intraplanar

On the plane ride back from Boston, I was getting no time announcements of any kind, and I kept thinking we'd be there right away. (I'm still convinced that we went more slowly than usual from the lights of Mpl-StPl to landing in Seattle, and usually I'm taking off from the Twin Cities and still have to get up to speed.) If I'd realized how long it'd be, I probably would have gotten more books out of my second bag, but I didn't want to climb over the aisle-seat guy.

So there was crosswordage and snoozing and scribbling, and one of the things I was really wishing for was an in-plane text messaging system. My thought was of a MUSH, but IRC would really make more sense. It'd work -- it could all be hardwired between the people on the plane, so there wouldn't be any pesky outside transmission. I could have done a global, "wow, look at that!" the several times I saw cool things, and not worried about bothering people who didn't care. There could be channels set up for people who wanted to discuss topics, though airplane net-sex really ought not to count toward the mile-high club. It could even upload a Usenet spool before takeoff and download when the plane touched down. And if we had screens anyway, we could have the nifty display of where the plane is that was so satisfying to watch on the British Airways flight to England. And then I would have known what time it was.

So, my biased audience, shall I figure out how to submit a patent application?