SFO now lets you walk loved ones to the gate without a plane ticket

San Francisco International Airport is now allowing approved visitors without plane tickets to go past security, bringing back a once familiar airport ritual: walking loved ones to the gate and meeting them when they arrive.

This would (almost) win me back from OAK. That’s a brilliant perk.

I could either fly out at 5AM with a 1 hour layover, or 7AM with a 6 hour. And that’s why I’m sipping coffee at 0230.

If you get on a plane, stick your carry-on at the very front, then walk to the very back so that there’s no room for the frontward peoples’ luggage when they board and everyone has to wait for them to trek to the back and stow it and return to the front, you are a bad person and should feel bad.

The GL.iNet GL-AXT1800 travel router I bought a year ago is on sale today for 38% off. If you’ve been on the fence, get this now.

Summary: check into a hotel and connect this, instead of your phone, to the paid WiFi instead. Then connect your phone, laptop, Switch, whatever to the router’s WiFi. Only pay for the one device, have your own firewall in place, and route everything through your own VPN if you want (we watched American Netflix from Germany).

I’ll never travel without one again.

The afternoon’s adventure: Traveler’s Notebook aficionado nerdery.

My wife and I went to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.

My god.

My god.

It’s never been so hard to make myself stay and learn about something important.

In an older post, I talked about making a project template for trip planning. The goal is to build a comprehensive list of everything I might want to prepare, pack, or do before, during, or after a business or vacation trip. Before I made this template, I was more anxious: Did I forget to do anything? Do I have everything I need? What am I missing? Now I can relax and concentrate on the fun times ahead.

Friends have asked me for my list to use as a starting point for their own, and this is that lightly annotated list. Regrets from past adventures inspired every item. The moment I’ve booked a trip, I copy this template into my to-do app, then delete everything that doesn’t apply this time. For instance, if I’m going to visit family, I can use their pillow instead of packing my own. If I’m going to Chicago in winter, I don’t need swimming trunks. If I’m traveling for personal reasons, I may not take my work laptop. It’s much easier to remove items I don’t need than to scramble to remember the things I do need.

As always, the “update the travel template” action near the bottom is the critical feedback loop that makes this all work. Every time I’ve wished I’d done or packed something, I made a reminder to add it to the list for the next time. If I were to start over with a new template having that as the only item, after a few trips that template would look a lot like this one.

As soon as travel is planned

• Schedule time off at work ¹
• Call the vet to make pet boarding arrangements

Three weeks before travel

• Ensure airline has TSA Pre✓ info

One week before travel

• Notify the bank about travel ²
• Buy travel toothpaste
• Buy disposable razors
• Buy travel shaving cream

Two days before travel

• Get passports from safe
• Check in to flight
• Get $40 from an ATM ³
• Download reading material ⁴
• Stop eating spicy food ⁵

Day before travel

• Charge the USB battery ⁶
• Pack pants
• Pack shirts
• Pack undershirts
• Pack underwear
• Pack socks
• Pack shoes
• Pack jacket
• Pack sandals
• Pack shorts
• Pack belts
• Pack a wearing-around hat ⁷
• Pack swim trunks
• Pack a sun hat
• Pack a sun shirt
• Pack gaffers tape ⁸
• Pack water bottle
• Download podcasts and meditations ⁹
• Pack dopp kit ¹⁰
  • $20 bill
  • Brush/comb
  • Hair gel
  • Deodorant
  • Bottle of shampoo
  • Bar of soap
  • Razor
  • Shaving cream
  • Toothbrush
  • Toothpaste
  • Floss
  • Lip balm
  • Nail clippers
  • Sewing kit
  • Safety pins
  • Curtain clips ¹¹
  • Eye lotion
  • Meds and vitamins
  • Q-tips
  • Eye drops
  • Gold Bond powder ¹²
• Pack first aid kit
  • Band-aids
  • Blister bandages ¹³
  • Ibuprofen
  • Melatonin ¹⁴
  • Allergy meds
  • Indigestion medicine

Night before travel

• Put passport card in bag
• Put backup credit card in bag ¹⁵
• Set wake-up alarm
• Charge laptop
• Charge iPhone
• Charge iPad
• Charge Apple Watch
• Charge AirPods
• Charge Switch
• Remove TSA-unfriendly stuff from bag ¹⁶
• Pack USB battery
• Pack passport book in suitcase ¹⁵
• Pack handkerchief
• Pack food bar
• Pack AirPods
• Pack Switch
• Pack magazine for plane ⁴
• Pack boarding passes
• Pack sunglasses
• Pack journal

Day of travel

• Wear my Apple Watch
• Turn on Fog of World ¹⁷
• Set the thermostat to vacation mode ¹⁸
• Pack laptop charger
• Pack iPhone charging cable
• Pack iPad charging cable
• Pack Apple Watch charging cable
• Pack USB charger’s charging cable
• Pack AirPods charging cable
• Pack multi-device charger
• Pack laptop
• Pack iPhone
• Pack iPad
• Pack pillow
• Buy airport stickers ¹⁹

The day before return

• Check in to return flight

The day of return

• Buy airport stickers
• Set the thermostat to normal mode
• Put away passports
• Update the travel template ²⁰

After return

• Submit travel reimbursement request ²¹
• Look for travel reimbursement check ²²

Airlines Restrict ‘Smart Luggage’ Over Fire Hazards Posed By Batteries : The Two-Way : NPR:

“Beginning Jan. 15, customers who travel with a smart bag must be able to remove the battery in case the bag has to be checked at any point in the customer’s journey. If the battery cannot be removed, the bag will not be allowed,” American said in a statement on Friday. The same day, Delta and Alaska announced similar policies on their flights.

American’s policy dictates that if the bag is carry-on size, passengers can take the luggage onboard, so long as the battery can be removed if needed. If passengers need to check the bag, the battery must be removed and carried onboard. But if the bag has a nonremovable battery, it can’t be checked or carried on.

An FAA spokesman told The Washington Post that the airlines’ policies are “consistent with our guidance that lithium-ion batteries should not be carried in the cargo hold.”

Last month I wrote: “Listening to an ad for luggage with a built in USB charger, which may be the worst idea ever. Now your suitcase can grow obsolete. What if it breaks? Or a bigger battery comes along? And you always have the weight penalty even when you don’t need it.” I think we can all agree now that this is a terrible idea for many reasons.

I don’t travel a lot, so when I do I invariably find that I’ve forgotten something important (9 PM the night before: “say, dear, where are we boarding the dogs?” “I thought you were doing that!”). I wrote an AppleScript to copy items from an OmniOutliner document to an OmniFocus project so that I never have to forget again.

I love OmniFocus. It runs my life. But it lacks any kind of a template systems to let you quickly churn out copies of a project. That’s exactly what I needed here, though. Fortunately OmniOutliner fills that gap and gives me a nice way to describe that project. Here’s how mine starts:

When I run the AppleScript and say “I want to travel on June 24”, it creates actions like “Call the vet to make pet boarding arrangements, with the Phone context, due on June 3 at 5PM”. I add everything to this list:

• USB gadgets to charge
• Toiletries to pack
• Things to remove from my messenger bag (so I don’t find myself in line at security and realize I’ve still got my pocket knife)
• People to notify, such as telling my credit union that I’ll be using my debit card in some exotic place like Topeka and please not to block it as fraud

A magic moment for me was hearing Merlin Mann’s suggestion to add an “update this list” action:

A couple of days into my trip, I get a reminder to add anything new I’d forgotten or wish I’d done differently. This turns my template into a living document of exactly my own personalized requirements.

Over-eager airport security has recently taken to making travelers unlock their phones and tablets for examination. This is both unforgivably invasive and trivially easy to defeat. Here’s how to protect your data¹ on your iPhone or iPad² when traveling.

Simplest: disable Touch ID

• Enable a six-digit passcode on your device.
• Set your device to erase itself after 10 failed passcode attempts. You should do these two steps anyway!
• Before you get to airport security, turn your device off. iOS devices require a passcode to unlock themselves the first time after they’re turned on. For dumb legal reasons, passcodes are generally thought to be protected by the 5th amendment, but fingerprints are not.

Now you have at least the physical ability to refuse to unlock your device. Be prepared for mental or legal pressure to supply your password, though. File this under “better than nothing”.

If you want to keep your current device

• Turn on iCloud backup.
• When it’s finished backing up, reset your device to its factory settings.
• When you get where you’re going, restore your device from backup.

You’re traveling with a device, but one as bare as the day you originally bought it. Be prepared to explain why you’re carrying an empty device.

Keep your device, but less suspicious

• Turn on iCloud backup.
• When it’s finished backing up, reset your device.
• Start using it. Add a few contacts. Set up a (disposable) email account. Add some songs.

Now you have a plausibly used device. When you get to your destination, reset your device again. Restore it from backup. This is more work than the previous instructions, but also less suspicious.

If you’d rather travel bare-handed

• Turn on iCloud backup. Let it finish.
• Leave this device at home.
• When you get where you’re going, buy a replacement device. Restore it from the backup you made earlier. Now you have an exact clone of the original.

This is the most expensive option, but you can’t unlock what you don’t have.

Conclusion

Searching travelers’ devices at airports is security theater. It’s a massive and inconvenient violation of privacy, and only the world’s least prepared criminals would ever get caught this way. I guarantee I’m not the first person to think of backing up a phone and restoring it at my destination. Since it’s ineffective and almost certainly unconstitutional, cooler heads would recommend ending these pointless searches. Don’t wait for that to happen. Protect your data.