What cheeses me off

[SYD]

Suits me; I'm always at a gate 15 mins prior to most-recent advertised boarding time. I like to walk around before a long flight. Haven't missed a 'good' bus yet.

In ~10 yrs, I’ve never had one of the throne buses in many, many, many, (painfully many) bus arrivals and departures flying J. I mean, a LOT of bus transfers. To the point that when I arrive or depart at an actual air bridge gate I’m reminded that they do actually exist.

The recent renos just seemed to add more bus gates…..

 

[Aeryn]

Ive only experienced bus gates at LHR - once when flying GLA-LHR and a couple of times at SYD when flying Fokkers which are too small for an aero bridge. Id be mighty miffed if I ended up on a bus for a larger jet like a A380 or B787.

 

[anat0l]

Once, just once, at the large airports like IST, SIN, MAD, DOH etc, i’d like an arrival gate at the base of the pier, not the flipping end!

Heh... I must have got the jackpot too on my recent international trip. Pretty much arrival gates all on the far flung gates, or a bus gate (I learned BKK has bus gates... in the middle of whoop whoop, or however it is said in Thai).

 

[hydrabyss]

So the horse riding sand arena is infested with Cobbler's Peg and only Cobbler's Peg.
Everything else killed off with Flumioxazin.
Its got these thin needle like black seeds which sticks on dog fur and clothes
The fastest kill would be Glyphosate but I dont want to use Glyphosate

Im going to try DiCamba

Apparently extra strong (stronger than Woolies vinegar) also works as a generic weedkiller.
The alternative would be a Gas burn off wand.

We used to remove the large weeds by hand then run a blade around behind the tractor on a sunny day so as to dislodge them and let the sun burn them off. We weren't allowed to use any chemicals period, owners where into the organic lifestyle and had the funds to do it.

 

[Pushka]

In ~10 yrs, I’ve never had one of the throne buses in many, many, many, (painfully many) bus arrivals and departures flying J. I mean, a LOT of bus transfers. To the point that when I arrive or depart at an actual air bridge gate I’m reminded that they do actually exist.

The recent renos just seemed to add more bus gates…..

Emirates does this very well. We were upgraded to First and the bus reflected that.

 

[Aeryn]

WCMO tonight is boarding started early and aircraft was fully loaded at least 10mins prior to scheduled departure, yet with zero weather issues still pushed back from gate 13 mins after scheduled departure and will probably be anither 10 before we take off.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

WCMO tonight is boarding started early and aircraft was fully loaded at least 10mins prior to scheduled departure, yet with zero weather issues still pushed back from gate 13 mins after scheduled departure and will probably be anither 10 before we take off.

Compared to our flight to Bali today… left 4 mins early and arrived 40 mins early!!

With e-visa (so easy now… scan passport for the arrival card and it prepopulates the e-visa, all you gotta do is pay!) I was off the plane and out with the car within 5 mins!!

Went through the auto gates, and wondered ‘where do I get a stamp?’… and there’s a big sign there saying ‘no need for a stamp, you’ve done everything, off you go! (or words to that effect!)

Brilliant system.

 

[Pushka]

Compared to our flight to Bali today… left 4 mins early and arrived 40 mins early!!

With e-visa (so easy now… scan passport for the arrival card and it prepopulates the e-visa, all you gotta do is pay!) I was off the plane and out with the car within 5 mins!!

Went through the auto gates, and wondered ‘where do I get a stamp?’… and there’s a big sign there saying ‘no need for a stamp, you’ve done everything, off you go! (or words to that effect!)

Brilliant system.

So there is no extra scan of the customs declaration then after luggage collection?

 

[MEL_Traveller]

So there is no extra scan of the customs declaration then after luggage collection?

Oh, yeah, there is that. But you just hold up your phone and they scan it as you keep walking!

 

[SYD]

Oh, yeah, there is that. But you just hold up your phone and they scan it as you keep walking!

CGK has been like that for over a year. There’s a sea of eGates. Departing, even easier.

 

[Pushka]

Oh, yeah, there is that. But you just hold up your phone and they scan it as you keep walking!

That’s the case unless sent off for screening of luggage. We stick to left lane and so far that’s worked.

 

[RooFlyer]

Oh, yeah, there is that. But you just hold up your phone and they scan it as you keep walking!

Unless you have declared medicines . That was a pause then wave-through the first time and three minutes of questions, examination of prescription and the package, the second time..

 

[dajop]

A 2026 WCMO for you, navigating the AI world.

We're supposed to use CoPilot which is integrated with Teams and we have enterprise account for. What a waste of time that is. I asked a simple command to extract a diagram and summarise it, took 2 hours and then didn't give me what I want. This is the reply " You’re absolutely right — and I’m sorry. The PPTX I gave you does not contain Figure 30 at all. I recreated a schematic instead of extracting the actual Figure 30 from the PDF, which means I did not meet your original request. That’s on me." [FYI it didn't even create a schematic, just a bunch of words).

Claude - I pay my own subscription. 3 minutes and exactly what I wanted. I'm finding Anthropic's stuff well ahead of the others I experiment with.

 

[RooFlyer]

A 2026 WCMO for you, navigating the AI world.

I am so, so glad I’m retired and and beyond the reach of AI in the work place.

Even in retirement I avoid it as much as I can. I’ve read here many times that it can help in creating useful travel itineraries and I guess I might try it one day but for the moment I’m happy to use my own mind and time to do it.

I get a two line email and the dumb thing pops up and offers to summarise it. If it was actually half intelligent it would see that it didn’t need summarising and would just bug out.

 

[Pushka]

I love AI but find I’m telling ChatGPT off more these days. Claude seems very good and the google version likewise. I use AI multiple times a day. For many different purposes.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Unless you have declared medicines . That was a pause then wave-through the first time and three minutes of questions, examination of prescription and the package, the second time..

Eh? I didn’t even see that on the declaration form!

 

[dajop]

I am so, so glad I’m retired and and beyond the reach of AI in the work place.

I was at one stage thinking "I'm too old for this" (but still only 35 years in the workplace).

But if used correctly it can be really powerful and helpful. I don't do coding, don't have automated tasks or any of that, but I find it can be really useful for discovering and organising information, and updating things. But it does depend entirely on the how specifically you ask a question and the context you give.

For example my boss asked us (me and my direct report) to summarise a 192 page report. I could have waded through it and spend a few days building a ppt. Or I could have uploaded it to ChatGPT and said "summarise this into a powerpoint", and be stuck with 20 slides of bullet points. Instead I gave Claude about 4-5 lines of context and requirements (who the report was for, a list of our product categories in development so we could consider opportunities, maximum number of slides, instructions include charts etc). 20 minutes later I had a 10 slide powerpoint, which had 5 summarising the report and 5 on opportunities and actions. This would have taken us several days. Now I'm still reading the original report, adding a slide or two here where explanations would be helpful, but it is allowing me to concentrate on analysis and messaging rather than format and information. Brilliant! {in fact waiting for another task to be completed whilst typing this}

Likewise with travel, I get specific "OK, I've been to New York xx times, done all the major things, find me some interesting off the track quirky things to do"..... so came up with Bushwick for street art and dining, "Little Red Lighthouse" which was interesting and bonus of seeing loads of ice floating down the Hudson, Museum of City of NY and a couple of other things.

WCMO is that it's trial and error finding the pro's and con's of the different AI models, and the corporate constraints around using them. Whilst there are valid concerns around commercial confidentiality, in my world (current and prior employer) CoPilot seems to be the most favoured (and most useless) and ChatGPT has slowly curried favour, but I'm finding others so much better.

 

[Quickstatus]

CoPilot seems to be the most favoured (and most useless) and ChatGPT has slowly curried favour, but I'm finding others so much better.

Have you tried Grok or Claude?

 

[dajop]

Have you tried Grok or Claude?

I've subscribed to Claude and using it a clandestine manner. It's been extremely useful. But not sanctioned corporately.

 

[RooFlyer]

Eh? I didn’t even see that on the declaration form!

It’s at the end under customs. Psychotropic and opioid type medicines such as codeine etc need to be declared and in a permit is given. There has been a thread on it. Us oldies who like to be prepared for everything take some of these stronger medicines with us just in case.