DaveTraynor.com

First of all, don’t be that person who insists that while everyone in the line is dealing with the fact our flight has been cancelled, his (or her) situation is unique.

“I can’t wait. I have to be in Calgary this morning!”

What a tool.

Fortunately, I was far enough away from that guy that I could just ignore him. But I felt for the staff that had to deal with him.

As I write this, I’m sitting in the departure lounge at the airport, twiddling my thumbs (virtually) and waiting for another flight. The early-morning flight I had booked was cancelled when some wimpy pilots couldn’t land their plane during the hurricane we have happening here right now. The announcement said something about wind gusts and the fact that they had tried to land twice and been blown off the runway, or something like that. Sounds like a feeble excuse to me — and the obnoxious guy who just has to get to Calgary agreed with me.

Anway, kudos to the Westjet staff, who handled the cancellation with their usual good humour and whisked us through a fairly complicated rescheduling fiasco with a lot of class. I don’t know who’s in charge of their crisis training but it certainly paid off today. Oh, did I mention that while all this was happening, the power was completely out here in the terminal?

At any rate, I’ve got the better part of day to kill out here. I’m supposed to be on a later flight but so far, the wind is still playing havoc with the schedule here. The smaller planes seem to be able to land, but the larger Boeing 737’s, like Westjet uses, are still not able to make it in.

Oh, I almost forgot — today’s incident gave me the perfect chance to practice my new best thing. It’s just two words that go a long way to keeping us sane in situations just like this one — “Hmmmm…that’s interesting.”

To see what I’m talking about, read Kathy Sierra’s great post on Creating Passionate Users.

It’s Christmas time again and that means lots of list-making is happening all over the place. So I thought it would be a good time to point you to one of my favourite little on-line apps, TadaList.com.

This little gem is exactly what it says it is.

You just sign up, and presto! You’ll be creating lists, checking things off and feeling very up-to-date and plugged in, to boot!

It’s easy, fast and free. And you can print out your lists, send them to other people and even share the list with others, including letting them add to it. Want to see my list?

It’s a handy little utility. I use it all the time.

If you like reading and especially if you like reading about reading, and writing and books and booksellers, then you’re going to love this series.

Forbes.com has published a special report on books. And what a treat it is.

But a word of warning. You could end up spending a lot of time working your way through this, so make sure you’ve carved some time out of your hectic schedule first. I’ve only begun to work my way through the many articles in this great series, but it’s something worth bookmarking and returning to at your leisure.

Here’s a snippet from the introduction:

Are books in danger?

The conventional wisdom would say yes. After all, more and more media–the Internet, cable television, satellite radio, videogames–compete for our time. And the Web in particular, with its emphasis on textual snippets, skimming and collaborative creation, seems ill-suited to nurture the sustained, authoritative transmission of complex ideas that has been the historical purview of the printed page.

But surprise–the conventional wisdom is wrong. Our special report on books and the future of publishing is brim-full of reasons to be optimistic. People are reading more, not less. The Internet is fueling literacy. Giving books away online increases off-line readership. New forms of expression–wikis, networked books–are blossoming in a digital hothouse.

People still burn books. But that only means that books are still dangerous enough to destroy. And if people want to destroy them, they are valuable enough that they will endure.