What happens in Vegas… sometimes comes home too

April has been the busiest traveling month for me in years. A combination of conferences, client work and a work reward trip means that I’ll be physically in the office for three days this month!

My month began with a trip to Las Vegas for the CTIA Wireless conference. In the spirit of the week, I decided to try Air Canada’s new mobile check-in.  The way it works is that you check-in as usual on their website then in the final step you can choose to print your boarding pass or request one be sent to your mobile device. I entered my mobile number and waited. And Waited…. and waited.

My Air Canada mobile boarding pass never came.

Fortunately for me, the airport wasn’t very busy and I was able to easily reprint my boarding pass from a kiosk just outside the security gate.

The conference was a great learning and networking experience -although it pales in comparison with the world mobile congress in February. Next year I don’t think I’ll go to both CTIA and WMC.

My week at CTIA made a turn for the worse when my iphone was stolen early Monday evening at an industry event at the MGM Grand. It was my fault – I lent my phone to a woman who had been hanging out with us who wanted to check her voice mail while having a smoke. She never came back.  Although irritated, I knew I could replace it the following day at the Apple store.

There were no iphones left in Vegas.

Fortunately I was back in the U.S. a few days later in Augusta – working on one of our projects. I again tried to check-in through the Air Canada mobile service and again nothing came to my SMS inbox.  This time I also printed a boarding pass from home. I never had this problem using West Jet mobile check-in…  

I went to the first at&t store and declared that I wanted 5 iphones.  The store manager said no problem – but I had to activate all 5 to accounts and do a credit check. Apparently people have been buying iphones and reselling them for use on non-att&t networks? No way!

She ended up selling me one iphone as I convinced her that I needed to replace the one that was stolen in Vegas. I gave her my Toronto number and she sold me the iphone.  15 minutes later I was back in business after popping in my Rogers SIM card and taking advantage of some free software I found here.  

Imagine my surprise a few hours later when my girlfriend called with some unbelievable news….

Vegas was calling and they have my iphone.

I couldn’t believe it. My iphone was found at the ESPN bar at the New York, New York center.  The gentleman who found it looked at my favorites list and called home. All he needed was my home address and my credit card number… We had second thoughts – was this a fraud? A ploy to steal my identity…along with my iphone?

Fortunately we have access to a Purolator number that was attached to a work address. 5 days later, I’ve got my iphone back… unscathed!

I was thinking of sending a bottle of Canadian maple syrup as a thank you to my new friend in Vegas. What would you send as an appropriate thank you?

I’ve got one more trip this month – so this blog will be on auto-pilot for the next week. I wonder if Air Canada’s mobile check-in will work this time…