Blogging and Watching TV at 29,000 feet
No, I’m not posting this in realtime to my blog. That’s the beauty of Notepad on a laptop. And no, I’m not watching some way-too-expensive TV offering from an airline. Alaska Airlines doesn’t even have any TVs on board, at least on flights between Seattle and San Jose. I am watching a recent episode of Alias on my laptop, though. I am time-shifting in both directions at once, which is kind of cool actually. 
At this point, 9pm in my household is simply not a good time to watch TV. It is very near my kids bedtime, and thus watching particularly violent shows like Alias just isn’t something I should do. South Park is not something I would watch around my wife (mostly because she doesn’t appreciate the humor), let alone my children. However, watching it on a plane at 29,000 feet when I’m otherwise idle or finding other ways to kill time seems as good a time as any. And while the movie files are about 350mb for 40 minutes of video–an hour television program sans commercials–the quality is absolutely phoenomenal–almost better than my 15-year old TV at home.
Time shifting is something I’ve always done, partially as a result of working at home. I don’t work what you would call conventional hours. I do have a “day job” as it were, but I don’t work entirely conventional hours. I work around my family’s schedule, which means sometimes working outside of normal business hours. I don’t think I put in more than 8 hours a day in on average (sometimes I do put in more), but the hours are not always contiguous. Call it time-shifting my work day.
While I am not a busy jet-setter like Jeff Pulver. I too can benefit from time-shifting. Everyone has 24 hours in a day. Those who can make the best use of that time are highly successful people.
