Kuala Lumpur

I'm in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for a few days on a trip. Located near the equator, (around only 3 degrees north latitude) the outside feel is understandably hot and humid, but a constant breeze keeps the air from being too oppressive. I'm staying at the J.W. Marriott in the city center and have found the area very modern.

I took a walk today to the famed Petronas Towers and took the attached picture. A truly impressive sight, the towers used to be the tallest buildings in the world. (The Taipei 101 currently holds the title)

A hotbed of shopping, restaurants and entertainment - KL's atmosphere has proven a pleasant surprise. I can't wait to do more exploring tomorrow!

Road Warrior Laptop needs

I leave for a trip tomorrow, and while gathering my "stuff" I was thinking about what would make the perfect travel laptop. All Road Warriors do not have identical needs, so the ideal travel laptop would vary between the user types but I am confident I can dictate specs that most would prefer.

The laptop I carry with me on the road is the Sony Vaio VGN T250 (see pictue) I love the form factor,(small, weighs about 3 lbs) battery life, built in Wifi/Bluetooth, DVD writer. However, its durability is in question. (The USB ports have all failed, and after intense troubleshooting I have come to the conclusion that I have a hardware problem that would require main board replacement.) Due to the diminutive form factor (which I love) the 10 inch screen can make small text a bit hard to read. The keyboard is smaller than standard laptops provide, but this hasn’t been a problem for me. The Sony, being a Sony, was significantly more expensive than other laptops in its category and in true Sony style the onboard memory card reader supports only Sony’s memory sticks. (Being that my digital camera is also a Sony, this is not a problem.) I was able to overcome my USB problem with a bulky USB PC card I had to purchase on the road in Riga, Latvia. I can now sync my Ipod and use an external mouse.

When I was trying to spec out my dream travel laptop, I had to determine what I use it for…what is important to me?

Bill’s laptop road usage:

- Watching movies while traveling on the airlines. (Both DVD and downloaded via Vongo or Bittorrent)

- Communicating with home/work via Skype.

- Itunes. (Both for syncing podcasts to ipod and watching downloaded video content)

- Email.

- Web-use. Both work (pilot stuff) and normal surfing.

- Watching movies in the hotel (When the only English channel on the TV is CNN, it’s nice to be able to watch something else..)

- Managing digital pictures – nothing serious, my personal travel shots.

- Minor document creation/managing.

My Vaio handles most of these tasks pretty well. If I could change it I would FIX THE DAMN USB PORTS, double the hard drive size, make it a bit faster, add S-video output, and move the ports around. It seems like the laptop runs a bit hot, I’m not sure what can be done to fix that issue. I LOVE the fact that headphone/mic inputs are in the front of the unit. Skype is my connection with home. The easier it is to hookup a headset in a dim hotel room after being up for 24 hours the better.

The updated versions of the Vaio include an A/V mode that allows you to watch DVDs without booting up the entire system. (Which takes FOREVER) Unfortunately the audio output volume isn’t sufficient for normal headphones in a noisy environment (i.e. AIRPLANE). With in-ear headphones it works okay.

The USB ports (even before my Jenky card solution) are all located on the left side of the laptop. I guess the left side is better than the back, but with an external mouse cables are going all over the place. Keep the current USB ports on the left, but add some more – maybe to the front?

I like the built in wifi and Bluetooth. However, the shipped Bluetooth was crippled and didn’t support much. I was able to update the stack and make it work with an external headset after hours of research. (What else am I going to do in Chanchun, China?)

What else would I add? Onboard GPS maybe? I’m not sure if I would use it. An onboard webcam would be nice. I’d like to be able to access SD cards (We all carry Treo 650 phones)

Okay, enough rambling..What do I want/need in an ideal travel laptop:

1. - Small form factor. (around 3 lbs is great)

2. - Rugged design. It has to be able to take being dragged around everywhere.

3. - Skype and movie friendly ports. I have to be able to plug in Ethernet cables, power, headsets without having to turn the laptop around. (This includes front mounted wifi switch and volume controls.)

4. - Decent battery life. 3 hours MINIMUM.

5. - 130 gig hard-drive MINIMUM.

6. - Onboard Wifi/Bluetooth.

7. - Onboard DVD writer.

8. - External S-video port. I want to be able to output the latop video to the hotel TV.

9. - Speed – I don’t need blistering gaming performance, but I want it to boot up in less than 10 minutes.

10. - Value – I don’t want to spend more than 2 large on this system.

Happy travels!

Jet Lag and air conditioners.

Okay...it might seem like I've been amiss. Not really, heck I just started this thing a couple days ago. Since I started this blog to have mostly a tech and travel theme, and nothing has happened the last few days in these arenas I haven't posted.

This week has been mostly been about two things: 1. Recovering from Jet Lag and 2. Getting new AC and Furnace installed in my house. I'll cover these today.

1. Recover from Jet Lag.

This is pretty much a constant process. A few of the airplanes I fly for my company are based in Japan, so I airline from Los Angeles, CA to Narita, Japan at the beginning of most trips and then back at the end of the trip. Most trips last from a week to 10 days or so. It's 5400 or so Nautical Miles (A Nautical Mile is used in aviation and ... well ... nautical settings. While a statute mile is 5280 feet, a Nautical Mile is 6000 feet.) and 8 time zones between the two places. The airline ride from LAX (Los Angles) to RJAA (Narita) is about 11 hours, and coming the other way it's about 9 hours. This is due to the winds blowing from the west to the east. (All these numbers and times change based on the time of year. Usually the winds are stiffer during the winter and lighter during the summer.

Anyway, the whole poorly attempted point of the previous paragraph was to illustrate the Jet Lag Potential (JLP) of each of my trips. We sometimes joke when we board the LAX-RJAA flight that "This is the last time we'll feel normal on the whole trip." That statement is a bit of a hyperbole, but the effects of Jet Lag can be detrimental. I've been doing these routes for a while, so I've kind of gotten used to the effects, and recognize them as such. Wherever in the world find myself I always TRY to stay up until a normal bet time. Sometimes this is impossible, and if your body decides it's going to shut down fighting it can be futile.

I'm often amazed how consistent the effects of Jet Lag are between people. For instance, usually the first morning in Japan I wake up around 0300 - 0400 and can't get back to sleep. NO MATTER WHAT. There is a gym at the hotel in Narita that is open 24 hours. I've actually met my crewmates in the elevator on the way to the gym....we both woke up at almost exactly the same time, tried to get back to sleep, gave up, put on our gym gear and walked to the elevator at the same time. I've seen this happen so many times I almost expect it. Everybody ends up meeting for breakfast within 10 minutes or so without planning. Erie.

Enough about Jet Lag...

2. New A.C. Unit!! Yeah!!!

I live in Southern California - it get's hot here and electricity is EXPENSIVE. I have a 2200 square foot house and had a 20 year old air conditioning system. The builder who built our subdivision had to be the biggest cheapskate on the face of the earth. The piece of crap 3 ton AC unit we had was the cheapest, most inefficient one he could find I'm sure. (See bottom picture - the ugly round one)

Last summer was a hot one, and in July I opened up our electric bill. $650!! I almost puked...and vowed to replace the aging unit. I never realized how expensive and involved changing the AC unit would be.

Trying to be fiscally responsible homeowner I decided to get a few quotes. First guy showed up - he had the biggest add in the direct mail (usually "direct-to-trashcan" mail) - and he stayed for almost 2 hours....evidently we needed to replace the condenser (the thing outside), the coil (a silver box on top of the furnace), the furnace (might as well do it all together) and the line-set (the copper lines that connect the condenser to the coil.) It seems that a house our size requires a minimum 4 ton unit (I guess that number describes the amount of air it can move in a set amount of time) and the 3 ton unit that the jackass builder installed uses 3/4 in copper line-set, but of course the 4 ton unit requires a 7/8 inch line-set. Gosh...well I got a pretty good tax refund this year how much can all this cost? First estimate - 11 THOUSAND Dollars. I basically told him he was smoking crack and sent him on his way. 4 estimates later we got some more realistic numbers....ended up doing it for half that. (The new condenser is the top picture - square box)

I'm sure this is COMPLETELY boring, but I learned a bunch about AC systems. If anybody is looking at doing this, here is my advise:

A. Get LOTS of estimates. Some of the guys who came over actually looked a bit peeved when they found out I was getting multiple estimates. Well, La-Ti-Da!

B. Plan to do the overhall in Feb-April timeframe if you live in a hot climate. There are deals to be had this time of year, but I'll bet when it's 115 in July the deals will be gone for the summer.

C. Think about what you really need. If you live in Southern California and your furnace only kicks on about 5 times a year you probably don't need the $5000 super-dooper 99% efficent plasma furnace. Opt for the cheap furnace (with a good warranty) and get a high SEER rated (SEER is how they measure efficency - we got a 14 SEER unit, the last one was 8 SEER when it was new, probably around 6 when they took it out.)

D. Check references of who is proposing to do the work and use resources such as angies list.

E. Be around when they do the work. Don't let them leave until the area is clean and everything was done to your specifications.

That's all I have for today. I'm going to have a glass of wine and see what's on the plasma!

(I'll try to make the next post a little more interesting.)

Bill's Blog

Okay, we're going to give this a try. I've always thought blogging was a good way to improve writing agility and overall skill, but never had the gumption to give it a shot. Here goes...I'll try to keep this up to date and post somewhat coherent snippets on my day to day (probably more likely week-to-week) musings and ideas.

I anticipate this blog will be travel and tech centered. A corporate pilot for a living, I travel the globe a great deal and maybe my observations will be interesting to a few who happen upon this site. I embrace technology, especially that which keeps me connected when I am on the road. My Ipod and my laptop keep me sane on my travels. I listen to several podcasts and am a heavy Skype user. (Married with a child)

I'll try to include pictures when it's convenient. I have a Sony T-33 digital camera that I bring with me when I am travelling to new locations so I'll post pics when they aren't too out of focus or boring. (I'm sure what I consider "not-boring" will put some to sleep...sorry)

Here we go, wish me luck..