• Scuba dive packages
• Belize beach vacations
• Honeymoon packages

In the summer of 2001, commercial air travel was incredibly painful. Lots of delays, passengers were treated like cattle, every plane was packed, schedules sucked -- it was just plain a rotten way to spend any significant amount of time at all. Then 9/11 happened and lots of people stopped flying.

Well, we're back to the way things were pre- 9/11. Air travel is just miserable. All the old complaints are once again true, with new additions.

1. Food, or lack thereof. A bag of peanuts is a luxury. Airlines want you to bring your own food on board, or to pay them extraordinary amounts for things disguising themselves as food.

2. Code-shares. You no longer know what airline you're flying when you buy a ticket, or whether you're getting the best price. Code-sharing is a huge scam, and the customers are the suckers. How this officially works is that one airline buys a set of seats on another airline then re-sells them under their own brand at whatever price they want. Go do a search on Expedia, and more likely than not you'll see the exact smae flight offered by two different airlines are radically different prices. What's worse, in most cases when you get to the airport the airlines won't have anything to do with each other -- you get a rude awakening when they send you down to another ticket counter to chek in. Here's what happened to me Friday:  I was originally booked on an Alaska Airlines flight to Chicago, connecting to an Alaska code-share flight to Montreal that was really run by American Airlines. But between the time that I booked the flight and Friday, my connecting flight was removed from the schedule and replaced by another one that was NOT a code-share flight. So my reservation went into airline purgatory and my travel agent wasn't notified. Neither Alaska nor American took responsibility for re-booking me on another flight, and when I tried to check in Alaska no longer had a record of a connecting flight for me. In fact, it's worse: the Alaska agent checked me in for the Chicago flight and told me I needed to go to the American ticket counter to check in for the connecting flight in Chicago, but neglected to tell me that she had only checked my bag through to Chicago. I caught this as I walked away fromt he counter and my bag was disappearing into the back on the converyor belt. I grabbed the attention of the supervisor, who was very nice and called down to the baggage handlers to grab my bag off the belt while she called over to American Airlines to sort out my conencting flight. Fifteen minutes later, I had a reservation on a connecting American flight and a promise that the Alaska baggage handlers would re-tag my bag to get it to Montreal. The good news is that my bag did in fact show up in Montreal, but I had to spend all day wondering if that particular miracle would happen.

3. Airline staff who care, or lack thereof. The supervisor at the Alaska counter was the rare exception. My best guess is that airline personnel are so worried about their company going bankrupt and being out of a job, or the courts invalidating their union contract, that their thoughts are just elsewhere. I'm sure they're well-meaning, and that they have their own struggles with the state of air travel today, but they sure do seem checked out.

4. Security checkpoints. As if everything else wasn't enough of a pain in the butt, you literally have to run the gauntlet. Jacket off. Zip-up sweatshirt off. Shoes off. Belt off. Watch off. Cell phone, keys, change out of pockets. Laptop out of carry-on bag. Fight other harried passengers for enough grey buckets to put all this stuff in. Remember to keep boarding pass with you. Hope you don't get randomly spot-checked. Then on the other side, as carryons and buckets accumulate and run into each other, struggle to put your shoes back on, sweater and jacket, belt, watch, put the laptop back in the carryon, make sure you didn't forget your boarding pass (which you had to set down to re-dress and pack up everything again). Then get out of the way fast. On days I'm travelling, I find myself dressing for the sole purpose of speeding my trip through the security line.

Whil in general I'm not living my life to accumulate large quantities of money, I find myself increasingly wanting to get rich just so I can afford to buy a private plane and get a pilot's license, and/or fly executive jets, just to avoid commercial air travel whenever possible. It would be money well spent.

Well, the travel month from hell is finally over. The CHI conference in Montreal was very enjoyable (though it rained most of the time we were there) and my time in Princeton at the engineering school advisory board meeting was also very interesting and enjoyable. But it's so nice to be home, and it was great to spend the weekend with my daughters. I made cinnamon raisin scones Saturday morning, and I went to see my daughters' school play Saturday night. They put on The Children's Hour, which is pretty heavy stuff for a bunch of high school girls. But they were fabulous and I am so proud of them and all of their classmates.

In May, I have one trip, it's only to San Francisco, and it's only for one day. Yippee!!!

• You sneak out of bed at 5.30 in the morning, just to be able to have a cup of coffee in silence
• You haven't been able to have dinner at the same time as your husband for weeks (a crying baby has had you eating in shifts)
• You pick up things with your toes as your hands are always taken up by carrying children
• You cut your finger and have to wear a 'Dora the explorer' bandaid, which is all you have in the house
• The theme tune to 'SpongeBob Squarepants' is stuck in a loop inside your head (Wo lives in a pineapple under the sea? SpongeBob Squarepants!)
• You lie awake at night wondering how on earth you're going to be able to pack sensibly for an upcoming trip (is it possible to bring the baby swing, car seat and the stroller? Will we be exceeding the luggage allowance on the flight? And how many presents and treats do we need to keep Lucas entertained for the duration of the trip?)
• You start to gravitate towards blogs written by other mums. Their words resonate with you like nothing else can
• And you could totally relate to Felicity Huffman's character Lynette in 'Desperate housewives' when she started to take her childrens' ADD medication just to keep up with her pace of life

Yep, being a mum is a crazy thing. It's wonderful and annoying. A blessing and a curse. You wouldn't change it for the world, yet you fantasize about life without children. You are jealous of your former self, of how all she had to think about was herself & at the same time you cringe at how selfish she really was. Being a mum is the ultimate paradox, a black hole of love, that sucks you in and forces you to lose yourself, yet helps you to find your truer self, there where you lost you (does this still make any sense?)

Anyhow, some of the parenting websites and blogs that I have come across and liked:

1. Five minutes for mom. They were even so nice to add my blog to their site and to interview me as well
2. Parent center. They send me weekly updates on baby's developments. It tells us what we can expect at each stage, which is great as we don't have many other babies around us to measure Aidan's development against
3. The mommy blog. Made me laugh out loud. Especially the part about traveling with young children (she deals with the same pre-travel anxiety as me)
4. Happiness is a good nap. Sweet personal blog by a single mother of two
5. Natural parenting. All about attachment parenting
6. Dr. Sears website. His 'Pregnancy' book & 'The Baby' book are my bibles
7. Think twice. Are you debating whether or not to vaccinate? Make sure you read this website.

And finally, you know you're a mum when it takes you at least 10 attempts to write a short blog like this....

Living in Belmopan is just so civilized. We have cable television, DSL Internet, shops that are open till 8 o’clock in the evening and there are tennis and basketball courts around the corner. As it’s a concrete house, it’s nice and cool. There are no creepy crawlies, very few mosquitoes (the town sprays against them), no snakes and (best of all) bin men to collect your garbage!

Living at the Dome is more like being in the Wild West in comparison. You have to rely on yourself and your neighbors for so many things. Finding your own solutions to waste disposal, catching snakes, scorpions, tarantulas, putting out your own fires (we once waited all night for the fire brigade…they never showed up) & now the police asked us for a ‘contribution’ to buy a car and supply it with gas, to patrol our area more.

So again, we’ve come to the conclusion that we’re better off relying on ourselves and on our direct neighbors, even for something like security. It seems to be the best system when you live ‘out in the sticks’ like us.

So that makes our list of what we’re up to at the moment look like this:

• Take care of a toddler and a newborn
• Expand our resort with 2 extra rooms (in what used to be our living space)
• Build our own house
• Look after our guests every day (we’re fully booked most of the time)
• Buy back our old store in San Ignacio (The Green Dragon)
• Revamp our http://www.greendragonbelize.com/ website. Making it a separate entity from the Belize Jungle Dome, as the travel agency ‘Green Dragon Adventure Travel’
• Sort out the deal with our future business partners Tom & Marge
• Set up security systems for the local area with our neighbors

Building work at the Dome. Hard to believe that in this space there will be a bautiful suite soon.

Can you believe that this used to be our kitchen? What a mess...

I'm in Montreal for CHI 2006, then on to Princeton for an advisory board meeting for their engineering school next week.

I'm working up a really good rant about air travel, snce my flight out here very nearly went wrong on Friday. But I'll save that for another post.

Friday morning I dropped my kids off at school, and headed for the airport. On my way in the car I was listening to Marc Broussard, and the untitled/uncredited song at the end of the CD came on.

I wish you freedom
I wish you peace
I wish you nights of stars that beckon you to sleep
I wish you heartache that leaves you more of a man
I wish I could be there, but I can't

I wish you places that sit so still
Where people never ever change and never ever will
I wish I could hold you and make you understand
I wish I could be there, but I can't

Be good for your mama
Cause she'll need a hand to hold
Boy, she loves you
More than you'll ever know
There are rhymes and there are reasons
And times when nothing stayed the same
But you know my love still remains

I wish you wisdom
I wish you years
I wish you armies to conquer all your fears
I wish you courage for all that life demands
I wish I could be there, but I can't

Be good for your mama
Cause she'll need a hand to hold
Boy, she loves you
More than you'll ever know
There are rhymes and there are reasons
And times when nothing stayed the same
But you know my love still remains

I wish we were together
I wish I was home
I wish there were nights where I was never alone
I know I've said it but I'll say it once again
I wish I could be there, but I can't

Damn. I wasn't ten miles from the airport and my heart was already achng to turn around, stay home, and spend more time with my kids. Particularly since I missed a performance of my daughters' choir on Friday night, and I'm going to miss opening night of the school play this coming Friday. In three years they're graduating from high school and heading off to college, and here I sit in a $^%&! hotel room in Montreal, two thousand miles away from them.

I really look forward to CHI every year, but this year the conference hasn't even started yet and I'm already dying to get home. But thanks, Marc, for reminding me where my priorities should be.

I'm in the CHI panel on Mashups.

The BBC Backstage guy is giving a 'Basics' talk on what Mashups are.

Why do developers get involved in building mashups?

• new business opportunities
• it's cool
• they're frustrated with missing features/abilities in what the main provider supports
• to get noticed.

BBC Backstage is BBC's developer network for supporting third parties creating mashups with BBC's data. They only support non-commercial use, and stress that all intellectual property remains solely with BBC. They offer broadcast schedule data, audio and video archives, plus travel data for the UK (train, road, etc.)

BBC launched today reboot:bbc.co.uk, a competition to re-design the BBC home page. Cool idea.

The Google guy is talking about the technical underpinnings of mashups. and why AJAX and lightweight feed protocols make it much easier to do mashup web apps. The data sources are growing faster than specific UI services are, which is a problem at one level and certainly exacerbates UI consistency issues since each mashup developer needs to roll their own.

A good question from the audience about how to address accessibility issues for AJAX applications and machups in general.

Not a lot of good answers to questions; mostly a lot of 'good question, there are people thinking about that, no answer today.'

The discussant is talking about the privacy and security issues behind mashups. For example: do mashups make it really easy to develop a phishing site?

Another issue: authentication for mashups. If you go to a mashup site and type in your password for another site, how do you know what's really going on behind the scenes? Will we see the return of Passport? or will Infocard pick up quickly, or will Liberty Alliance finally get going? Will SSL be required? (is that too costly in terms of getting an SSL certificate from Verisign?)

The discussant is suggesting that mashup developers should develop more like enterprise developers.

The Google guy just said that we need to be careful not to put too much burden on mashup developers to 'do things the right way.' and we should look for technical solutions instead. (my editorial view: there is a natural tension here, but if we really want mashups to take off, the responsibility needs to be both on the mashup enablers as well as the mashup developers)

Is there a separation between mashups on Web sites vs. cell phones? The BBC guy says no.

Some audience questions around the intersection of 'citizen journalism' and mashups, and the issues of accuracy, authenticity and reliability of information. Also if there are errors, how do we build a feedback mechanism from end-users through mashups back to the original data source providers?

Another audience question: mashups are a developer phenomenon today. Is there any chance to make it an end-user phenomenon? What would those tools look like? The Google guy thinks that it will happen eventually, but will just take time.

My takeaway: the discussant (Hart Rossman, SAIC) has thought far more deeply about the issues behind mashups than either the BBC or Google guys. Mashups are very very young, and the hype has masked a number of severe limitations. We've seen a set of relatively simple mashups where the end-users cna remain anonymous (like layering data on top of maps) and that maps (no pun intended) well to 3 of the 4 reasons stated above why mashups are getitng built: coolness, frustration, and to get noticed. The real business opportunities, in order to be realized, will require actually tackling the hard issues, and we'll have to see if and how that happens -- or if not, how quickly mashups dies as just one more fad.

I'm also disappointed at how little discussion there really was about the HCI issues related to mashups -- other than to point out that the HCI/usability community is not at all involved today.