AT&T's coverage map for Washington and Oregon:



Doesn't look too shabby... except that's got 2G thrown in, which is sloooooow and doesn't let you use voice and data at the same time (one of the things they've been plugging.) Let's see what it's like with only the coverage you care about:



If it's not 3G, it's not coverage. The first commercial UMTS installation happened over eight years ago, you recto-cranially-inverted people at AT&T. You have no excuse.

Updated after the cut.

( Update after the cut )

Sprint's EVDO:



The loser, T-Mobile's UMTS:



Amazingly enough, USCC finally realized that it's the 21st century now and we want EVDO. They just recently started turning on 3G in the northwest, and are moving much faster than TMo, so maybe there'll be something worthwhile in a few months.

Only 140ish vias. Would be nice if I could convince pcb's toporouter to work (there's a reason it's completely undocumented.)

I just accessioned a 90-page hardcover book that JAL gave to their first-class passengers in 1965. My copy came with the comment card (which refers to HND as an international airport) and pocket guide to various cities (including Karachi, yay). I suppose I'll have to do a full book report at some point, but for now, a snippet from the "Etiquette on Board" section:

Got some photos; more to follow.

The Marriott Hunt Valley Inn appears to have an extremely frakked-up wireless network -- it's assigning client addresses in a completely different netblock from the default gateway. This problem appears to be popping up in Linux for some reason, although my Android phone works fine. The solution:

sudo route add -net 172.30.1.0/24 ath0
sudo route add default gw 172.30.1.1

You will now be able to type a random URL into a browser and click through to teh Intarwebs. THIS HAS BEEN THE VOICE OF THE MYSTER-OPS. WE KNOW YOU CAN HEAR US, EARTH FEN.

Cranky Flier reports on a United talk at the PhoCusWright travel conference. This quote says it all:

Josh had a good question that seemed to be almost an afterthought, but it was important that it was asked. He wanted to know what “class” the airline was trying to be in when it said it wanted to be “best in class.” Were airlines like Singapore and Lufthansa included?

Tim responded that no, they weren’t. They’re only looking at North American carriers. And then he said, “For us to say we want to be as good as foreign flag carriers is overstretching.” Ouch. So they want to be the best of the worst, apparently.

Full article here.

...until the 2008 Japanese Language Proficiency Test (日本語能力試験). Yes, that means it's scheduled for 7 December. SOAS has charged my credit card, so now it's time to book train tickets and hotel.

Last week, I bought a Mamiya 645 1000S and a few lenses off a contractor at work. Looks like I'm back to shooting film¹ now; although if I'm going to deal with all the negatives of film (no pun intended), 35mm is something I don't ever plan on going back to, other than to run some Velvia rolls on a friend's Canon PC lens. (He's got a 5D, and I'll dust off the old Elan II body for this occasion.)

Unfortunately, while I exposed one roll of Provia 100F and got some good pictures, my shiny new scanner won't arrive until next week, so JPGs will have to wait.

Next on the agenda: Maybe head up to the quarry or Birdlip once it stops raining—which could potentially happen as early as Thursday.

¹Not exclusively, of course — I still like my D300.

Maytag Cheese

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United is dropping their service between Denver and London, but is delaying the effective date so as not to affect Worldcon. Details from the Denver Business Journal.

Just as I get elite status somewhere, they start going to heck. (I'd much rather be elite on BA, but UA's the contract carrier LON-WAS, and anyhow DoD employees aren't good enough to fly EU airlines under the partial repeal of the Fly America Act, so the trips for work made the decision for me.)