An unproductive weekend

I had been planning on heading home to Ann Arbor for the weekend. Unfortunately, Northwest Airlines cancelled my flight on Friday evening, and was unable to rebook me for my weekend trip. Apparently, all of their flights to Detroit on Friday and Saturday were all booked. This left me in Virginia, working on coming up with alternate plans. While I had planned a busy weekend in Michigan, unfortunately, the weekend turned out to be pretty unproductive. I think the highlights were getting my Yellowstone photos online, and going for a bike ride this afternoon.

I find it interesting that I have been back in Virginia for only one week, and I already can't wait to leave.

Yellowstone pictures posted

It took me a while, but I finally posted my Yellowstone pictures online here. I hope that you enjoy them.

Picture sorting

I am still in the process of sorting through my pictures from Yellowstone. I started with over 400 pictures, and I have trimmed them down to about 200. I'm planning on putting the best 75 to 100 of them up online. In the meantime, here is a nice picture of Mammoth Hot Springs.

Back from Yellowstone

Last night, I flew back to DC from Montana. After a cold week of rain and snow, the ninety-five degree weather in DC did not seem all that bad. However, despite the lousy weather in Yellowstone (and getting a bad cold), I enjoyed my time out there. I plan on getting my pictures sorted and online over the next week.

I was rather amused by the TSA last week while flying out from Salt Lake City. The airport had computer displays on the wall playing a video about the security process. The video included a warning that passengers should report suspicious behavior, and as an example of suspicious behavior, it showed someone taking a picture of the screening area with a camera phone.

While I'm sure that taking pictures of the screening area is security related, it has less to do with airport security and more to do with TSA job security. As security professionals know, in general, a system that is designed around the principal of "security through obscurity" will fail if exposed to intense scrutiny. Airport screening areas are highly visible areas that can be easily observed. One or two trained individuals could easily conduct complete surveillence on the area without detection, and as a result, airport security cannot rely on any details of the screening area being kept secret.

So why does the TSA want to encourage the belief that taking photos of the screening area is suspicious behavior? Photos and videos taken by passengers could document incompetent screeners, illegal behavior, and civil rights violations. Imagine what would happen to TSA if YouTube started being flooded with videos showing abusive secuity personnel, TSA agents stealing items from passengers' belongings, or TSA screeners failing to perform their jobs. TSA does not want the American public to come to the realization that the system is completely flawed, and is nothing more than mere window dressing against the threat of terrorism.

Plus, this is the same TSA that is deploying millimeter wave scanners to provide images of people under their clothes. Do you really trust some entry-level security person to not enjoy checking out pictures of your naked daughter?

Improvising in Salt Lake City

I am on my way out to Yellowstone for a week of vacation, but my trip did not quite start as planned. My flight out of DC was delayed about three hours, which meant that any chance of making my connection in Salt Lake City vanished faster than tax dollars being spent by Congress. Rather than wait until tomorrow with the vague hope that Delta might actually put me on a flight to Salt Lake, I changed my hotel plans from Billings to Salt Lake, took the flight out, and am spending the night in Utah. This means I should actually make it out on a flight to Montana tomorrow morning.

While I was waiting around in DC, I watched the Democrats work on trying to figure out what to do about Florida and Michigan. It was amusing watching all of the parties jockey for position. Of course, Clinton herself originally agreed that the Michigan votes would not count for anything, and now her team is horrified that Obama might get some votes from Michigan's compromise. Her desperate attempts to drive the Democrats into the ground are pretty much the only thing that might save the Republicans this fall.