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Someone in London loves my luggage

On my way out to San Francisco my luggage was delayed in London and in similar fashion, when I got into Cork Airport it was again delayed in London. For all I knew my luggage was lost! I wouldn’t mind except:

  • Once per trip is enough, please British Airways, keep track. It’s simply not fair.
  • My flight from San Francisco arrived at 1pm, flight to Cork was scheduled for 2:15pm. It’s cutting it a bit tight but I’ve been in this situation before and my luggage came through. How close before? Let’s just say we had to sprint from one terminal to another in Heathrow to catch the next flight!
  • My flight to Cork was delayed for over an hour. First the flight captain fell ill in Cork and had to be replaced, thus bumping the boarding time to 3:15pm, then we actually started boarding at 3:25pm, before waiting on the tarmac for at least 40 minutes because repairs and tests had to be made to the plane. I finally arrived in Cork at 5:20pm.

Don’t you think British Airways could have moved my luggage from one plane to another in 2 hours? Not a chance. Thankfully it was delivered this afternoon, almost 20 hours later by Aer Lingus staff.

I guess someone in British Airways has a fetish for luggage with pink and blue ribbons. Yes, I bet it was the ribbons.

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I'm in San Francisco, luggage is in London

Thanks BA, this is the second time I’ve flown to San Francisco, and it’s the second time my luggage has been delayed in London. Notice a pattern? Don’t you like my name? Grrr. My luggage is supposed to be delivered tomorrow night to the hotel, but i need to do some shopping this afternoon for essentials.

On a lighter note, almost all of Automattic are downstairs in the lobby and it’s good to finally meet many of them! Mark and I had an uneventful flight, and even fixed or discussed a few bugs on the way! Desktop Tower Defense is no easier at 36,000ft than it is at sea level however. Oh well!

See you all at WordCamp!

Overdue update! Luggage was delivered around 4am on Saturday morning so I picked up the case and had a change of clothes just in time for WordCamp!

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The WordCamp 2007 schedule is now online

The schedule is up for your perusal now. It’s a two day event this year on the 21st and 22nd of July with the highlight being the bbq lun.. uh, I mean, it’s all great. I’m looking forward to attending as many talks as I can and meeting people. I’m sure Matt Cutts will have some interesting whitehat SEO tips for us too!

Meanwhile, a group of Irish people who are heading to Silicon Valley on December 2nd to, “try and build some long-term relationships and friendships with people over there which will be good for the Valley and good for the Paddys.” From the About page:

An ad-hoc group of Irish business people have decided to form their own delegation to tour Silicon Valley and create closer bonds with companies and people in the mecca of the computer world. The tour nicknamed “PaddysValley” will head off at the start of November, taking advantage of the new air routes from Aer Lingus.

There’s still plenty to do but if you’re in business in the Valley, and want to build up a relationship with business in Ireland, check out paddysvalley.org. A pity they’re not heading over in July. It’d be nice to have an Irish crowd at WordCamp!

Update! Matt says the registration page is now active. That Paypal IPN stuff is the business!

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Post WordCamp, Post SF, Post Haste

Last week I went to San Francisco to meet up with the rest of Automattic and attend WordCamp 2006. There's plenty of coverage of WordCamp so I'm sure you're not interested in me telling you how great it was, who said what, what sucked, etc, etc!

What I would like to say is my heartfelt thanks to Matt and Toni and those who control the purse strings in Automattic who made last week possible. Podz, Andy and I stayed in a fabulous house where everyone gathered to work and brainstorm new features, work methods, discuss our strengths and weaknesses and work super-fast on finally getting the Upgrades feature of WordPress.com out.

What are the guys in Automattic like? They're smart, they're enthusiastic, they're really driven by blogging and making things better. They live and breath blogs and tech but they really do worry about how a beginner views WordPress. They're also fun and great to be with and I look forward to the next Automattic get-together!

Much to my delight everyone I met was nice. In the cut-throat world of business it's not often that can be said. It's such a simple thing, that word, "nice". How often can you describe your work colleagues and business people in general that way? I hope that things remain competitive and fast moving but that people don't lose their humanity over the all-mighty Dollar.

I hope Matt doesn't eat all that brisket, I know it tastes like heaven but I think it may be off by now!

Oh yeah, a final thank you to you all for being so patient when I would say, "hang on, I just saw something" and go shoot a lamp post or a doorway, or some other street furniture or a silly yellow "computer guided" tourist car. I have 5GB of Jpeg files to look through! 🙂

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My First Earthquake!

Wow, the house just shook! Toni found some info on it, and I got it from Andy. Magnitude 4.4 apparently, but 42 miles away.

Podz mentioned it too. What did you do when you felt it? Did you run to the door, duck, take cover? No, we blogged it!

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The Crazy Stories

Scott Adams invited people to tell their most amazing personal story. Here’s what he got..
Update! Scott responds with some stories of his own. Is San Francisco that dangerous or was it just the ’80s?