Hey, I'm not dead, how about that!
I'm here today because I recently returned from a trip to California* and had to issue a warning to all those thinking about traveling on Northwest in the future. I could talk about how they lost my only checked bag in Minneapolis, but that's a story we've all experienced already. Instead, I have a story from my return layover in Minneapolis (all Northwest flights, like the rest of the world's evils, go through Minneapolis). While waiting at our gate, I was keeping an eye on the video screens arcross the hall because I had noticed one monitor displaying an all-to-familiar BIOS-level message asking for a floppy boot disk. Amused, I kept watching, and a few minutes later all the screens recycled. I imagined a panicked staffer running through the airport corridors with a 3 1/2 floppy. In any case, the reboot must not have fixed the problem, because the prompt was still there afterward, and much to my amusement I saw a another familiar sight, a windows error pop-up bridging two other screens. This one was an error I've seen too often at work (before we moved to Linux), warning that the windows system event log was full. With this peek into the inner working of the Northwest/Minneapolis airport infrastructure fresh in my mind, my earlier lost luggage debacle became more understandable.
I took some pictures for posterity, but I have to apologize for the blurriness, I had to be covert for fear of being dragged off by security. Of course Lisa thought I was crazy for finding humor in this, but I'm used to that by now.
* We rented a Kia Rio to drive around the coast. One of the buttons on the radio was labeled "CAT FOLDER". I am assuming this is for on-the-go commuters who need to fit felines into small spaces, but I could be wrong. In any case, we didn't have a cat with us, so I didn't get to try it out.
I'm here today because I recently returned from a trip to California* and had to issue a warning to all those thinking about traveling on Northwest in the future. I could talk about how they lost my only checked bag in Minneapolis, but that's a story we've all experienced already. Instead, I have a story from my return layover in Minneapolis (all Northwest flights, like the rest of the world's evils, go through Minneapolis). While waiting at our gate, I was keeping an eye on the video screens arcross the hall because I had noticed one monitor displaying an all-to-familiar BIOS-level message asking for a floppy boot disk. Amused, I kept watching, and a few minutes later all the screens recycled. I imagined a panicked staffer running through the airport corridors with a 3 1/2 floppy. In any case, the reboot must not have fixed the problem, because the prompt was still there afterward, and much to my amusement I saw a another familiar sight, a windows error pop-up bridging two other screens. This one was an error I've seen too often at work (before we moved to Linux), warning that the windows system event log was full. With this peek into the inner working of the Northwest/Minneapolis airport infrastructure fresh in my mind, my earlier lost luggage debacle became more understandable.
I took some pictures for posterity, but I have to apologize for the blurriness, I had to be covert for fear of being dragged off by security. Of course Lisa thought I was crazy for finding humor in this, but I'm used to that by now.
* We rented a Kia Rio to drive around the coast. One of the buttons on the radio was labeled "CAT FOLDER". I am assuming this is for on-the-go commuters who need to fit felines into small spaces, but I could be wrong. In any case, we didn't have a cat with us, so I didn't get to try it out.
