Your site has sent me 85 flight reminder messages so far about my flight tomorrow, starting at 7am today and continuing approximately one every 2-3 minutes. Please fix this.

There are a few other problems with your site:

• Online checkin required two attempts, with no apparent cause for the failure.
• I was unable to book my last two flights online in spite of repeated attempts in two different browsers. Eventually, I gave up and called an agent but this is not my preference.
• This comment form that I’m filling out right now doesn’t prefill with my contact information in spite of the fact that I’m logged in. Also, on Chrome, it only allows 3 characters in the comment field (when I tweeted about this, several friends replied that "wtf" fits in that space).

As a long-time software engineer and heavy user of many consumer websites, I have to say that I’m sorely disappointed in the quality of your site — you need to hire a serious QA person to test this stuff out before you start inflicting it on the rest of us. As much as I love flying Porter, the online experience is enough to put me off. It might not drive me back to Air Canada (yet), but it certainly is not making me happy.

I tweeted to them about the problems, but I don’t think that they have anyone monitoring their tweets or comment emails on weekends, and I don’t expect to get an answer back for a few days. Even then, it is unlikely to be satisfactory, based on my last exchange with them about their website, which went most along the lines of them telling me that I was obviously doing something wrong. In the meantime, I’ve set up an email filter that removes the messages from Porter as they arrive.

I fly Porter on the routes that it covers because it’s a great in-person experience:

• They almost always have a 20% off promotion available, which undercuts Air Canada fares.
• The airport is 2km from my home, which means that I can actually walk there, or take a $8 cab ride instead of the $55 required to get to Pearson airport.
• I get to take the shortest ferry ride in the world to get there, which earned me the “I’m on a boat” FourSquare badge.
• I am only required to be at the airport 45 minutes before my flight.
• The lounge, available to all passengers, has free coffee, tea, soft drinks, cookies and wifi, as well as comfy chairs.
• I love the smaller propeller planes since it actually feels like flying.
• They fly to Midway rather than O’Hare.
• The flights that I’ve taken so far have a good on-time record.
• If I’m at the airport early enough to catch the previous flight, they’ll change it for free if there’s room on the flight rather than trying to shake me down for extra cash (are you listening, Air Canada?).

The only downside is that they don’t have US customs and immigration pre-clearance in Toronto, meaning that I end up in the international arrivals area at the destination airport where there is rarely a NEXUS kiosk and often a lineup. Not a problem for early morning arrivals, but from late morning on, I’ve sometimes ended up stuck in a crowd of arriving European travelers.

The good news: the flight reminders seem to be holding at 85 for now.

Thanks for this mobile productivity goes to the following iPhone apps: NextBus (actually a mobile site, not an app), DropBox, TTC Exit Guide, Kindle, FourSquare and WordPress.

Some of this might seem trivial, but these things enhance my life and make me more productive. Knowing when the next streetcar will really arrive tells me whether I need to take a taxi to avoid being late. Accessing active project documents allows me to some work done even thought I’m in the middle of a haircut. Knowing which subway car to board can save me battling through crowds on the platform, only to end up at the wrong exit. Even reading a book is business in this case: ironically, it’s “Empowered”, all about allowing people to use their own tools and methods for getting things done better.

In case you were wondering, the ringer is off: I take calls and read email on my schedule, not just because my device tell me to. Use your mobile device to work the way that you want to, not to turn you into a phone and email slave.

Lars was pretty much my own personal flight attendant: there were only 4 of us in first class, and he had part-time help from the purser and another flight attendant, so I didn’t want for anything. He was so adorable, I wanted to tuck him into my bag and take him with me. As I got on the plane, he was there to greet me by name, put my bag overhead, give me pyjamas, slippers and a ladies toiletries bag, and bring me a drink and a dish of macadamia nuts. He served me Piper-Heidsieck champagne, talked me into having the caviar as an appetizer as he walked me through my dinner order, and when I accused him of being a bad influence by offering me dessert, he said “I am here to seduce you” (I’m quite sure that the literal German translation of that is less innuendo-laden than the English).

Although the food was obviously prepared ahead of time, it was expertly plated and quite good: as good as many restaurants that I’ve been to. An amuse bouche of a seared scallop with mango salsa and a dollop of avocado; then the caviar accompanied by finely chopped egg, chopped onion, sour cream and toast. Technically the caviar was one of the appetizers, but I had also ordered the roast guinea fowl, which was a few slices of quite moist (cold) meat on a bed of thinly sliced beets with hazelnuts scattered around. The main was salmon steamed with ginger, a bit overcooked but to be expected for food that was prepared at least an hour before, with quite good rice and bok choy. And of course, Lars remembered to bring my fish knife. I washed that down with a glass of a German white burgundy, then had a taste of a muscat dessert wine with a slice of Cambazola and a few grapes.

I never sleep well on planes, and this was no exception. Although the seat lies completely flat, it’s a bit hard and lumpy – I think the lumbar support sticks up in the wrong place if you sleep on your side. However, dozing for a couple of hours does take the edge off an overnight flight, and the afternoon departure from Toronto meant that it was only midnight in my brain when we arrived in Dusseldorf at 6am. I’m completely looking forward to the return flight, which will be in daylight so that I can enjoy the excellent service even more.

If money were no object, I’d travel like this all the time. Instead, I do it every 10 years or so, on points – I think that the last time I did a long haul first class flight was going to Australia in 2001, also on points. That makes it an especially nice treat when it does happen, but does make it hard to go back to cattle class the rest of the time.

First class on the ICE train from Dusseldorf to Ulm, on the other hand, was a big disappointment: probably the most uncomfortable premium class seats ever, very shallow, lacking about 3-4 inches of support under my legs. No power at the seats (although with the magnificent HP Mini, I didn’t need it for the 3-1/2 hour trip) and no wifi. The tray table didn’t reach far enough out to put the computer on and type for anyone with arms less than three feet long, which meant having the netbook on my lap. To be fair, it was on time, fast and efficient; but I’m not going to miss the train ride if I end up driving back up to Dusseldorf.

Recently I was in Boston, and had an extraordinary example of how not to treat a woman (or man) dining alone. I had a night free — or rather, opted not to attend the conference dinner event — and walked down to the Legal Test Kitchen, which is part of the Legal Seafoods chain. The menu on their website looked good, and their site said that they had wifi, which was doubly good for playing around on my iPod Touch.

It was a Tuesday night, so they were a bit busy but not overly so, and there was a free table immediately available. So far so good, until I had to wait 15 minutes for the waiter to take my drink order. I ordered a glass of one of the most expensive wines on their list (still reasonably priced), and asked the waiter about the wifi since I couldn’t find an open node. He didn’t know, but promised to find out. A long wait for my glass of wine, then I ordered the most expensive dish on the menu, a lobster Pad Thai, in part on the recommendation of the waiter who claimed that it was his “favorite dish”. No wifi information was forthcoming, and when a different waiter dropped off my food, I didn’t even get a chance to order a refill for my now-empty glass. The Pad Thai was okay, not great, and I really missed that second glass of wine. My original waiter came back when I had finished and asked if I wanted another glass of wine (um, a bit late for that, buddy), then asked if I still wanted that wifi information (ditto).

All in all, I felt ignored, and am unlikely to go there again. This may be an issue of a single diner, since the larger tables around me seemed to be getting fairly good service, although not from the same waiter — mine seemed to just disappear off the face of the earth for a long period of time, that being the time when I wanted another drink and the wifi information. I probably should have complained, or flagged down enough other passing waitstaff that one of them would have reminded mine that he had a customer here, but was feeling too lazy and non-confrontational to make a scene.

I tipped a standard 15%, feeling that I should have reduced it due to the bad service, but the bill amount was small enough that the difference may not have been noticed anyway. I was left with the feeling that I’d really like to get a message out to waiters everywhere: consider that we’re not leaving a crappy tip because we’re cheap, we’re leaving a crappy tip for crappy service.

It’s not the nirvana of free airport wifi, but better than nothing: 15 minutes of free wifi via Boingo in the Toronto airport, which is enough time to sync your email in a pinch.

I’ve had pretty good experiences with Zipcar so far; I documented my first one here, and have rented with them a few more times since then. In Canada, I’ve never had the problem with the gas card that I had in the US on my first rental, it’s worked flawlessly. I have had a few times when the car wasn’t as clean as it could have been — the prior renter leaving crumbs on the seat or coffee rings on the console — although I have to admit that it’s still cleaner than my boyfriend’s car. They also dropped their rates a couple of months ago, making it even closer in price (or cheaper, depending on the length of rental) to a regular rental car while remaining much more convenient.

I’m having a lot of fun watching how my Flickr photos pop up in different places around the web.

The flight down here on Wednesday was a really pleasant surprise. Except for leaving from Toronto terminal 3, which seems so outdated compared to the newer terminal 1, everything went smoothly. We flew to Charlotte on a 737-400 — an adorable little airport with rocking chairs instead of benches in the main concourse — then I changed concourses to board an identical 737-400 on to Fort Lauderdale, only to find the same flight crew on board, a weird coincidence. Both flights landed early, which means that they’ve likely set their schedules overly long to account for any delays, but at least that way there’s many less missed expectations. [I think that this is common practice now; I was on a flight back to Toronto recently that arrived 30 minutes early, which meant that I had to wait around for my ride since he was counting on the flight being on time.]

Even the in-flight magazine was great, with several articles of interest: ferry trips on BC’s inside passage, luxury “camping”, designer purses made out of auto upholstery fabric. I took it with me to the hotel to finish, and grabbed a few references out of it for future travel plans.

One last really nice thing: when I booked the flight at the last minute (less than 24 hours before I flew), only centre seats were available on the online seat selection. However, the online purchase process ingested my Air Canada Aeroplan number, and sometime between then and a couple of hours later when I did the web check-in, it had detected that I’m an Aeroplan Prestige (silver level) member and put me into better aisle and window seats. Bonus.

Although I prefer Air Canada because they tend to have more direct flights to places I’m going, I’d definitely fly US Air again.