Dave’s Personal Blog

I’m in NYC for work this week. I had dinner with a friend (and former client) Monday night and had to work late Tuesday.

However, Wednesday night I spent the evening at Neutral Ground playing type 2, finishing 2-1. I was playing a slightly modified build of Da Rosa’s top-8 faerie deck from ProTour Hollywood.

Last night was 4 rounds of SSE draft where I finished 2-2. I drafted a BR deck that held it’s own quite well. It either won or went down fighting.

I’ve enjoyed playing there and talking with the staff. It’s a fun place.

I’ll be in NYC next week for work. In addition to work and meeting up with some friends, I’m planning to spend most evenings at Neutral Ground playing Magic. Tonight I’m building block & standard versions of QuicknToast to take.

Update: After deciding on a Faerie deck for Block night, I figured I’d simplify and use Faeries for Standard night as well. I’ll take the deck I took to Regionals: da Rosa’s from PT Hollywood. For block I’m taking Takahashi’s from GP Kobe.

Guess where I was yesterday.  The Mothership (and yes… I got the tShirt)I actually spent the afternoon walking from my hotel (at rt 85 & E El Camino) to Apple and on to Hobee’s on Stevens Creek Blvd. Nice walk, beautiful day, cool Apple swag.

I’m writing this en-route from Montreal to Vancouver. Nancy & I scored a couple of awesome seats: Row 25 on an Air Canada Airbus 321.. exit row… with a full missing row ahead of us… and the 3 seats to ourselves. So we’re hacking our way across Canada.

We (Nancy & I) fly to Vancouver this afternoon for the first Canada On Rails conference. It’s going to be fun. It’s my first keynote and the big public unveiling of the new, improved rSpec.

Yesterday I flew back to my client site outside Chicago. En route I needed to get a new TN-1 visa so I made sure to get a lengthy stop in Toronto to do so.

So for the stick… while the border officers were pleasant and down to business, there weren’t nearly enough of them on duty to efficiently handle the amount of people going through the system. A simple 10 minute job (my TN-1) took far too long to make it through the queue. Once it did it was processed efficiently. In fact, I had to wait so long that I ended up missing my connection, albeit only by about 15 minutes.

Now for the carrot… I went to the gate from which my flight had oh so recently departed and explained the situation to the Air Canada agents still there. They promptly printed me a boarding card for the next flight to Chicago. I had almost an hour before it boarded so I was able to grab a quick lunch. Everything worked out for the best after all. I am most impressed with how Air Canada handled the situation… immediately and with a smile. My checked bag even made it to Chicago with me.

In response to yesterday’s NY Times column by Davd Pogue where he says:

“Thou shalt not entomb thy product in indestructible plastic. Sure, we understand the temptation: you want your packaging to be sturdy yet see-through, so shoppers can see exactly what they’re buying. Trouble is, you’re caring only about whether people take your product home; you apparently don’t care about what happens after that. You don’t seem to mind that getting those hard plastic packages open is a dangerous ritual involving scissors, steak knives, band saws and, eventually, blow torches.”

I run into this problem all the time. I live in an area bereft of big box electronic superstores, but I spend a good chunk of time working in places that have such amenities (within a short walk of my hotel in Detroit area are both a BestBuy and a compUSA). So, when I’m onsite I generally go technology shopping. As I said, I run into the plastic entombment issue that Mr. Pogue talks about in his column regularly. Add to that the fact that I fly there, internationally at that. For those who don’t fly much, that means that I have no weapons of mass plastic destruction at my disposal.. nary a nail file with which to dis-entomb my latest crumpet of technological excess.

I have however come up with a viable solution that is universally (at least in my experience) applicable. The lowly hotel pen. Most packaging has a spot where the pen (cap removed) can be jammed through the packaging, making a nice sized hole. Near an edge is best. Often you can, using the hole and leveraging off nearby protrusions or sides of the packaging, you can generally rip through the plastic with relative ease. Alternatively you can make a series of holes with the pen, allowing you to eventually rip the packaging open enough to extract whatever happen to be inside.

Sadly, the pen must typically be sacrificed. But it’s a small price to pay.

As a side note, I have to give Apple the nod for their packaging. Not only is it easy to get into, but it’s often as well and as imaginatively designed as what’s inside.