e hënë mars 14, 2005

TechnoToys

Last Friday I got this rockin' new Treo 650. I have suffered with an antique Nokia for years but no more. I am beginning to exploit the features of the new phone. I revived my Outlook Calendar/Contacts/Memos/ToDo list which had languished since my last Palm died and I switched laptops. It checks email (which I have not yet set up), surfs the web (which I am struggling with), supports a Bluetooth headset (which is currently more hassel than its worth), and sends and receives short messages. It also has a built in camera phone. You may say to yourself, 'Who the heck needs a camera phone?' but I would argue that it does have at least one practical purpose.

I arrived at DFW Airport Monday morning at 5:30am to catch an early flight. I immediately snapped the picture on the right in order to remember exactly where my car was parked. I took the picture because last August I forgot where I parked my car between the 3 American Airlines terminals at the DFW airport. After an hour of fruitless searching for my misplaced car, traveling back and forth between terminals, I called American Reservations. Do you know it is very difficult to find out where a flight left from last Monday? My flight home was delayed Thursday night and I arrived in Dallas after 11pm tired and cranky. But we did arrive at terminal A very near my car and I had no doubts about where I left it at the crack of doom (ur, uh, dawn) on Monday morning.

So my typical travel routine is to have a page sent to my phone concerning my departure gate 2 hours before each flight. Since I use American Airlines primarily, I go to http://www.aa.com and the 2nd button in the left column is titled "Travel Information." That opens another menu where the 2nd entry is 'Flight Status Notification' which expands to 'View/Delete' or 'Create.' You can get a voice mail or a page and even my old Nokia supported text pages. Then when I finally find a parking spot in the multilevel garage, I take a picture of the nearest marker so that I know what level I parked on.
(2005-03-14 07:53:12.0) Permalink Comments [1]