For me:
Newark
LGA
Kennedy
Philly
Atlantic city
Teterboro
MacArthur
And dozens of small airfileds.
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At some times of the day I have zero airports in a two-hour drive.
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JFK
LGA
MacArthur
Westchester
Newark
Teterboro
Sullivan
Sullivan and Westchester are in my circle, too.
I learned of Teterboro and MacArthur airports in the NYC area from reading/listening to the John Corey books by Nelson DeMille.
Union station itself is a mess, the rest of the system is usually a bit better marked, particularly if you can find an entrance directly from the street and not through a building.
I do have an airport pretty close to where I liveā¦but flying out of there would have required connecting some place, and flying into Pearson, which has been North Americaās worst airport this summer.
In terms of total time door-to-door (on paper, when planning, at least), itās faster to drive a couple of hours and take a nonstop flight into YTZ downtown.
The other stations Iāve transited have been fine. I appreciate that they clearly indicate ānorthboundā, āwestboundā in the signage on the platforms, something that isnāt the case on some citiesā transit systems. If I were only presented only with the option of going towards Kipling or Kennedy, and only knew as a visitor that I wanted to go Westā¦
FWIW, todayās additions to things I wish I had my phone to do:
- Office map. (Weāre mostly WFH/hybrid, and therefore have a cube reservation system. I knew what cube I had for the day, but had to wander around quite a bit to find it, since I couldnāt pull up a map on my phone.)
- Phone again. (Most cubes in the office, and a surprising number of conference rooms, donāt seem to have phones anymore,)
- Teams client.
- Calendar
- To-do list
- News source
- Calculator
I already mentioned these in my list of uses for my phone, but since I painfully felt the lack today:
- Boarding pass
- Password manager
- Camera
I wanted to register for the CAS meeting in Minneapolis, and book my travel arrangements, since I got the official blessing from my boss to go, and wanted to go ahead and expense it now, rather than waiting and needing to do an extra expense report. Unfortunately, I failed to consider that I use LastPass for a password managerā¦and I donāt have that installed on my work computer. Had to look up the long, random strings of characters that serve as my passwords for the CAS website and the corporate travel system on my personal laptop and transcribe them. I probably should have waitedā¦but I wanted to get it done.
Got to the airport, and discovered that Porter doesnāt have check-in kiosks. Stood in line for 40 minutesā¦
The view of the Toronto skyline from the airport terminal is quite lovely. Itās the sort of thing I would normally take a picture of and send to my wife.
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I almost added āpassport / customs toolā to the list.
Most of my international travel is simply driving back and forth between the US and Canada. This was only the second time Iāve flown on an international flight (the other instance was back in 1999).
Billy Bishop doesnāt have US Customs preclearance (although I thought I read thatās coming soon; they have US-bound flights segregated from domestic flights already), so I had to clear customs when I got back to Boston.
My flight, of course, arrived after several large international flights got in. I was dismayed to see a huge line inside the customs hallā¦and a much shorter line for folks who used US Customs epassport app.
Fortunately, my NEXUS card gets me access to the Global Entry kiosks, where there was almost no line. Kind of a creepy experience ā remove mask and glasses, have picture taken, and get a receipt with my picture, name, and flight number (with no prompting from me, although I guess it could have remote-sensed my NEXUS card or passport). After that, step up to the booth, have a quick 10-second interaction with the border guard (āAnything to declare?ā āA cheap souvenir snowglobe and two KitKats, total value less than $25 Canadian.ā) and I was done.
Also, I do not recommend using oneās laptop as an ebook player in the car. Sound didnāt work well (although I guess I could/should have taken the time to get it connected to the carās audio via bluetooth), and I did have one bad moment where I had to do a panic stop due to someone elseās failure to stop, grabbing the laptop to keep it from going flying.
Two new additions to the list:
- Traffic advisory tool
- Speetrap alert tool
ā¦both side effects of using Google Maps when in the car. The former wasnāt an issue ā traffic was light at that time of night, and there werenāt significant nighttime road construction headaches. And the latter was addressed by driving more conservatively than usual / knowing the usual speedtrap locations along the route. Still, I was aware of the lack of that information, beyond the navigation aspect.
When I got home, I missed the outside lights automatically coming on for me, and being able to turn off the house alarm and unlock the door with a simple voice command. Fortunately my wife was still awake and she was able to let me in after some knocking; I didnāt have to go find the emergency house key in the dark.
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Last time I took the ttc, I parked at yorkdale and took the subway downtown for a basketball game.
On the way home, it was shoulder to shoulder. One of the guys Iād attended with was on the same train. He yelled over, where are you going? I responded with ā the York something shopping center where I parked '.
No word of a lie, the entire train burst out laughing. I was goimg to North York, the complete opposite direction. Country fella in the city I guess.
Beats NYC subway though, where in an attempt to get money, a hobo lifted his shirt to show his gunshot wound. And you could smell the wound.
LSD is naturally extracted, not synthetic.
For some reason I always thought LSD was created in a lab and not natural.
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Helicopter is not heli-copter, but rather helico- which means spiral, and pter - which means wings, like in pterodactyl
Copter then is misused as an abbreviation
same as hamburger, which is hamburg (a city) and -er. And burger is now misused.
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Another addition to my list of smartphone uses:
- Banking (check-depositing, specifically)
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Seems to me that once youāve formed the new word, shortening it to copter or burger is not a misused abbreviation. That is, the word is different than a combination of its roots.
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One last (I hope) item for the list:
I had to run my wife over to Urgent Care this morning. We walk in, and were asked: āCould you please wait outside until we text you that weāre ready?ā
I hope that this is the last entry regarding my learning experience about my dependency on my smartphone. The new phone arrived just before we left (good thing, since a signature was required). Weāre back home; the wife is resting, and Iāve transferred over the SIM card and done the minimum to have it functional as an in-house pager.
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So should it really be pronounced as helicotter? Shouldnāt the āpā be silent?
This is what I use passwRrod123! for everything, See what I did there? Switched the o and the r. And, I capitalized a random letter in the middle.
Aināt no way someoneās gonna guess that.
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