Courtney Hoskins

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The Terminal

Only without Tom Hanks or Catherine Zeta-Jones or any comedy, drama or story of any kind... Well, the last part is not quite true. There's always a story. Even if you have to delve into the inane to find it. And I do. A lot. Six hours is a long time to have to sit at an airport.

I have to confess something: I am a total tech toy geek. It’s an illness I’ve had since childhood. When the MacBook Air came out, I wanted one. I didn’t want to pay thousands of dollars for it (and what's the point if you can't get that solid state drive), but I wanted one. I think I found a reasonable compromise.

My latest purchase is the ASUS EeePC. For $360, I get the smallest damn laptop I’ve ever seen. It weighs two pounds and is… well, look (and I have small hands):

tiny little laptop…

It comes with Windows XP and (fairly zippy) wireless internet, AND, to my shock and glee, a built-in web cam and microphone (we were right over the Grand Canyon here):

looking at the grand canyon

The tradeoff is that it has no disk drive and an extremely small amount of storage, but for blogging and keeping up with e-mail, it's perfect. I have my iPhone (the last manifestation of my tech illness), but I’m terrified to do anything online with it while I’m in Europe- international roaming rates are… pretty high.

This should keep this blog sufficiently supplied with tales and pictures and videos throughout Cannes. As long as the free wireless I was promised is really free. I had to do some hacking to get it for free here at LAX.