How I Accidentally “Joined the Mile High Club”

Or, I should say, the biggest lesson I ever got in what can happen while you are out of pocket, and how you need to be careful before you are disconnected for hours.

I’m a subscriber to Gogo Wireless Internet, so I sometimes use it just briefly while on a flight.  On a flight from San Francisco to Philly, I quickly pulled up the internet to check my email.  The Gogo login page had a link to check yourself in on FourSquare, so I clicked on it.

I was able to check into the sky.  Which really amused me because of the Louis CK bit (warning, Louis CK sometimes uses colorful language, and I can’t remember if he did here).

<scroll down for the video if this formatted weird>

So I checked into my chair in the sky.  Or so I thought.  And then I closed my laptop.  I dozed for a little bit.  I ate my gourmet pasta in some sort of white sauce with … is that pasta with a side of pasta?  (Yes it was).

Imagine my horror when I pulled up my tweets almost six hours later and saw

Badge on FourSquare

Which was funny except anyone can see my twitter feed.  Friends and work contacts alike.  And an important work contact happened to retweet it, which got retweeted, which got … well, you get the point.  Colorful commentary got added as it went.

And I didn’t comment on it for six hours.  And it was just sitting there on my twitter feed, confusing and amusing people.

When I finally saw it, I brushed it off with:

thanks

and most of the damage was my personal embarrassment and lack of control of the situation.  I was able to follow up with people afterwards just to make sure they knew why FourSquare decided to induct me into the Mile High Club.  But had I been online sooner, I’d at least know my twitter account automatically tweeted that out.

So, before you go into a plane and plan to be offline for a while–pay attention to what you let auto-post, auto-tweet, and make sure you haven’t said anything too controversial that you might need to offer follow up commentary on.

With how connected this world is, 6 hours is a really long time.  Everyone knew about my foursquare check-in before I knew it was there.  And luckily, it is the type of thing you can laugh with people about, even though it was horribly embarrassing.

But whenever I look at my Foursquare account, this is staring at me.

Badge on FourSquare2

Mocking me.  Reminding me.  I must be very careful when I decide to go off the grid.  And if I’m subscribing to Gogo anyway, maybe I should make sure I log in each hour–just to make sure nothing’s gone awry while I’m in the sky.  After all, I shouldn’t be the last to know when I’ve, er, joined the Mile High Club.

 

About Jeanne Marie Hoffman

Former bartender, still a geek. One equal part each cookies, liberty, football, music, travel, libations. Stir vigorously. +Jeanne Marie Hoffman Jeanne on Twitter

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4 comments

  1. I love that bit! =)

    • Jeanne Marie Hoffman

      Haha, it’s one of those things you can look BACK on and laugh at, but at that time… Especially the retweet from the work contact. Now I know why they say the phrase “the color drained out of her face” because I could feel it slowly leaving.

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