Where's Nate?

living large in the four-oh-eight. wicked large.

1.17.2005

permission to buzz the tower

i'm sitting here in camp bell waiting for paige's flight to arrive from o'hare. she was off at a girls-weekend-o-fun in grand rapids. those three crazy girls had about as much fun as one can have when the temperature struggles to get out of single digits. brr.

anyway, sjc will almost certainly roll out one of those fancy cell phone lots. this is essentially a 21st century version of the parking lot that used to sit beneath the runway. back in the day, if you got to the airport early, you could just chill out and actually *watch* your plane fly over. then you knew it was time to head to the terminal.

no such luck in 2005. you just orbit the airport road, avoid mowing down luggage-toting groggy travelers, and whip yourself into higher and higher levels of annoyance.

that's where flighttracker comes in.

there are a handful of different apps where you can type in the flight number and actually *watch* a little graphical fisher price version of your plane fly across the country. so after a little quick math, you figure out when you need to head out to the airport. my rule of thumb is about 10,000 feet.

now, this technology has been around forever. i remember thetrip.com had a tracker back in the mid-90s. i just wanted to pay homage to that cool little app that has made my life so much easier.

gotta boogie. paige is at 14,000 feet.

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