Kai is okay!

Chuck and I had been a bit worried about the fate of Kai Hendry, the South African Linux geek we partied with in St. Petersburg (see photo of the two of us here). His last blog post had him setting off for the Andaman Islands near India to celebrate the New Year with his French traveling companion, Antoine (who we also met). Unfortunately, the Tsunami also decided to go there. His blog has been down, but I found this story today, saying he's alive.

And, though they've hidden it (from all but Google) in a for-pay archive, the Independent had this statement from him:

Kai Hendry, a 26-year-old computer-science student from Bodmin, Cornwall, who was on holiday in the Andaman Islands.

"I was relaxing in a hammock on the beach when the earthquake hit. The force of the tremors was unbelievable and it began raining coconuts as the place shook. I ran and held on to a tree for what felt like an age but was probably only about a minute before it all went quiet.

"Then all of a sudden the tide went right out and the sea disappeared. Even at this point we didn't know what was coming and remained close to the sea until the wave came and we had to run for our lives. We should have realised what was coming, but nobody did.

"My French travelling companion, Antoine, and I decided we had to think of a plan or we would die there. Our only option was to run inland into the jungle but there was no path, only thick, dense undergrowth. We pushed through it with the water rushing around us and eventually clambered up on to a high section of ground."

McCarran Wireless

McCarran Airport in Las Vegas recently started offering free wi-fi. That's great and all, but they've got it so locked down you can't do much with it. I can't connect to any instant messaging servers and I can't get my e-mail via secure IMAP from work. I was eventually able to get the e-mail by tunneling through our VPN, but still no solution for the instant messaging. I've still got an hour until my flight leaves, and while web access is better than nothing, denying e-mail and IM traffic is absurd. Update: It's also slooow as molasses. I've got pretty good signal strength, but am getting completely erratic connections. They put this in for the CES show that started today, and as far as I'm concerned, it's a failure.

The Dam Tour

My friend Jeremy and I are off to Hoover Dam today to take the dam tour with the dam guide. It's rainy here in Vegas, but we'll be inside, so it's a good day to do it.

In the Southwest

I arrived into Las Vegas last night, via Allegiant Air. It was the first time I'd flown that low-cost carrier, as they started offering flights from Cedar Rapids, Des Moines, Sioux Falls and Madison to Vegas this year. I'd fly them again. The planes were new and clean, all the seats were leather, and there was a lot more leg room than on my Lufthansa flight to Europe. If you're going to/from Vegas, check their site for pricing, as they don't seem to show up on Orbitz/Expedia/Travelocity. Their web site design rather sucks, but the price was right. I woke up before everyone else this morning and was pleasantly surprised to find that MSN has a local dial-up number for Sandy Valley, the small town outside of Las Vegas where my parents' house is. I knew AOL had put in a local number here last year, but I use MSN when I travel, and I didn't feel like waking up mom and dad to get their password for their AOL account. The phone lines out here in the sticks only will let me connect at 28.8, but at least I don't have to pay long distance any more...

Is expediting your passport application worth it?

Before I went to Russia, I had to get my passport. I paid the extra money for expedited service, as well as shipping the application and the passport overnight both ways. It came to about $180, but I had my passport back 8 days from when I sent it in during the month of June. My wife applied for a passport two weeks ago, as we're thinking of traveling abroad in the coming year. No particular hurry, so we just paid the normal $80 charge and sent it first class mail, no rush service on the passport either.

Her passport came in 9 days.

I guess they saw me coming, it cost me an extra hundred dollars to get my passport a day sooner. At least work paid for it...