Here’s a few pics I took of the Sydney Power Outage. Also included is a shot of my hand-written ticket home and a picture of me now, blogging in the Charlotte airport.

Who would’ve thought that when I’d made it to Los Angeles my trip wasn’t even halfway done? My scheduled departure at 9:50 didn’t occur due to the incoming plane being delayed by bad weather in Indianapolis. My trip to Raleigh won’t begin until 11:45. I won’t get home until Saturday morning.

As of this hour I’ve been traveling for 28 hours straight. It’s been Friday for 34 hours now. Boy do I wish that Delta’s nonstop service between Raleigh and Los Angeles began this week instead of in June.

Fortunately for me, Charlotte has free Wifi in the food court area. And a wonderful pianist named Emily Roland who has been keeping us food court campers happy.

[Update:] I just got word that my plane will be at the gate a little past eleven. That means I could conceiveably be on the ground in Raleigh before my long Friday ends.
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I’ll try to recreate the post that Boingo ate. Here goes.

I’m in Los Angeles now after a longer than usual trip from Sydney. As a result I’ll get home three hours later than I expected.

Clinton dropped me off at the Sydney airport this morning a good two and a half hours early for my flight. I walked into a crowded airport, with people lined up in queues as far as the eye could see.

I found my way to the correct queue and asked what was going on. A family from Perth on their way to Disneyworld told me the airport had suffered a power outage. Though the power was on at the check-in counters, the baggage system wasn’t working and the check-in process had come to a standstill.

We chatted for a while until I looked up and saw the displays above the counters flicker to life. My applause was premature, however, as the baggage system was still dead. At least I got a chance to see the displays boot into some Red Hat-flavor of Linux.

The queues got longer, reporters interviewed weary travellers, and airline staff passed out free water and cookies. The mood remained upbeat, mostly. Still the time dragged on.

It took me two and a half hours to actually reach the check-in counter. In other words, the first 100 meters of my trip took two and a half hours. I still had fifteen million meters more to go!

The original departure time had come and gone by the time I reached the gate. People weren’t boarding yet because the majority of passengers hadn’t yet checked in. That tacked on another 20 minutes before boarding began.

The flight was an hour late before I reached my seat. As the power outage had caused a pileup of departing planes, we had to wait to get a tow to the taxiway. Then another wait for the flight data to download into the plane’s computers.

We left Australian soil over two hours late.

Fortuntately, the pilots hauled ass across the Pacific. We made Los Angeles in a little over twelve hours, travelling at ground speeds of 650 miles per hour! Gotta love having the jet stream for a tailwind.

Still, it wasn’t enough to make my connecting flight, which left Los Angeles before I had even cleared Customs. I had another 30 minute wait to get booked on another airline, a 20 minute walk to the US Airways terminal, and 5 minutes for “special screening” once I got there.

Now my US Airways flight to Charlotte is boarding. From Charlotte I fly to Raleigh, getting in around 11:30 if I’m lucky.

That’s twenty-two hours of travel, thirty hours without significant sleep.

At least I’ll be home soon, and shortly after with my family. Woo!

Here’s the story on the Sydney airport power outage.

In this picture, I’m right in front of those display screens, blocked by the people in the foreground. The photog took a number of pictures of me, so I half-expected to see my mug in the paper.

I’m in Los Angeles after a long trip back. The power was out in the Sydney airport, which made my flight two hours late.

I just spent thirty minutes writing about it before my Boingo session timed out and ate my post. Dammit!

I get to Raleigh about 11PM tonight. That’s 22 hours straight of travel, thirty hours with little sleep.

More details after I smack Boingo around.

I’m down to my last 24 hours in Australia. I’m spending it bored out of my wits at this dreadfully slow trade show. Instead I’d rather be outside sailing this beautiful harbour. When I walked in after lunch a few minutes ago it looked like it was going to rain. Rain isn’t appropriate for my last 24 hours in the Land Down Undah.

Once I’m on my plane tomorrow I’ll have about 21 hours of travel to get back to North Carolina. It will take about 14 hours to hop the Pacific. The rest of the time will be spent waiting to get to Phoenix, then waiting to get to Raleigh. Joy. Australia is one reason I’m looking forward to Delta‘s nonstop service to Los Angeles, which begins in June.

More before I go. Cheers, mate!

It’s been a boring day and an eventful evening.

The Linuxworld trade show was only marginally busier today than yesterday. It didn’t have the thrill of doing a keynote speech. To top it off, the free wireless Internet we enjoyed yesterday was unavailable more of the day. Thus it was a long, boring day.

After the show, Gehan, Clinton and I walked over to a Darling Harbour pub and enjoyed a beer out on the pier. After hearing Gehan’s fascinating stories from his time in the Middle East, we parted ways. I hopped onto the tram for a ride back to the hotel.

I relaxed at the hotel until 8, at which time I was feeling pretty hungry. I wasn’t out for fancy food, but I wanted some scenery. I thought I’d head to The Rocks for the scenery and if there happened to be a fish-and-chips place I’d take care of the food part, too.

I hopped a train and was soon at The Rocks. Tempting as the sight of the Harbour Bridge and Opera House was, I kept my lens cap on and headed towards the restaurants and pubs.

I followed a couple into a bistro called Claude’s Kitchen, right inside the Observer Hotel. The huge plate of fish and chips I got for $16 AUD may well have been the best meal I’ve had in Australia. I had to order my dinner drink at the bar, so I walked up the mostly-empty bar and picked up a Killarney’s on draft. It instantly became the best beer I’ve had in Australia.

After I devoured my dinner, I heard music coming from the bar area. Wandering back I heard a guitarist playing in the corner. A crowd of voices began to sing along with whatever forgettable pop song he was playing. I turned the corner to see the bar now filled wall to wall with college-age students wearing lab coats scribbled with risque grafitti.

“Aha,” I thought. “These are the kids I saw wandering around outside when I walked in.” The flock had apparently chosen the bar I was in to roost.

“Uh, what’s the occasion?” I asked a nearby girl.

“It’s a university pub crawl,” she answered as she turned back to her friends.

I considered this a for a moment. I had pictures to take, so I thought of working my way through to the door. Then I got caught up in the revelre in the bar and settled onto a nearby bar stool.

A man was sitting across the barrel table obviously drunk out of his mind. He smiled crookedly and leaned over to my ear.

“Habarasheuhuni Amhahdigehhtal,” he slurred above the din.

I blinked. “Uh sorry, mate. Can you say that again?”

With a look of intent on his face, he slurred his words once again. The guy was falling-down drunk. After repeated attempts to decipher him, I figured out he was asking if my camera was digital. I told him yes, at which point he began to pose for a picture. Humoring the drunken fool, I snapped a picture.

He leaned over again. More slurring gibberish. The word hammered doesn’t do him justice. I shook my head until he began to gesture.

Ah! He wants a copy of the picture!

“Do you have an email address?” I shouted to him. A blitzed, blank look was the reply.

Sorry, dude. No picture for you.

I took a few more pictures of the crowd before deciding to head over to the Sydney landmarks on the water. Standing in my way was a hundred college students crowding around the bar. I was five feet from the door with no chance of getting there. I turned around and found my way out a side door.

As the crowd milled around the front of the bar, I again pulled out my camera and took a shot of the festive crowd. As I snapped the picture, I heard a voice beside me.

“Why are you taking pictures?” came the not-exactly-friendly voice. Had I known what was to follow I would’ve answered “I’m shooting pictures for Girls Gone Wild In Full-Length Lab Coats!” Alas, I did not.

“Because you just don’t see this kind of thing in the States,” I answered, looking up. Next to me were too mall-security types. One had a walkie-talkie microphone on his shoulder. I looked for badges but didn’t see any.

“Why,” I asked, sizing up the situation. “Is there something wrong?”

“Are you with them?”

“Uh, no. I’m an American tourist,” I answered. “I just wanted to capture this on film.”

“You can’t take pictures here,” one of them motioned. “Its to protect their privacy.”

I considered the privacy of a crowd of rowdy people on a public street, but gamely played along.

Then the other one leaned in. “There are females over there,” he said. I almost expected him to do the Monty Python “wink-wink-nudge-nudge” bit.

Oh my god!! He was right! There really were females over there, outnumberd by guys two-to-one in the crowd thirty feet away from me. If you squinted really hard, you could even tell!

This was ridiculous. Time to wind it up.

I feigned surrender. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know there some kind of law against taking pictures.”

“You can’t take pictures of the people,” the other one said. “But since you’re a tourist its probably okay.”

Whew. Nothing more embarassing than getting busted for a phony infraction by a pair of rent-a-cops.

They began to move on. “If a copper sees you,” said one, “he might question you. You can take pictures of the buildings, though.”

I walked away, too, my mind buzzing with the irony of it all. Here is a country that shows American movies practially uncut on network television – stuff that America doesn’t show on TV. Here’s a city with adult bookstores seemingly on every block. Nearby are beaches where women frequently sunbathe topless. If that wasn’t enough, prostitution is legal here! There are brothels right out in the open!

In spite of all the hedonism, I take one picture on a public street of college students dressed like clowns and whooping it up, and I get hassled for it? Doesn’t it follow that if you act rowdy and dress in costumes with racy writing, you’re pretty much trying to attract attention?

Just when I thought I was starting to understand this country it throws me a curve ball. Unbelievable.

I made it to the landmarks. I even took some great pictures. But I did so in a huff. Australia has a lot of things going for it, but I wouldn’t trade America’s freedom of the press for anything! Australia’s approach to modesty is schizophrenic, indeed. It looks like they’ve got some issues to work out.