I can't seem to get much in the way of a satellite lock

for my GPS on this flight; just a single sat! Hopefully

some more will come into view. It seems once there's a

full lock, it's pretty easy to hold and reaquire. Makes

you kind of wonder if a small (USB-recharged) battery

inside the GPS unit itself would not have been a little

useful in preserving state and doing some basic

internal timekeeping.

I've got that traveller's dizziness. It really is like

being dizzy - when you're dizzy your ear tells you one

thing and your eyes another - the disagreement sends

your brain out of whack and you can't assemble a

consensus on which way is up. You feel disoriented and

a little ill. When you've got traveller's dizziness,

which is like a very temporal and severe form of jetlag,

you don't know what time of day it is. Your eyes tell

you that it's 10 in the morning and that you ought to be

eating breakfast and getting ready to start the day.

Your muscles and mind tell you that you've been up for

much too long and really ought to go to sleep. And your

stomach tells you that it's time for another meal. So

everything ends up a wee scrambled.

Interesting note - on the flight from the US to

Germany, there were no class-dividing curtains; we were

told they were no longer used because of security

concerns. On the Germany -> US flight (same plane, same

airlines), the class-dividing curtains are in active

use.

I thought it was interesting how thorough the Germans

were being with their security for JUST the flights going

to the United States. For EVERY passenger there was a

full-body pat down, hand metal detector search, brief

interview, extra hand baggage X-ray scan, and a swabbing

of my camera to check for explosives. Impressive or odd,

I don't know. Not clear whether this was meant to be a

gesture of empathy (hey, America, we care about your

security), or sarcasm (good job frisking our passengers,

America, now we'll frisk yours), but I have to say at

pretty much every passport control, my American passport

has gotten me through with little more than a smile.

I've seen numerous others get more extensive interviews

about their destination and purposes. But it does seem

odd that Germany would seem more concerned about outbound

flights to America than any other outbound or inbound

passengers. Well, maybe it makes sense and I just haven't

thought it through enough.

They're watching skiing on TV - it's been a while and

it's honestly pretty exciting when a group of guys are

in a pack going like 100 miles on a pair of planks of

waxed fiberglass.

Yay - I finally got a lock on with GPS. We're about 100

miles northwest of Amsterdam at 32,500 feet, bearing

341 degrees. GlobalSuiteWireless and USC Wireless nets

just popped up as being available. Interesting.

OK, climbing to 32,600 now (11:04am). Wonder how high we

will go? Hm, I've just lost a fix, despite being locked

onto five satellites. What gives? (11:08am). Hot towels,

incidentally, are like the coolest thing ever. When I'm

rich and famous I want to start lunch and dinner every

day with a hot towel.

Random interesting thought - why not provide bluetooth

GPS on every flight as a novelty for passengers wbo

really want to see where they are? I wonder if Worldwind

has a live GPS input. The multioutput format of the GPS

driver lends itself well to there being a number of

separate applications each doing something different and

interesting with one's live position, all without

getting in the way of each other. I'd love a live

Jeppensen map, for instance, to see when we're entering

various zones, and a commlink to hear the pilots

coordinating transfers. It doesn't look like there's an

obvious option to have Windows set its time from a GPS

device. This seems wierd to me.

3.19pm - there's something about munching camembert and

drinking champagne on a plane that makes you feel pretty

cheerful and high-class. What, I don't know. But I think

I really do like Camembert now. :) (Brie has still yet

to really grow on me)

Lufthansa has a strange setup with their lights; they've

actually mismapped the light buttons to the light for the

window and middle seats - the person in the window seat

has to reach across the person in the middle seat to turn

on and off the light shining on to the window seat.