I just got into my hotel room at the Hilton in Manhattan (nice room too) and I must say it’s been an interesting few hours. First, I got up at 4:30am to catch a 7am flight. Of course I decided to buy a new laptop last night and was up until 1am updating/installing, yada yada. This new Vaio with dual Centrino processors is very cool I must say.
So after not being able to get MS Office working, I opt for Thunderbird instead of Outlook. Thunderbird imported my pst file without a hitch. Firefox bookmarks and sage feeds transferred just fine.
As I cruised through the western suburbs of Minneapolis to get to the airport, I get pulled over for doing 62 in a 55. The officer asks if I’m going to the airport. I look at my clock which says 6:05 and I have 30 min to drive for a 7am flight, and say, “yep”. He asks my flight time and then if I’m going to NYC. I’m thinking, “How did he know that?”. Then he tells me he’s pulled a few others over leaving for the same flight. After 5 min he lets me go – no ticket, no warning. Thank you!
However my luck takes a different turn a little later. As I am waiting for my luggage to come off the carousel, I see another person from Minneapolis who will be attending SES and I go over and say hello. I don’t know if she would mind me mentioning her name, so I won’t. In a few minutes everyone is gone and no garment bag for Lee. A long trip to baggage services leads me to the fourth floor Northwest counter, then back to the carousel and back to Northwest to finish filing the claim.
My taxi takes me to the wrong Hilton, but no big deal – I get to see more of the city riding with a taxi driver who thinks he’s in a Mad Max movie and jamming to the Scorpions.
Needless to say, I hope they find my bag. And no matter what, the Search Engine Strategies conference is going to be a blast tomorrow and I am really looking forward to some top notch coverage with Barry, Ben and Chris.
It will be different not wearing a suit, but maybe that’s a good thing.
