Off to Flash on the Beach

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I’m heading to London tonight (posting this from our plane on the runway… delays suck) for Flash on the Beach.

I’ll be hanging out around London Saturday and Sunday, and heading to Brighton Sunday evening, so if you are in the area be sure to say hi.

UPDATE: Well, after a smooth flight, we landed at Gatwick, waited a bit to get through customs, and then found out Brandie’s new suitcase was missing… all that was left near mine was another bag that was the exact same color and model as hers, but with someone else’s nametag on it.
So we notified the airline, and they will hopefully deliver it when this other person realizes they took the wrong bag.

So then we headed up to London for the night (before heading down to brighton Sunday evening). Well, the first thing I tried to do out of the tube station was get some cash from the cashpoint machine. I put my card in, selected the amount, and when the machine tried to spit my card back out, it got stuck somehow just out of reach. It tried a couple of times to spit it out, but eventually gave up and confiscated my card! The lady in the bank wasn’t helpful at all, and was just plain rude when I told her the machine ate my card.

So, right now the score is UK: 2, me: 0.

On the up side, the hotel we picked in London is very nice, and in a prime location to enjoy a bit of pre-conference shopping and sight seeing, and the airline website says they found our bag and it’s out for delivery… so things should be better from here on out :)

UPDATE (12-3-2006): Well, more than 30 hours after we arrived in London, our lost bag showed up. We got into Brighton this evening around 6pm, and met up with all the other nerds at the hotel bar and headed over to Aral’s house for a little pre-conference party. And HOLY CRAP he has a nice place. He was just moving in so the furniture was very sparse, but the apartment itself was fantastic.

18 thoughts on “Off to Flash on the Beach”

  3. Man I would be really mad if a machine ate my card. Not telling the details but I’d try hard to make it UK: 2, me: 30 within minutes.:)

  7. Ah the irony – show up for a conference on technology and the first thing that happens – technology gets the best of you. Actually, I’ve had the problem with the card happen to me before. It’s especially infuriating since you know that if you just had a nice pair of needle nosed pliers in your back pocket things would be different. But then, once they caught you on camera fiddling with the machine with a set of tools, you’d probably wind up with your picture on the news, so maybe things were best as they turned out. Also had the unpleasant misfortune of losing my luggage, though mine didn’t end quite as well. Unlike you, it turned out the airline had put ours on the wrong plane, meaning essentially that we’ll likely never see it again. I have been able to accept to the loss of a percentage of my wardrobe, but at the time there was no where handy to buy clothes, so the wife and I spent an entire week washing our day’s outfits in the hotel sink every night.

  8. I have a friend who does a lot of travel – and they have lost his baggage four times. Twice in Italy, once in London, and once in another European country (can’t remember which one.)
    Four times – pretty ridiculous. Eventually the airports / airlines stopped wanting to pay out. He figured that if he bought cheaper luggage, his luggage seemed to be safe. Interesting, I thought.

  9. I guess that you’ve long returned home now. Sorry – on behalf of the UK – about the rude lady in the bank! Trust that the score evened up by the time you left. I can’t believe that Brighton didn’t treat you well! We’re a city of visitors and believe that we’re great at welcomes. Hope it’s true. Would be relieved to hear that things got better when you hit the coast. Hope you’re coming back. Brighton gets better on each visit. look forward to your next visit.

    Alice

  11. Sorry to hear about your travel troubles. I’ll be flying off to Seattle, Washington around Christmas time, but to be quite honest I’m not looking forward to the plane flight. See I have this fear of flying. I know it’s just a mental thing, but everytime I get into a plane I start feeling like I’m about to get an anxiety attack.

    Especially when it’s American Airlines, you know they have the oldest planes in the airline industry?

  13. Hey, lucky you got that luggage back!
    I flew from the US to Sweden this past summer and they lost my luggage
    both going there AND coming back!
    Coming back, mny bags were stuffed with Swedish delicacies :( including the (in)famous fermented herring, aka, “Smelly Fish” you are totally not allowed to fly with that stuff, it would put the airplane out of business if a can exploded :) and here I am with 2 large cans sitting around somewhere in the summer heat for over 48 hours… Thought fersure I’d get a visit from “Homeland Security” LOL!

    Yup, loosing yer luggage aint fun at all!!

    Eva

  15. Do you know why plane personnel won’t allow passengers to use their cellphone while on board the place? I didn’t want to bring my laptop when I’m on a trip because it tempts me to work instead of relaxing. My mobile phone allows me to surf the Internet in addition to being handy.

  16. You are so lucky to get your luggage. Great site here. I’m liking it alot, except for all these stupid comments right above mine here … lol! I guess there is always someone to stir things up and leave blabber behind them.

    I had a figure once upon a time, a statistic of how often luggage is lost on flights. It was a low number, but it was actually quite staggering when you actually did the math and realized how many flights there are a day and then how much luggage gets losts.

    That was some years ago. I believe they are a bit better today. Homeland Security has made this situation better, just from the added security being there.

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