Yesterday was a long day, spent mostly at airports and on
airplanes. The final session of the Tcl conference was yesterday
morning, and it was the best so far; Kevin Kenny presented a particularly
good paper on optimizing Tcl code. Then Michael Cleverly and I and the
big guy from Washington D.C. whose name completely eludes me had lunch at
the McDonalds at the Pacific Center Mall, and went off to Vancouver
Airport.

You can fly from Vancouver to a number of U.S. cities, so to make
things easier you go through American customs in Vancouver instead of at
your destination. This is nice, as it gets it out of the way when you’re
not in a rush, i.e., when changing planes in Portland. On the other
hand, once you check in you’re stuck in a tiny little gate area without
many amenities. As I’d gotten to the airport well in advance of my
flight on the theory that I’d rather spend my time walking about the
airport than walking about Vancouver with a heavy suitcase, this was an
unpleasant discovery. On top of that, all of the electrical outlets were
dead, so I couldn’t even pass the time writing weblog entries on my
laptop.

But I’m home now, and I can honestly say that all of the airport security
people I encountered, both coming and going, were polite, efficient, and
no more intrusive than necessary. And, shower curtains to the side, the
Crowne Plaza Hotel Georgia was an extremely pleasant place to stay.