E-Mail Addresses on Web Sites

Why you shouldn’t include a link to your e-mail address on your Web site.

Many people — including me! — use their Web sites as a kind of global calling card, a way to share information about themselves or their companies with others all over the world. It’s common to want to share your contact information with site visitors — particularly potential customers — so they can contact you. This is often done through the use of a mailto tag. For example, e-mail me! which appears as a clickable e-mail link.

Unfortunately there are people out there who want your e-mail address, people who want to scam you into sending money to Nigeria, advertise their online casinos, sell you prescription drugs, show you their porn sites — the list goes on and on. If you have your e-mail address on any Web site, you probably already get a lot of this spam. That’s because of computer programs that crawl through Web sites and harvest e-mail addresses that are included in the otherwise innocent mailto tag. Heck, they even harvest addresses that aren’t part of a mailto tag, so just including your e-mail address on a Web page without a link can get you on a bulk e-mail list.

So what’s the solution? There are a few.

One popular and easy-to-implement solution is to turn your e-mail address into a text phrase that a site visitor must see and manually type in to use. For example, me@domain.com becomes me at domain dot com or meATdomainDOTcom. You get the idea. Someone who wanted to send you an e-mail message, would be able to figure that out — if he couldn’t, he really shouldn’t be surfing the ‘Net anyway — and manually enter the correct translation in his e-mail program. But e-mail harvesters supposedly can’t figure this out (which I find hard to believe) so the e-mail address isn’t harvested.

Another solution is to use an e-mail obfuscation program. These programs take e-mail addresses and change or insert characters to make them impossible to read. The e-mail addresses look okay on the site — to a person viewing them — and work fine in a mailto link — when used from the Web site. WordPress plugins are available to do this. I don’t use any of them, so I can’t comment on how well they work. But they must be at least a little helpful if they’re available. You can find a few here, on the WordPress Codex.

The solution I use is form-based e-mail. I created a Contact Form with fields for the site visitor to fill out. When the form is submitted, a program processes it and sends it to my e-mail address. Because that address is not on the Web page that includes the form — or on any other Web page, for that matter — e-mail harvesters cannot see it. As a result, I’m able to provide a means of contacting me via e-mail that keeps my e-mail address safe from spammers.

The program I use is called NateMail from MindPalette Software. it’s a free PHP tool that’s easy to install and configure. But what I like best about it is that you can set it up with multiple e-mail addresses. Use a corresponding drop-down list in your form to allow the site visitor to choose the person the e-mail should go to. NateMail directs the message to the correct person. You can see this in action on my other WordPress-based site, wickenburg-az.com, in its Contact Form. If you want a few more features, such as the ability to attach files to an e-mail message, MindPalette offers ProcessForm for only $15.

Other WordPress users are likely to have their own favorite methods of protecting their e-mail addresses from spammers. With luck, a few of them who read this will share their thoughts in the Comments for this post.

One more thing…this doesn’t just apply to WordPress-based sites. It applies to all Web sites. And a contact form tool like NateMail will work with any PHP-compatible Web server.

If you’re already getting spam, using one of these methods won’t stop it. It’ll just keep the situation from getting much worse. Your best bet is to change your e-mail address and protect the new one. In my case, that’s a big pain in the butt — so many people I need to be in touch with have my e-mail address and, worse yet, I often use it as a login for Web sites I visit (which does indeed make the spam situation worse). I’m working on a plan to phase out the bad addresses and replace them with ones that I protect. Until then, I have to rely on the spam-catching features of my ISP and my e-mail software to sort out the bad stuff — currently about 20-40 messages a day — so I don’t have to.

The Eyes Had It

I begin to lose my close vision.

It’s inevitable. As a person ages, he loses his close vision. Now, as I approach my 45th birthday, I’m beginning to lose mine.

My far vision has always been bad. I started wearing glasses in 5th grade and I’ve been wearing contact lenses since my college days. Because I seldom wear glasses, however, people assume I have normal vision. I don’t. My vision is very bad. At this point, I wouldn’t trust myself to walk five steps without my contacts or glasses on.

It always makes me laugh when I see the “corrective lenses” restriction on my driver’s license and pilot medical certificate. Do they honestly think I’m crazy enough to drive or fly without some kind of visual aid?

I’m fortunate in that my vision, although bad, is extremely correctable. That means that with my lenses on, I can see just as well — if not better — than most people who don’t have “vision problems.” In my life, I’ve had two friends who weren’t so fortunate. Their vision was not correctable. Both worked with computers for a living. I still remember sitting with one of them at his desk while he stuck his face up against his 21″ monitor — considered very large at the time — reading something onscreen.

(Apple has a software solution for this called Universal Access. I wrote briefly about it in my Tiger book.)

Two years ago, I got an eye exam. My far vision had worsened again. My doctor gave me an option.

“You can keep the prescription you have or go with a stronger prescription. But if you go with the stronger prescription, you might have some problems with your close vision.”

I didn’t believe her and I went with the stronger prescription. After all, I liked being able to see things off in the distance, especially when I flew. The air can be so clear up here, away from the city. Visibility often exceeds 50 miles. I wanted to see those 50 miles as well as I could.

But she was right. After switching to the new prescription, I started noticing a problem with reading small print. At first, it was just a minor problem that could be solved by adding light. But it seemed to get worse and worse. I finally broke down and bought a pair of “cheaters” — you know, those cheap reading glasses you can buy in a drugstore. They were a +1.25 prescription and they really helped.

The trouble with wearing cheaters is that the more you wear them, the more you come to depend on them. I tried hard for a long time to just wear them when I was reading in bed. But it wasn’t long before I found myself needing them other times, like when trying to read package ingredients in the supermarket or drug store. Add more light.

I had an eye exam earlier this year and my far vision prescription has gotten worse again. But I learned my lesson. So far, I haven’t bought contacts in the new prescription. I don’t want my close vision to get any worse.

The doctor told me that with my new prescription, I’d need cheaters with a prescription of +1.5 or +1.75.

Oddly enough, with my contacts and glasses off, my close vision is still incredibly good. I can, for example, read the microprint on newly designed $100 bills. You wouldn’t believe how much stuff is printed in those tiny letters all over our new money! Of course, at the same time, I can’t recognize Mike sitting across the kitchen table from me. Or read the page of a book more than 5 inches from my nose.

I’m not complaining. I still consider myself very fortunate to have vision corrections available to me. So many people have vision problems that can’t be fixed. Many of them are probably grateful for what they have, too.

I saw an episode of Scientific American Frontiers yesterday that featured a man who’d been blind for the past 11 years. They’d given him an implant and a special pair of glasses with a video camera built in, enabling him to see up to 16 blobs of light. (Think of a computer monitor with a resolution of 16 blurry pixels.) He was so grateful to have even that — the ability to see the way the light changed when something moved in front of him, the ability to see something bright nearby. I’m lucky compared to someone like him.

You’re lucky if you don’t have any visual problems.

Right now, I’m sitting at the kitchen table, typing this onto my laptop. I’m having no trouble seeing or reading it. Yet.

But I know what lies ahead. I’m not anxious to go there, but I know I can’t stop time.

Get Me a Spelling Checker!

I used to know how to spell.

Plagiarism is not spelled plagerism. How embarrassing to have spelled it incorrectly — in the title, no less — of my previous post. I just fixed it.

Spelling checkers in word processing software have made me lazy. Why know how to spell a word when my word processor will simply underline it for me to call it to my attention if I get it wrong? Or, worse yet, simply fix it for me, as Microsoft Word often does? In exchange for convenience, just a little more of my mind is being sapped away by disuse.

WordPress, which I use to maintain this site, does not have a built-in spelling checker. That’s why you’ll see so many typos and misspelled words here. There’s no red underline to flag possible problems, so I just don’t notice them. I have, however, made a special effort to look up the spelling of words I’m not sure about (such as disuse and misspelled earlier in this entry). I do that with the Dictionary widget that’s part of Mac OS X. I leave it open and press F12 whenever I need to use it. Enter what I think is the right spelling and let Dictionary tell me if it recognizes the word. If it doesn’t, I think it out, trying to come up with the right spelling. It’s a good exercise for my brain.

The Dictionary widget is also useful when I’m reading an article online and need a word defined. Rather than try to glean meaning from use, I can just fetch the darn meaning to have a firmer grasp of the word and build my vocabulary.

If I can’t figure out a word’s spelling, I use Google. I enter my best guess at a word in Google’s search box — for example, plagerism — and Google instantly responds, “Did you mean plagiarism?” Uh, yeah. That’s what I meant.

Now at this point, Miraz, if she’s reading, is asking herself why I don’t use MarsEdit, like she does, to work with my WordPress blog. I tried it, but I wasn’t very impressed. I really don’t like using a lot of different software to complete a task. It’s more to learn. It’s more to figure out when it doesn’t work right. In my case, I couldn’t get MarsEdit to handle pictures the way I needed it to and I didn’t want to invest the time to make it work. I’ll probably use MarsEdit to do my blogging during the summer months when I’m away from a handy Internet connection most of the time.

So if you find a misspelled word in these blog entries, have patience with me. It could be my flying fingers unable to hit the keys in the right order. Or it could just be that I thought I knew how to spell the word…but was wrong.

Swansea Here We Come!

I finally get my BLM permit for Swansea.

Miners houses at Swansea Town SiteIn December 2004, I applied for a permit to conduct helicopter tours to Swansea Town Site. Swansea is a ghost town in a remote area of the Arizona desert, west of Alamo Lake, south of the Bill Williams River, north of Bouse, and east of Parker. I takes about 3 hours to get there by car — well, by Jeep, since a car can’t make it on the sometimes sandy, sometimes rocky dirt roads — and about 40 minutes to get there by helicopter. The idea was to take day trippers out to the town site, let them walk around with a BLM self-guided walking tour brochure, give them some refreshments when they’re done, and fly them back to Wickenburg. The trip would cost $495 for up to three passengers.

Miners houses at Swansea Town SiteYou might be asking why I need a permit to use public land. BLM, in case you’re not aware, stands for Bureau of Land Management. It’s a part of the Department of the Interior. Of the Federal Government. These are government managed lands that belong to the people. And the people can use them, as long as they follow certain rules. Among those rules are that if you want to make money by operating a tour or anything else on BLM lands, you have to get a permit.

I applied for that permit in December. It cost me $80 that was not refundable and there was no guarantee that I’d get the permit. Talk about gambling!

Of course, I didn’t get any response at all to my application. I followed up in January. That’s when I was told they needed more information, like proposed landing zones. So I took my helicopter, which was brand spanking new at the time, and my GPS, and John and Lorna, and flew out to Swansea. I landed on my preferred landing zone, which was near the middle of town, and walked around taking GPS readings of the places that would work as landing zones. I came up with about seven of them. I also took photos. One photo showed my preferred landing zone, which just happened to have my helicopter in it.

When I got back to my office, I fed the GPS coordinates into my mapping software to produce a topo map with the coordinates on it. I then numbered them in order of preference. I took the photos from the flight, stuck it in an envelope with a cover letter and the map, and sent it to BLM in Lake Havasu.

A few days later I got a message on my voicemail from BLM scolding me for landing at Swansea. It was my understanding that as a private citizen on personal recreation (not for hire), I was allowed to land on BLM land, as long as it wasn’t wilderness area or my landing would cause damage (common sense stuff). So I wrote a letter back to them. They replied grudgingly, in writing, that I was right. It’s one of those letters you keep, if you know what I mean.

Next, they told me they’d have to do an environmental impact study. This irked me for two reasons:

  • The majority of people who come to Swansea do so on ATVs and some of them have no qualms about tearing up the desert with their fat little tires. They don’t care about archeological sites or desert tortoises. Irresponsible. Yet when I land, my vehicle touches the ground in precisely two long places — where my skids touch down — and I don’t damage a thing.
  • This environmental impact study, which I thought was a waste of time and money, would be done with taxpayer dollars. I’m a taxpayer. And it made me wonder how much other wasteful spending BLM did.

But you can’t fight them. You really can’t. So although I voiced my protest and even wrote to my senators and congressmen, I had no choice but to wait.

In actuality, what I did was write off the $80 as a bad investment and swear I’d never send another dime to BLM.

Time passed. The guy who was working my case retired. I really didn’t expect to ever hear from BLM again.

Then, in December, my cell phone rang while I was at the airport putting away the helicopter after a flight. It was a new person from BLM. He introduced himself and said he was working on my application.

“Bad news?” I asked, figuring he was calling to say that it had been turned down.

“Well, no,” he replied, sounding a bit surprised. “At least I don’t think so. We’re almost done with the application and it looks like it will be approved.”

I tried not to sound shocked. He went on to tell me that he’d need BLM listed on my insurance policy as an additional named insured (no problem). We then had a very pleasant conversation about Swansea and what a great place it was. He was very friendly and knowledgeable and a real pleasure to talk to. I wrote his name and phone number down so I could follow up.

Of course, I lost that information. (if you saw my desk, you’d know why.)

Months passed. Then on Thursday of last week, my BLM man called again. He wanted to put the permit in the mail, but needed the insurance. No problem, I assured him. I’d fax it over. He gave me his name and fax number. (Can you believe I lost them again?) Today, I called the office, got the information I needed, and faxed over the insurance. And when I got home from work the permit was in my mailbox.

I still can’t believe it.

Now I know my original contact had warned me that the process could take as much as six months. Well, he really said 180 days. But maybe he meant 16 months? Or 480 days? Because that’s how long it took. The government doesn’t exactly move quickly. (Look at New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.)

The permit is a simple piece of paper. The letter that came with it has some restrictions that are easy to live with. Only 3 allowed landing zones — none of which is my preferred, but one of which is very good. A maximum visit of 2 hours — as if there will be someone there with a stopwatch to time us. No overnight camping. No more than four people total — that’s all that my helicopter can seat anyway, so it would be impossible to bring more.

My contact told me he needs to chat with me before I start using the permit. i’ll call him on Thursday.

In the meantime, I’m looking forward to adding the Swansea Ghost Town tour to Flying M Air’s Web site.

A Trip to Macworld Expo in San Francisco

I go to Macworld Expo, see new stuff, party with the Peachpitters, and still manage to find my hotel.

TehatchapiI took an America West — or is that US Airways? — flight from Phoenix to San Francisco on Thursday morning. The flight departed at around 8:15 AM and took off into the east into clear skies. The plane banked to the right until it was heading west, following I-10. I saw familiar sights out my window for most of the flight: Wickenburg, Harquahala Mountain, Salome, Bouse, the Colorado River, the road that runs past Rice and eventually past the north end of Joshua Tree National Park, the airport at Twentynine Palms, Big Bear Lake, Apple Valley, Edwards Air Force Base, and Rosamond. The jet took a route just south of the one I usually take when flying the helicopter from Wickenburg to California’s Central Valley, but because we were cruising at about 30,000 feet, I could see so much more. The lake at Rosamond seemed huge, the windmills on the Tehatchapi’s southern slopes were clearly visible. The pass was socked in on both sides with clouds, but the town of Tehatchapi, on top of the mountain, was perfectly clear (see photo). The central valley was completely filled with low clouds — so low that I don’t think general aviation flight would be possible. It reminded me of my scud-running adventure from last spring’s Georgetown, CA to Wickenburg, AZ flight. The tops of the clouds had a odd pattern to them, like waves far out on the ocean.

I spent the flight catching up with podcasts. Listening, that is — I’ve fallen far behind recording them. I listened to NPR’s story of the day episodes stretching back into mid December. When I was finished with those, I started on Slate Magazine podcasts. I did the crossword puzzle in the airplane magazine and attempted to take some notes for a presentation I needed to do later in the day. Then we started our approach to San Francisco and the mountains along the coast poked up their slopes through the clouds below us. There was green grass on some of the southern slopes; in a month or two, all the hills would be a rich green color there. But I seldom get to the California coast in the spring, so I’m accustomed to seeing the grass when it’s all dried out, making the hills look golden in the California sun.

The plane got to the gate at 9 AM local time. I had just one bag — a small backpack that held my PowerBook, some books I planned to give away at the end of my presentation, and clothes for the overnight stay and next day — so I didn’t have to go through the baggage claim ordeal. The bag was heavy, though, and it only seemed to get heavier as I made my way from the gate to the BART station.

BART, in case you don’t know, stands for Bay Area Rapid Transit. I used to take a cab from the airport to Moscone Hall for the Macworld Show, but I’d heard that BART went from the airport into the city and figured I’d give it a try. It was a relatively pleasant trip in a train car that reminded me more of a Long Island Railroad electrified train car than a New York City Subway car. The seats had upholstery and I don’t think they were quite as clean as they should have been. That gave the car a not-so-nice smell. But it wasn’t bad and I got used to it. I listened to my iPod and looked at the window when the train was above ground. It took about 30 minutes to get to what I thought was my stop: Montgomery Street. In reality, I should have gotten out one stop earlier, at Powell.

I came up from underground, got my bearings, realized I’d erred about the train stop, and started walking. San Francisco reminds me a bit of New York in that it has that “old city” feel. Lots of old buildings, many of which are pretty tall, some narrow streets, noisy traffic, homeless people on the sidewalks. The weather was pleasant and I was soon warming up inside my jacket.

My friend Ray called on my cell phone with a lead on a helicopter job for a construction company working along the Mexican border. I stopped and took notes on a receipt, wondering if I could be fortunate enough to get the job.

Advertising ScootersIt was less than a mile to Moscone and when I got there, I found the place relatively quiet. It was just after 10 AM and most attendees had already gone into the exhibit hall. I used a free pass to go through the registration process and get a badge, then crossed the street and went into the hall. I saw some scooters pulling advertising trailers — an Apple advertising gig, I knew. (I later got a photo of the scooters parked alongside the street.) My first order of business was to dump my jacket and the heavy bag at the Peachpit Press booth. It took me a while to find it, which was quite embarrassing because I actually walked right by it twice. They said it was near the Apple booth and they weren’t kidding. It was right inside one of the doorways to the exhibit hall, adjacent to the Apple booth.

I ran into a few people I knew, including Connie Jeung-Mills, the production person who’d worked on many of my books. I chatted with her while I stuffed my belongings under a table skirt in the booth, reserving an old Adobe canvas bag and note pad to carry while I walked the floor. I couldn’t believe the number of books in the booth. Most of the titles were about graphics and Web publishing, but I also the books I’ve written for them: Tiger, QuickBooks, and the little Visual QuickProject Guides for Word and Excel.

iPod-compatible carsI walked the floor. There was a lot to see, but not nearly as much as in the “old days,” when the show took up both sides of Moscone’s hall. I’ve never seen so many iPod accessories in my life. I think one out of every ten booths was peddling something for an iPod. Talk about trying to cash in on a craze. There were even iPod-compatible cars on display (see photo).

By 2:30, I was ready for a rest. I also needed to create my presentation, which was scheduled for 4 PM. I’m a last-minute person — I always have been — so I left the hall and found a seat on one of the balconies overlooking the hall entrance. It was nice and bright and airy up there and only about half the seats were occupied. Some people chatting, some people using laptops, other people eating or reading. I was very surprised to find that my PowerBook immediately connected to a wireless network when I opened it up. I was able to surf the net and check my e-mail.

I jotted down some notes about topics I thought my audience would be interested in. Mostly “cool features” stuff taken from my soon-to-be-published Informit.com article titled “Five Funky Finder Features.” (They may change the title, so if you go looking for it online, keep that in mind.)

While I worked, a man sitting nearby began complaining about how few seats were available. Two of the four balconies were blocked off, cutting the amount of available seats in half. But that didn’t seem to matter, since there were still empty seats to be had. One woman sitting nearby made the fatal error of acknowledging him. This resulted in him continuing his complaints. Another woman finally said to him, “I’m trying to enjoy my lunch and you’re ruining it.” He kept up for another minute or so before the woman, who was eating some kind of salad out of a Tupperware container, said, “No, I really mean it. Your complaints are ruining my lunch.” He seemed to get it then and he shut up. A while later, he closed up his iBook and went away. The whole exchange had been pretty funny. I was glad the woman had spoken up, though. He’d been quite a whiner and it was good when he finally shut up.

I did my presentation and it went well. I covered it in another blog entry.

Afterward, I met with Nancy and Cliff, two of my editors, for drinks and a bite to eat before the Peachpit Party. We wound up at an ethnic restaurant about two blocks away. Don’t ask me what kind of ethnic restaurant — I really don’t know. We ordered three different tappas dishes and a round of drinks. We talked business for a while — stuff I don’t want to cover here. Cliff left to go to an Apple party. Nancy and I finished our drinks and headed over to the Peachpit party.

Peachpit PartyI saw a bunch of Peachpit authors and editors and drank exactly one vodka martini more than I should have. The problem was, I still hadn’t checked into my hotel and I wasn’t exactly sure where it was. Or what it was called. Although I didn’t feel drunk after the third martini, I knew it was time to stop so I switched to water. Good thing I did. They must have used delayed reaction vodka in those drinks because I didn’t start feeling drunk until I was halfway done with my water. Still, I never got too drunk to realize that there were lots of people worse off than I was. Kim was probably the worst. It was her last day of work for Peachpit and she was partying a bit heartier than she should have.

I dug out the info for my hotel around 11:30, realized it was only about a block away from where Tom and Dori were staying, and walked with them. The walk took us down Market Street, which was surprisingly active with normal people (and a few weirdos) at that time of night. When we went our separate ways at Fourth Street, I felt safe enough to continue that last long block on my own. But it was good to get to my hotel and check in. I think the guys at the desk suspected that I wasn’t exactly sober, but they didn’t comment. I’m sure they’ve seen worse. And I wasn’t too drunk to realize that the guy had forgotten to give back my credit card with my room key.

I stayed at the Hotel Milano on Fifth Street. It’s an old hotel that has been fixed up. My seventh floor room had two windows that looked out across a narrow ventilation shaft to the two windows of a room in the next hallway. The room was big with a small television at one end and the king-sized bed at the other. I got undressed and into bed and watched a Seinfeld rerun for a while before turning off the television and going to sleep.

The only thing I’d forgotten to do was to check and adjust the thermostat. I was cold enough all night to sleep poorly but not cold enough to get up and do something about it. I hate that.

I woke at 5:30 AM local time. (I hate that, too.) I watched some Weather Channel and started work on this bLog entry before showering, getting dressed, and going out for breakfast. I wound up at the Marriott a few blocks away. I had a nice breakfast from the buffet, then walked back to my hotel and wasted more time on my computer. The show didn’t open until 10 AM and there was no reason to rush.

I packed and checked out at 9:30 AM. My bag was heavy, despite the fact that I’d given away the five books I’d brought with me from Arizona and I hadn’t bought anything else. I did have some product literature on board, but not enough to take the weight of five books.

At Moscone, I took a seat on one of the balconies to check my e-mail and my Web sites. The sites had been down the day before because of a computer glitch, but they were back online that morning. At 10 AM, I was back on the show floor, stashing my bag under a table at the Peachpit booth.

I bought a SightFlex stand for my iSight camera. Heavy.

I called America West and asked about an earlier flight. It was fully booked.

The Apple BoothI bothered an Apple booth guy for a demo of iWeb. It’s a cool little software package and I hope Peachpit lets me write a book about it. The guy who gave the demo was a software engineer and had written Pages, Apple’s word processing program. (I don’t know why they didn’t have him demo that.) I told him I used Word and had been using it for years. He told me that if I tried Pages, I’d switch. So I’ll try it again next week and see how I do with it. Word really is overkill sometimes. But, at the same time, I’m not too thrilled with the idea of software that works more like a page layout program than a word processor without giving you the control over page elements. If I recall, that was my main gripe about Pages.

The Apple BoothThe Apple Booth, by the way, was enormous. I think it gets bigger every year. There’s always a huge theater area (see photo) and this year there were 40-foot high “posters” of the new MacBook Pro (terrible name!) laptop and Intel processor iMac. I felt like a Lilliputian as I walked around the booth.

I wandered around the hall some more, killing time.

I ran into Sandee Cohen, Ted Landau, and Tonya Engst at the Peachpit booth and spent some time chatting with each of them. Then I grabbed my bag and made my exit. It was 11:30. I figured I’d stop by the Apple store before grabbing a bite to eat.

I dropped off my bag at a hotel along the way, checking it with a bellman. It felt good to get that damn thing off my back.

After looking around the Apple Store, I spent about an hour in Cody’s, a very nice bookstore near Market Street, not far from Virgin and the Apple Store. They were expecting President Carter as a speaker later in the day and the audience seats were already starting to fill with people who had nothing better to do with their time than spend the day sitting in a folding chair in the basement of a building, surrounded by books.

I walked up to Union Square, passing a handful of panhandlers and more than a handful of tourists. The cable car runs down Powell Street there and there are always a lot of tourists around. The area itself reminds me of lower Broadway in New York, with lots of discount luggage stores and shops that sell t-shirts and other tourist favorites. Kind of sleezy without being sleezy enough to scare people away.

Then I made my way to the Nikko, thinking about sushi for lunch. I was just about to go into the Japanese restaurant there when I noticed a Chinese dim sum restaurant across the street. I went there instead and had a very good lunch.

By that time, I’d had enough of San Francisco and was ready to head out to the airport. You know, I’ve been to San Francisco dozens of times and, unless you have a lot of time on your hands and comfortable walking shoes on your feet, it isn’t such a great place. I had neither and was more interested in finding a comfortable place to wait for my flight home than shopping or even walking around the city.

I retrieved my bag, gave the bellman a tip, and descended into the BART station. A while later, I was on a train bound for Daly City. I changed trains and got on another one for the airport. I listened to podcasts the entire time: Slate magazine and, when I was finished with those, Slate Explainer. The usual at the airport: get a boarding pass, go through security, find the gate, settle into a seat. I found a seat by an electric outlet and used it to charge up my PowerBook. For some reason, I expected to use it on the plane.

The plane was completely booked. Overbooked, in fact. They offered $400 worth of travel for volunteers, but I wasn’t interested. There was a woman in my seat when I boarded and, since it was my seat and not hers, she gave it up. When all the seats were filled, they closed the doors and we got underway.

I was asleep within ten minutes of departure.