Frequent flying comes at a price. For the last four days I have tried to believe eventually this ash cloudwould disappear, but it hasn’t. Tough luck.
There is only so much a person can take, but this is not the first time I got stuck at an airport this year. Remember the snow?
So apart from the complaining, the shouting at ground staff, the decline of my credit card funds, Starbucks running out of English breakfast tea, is there anything that I actually gain from all this?
There is!! I actually learned a lot about volcanos, and how they can terrorise a continent. It all makes the last 100 years very relative, actually it makes the last 15 years even more relative.
We have progressed from a global village in to a series of continents again by closing the air space over Europe. Most people may think internet gives us so much more freedom, but as we still struggle with the idea of people working from home and have not really utilised social networks (whatever happened to 2nd life?) on the work-floor, it is tough in times like this.
Do I sound like a passenger who has been stuck at an airport for too long? Maybe I do, but it also makes me realise how the ideas I put into Consectic a few years ago were simply not ready to bring to market at that point. The simple thought of being able to carry all your office work on a java card would appeal to me right now.
Not only does thin client computing over the Internet lower CO2 emissions on the ‘client’ end, but it also utilises the server and computing powers companies struggle with even more. On average a Unix or Linux server will be idle for 80-90%, so why not put the client end on there as well and have thin clients running on less than 4W of power.
Take out flights, drives, train rides, etc. Or at least bring them down to a bare minimum and maybe these ‘acts of god’ (as some insurance company in the UK calls them) may be kept to a minimum as well.
So what have I learned? That Frank Sinatra’s song Come Fly With Me for me refers to the fact that I should explore the ideas from some years ago again and put them into practice. The ‘flight’ in this case is a new business adventure, as (trust me) there will be no real flights leaving from Schiphol anytime soon.
Installing Sun Ray Server on my macbook as we speak … Ow yeah and they just got a new box of tea bags in. Hooray!
Best of luck mate! I was supposed to be flying out of AMS as well (Friday morning)…well…no dice. Luckily I have a place to crash, I feel for the people who are stuck at the airport. Are you able to use the lounge(s)?
Thankfully they have woken up and are doing test flights now. I assume normal operations will start from either monday or tuesday morning.
The passport area is closed. Today was really the last day I would expect to fly back. I will stay in the Netherlands until Thursday. Normal operations?
. The UK is already speculating it will take another week. We shall see!