Jeremy Toeman’s LIVEdigitally

My two posts last year on CES (1 and 2) had a lot of great comments and I got good feedback from colleagues long after the show. So I’m back again with a new version for ‘08. Some of the content is recycled, some is brand spankin’ new.

1. Wear comfortable shoes. It was #1 last year and is again. Even if you are the guy wearing the $6500 suit (come on!), put on your Adidas or Reeboks or whatever to go with it. Few will notice, and if anyone questions, saying “yeah, I decided it’s smarter to be comfortable than look pretty at CES” probably trumps any kind of rebuttal. It’s a BIG show and you’ll end up walking a few miles every day. Freebie bonus tip: while walking the show floor, try to walk on the booths as they tend to have better padding than the walkways between booths.
2. Bring Purel and some chapstick. Wash before eating, because CES 2008 is also International Germfest 2008. Also, Vegas is in the middle of a desert, so having chapstick (and some moisturizer) will help. Bonus: if you have a overly dry hotel room, leave the bathtub 1/4 full of water overnight, you’ll feel better in the morning.
3. Go counter the traffic flow. Day one will have the North and Central Halls buzzing. Head to the South Hall or Sands (do NOT miss the Sands!). If you are there through all four days, don’t even walk into the North/Central halls until Wednesday. The worst thing that can happen is you won’t get your hands on some crappy t-shirt you’ll never wear. Which brings me to
4. Discriminate on swag. Do you really want a Panasonic pen, or a Sony plastic bag, or a brochure from TiVo? Really? My wife has actually forbidden me from bringing home anything we won’t actually use, unless it’s a gift. New for 2008: I’m not allowed to bring mints home anymore either!
5. Don’t harass booth workers. They all have jobs to do (booth babes included), and just because they are there doesn’t mean they are the right person for you to give your 30 minute lecture as to why you are unhappy with your DVD player. It’s also not fair to beat up on some marketing guy who doesn’t have a uber-techie-detail question (although if they don’t help find you the right person, well, then they’ve asked for it). Also, if you see 12 people from CNN trying to set up a video shoot, you should probably realize you’ve become a lower priority, try to grab a business card and head out rather than wait for that awkward moment…
6. Don’t hide your badge. First, it’s just a nuisance. Second, people like me train all our booth staffers to ask people like you who you are. Third, good booth staffers will treat you the same as anyone else, although they might just filter you to the right person. If you are an important member of the press or a senior guy at a huge company, well odds are you shouldn’t be talking to the 23 year old QA person who was roped into coming to CES to help with some booth shifts. Flip side comment here: if you are working the booth and someone comes up that is a competitor, don’t be rude or glib. Treat them the same as any random booth visitor. It’s just stupid to tell them they can’t see something or take pictures, when any random schmo can do exactly that.
7. Plan ahead. If you have not registered for the show, you aren’t getting in (this happened to a commentor here last year). If you forget your badge, you are paying a fee to get it back. Pick up your badge at one o fthe non-primary locations (Sands, hotels, Hilton, etc). Traveling between any two destinations could easily take an hour, even as early as 8am (my calendar has 45 minutes of travel time between every two meetings, even if they are close to each other).
8. Need Connections? Figure it out ahead of time. Every year it gets better, but every year it’s still bad. Internet connectivity is unreliable anywhere in the convention center. Even the press room’s Internet service went down last year. If you MUST be online for a call/meeting/briefing/WoW session, have a place in mind to do it. I recommend either your own hotel room, or if you are a blogger, the PodTech BlogHaus (which is a lot out of the way, but supposedly has awesome connectivity).
9. Use SMS to coordinate. Last year’s CES was where I mastered the T9 10-key texting interface on my phone. You have to yell and scream to be heard on a phone call from the show floor, but texting works great. Even at night at the various industry parties we were still texting to find each other. If your cell phone plan doesn’t have texting, or you have waited to really try it out, now’s the time.
10. Bring business cards. I would say roughly 97% of the people that I’ve met at CES over the years who don’t have cards regret not having them. Maybe it seems cool now not to carry them. Maybe you think they are so 1990s. The truth is, there’s almost no reason not to carry cards, and even looking at it from a potential loss vs potential gain perspective says: carry the darn things! And Moo cards don’t count, people.
11. Pack lightly. My recommendation is to walk the floor with either nothing or a near-empty backpack. Forget shoulder straps, you’ll be aching by the end of the day. Bring nothing you do not need during the day. Also, try to dump your bag prior to dinner, so you can spend the night on the town without having to remember anything later. What happens in Vegas…
12. Check the live coverage. Engadget puts up a post every 3.8 seconds during CES (this is not a fact, I am just guessing). Make sure you tap into theirs (or Gizmodos or your own favorite gadget blog) during the course of the show. They might find something you hadn’t heard of before, and you might miss it otherwise.
13. Lower your expectations. If memory serves, the last time a company introduced something that was genuinely new and interesting at CES was Moxi, about 6 years ago (which was about the last time they were really interesting, unfortunately). The show is rarely the place where a company will launch newly innovative products, although it is a great place to see the ones that were announced in the past. Expect bigger/flashier screens, cameras, etc, but don’t expect something new and amazing. Heck, one of the top CE analysts in the country isn’t even going!

That’s it folks, 13 tips for maximizing your CES experience. Have a great show!

Updated: I decided to put some tips for people whose job is to work the booths over on my company blog. Check em out!

I flew approximately 185,000 miles between January and October 2006. That included 5 trips to Europe, 4 trips to Asia, 2 to Canada, and a few hauls back and forth across the States. The purposes of my trips varied, but were all centered around a few recurring themes: go train the CSRs for a new international support center; go speak at an international launch; or go participate in a tradeshow or press/media event.

Launching the Slingbox in Canada was exciting for me personally, as I am from Montreal. For the first time in my life, a product I built was being brought to my home country, and I could tangibly show my family what the heck I do for a living. My parents, inlaws, and other relatives all followed the well-publicized Canadian launch which took place in Toronto. While I enjoyed presenting to the attendees at the event, again my highlight memory was walking into a FutureShop (a Best Buy competitor in Canada. it is owned by… Best Buy) with my Dad and seeing the Slingbox on store shelves. Despite the employee insisting that the product didn’t actually exist, that is…

The UK launch of the PAL Slingbox involved two different trips, the first was to Amsterdam to train the customer service and support department. It was a good trip, especially considering the location the knowledgeable CSRs there, as it turned out the team had previously supported either media products, networking products, or both. This makes a huge difference; believe it or not there are both good and bad ways to handle even the simplest situations, such as verifying cables are plugged in correctly. The things that seem the most obvious in life typically are anything but that.

The other trip was the actual media launch. The highlight of this story has nothing (well, little) to do with Sling whatsoever, so diehards may want to skip ahead. We were setting up the demos in the bar/club we were using for the event, and they had a few Sky+HD boxes with plasma displays hooked up. Their AV guy informed me they were one of the first HDTV deployments in the UK (HDTV only really launched there weeks after we left) and was showing off the picture quality to me. When I told him it seemed “off” he looked like I had kicked his dog. I asked if he was using HDMI, he said he was. I grabbed the remotes, went through all the settings. All seemed fine. I turned it all off and on again, still crappy looking picture (which, as you recall, they all thought looked great). Finally I went to check the connections myself and found that while he was using HDMI, he had also left a coaxial connector in place, and that was the active input! When I switched inputs to the HDMI, I think he was ready to lick the screen. As I handed back the remote I said “now THAT’s high definition TV.” Looks like a lot of people need some help with HD…

Another good time in Europe was 4 days in Barcelona with Gregg Wilkes, Sling’s outstanding VP of Sales (I think he might know every single CE retailer internationally!), for the RetailVision tradeshow. RV is a “real” industry event in that the only attendees are those who are absolutely part of the CE-retail food chain. Manufacturers, vendors, distributors, etailers, retailers, and channel support people. That’s it. Virtually no press, no consumers. Since the first time Sling Media showed up at a RetailVision the company won an award there, all the way up until the previous year’s RetailVision Europe when, due to too many overlapping events, nobody from the Sales or Marketing departments could attend, though two quite capable senior execs went in their stead. They came home empty handed. Gregg and I talked quite the smack-talk about it, so we had a lot riding on our demonstrations that session. Let me say this: I’d never, ever want to play poker against European retailers. No expressions, no reactions, no smiles, no guffaws. Even as they named us as a nominee, we had absolutely no insight as to whether or not we’d won until the end. When we did. Huzzah. Unfortunately I missed my flight home the next morning and spent about 18 hours in airports. But at least it was spent trophy in hand.

Over the course of the year I also did two 2-day trips to Taiwan, a few days in Japan, less than 48 hours in Sweden (plus the 41 hours of travel), and 2.5 days in Hong Kong. To some people this sounds amazing; to others dreadful. Japan was great, because for one, I love Japan (especially here and here), and also I was able to carve the trip out around a weekend and my wife joined me there (where she learned about the most important things: Shabu Shabu and Ippudo Ramen).

I did get to go to many interesting places last year, but would love a bit more time to actually see them. So it was both amazing and dreadful.  I certainly don’t miss the 16-hours flying to Sweden followed by 3.5 hours in a train for less than 2 days’ worth of meetings only to turn around and do it all over again.  But I did meet some great people in all these cities and countries, and will keep a lot of those relationships alive for years to come.  Plus the miles don’t hurt.

In a post just before my vacation, I mentioned a video Robert Scoble shot of a few of us chatting about the age-old Mac vs PC debate.  Well, it’s online in its entirety (hour 1 and hour 2) and I think the part I’ve enjoyed the most is reading the comments written across the blogs who covered it (Scobleizer, Harry McCracken, Fred Davis, and especially Josh Catone - Josh, I’d be happy to debate the IPTV/DVR/TV2.0 topic any time!).  The good, the bad, and the ugly.  Thanks to Robert and the gang for the very interesting evening, and thanks to everyone who has taken the time to watch the action.

While I’d have really liked to be around last week to participate in the conversation live, I was just way too happy offline on the beach in Mexico.  I kept a journal while there (on paper even) and typed it up on the flight home.  I read a lot of travelogues (especially Bill Bryson, my personal favorite travel writer), and this is my little attempt to entertain with my travel story.  You can start reading here, or just jump to the pictures if you’d prefer.  I’ve got some video coming too, which needs a bit of editing and Muvee treatment, then I’ll put it up on YouTube later this week.

Well, I haven’t done a real vacation in a long time, so the wife and I are heading to Mexico tomorrow morning.  We’re staying at the Iberostar resort, which looks wonderful.  While I’m gone, please hold all my calls.

ps - gadgets I am bringing are down to three: cell phone (which will be off, but I like to have it for emergencies), laptop (mostly for the 5+ hour flight, but I like to write a journal when I travel), and digital camera.

Hong Kong is a city where technology and gadgets make a part of everyday life.  People cycle through mobile phones multiple times per year, and there are over 100% phones in use per person!  In fact, the elevator in my hotel proudly boasted cell phone service, per the photo on the right.

Stores in Hong Kong abound with cell phones, laptops, digital cameras, and that doesn’t even start to include the “little” pieces of technology.  I went to stores with practically nothing but webcams and mice.  Others had keyboards and LCD screens. It’s like going to the butcher, grocer, and dairy shop separately, except with more electronics.  I must admit, it was fun seeing literally dozens of different shops carrying the Slingbox!

One technology that’s done a lot better in HK than in North America is from a company called Fon.  If you haven’t heard of them, go check them out - think of it as a worldwide, peer to peer wifi Internet service.  You buy a Fon router, install it at home, and sign up to the service.  Then you basically share your Internet connection with all other Fon subscribers, and you get access to their Internet connection when you need one.  Nice idea, I hope they find some success here soon.

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In this second (of only three (thank goodness (didn’t anyone ever mention how nested parentheses were bad (no) (well they should have!) ) ) ) post about my recent stay in HK, I’m here to talk about the town itself.  Now, seeing as how I didn’t really get to explore all that much, it’ll be blissfully shorter than my typical post (ahhhh (stop it) ).  What makes this one interesting (in my over-parenthesesed (was that even a word?) opinion) is how the city preps for Xmas.

In a word: Griswold. 

What does that mean?  Well, while the third installment of the National Lampoon Vacation series wasn’t great, the scenes with Chevy Chase lighting up his house for the season were classic.  It seems as if the city planners for Hong Kong were somewhat, shall we say inspired by the film.  Literally dozens of office buildings were lit from floor to roof with patterns, sayings, and lots and lots of colorful lights.  Take a gander through the pictures below to get a better perspective of what I’m talking about - it’s really quite impressive!

I did get some time to walk, train, streetcar, taxi, and ferry around Hong Kong.  The city has an interesting mix of architecture styles.  On any given block you might find a decrepit, run-down apartment building right up next to a shiny new, glass-encased office complex.  And then there are the occasional “mashups” where an older building recently got a bit of a face-lift, with the first few stories showing off a new facade, built around the older interior. 

One particularly interesting stop was the toys outlet (cleverly hidden on the 16th floor of an office building).  In the small store lays years of treasures, including very old-school, original Star Wars action figures, Transformers, GI Joes, and more.  This place was an excellent stop on the tour, and I must recommend it for any fans or collectors

I had a chance to go pick up some genuine watches for a couple of folks back home when I visited the famous ‘Ladies Market’ in Mong Kok.  We showed up at around 11am, but interestingly this was apparently too early for the region.  The market didn’t really get going for a couple of hours.  We killed the time by avoiding the stinky tofu stalls in the vicinity, then stopped by the row of gun stores prior to moving on.

As I mentioned yesterday, I did get to spend the better part of a day in China.  As per my last trip, the roads were both in poor condition and congested with an utterly ridiculous driving situation.  Horns are used to inform your opponents of imminent impact, lanes are a suggestion at best, and you are welcome to use any gear, especially reverse, whilst on a freeway.  I’ll talk about the factory visits in an upcoming post, but we did get a chance to stop in at a DVD “store” on our return. 

While I didn’t pick up the Golden Girls DVD collection (per the picture), I did grab a copy of the entire Arrested Development series.  Don’t fret - I’m going to buy the set myself as I am such a fan of the show (are you?), but I just wanted to have the copy with the Chinese writing.  Plus, it was about $9 for the 15-disk collection. I checked out a couple of the disks - the quality is fine and all the episodes are present, but they aren’t all DVD-copies (there it is)!  A few disks were simply shows downloaded from the Internet and burned to DVD.  How do I know?  Well, the Fox logo and commercials from a local NYC station were a bit of a clue… Duh!

Getting to the airport is extremely convenient in HK.  Make your way to the airport express station in Kowloon (my hotel had a free shuttle service), then hop a 30 minute train to the airport.  The best part is you check-in at airport express, and don’t have to lug your bags around.  Nice!  Free wifi in the terminals too.  Double-nice!

As a final tidbit, I thought I’d share some of the funnier signs I saw around town.  Most of these come from the subway, and you really need to zoom in to the full-size view to see the humor.  Without a doubt, Safety Tips for Washing Machines (on the right) was my favorite.  Why?  Because it was located in such a useful place.  You know, somewhere very convenient to get tips on using a washing machine.  Like a subway station.  Check out the others below for more fun.

A week in Hong Kong (including a day in China) was enough time to get quite a good sampling of dishes, although the trip’s first meal was quite a surprise.  I was taken for Mexican food.  As I said at the time, it had been hours since my last Mexican meal… in San Francisco.  The next day at lunch I think it got mildly better, as they took us to the nearby Outback Steakhouse.  Things got a little more interesting after that was out of the way…

In general, had some excellent foods on the trip, typically featuring dim sum and other Chinese foods.  I might be unaware, but I don’t think HK is particularly known for a specific food, although the overall quality was very good.  I’m sure more time and more exploration would’ve led to some very interesting finds, but I did have some standout meals.

On my day-trip into China (yes, clever one, that means I left Hong Kong and this doesn’t technically fit in, but it’s my trip report, so I can handle it as I’d like) I was taken out for a great lunch.  First, we were welcome to walk to the back of the restaurant to see the various fish they had available.  Only thing is, we were picking out live fish to eat for the meal.  I had done this once before in China, but had a bit of trouble getting video footage.  This time, it’s on YouTube!

The food was, if I may use the term, crazy delicious.  We had options for two soups (I had both) - hot and sour (great) as well as a Chinese chicken soup (tasted like chicken broth mixed with dishwater).  The main courses included steamed clams (good, but nothing special), a wonderful tofu dish (pictured on the right), pea shoot leaves (always good), a beef and noodles dish that I had never tasted before (also great), sauteed beef, eggplant, and more.  Also included was a fried tube squid thing that they call Chinese french fries because they are so awesomely addictive (and don’t even need ketchup). The only dish I really didn’t enjoy was the mix of chicken and questionable items, which were apparently made to use the soup.

The other extra-special meal to recall was a buffet lunch at a place called “Kool” in the Kowloon Shangri-La. Best buffet. Ever. Chinese. Sushi. Indian. Grills (yes, plural). Salad. Dessert.  Everything, all in one place.  And, to capture it?  Another video on YouTube!

Overall, dining in Hong Kong was quite enjoyable.  I didn’t try anything out on the streets or in the markets (stinky tofu smells signficantly worse than it sounds).  I had a decent, although not unbelievable Xiao Lim Bao at a Shanghai-style dim sum place.  In the ex-pat region we went for Russian a few doors down from the aforementioned Mexican meal.  No borscht, but I think the live musicians were playing the Tetris theme the whole time.  I also had a very enjoyable Thai lunch, although they didn’t seem to have my favorite dish (Pad See Ew) but they almost made up for it with a steamed eggplant with peanut sauce, something I’ve never had quite the same before.

More trip report coming shortly, and more photos from Hong Kong here.

I’m here through next Sunday and I’m assuming I’ll be fairly busy the whole trip, so the LD is probably going to be a little quiet.  Unless I get a dose of the Lost in Translation no-sleep blues, but I’ve got my trusty Ambien CR, so I think I’ll be A-OK!

I did take a bunch of pictures of a couple of new gadgets, laptop bags, and a digital painting (yes, that’s correct), so I’ll try to get some of that content up while I’m here.

I came across a post entitled “Why Isn’t Internet Access Free for Travelers?” this morning and I figured I’d step in and answer the question for the author and others who are curious.  It’s one of those pat answers that’s almost too easy to answer.

The overwhelming majority of travelers who need Internet access are business travelers.  Furthermore, business travelers are pretty much the only segment catered to by the travel industry.  Airfares are based on business-oriented itineraries (unless you are going to Orlando, of course).  Hotels are priced based on proximity to business locations, such as convention centers, and their prices fluctuate when big conferences or other events come to town.  In other words, going to visit Aunt Sally and the kids doesn’t attract to much attention from United, Marriott, etc.

While this is clearly a generalization of the travel industry, it’s a fairly good rule of thumb.  So, if you are in charge of building out services for a given company, and you see business travelers as your key segment, you know you can probably charge them for something you effectively hold them hostage over.  They don’t just want to go online, they need to get online to do some work.

The most frustrating part, in my eyes, is the quality of the service we receive while traveling. The connectin is typically a standard DSL line split amongst all guests.  Access often blocks proxies or other services many folks need to get to their corporate network. 

The question I’m curious about is: what is the timeframe for this to remain a viable revenue source for the travel industry at large?

• I can use my 3G-enabled PPC6700 smart phone to get my computer online (via a technology called tethering), and its fast enough to do everything from surfing to slinging.  More and more phones include this capability.
• The upgrade to my Sony Vaio VGN-SZ160P laptop includes various options for 3G services, and most manufacturers have these options as well.  Alternately you can pick up a card from your cell carrier to provide this service if your laptop doesn’t have it built-in.
• Municipal wifi access is now available in several cities, and rapidly expanding.
• Wimax (Internet everywhere) offerings are on the horizon.  Okay, they’ve been on the horizon for a while, but now they’re really on the horizon.  You just need to squint a little.

In other words, the various airports, train stations, hotels, motels, Holiday Inns (say what?) around the country have an 18-30 month window in which to suck us dry for the (on average) $9.99 per night for unbelievably overpriced, underdelivering Internet access. 

After that, they’ll probably have to start overcharging for regular things. Like the minibar.

Want a surefire way to make the best headphones on the market even better?  Easy, add a mike.  Confused?  Well, Shure (the makers of my favorite E4c and runner-up E2c headphones) did just that, and believe it or not, it all makes perfect sense.It turns out you can divide people into one of two camps when it comes to headphones: innies and outies.  Innies are the people who enjoy wearing in-ear headphones, the ones that go inside the ‘lobe and pump the sound right into your brain.  Outies prefer on-ear headphones, such as the Bose QuietComforts, which sit on top of your ears.  I’ve tried quite a few of both, in a variety of situations, and am quite certain of the fact that I’m an innie.  I like being able to fall asleep with the buds in my ear, I find the Bose set makes my head get a little, sweaty, and I find they simply can’t block out the sounds of a wailing child three rows behind me.

Until a short time ago, the Shure E4c’s were my favorite headphones.  I’d even tried the E5c’s, and while the sound quality was stunning, they just weren’t comfortable for a 13-hour flight to Hong Kong.  The E4c’s were the king of the innies in my world, with only one major nag: the process of removing/inserting them is unpleasant to repeat on a frequent basis.  Welcome to the Shure E500PTH’s.

Packaging
As with all Shure products, the headphones are nicely packaged inside a small box.  The box has an inner metallic shell with a very nice finish, and inside that shell is a molded foam case to hold all the pieces.  Nice, simple, luxurious, and not overly wasteful.

Contents
When you buy the E500PTH’s you receive:

• The headphones
• The microphone
• A mini-extension cable
• A 1/8″ to 1/4″ adapter
• Oval carrying case
• Lots of extra earbuds

Headphones
I’m going to stay a little light on discussing the headphones themselves this time.  Others like Gary Krakow have already reviewed the overall sound quality of them (here’s Gary’s take on the E4c’s, and he’s about 100x a discerning listener compared to me) and CNet made them an Editor’s Choice.  Suffice it to say - they sound as good, possibly better, than the rest of the Shure lineup.  You’ll have nothing to complain about when it comes to the sound quality, be it at home, on a plane, or anywhere else you are using the E500PTH’s.  They sound great.

Microphone
Now this is where the E500PTH’s get interesting.  Their noise-cancelling capabilities are tremendous, but as I said above, taking out and shoving in little rubber buds in your ear every time the person next to you wants to share some little detail of their life and why they love their home town can get, well, annoying.  And I have a hunch quite a few of Shure’s customers shared that sentiment with the company, since the E500’s specifically address that situation. 

Through some quite clever ingenuity (in my opinion), Shure added a microphone and a little on/off switch to the headphones.  When switched “on” (which does require a single AAA battery), the E500’s effectively mute the incoming audio source, and amplify the microphone.  This translates to: when you turn them on, you can hear the outside world again.  There’s actually a little volume control dial to adjust the level of amplification, and while it took me a little tweaking and a lot of getting used to, I finally got it right.

The next time the flight attendant walked by my seat (my original fiddling with them was on a plane), I was able to order my drink (and, of course, thank her for it), without whispering or screaming at the top of my lungs.  Again - it takes some getting used to, but once you’ve tried it for a few minutes, you’ll find yourself hitting the switch and carrying on a conversation as if you weren’t wearing the headphones at all. Very very impressive!

Overall
I have only a single annoyance with the Shure E500PTH’s, which is the size of the carrying case.  Granted, I was spoiled by the “fits in the palm of my hand” size of the E4c’s, and it’s still nothing compared to the mega-case which carries the Bose QuietComfort 2’s (forget the 3’s, they make ya puke).  So chalk that up as the only negative thing I have to say, otherwise, the E500’s are a winner.  Another nice touch is if the microphone battery dies, the headphones still work (unlike most over-the-ear noise reduction headphones).They are now, in fact, a permanent addition to my laptop case, and should be in yours as well.  However, they do cost over $400 (Amazon link), so if you already have headphones you like, you can opt to purchase the “push-to-hear” component instead (Shure site).

I was reading Brad Feld’s blog today and saw his post with a photo from La Guardia airport.  I am stunned at the amazingly poor state of things with regards to flight and TSA policies.  I am more stunned that it seems to be status quo, and not changing for the better.  On Saturday Night Live last month, there was a great skit wherein they portrayed a TSA training session.  When presented with rules such as “no liquids over 3oz” a trainee asked the (obvious) question, “what if two people get together with 3oz each?  Is 6oz dangerous?”

When the liquid ban came into effect a couple of months ago, I was on a trip to Europe.  I flew home via Stockholm airport, where they told me to put all my carry-ons in a clear plastic bag, otherwise they’d get confiscated in Frankfurt en route to the USA.  Sure enough, I was the only guy walking around Frankfurt with a huge baggie full of my personal effects.

However on virtually every trip I have taken since that flight, my carryon bag contained multiple containers with liquids or gels (yes, I admit to grabbing shampoos from hotels, but only one per stay).  My secret?  Well, I’ve mastered the security system.  Here’s what I do: when asked “got liquid?” I respond “no” and move along.  Try it out, it works pretty well.

Last week, as my wife and I entered security in SFO and we placed our bags on the security belt, to my extreme chagrin she separated her makeup bag.  Big no-no, but I couldn’t stop her in time.  Sure enough, the TSA employee picked up the bag, and went through it.  She found some makeup and lotion, and gave her three options: check it (nope), put it in a Ziploc bag (huh?), or chuck it out (gee, thanks).

I tried reason.  I tried logic.  To no avail.  I politely (then again, slightly less politely) asked how the TSA could operate such a policy without providing a reasonable solution.  Her oft-repeated answer: “all this information is available on our Web site” (not the official link).  I must say, I felt quite a bit like Arthur Dent (the only hint for such a reference is it involves a bulldozer, the rest, dear reader, is up to you).

Kudos to Wal-Mart, US Airways, and whatever supervisor at La Guardia who did not actively prevent such a common sense solution to a stupid, self-imposed problem.  Although I must say, knowing that mascara and facial cream can only be carried aboard a triple-7 inside a see-through Ziploc bag makes me feel safe, and I can only imagine it really drives fear into the hearts and minds of the terrorists.

I’m voting in the USA for the first time in my life this Tuesday, but it appears my ballot (yes on 87) doesn’t have any option to vote out such incompetence.  Ah well, maybe in ‘08.