Good morning from McCarran airport. After a frustrating time dealing with Southwest airlines I'm parked comfortably at the gate. Another hour will pass before the flight boards. However, a wayward passenger made a trip too close to the wall and now all the early-birds with their "A" boarding passes are standing for the foreseeable future.

The Southwest problems began when I arrived a little over two hours before my flight. Standing in line for an hour before any agents came to check in bags was frustrating. Then they arrived and said that although I'm allowed 150 pounds of luggage it has to be in three seperate bags or a $25 per bag sur-charge is imposed. So the extra books for boys state will end up costing an extra C-note unless I find another bag along the way to put five pounds of luggage in. Bah!

Dawn was making its way down the hills to the south of the valley as I arrived at the gate. There is always something spectacular about both dawn and dusk in the desert. It is a beauty that is unrivaled and unless experienced first hand is hard to imagine. The runway has been quiet as I write with the exception of a Janet Airlines jet.

It goes without saying that when I went to get a cinnamon roll Cinnabun was closed but Pizza Hut was open - at 5AM. This is going to be an interesting day.

Andy Bowers of Slate has an article about the problems related to the ease by which someone could get on an aircraft without having their true identity checked. He suggests the problem is simple to fix. I'm not so sure. As Bowers notes in the articles there are plenty of tech savvy, intelligent people out there who might like to do harm. They can easily, as Bowers did, modify a boarding pass in a few minutes. They could, however do much the same thing with a traditional boarding pass, not just the home printed one, or with slightly more effort produce counterfeit government documents. Anyone who has been around a college for long knows that the ability to get one's hands on fake id's is not limited to international spy-masters. Changing the homespun printing of boarding passes will, for a time, possibly make travelers believe they are more secure. It is all really mostly illusion anyway. The name-based no-fly-list is based on a fallacy itself that a terrorist would use their name or noms de plume to purchase tickets in the first place.

Here's a test to see if I can get the movies working with Quicktime Streaming Server.

It didn't work. QTSS does not seem to want to work. The only thing more frustrating is QTSS Publisher which seems to be complete waste so far. (Note to Apple when you have templates you have to also copy the graphics with them). Click on 'Read More' to see the video coming from a plain old web server.

Dave Winer has been writing recently about wanting hotels to show when they have wireless. I agree completely. It's amazing that "data port" is listed but free internet doesn't even make the long text description of hotels.

For the record the Quality Inn in Fort Collins, Colo. has a great free high-speed wireless connection.

Another good place to look for internet connections, either wired or wireless, is public libraries and university libraries. Colorado State University and University of Nevada, Las Vegas both have free public internet in their libraries.