Tag: delays

Ground-stoppage, redux

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Our plane pulled away from the gate on time last night at Dulles. The pilot said wheels-up to wheel-down time to La Guardia was 39 minutes. We taxied toward the runway and as soon as I heard the engines spin down, I knew what was going on: another ground-stoppage in La Guardia. This happened the last time I took this flight too.

For those not familiar with the terminology, a “ground stoppage” is when air traffic control halts traffic into an airport that hasn’t already taken off from their departure points. This usually occurs when the skies are so busy that it becomes difficult for ATC to handle all of the traffic. Last time, we were held on the ground for 15 minutes. This time, we sat there for an hour. It was after 8 PM when I finally arrived at La Guardia. Fortunately, it did not take long to get my luggage, nor did it take long to get a taxi and I was at Jen and Jason’s just after 8:30 PM.

We headed over to Jackson Hole for dinner and then back to Jen and Jason’s place to hang out for a while. Jen and Jason gave me my birthday presents, which were awesome! They got me five books, all of which were copyrighted in 1972, the year I was born. There were 2 Isaac Asimov books, a collection of stories by Frederik Pohl, a 1973 yearbook (covering 1972), and the March 1972 issue of F&SF. I was really overwhelmed!

Jason ended up putting Jackass on TV. I’d never seen the show before and found it to be so utterly stupid that it wasn’t even funny. But Jen and Jason seemed to like it. I took some medicine last night and was pretty tired and we made it an early night. Lights out around 11 PM.

Delayed! Workout!

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I was up at 4:30 and caught the 5:10 AM Yellow line train as usual. When we got to the Pentagon stop, however (one stop before I get off the train at Pentagon City) we were held there for fifteen minutes due to track work. Fifteen minutes doesn’t sound like much, but it meant that by the time I got up to my office, I would not have time for my full cardio workout this morning.

Rather than go after work today, I am planning on going at lunch. I talked to someone here who goes to the gym at lunch and says that it is not too busy. Mainly I want to get in my 40 minutes of cardio and if I can do that, I’ll be happy. We’ll see how it goes.

My work laptop was supposed to be imaged last night so that the image could be transferred to a new hard disk. I have a feeling it didn’t happen, or it didn’t work. When I picked up my laptop this morning, the screen seemed to indicate that the image creation process never got started. That would be annoying, but not surprising.

I should actually get some code written today on my main project, which would be nice for a change.

And it hasn’t started snowing yet, but the estimates are now anywhere from 1-3 inches.

Flight delays

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I just got a notice from United that my flight from Pittsburgh that was scheduled to leave at 7:30 PM this evening is now scheduled to leave at 9 PM. Weather delays. Oh, well, it means that Jim and I can have a leisurely dinner at the airport. (It also means that I won’t get home until well after 11 PM.)

UPDATE (7:40 PM): At the airport now. They just made an annoucement saying the flight would be here around 8:40 PM, so we’d be under way around 9 PM. I may go into work late tomorrow, depending on how late I get home.