50% of their flights due to heavy fog, so we chose to drive the six and a half hours from Solvorn to Oslo/Gardmoen and spend the night at the excellent Radisson SAS Oslo airport hotel.  I highly recommend the hotel.

The connection through Heathrow was uncomfortable, but not as bad as expected.  Luckily, the check-in counter agent from British Airways in Oslo was exceptionally competent, and checked us and our bags all the way through to Iowa.  The flights from Oslo/Heathrow and Heathrow/Chicago were as planned, with the exception of some strong headwinds that had us arrive 90 minutes late in Chicago for our three hour connection.

This is when the fun started.

I fly internationally often.  I fly internationally through Chicago often.  I exclusively fly United when I do this, and generally I do not check any bags.

We flew B.A./American on this trip.  I still have very good experiences with British Airways, however I had given up flying American years ago when I had Advantage Platinum status and was informed by a testy gate agent that my fiance and I would have to sit on opposite ends of an aircraft bound for our valentines in Hawaii, rather than the seats together that I had confirmed.  I have a personal problem with domestic airlines and their complete lack of customer service, especially when they are receiving not only my revenues via ticket sales, but also my tax dollars in the form of multi-billion dollar bailouts when they default on their own obligations.

Today was a unpleasant reminder of why I do not fly American Airlines.  When our flight arrived ninety minutes late, and our bags took thirty minutes to emerge from the baggage claim, we were greeted with the line-of-the-damned at the international bag-transit area.  With United, there are three muscled men who stand there when you emerge from baggage claim/customs, take your bags, and you are on your way.  With American, there were five very angry and testy women who were yelling (yes, yelling) at anyone who approached them with a question.  There were no posted signs, no definite queue, and no process as far as I could tell.

I wish I had a) taken a photo for the blog of the queue, just for illustration purposes, and b) taken a photo of the screaming employees, to include in my letter to American Airlines.

After a substantial wait in queue purgatory, we finally took matters into our own hands and took our sizable baggage, two young children, and two seniors up the escalator to the train, went to Terminal three, ran to the checkin-counter to recheck our already-checked baggage only to be rudely snapped at by yet another American Airlines employee.  With 20 minutes to departure, we spotted the x-ray machine nearby and were able to convince the attendant to take our checked bags for the flight, then sprinted (as much as you can with a four year old, a stroller, and two octogenarians) through security.  My wife then took the stroller and literally ran from the security checkpoint to G concourse, to the end (G19, of course!) where she was able to convince the only-redeemable-AA-employee gate attendant to hold the gate open one more minute until the rest of the entourage arrived sweating, crying and puffing.

Total time elapsed in Chicago, 83 minutes.  In all of the airport connections I have ever done, that has got to be the most amazing connection I have ever made (still traversing the security checkpoint in Chicago security 8 minutes before flight time?).

We arrived tired but intact in Iowa, where the American Airlines folks had lost our luggage (second time on the trip).  We chose not to wait at 11pm, and will sort it all out later this morning.

Why do we, as a country, continue to bail out our broken industries, like airlines, automobile manufacturers, and the like?  This is a perverse incentive, and gives the airlines an entitlement perspective that encourages bad behavior and performance.  Can you name one other industry that can get away with screaming at it's customers and continue to exist, other than government-supported monopolists like the airlines and the Local-Exchange-Carriers?

It makes me want to start a political movement.

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