Greetings from Amsterdam. Peter and I have a 10 hour layover here. Luckily, we were able to talk our way into the Crown Room lounge without having to pay anything. That means free food and drinks, reasonable chairs, wifi, and power outlets for the duration of our stay here. The flight from Atlanta to Amsterdam was by far the most comfortable trans-atlantic flight I've ever taken. They had personal video systems in the back of the headrests of all seats, even in coach. Each one was capable of showing its own video on demand, and their selection of movies and TV content was impressive. I watched No Country for Old Men, Juno, I Am Legend, and Michael Clayton. And boom, the flight was over. Got no sleep... but that's OK. If only all flights were this comfortable. As an interesting side note, they had a problem with the video system right at the beginning and had to reboot the system. When they did this, a standard Red Hat Linux startup scroll went by. Could see some details about their onboard filesystem, the processor being used in the headrest displays, etc. Interestingly, each headrest has its own embedded Linux box in it (with a puny 266 MHz processor) and the video data is grabbed from a central fileserver that is mounted over the network.

One other humorous side not: DOE did not put the Netherlands on our country clearance cable, meaning that we are not allowed to leave the international departure area (i.e. we can't go into town during our 10 hours here). However, because the layover was so long, the airline was not able to check our luggage through. As a result, we had to leave the international departure area to claim the luggage and recheck it. LAWBREAKERS!!! Peter and I are total criminals now. Delta made us do it.

Also, notice the weird alliteration itinerary: Albuquerque - Atlanta - Amsterdam - Almaty - Aqtau. <dramatic chord>