Chil's Point of View….

My flight from Seattle to Chicago was delayed. So as a result, I was going to miss the Chicago to Champaign connection flight. The next available flight from Chicago would not have got me where I needed to be on time. So I picked the car rental in Chicago, spent a night at a hotel near Ohare airport, and drove the 2.5 hours drive to Champaign the next morning. It was not terrible at all. I had my mobile device and some directions, which helped me get where I needed to be. The delayed/missed flight turned out to be a good experience after all.

I made it on time to geek it out at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. I manned once of the mobile devices booths, and demo’ed internet connection sharing (as a 3 click process). I spoke about information rights management (IRM) and SMIME in messaging, especially to the people with security interest. I wanted to demo the GPS over Bluetooth combined with the windows live services application (http://wls.live.com) but, the GPS was not reading the satellites from within a building. All in all, devices are always an excitement.

Urbana-Champaign is a typical college town. The town is easy to navigate, and places not too hard to find. I did not get to do as much exploring as I needed to do.

I did not have to drive back to Chicago, as my original reservation living from Willard’s airport remained the same. But because of the time zone, I needed to make sure I was at the airport by 4 AM PST (Seattle time). I refused to adjust my watch/laptop to central time while I was there.

Again, this was 80+ weather – really warm. I had AC in my hotel room, and I had to fold the sleeves on my long-sleeved shirts. As I boarded the plane back home, the temperatures announced for Seattle was in the 40s. I guess Seattle is really in winter mode.