Back in the USA

First let me say that this is somewhat stream of “thoughts” rather than a more formallized blog as I landed literally 90 minutes ago after 13 hours on a plane. I will come back and create more entries from these snippets.

I left the hotel at 10:00PM Dubai Time, which is 2:00PM EDT. I then arrived at IAD at 6:00AM EDT. I boarded the plane at about 3:30PM EDT and remained in Seat 21J except for one trip to the facilities until 6:00AM the next day. So that is about 14.5 hours.

I was able to get some sleep thanks to the wonders of modern medicine Probably about 8 hours but not great sleep. There are times I can get good sleep on a plane, seat 21J was not one of them. The seat was not very comfortable, while it had tons of leg room as the “crew sleep seats” were in front of me, the seat itself was not comfortable. I ended up putting the pillow under my but to help.

I slept through dinner and breakfast was not very Brad Diet friendly. Good thing Mr. Budge took me out for a big dinner before I left.  I am not very happy with the traveler profile and meal situation.

We got in early which was nice, but I think it might have not actually gotten me through any quicker as there was a stack up at passport control with everyone arriving at 6AM. I think that when flights are scheduled there is some thought to staggering through choke points like passport control. As I said on my Twitter post (yes, you have to sign up to get the info) the process of passing through passport control was faster for me in Dubai than in Washington DC.

I was somewhat down periscope while I was in Dubai due to time changes and also do to the Internet usage situation. When I arrived my Blackberry was a doorstop. It was not turned on. That got sorted midday Monday Dubai Time. Trying to call AT&T from Dubai was not very succesful. Once work opened I was able to get it sorted out in about 15 minutes. Apparently saying I want International Calling meant I could make international calls. Whoops.

The other thing was that there were some sites that I could not get to through the Internet.

Click for larger image

Now before everyone starts chuckling and assuming that I was trying to get to “entertainment sites” I got this message on some pretty benign sites:

• Skype
• SmugMug
• iChat
• Amazon.com
• Twitter

So I was able to use the work laptop and its VPN connection to get to some things – but then I had corporate policy making things tough. For example I could not upload photos to my SmugMug account or get Skype to work. On my personal laptop I was able to get inbound Skype video chats, but not outbound phone calls.

Also the time change made life quite interesting as I would end up working long days as a result of getting back from dinner and it being midday back at the office. This would result in me being engaged and working until about 1AM Dubai Time at which point it would take me a little while to wind down to go to sleep.

I am sure that more things will be coming in upcoming Blog posts, but figured I should at least put this one up… Next flight leaves in about an hour. I think that this will only be 22 hours of travel.