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• Delayed Upgrades

  One of the benefits one gets for being an elite member of United 's Mileage Plus program is the ability to upgrade into the next class of service on select fares (most domestic fares qualify and some international fares qualify). Theoretically, there's also a benefit to being at a higher level in the program as your upgrades should clear sooner: Status Clears at General Member 24 hours before flight Premier Associate 36 hours before flight Premier 48 hours before flight Premier Executive 72 hours Read More... Posted Thursday, November 13, 2008 3:44 PM from Conor's Web Log of Esoterica | 1 Comments Filed under: United, UAL, travel, Mileage Plus, upgrade

• Paying for upgrades

  United Airlines has announced a host of changes for their Mileage Plus program for 2009 . Many of the changes involved increased mileage for award travel (other than domestic economy travel). However, the worst change, IMHO, is that like American Airlines , United is now going to charge $$ (in addition to mileage) for mileage based upgrades from anything other than full fare economy tickets. To me, a long term, very loyal 1K, million mile flyer, this really sucks. This was the one real benefit (upgrades Read More... Posted Friday, November 07, 2008 10:08 AM from Conor's Web Log of Esoterica | 1 Comments Filed under: United, UAL, travel

• 36756 over 6

  Part of why I didn't find a new apartment is that I'm traveling a lot through September and October. Just calculated it and I'm flying 36,756 miles over the course of six weeks! Insane? Yes, most likely... I'll see everyone at FOWA in London in a week where I'm giving a kick ass workshop along with Chris Messina on Implementing the Social Web with OpenID, OAuth, and All That Jazz and then talking about the same sort of stuff during a normal session on Thursday. Read More... Posted Sunday, September 28, 2008 4:12 PM from David Recordon's Blog | 1 Comments Filed under: travel, conference

• Let me count the ways

  Washington Dulles airport now has 4 separate security checkpoints for non-employees. These include: Regular security checkpoint . This is the old tried and true security queue on the check-in level of the airport. These are intended for use by the average traveler and frequently, especially around 4PM, has long, slow moving lines. Premium security checkpoint . This checkpoint is co-located with the regular security checkpoint but it has its own dedicated queue. This queue is restricted to premium Read More... Posted Tuesday, September 16, 2008 8:44 AM from Conor's Web Log of Esoterica | 1 Comments Filed under: travel, United Airlines, Dulles, Registered Traveler

• Paul, Paul, Paul....

  Paul writes about an upcoming Liberty Alliance futsal match in Tokyo and includes: Conor "One-Sock" Cahill, when asked whether he would be participating, responded 'Only if I can get an upgrade to First. Currently, I'm booked in business on a Triple 7 in from SFO, but I'm trying to switch that because I'm in seat 4A and I hate that seat because the power plug is about 2 inches too high and I have to unbuckle my seatbelt to reach it. I generally like 3F but the window shade was broken last time and Read More... Posted Friday, September 12, 2008 10:52 AM from Conor's Web Log of Esoterica | 1 Comments Filed under: United, UAL, travel, Liberty, futsal, Boeing, 777

• Changing Planes

  It happens to me a lot more than I would like. I'm booked on an Airbus A320 only to have United change it to an Airbus 319 causing my exit row seat in row 11 to be a standard economy seat (not even an economy plus seat) -- that's why I'm not too keen on booking exit row seats nowadays -- though booking exit row seats is one of the primo perks of a United Mileage Plus Premier Executive . However, it seems to be a much worse change when you've got a seat booked in United 's new Premium International Read More... Posted Thursday, September 11, 2008 6:47 PM from Conor's Web Log of Esoterica | 0 Comments Filed under: United, UAL, travel, United Airlines, Dulles, A319, A320, Airbus

• Identity Leakage

  It's interesting to see how much information you can learn about people just sitting around at the airport. This past Sunday, I flew out of Dulles airport and running a bit late I arrived just 45 minutes before my flight (so I wasn't sitting around there all that long). What I noticed while I was there: I was able to observe the full name and address for 3 people as they had luggage tags on their carry on luggage which had their name/address visible to all. This doesn't count the other people who Read More... Posted Tuesday, September 09, 2008 8:49 AM from Conor's Web Log of Esoterica | 1 Comments Filed under: Identity, travel, identity theft

• TSA's "Federal Agents"

  If you haven't been following one of the things the TSA has been up to this year, one of the things they've been doing is slowly replacing uniforms to look more like police officers. This includes a metal badge despite the fact that the majority of TSA employees are not actually law enforcement officers. Everyone's been wondering when this was going to cause an issue with 14,000 screeners across the country now starting to dress like police. Well, it's happened in really one of the most pathetic Read More... Posted Monday, September 08, 2008 8:21 AM from David Recordon's Blog | 1 Comments Filed under: travel, lame++

• Barcelona in October

  Sounds like I'll be in Barcelona in October for the European Ecommerce Conference '08 and I'm thinking a few days of vacation in Spain would be cool. I've never been. What should I do and where? Looks like I'd get into Barcelona Thursday evening and then be free until Monday evening. Thoughts? Read More... Posted Thursday, July 31, 2008 3:41 AM from David Recordon's Blog | 1 Comments Filed under: travel

• I've been cleared

  I've joined the US's Registered Traveler Program . Clear (a subsidiary of Verified Identity Pass Inc.) operates the local facility here at Dulles, so I joined their network. In exchange for submitting to (and paying for) a background investigation and biometric authentication (fingerprint in my case, though they also had iris scanners there it wouldn't work on me) you get to have a very short security line -- though you still go through the same "take-off-your-shoes" security process. They seem to Read More... Posted Thursday, May 01, 2008 10:37 AM from Conor's Web Log of Esoterica | 1 Comments Filed under: Identity, travel, Dulles

• On My Way Back Home

  Well, after being on the road for nearly a month, I'm now back in San Francisco for the next few weeks. I started out with a vacation in Belize for the third year in a row along with a bunch of friends. Didn't dive as much as previous years, but really enjoyed the trip, others learned to dive, and it was quite relaxing. From there I took a red-eye back to San Francisco to attend Collective Intelligence FooCamp down at Google Friday and Saturday. It certainly was interesting, though much more focused Read More... Posted Tuesday, March 11, 2008 7:06 PM from David Recordon's Blog | 1 Comments Filed under: travel, technology, conference

• I (sort of) Fail at Winter

  Getting back into the spirit of personal blogging, I'm taking about two weeks of very much needed vacation right now. Of course this really means I do less work each day versus a real vacation with no computers. Met Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb yesterday for lunch and a walk with his dog around Mt. Tabor in Portland which was a lot of fun. Definitely the type of "work" that I enjoy during a vacation! Spent a few days this past week in Sun Valley along with friends from high school. After Read More... Posted Wednesday, January 02, 2008 11:11 AM from David Recordon's Blog | 0 Comments Filed under: travel, friends

• Wanting Twitter Import...

  Writing about social network fatigue around the world on O'Reilly Radar - http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/12/decentralizing.html Read More... Posted Tuesday, December 18, 2007 10:58 AM from David Recordon's Blog | 0 Comments Filed under: social network, travel, technology, social graph

• Holiday Travel

  If you're wondering when to fly on United (or probably other airlines too) take a look: Read More... Posted Wednesday, December 05, 2007 3:05 AM from David Recordon's Blog | 0 Comments Filed under: travel

• Full Flight Back on Sunday

  I can only hope they need extra seats in Y and I get bumped up to C. Read More... Posted Friday, November 09, 2007 6:40 AM from David Recordon's Blog | 0 Comments Filed under: travel, lame++