We Went From Phoenix, AZ, All The Way To Oklahoma…

And now we’re home. Sorry I didn’t get to post anything here — our hotel’s “business center” charged $0.10 a minute to use their computers. How dumb is that? I could see if people were standing in line to use them, but the computers were just sitting there, useless. They didn’t appear to be in high demand at all.

The conference hotel had public Internet terminals, however, but they tended to be busy. What time I had I spent posting to OKMensa.

My first draft of this entry included a very long diatribe about airport security. I decided I wouldn’t subject everyone to that, so I pulled it out and made it a story. If you decide to skip it, don’t worry, you’re not missing anything. :-)

Most everything else of interest can be found in the various stories at OKMensa. It was your typical Mensa event — lots of strange people reveling in their strangeness.

One small point about the web design workshop I attended — I want to host it next year. :-) It was a very good overview of how to design a web site, but they left out a lot of important points about designing a good web site. Things like standards, separating content from layout, and usability were not adequately addressed.

Speaking of usability, I have a bone to pick with the Phoenix airport. Driving to the airport on Sunday, I was following the signs to Terminal 2, which listed our airline. Then, just before the various lanes split off, I saw that the sign for Terminal 4, besides listing the airlines housed there, also listed “Car Rental Return.” Since the signs for terminals 2 and 3 (There is no Terminal 1. Weird, huh?) did not mention “Car Rental Return,” I rushed to follow the sign that did. Once I got there, the guy checking in the car asked what airline I was on. I told him, and he said I should have returned the car to Terminal 2, which is now 2.5 miles away.

So, because of signs that are incomplete, we ended up taking the inter-terminal bus back to Terminal 2. Whoever decided what to put on those signs should be dragged out in the street by Jakob Nielsen and beat with a very large compass.