One of the small but notable annoyances of air travel is the scarcity of electricity en route to your destination. Air travel boomed long before the advent of portable electronics like laptops and iPhones, and as such, airports and airplanes are ill-equipped to provide the juice travelers so desperately need. While some flights offer power, it’s far from common, so the time spent waiting for a flight at the airport is crucial charging time.

Airports have always needed to be vacuumed, so even the oldest of them has a few power outlets scattered about. Many airports have also added additional outlets over the years. There’s never enough to conveniently go around, however, so their use needs to be maximized. My readers, good-looking and smelling faintly of a summer breeze as you are, no doubt know how to properly handle this scarcity. The rest of the world is less perceptive, however, so you may find it useful to point others to these simple rules for airport electricity.

Seat Selection Matters

When it comes to the airport seating, not all seats are created equal. There are plenty of seats around, so unless you’re planning to use a power outlet, don’t sit down at a chair in front of a power outlet.

One Seat Per Person

At airports like SFO, there are often a pair of seats in front of a pair of power outlets, perfect for two people to charge up. When seated at a pair of seats like this, the other seat is not for your bag, your feet, or even your child. It is for another person who is in need of electricity, so that he or she may also use an outlet.

One Outlet Per Person

Prioritize, you miserable bastard. Do you really need to use your laptop and a portable TV at the same time? And for the love of god, your iPhone charges over USB with your laptop. Yes, that laptop which you’ve already got plugged in to the power.

Acceptable Usage

So, you’re seated next to a power outlet. One and only one power adapter is plugged in to that outlet, charging your laptop. Your bag is at your feet next to your seat. Perfect.

And then you go and spoil it all, by doing something stupid like video chatting. Video chatting, particularly video chatting without a headset microphone, is completely unacceptable behavior for an airport. If the safety of the planet is at stake, and you apologize profusely, then perhaps an exception could be made.

If you’re calling your adult child to chat about your vacation, however, security should escort you out of the airport immediately. I’m sure Fort Lauderdale was lovely, but the rest of the airport doesn’t need to hear about it. We certainly don’t need to be treated to a five minute story about that bout of food poisoning you had, complete with a physical demonstration of your retching.

Oh yes, I’m writing about you, reprobate-sitting-next-to-me-at-this-very-moment. You sadden me, you sicken me, and I can only hope someone will point you to this post.

Conclusion

Choose your seat wisely. Use just one seat and one outlet. Don’t use the power for activities which are sure to annoy a large percentage of those seated around you. Follow those simple rules, and you’ll avoid being a thoughtless jackass, at least when it comes to electricity at the airport.

Twitter is one of the hottest companies in the world right now. There are all manner of uses for the service. While by and large it’s full of banality and minutia, some Twitter streams provide useful information. Others simply contain amusing psychosis. Twitter can provide news, entertainment, or simply act as a way for social circles to keep track of one another.

None of these, however, get to Twitter’s true reason for being. I believe that has finally been found, in the form of Michael Jordan’s Twitter stream. Just look at some of this gold:

• Do you think Dragons ever existed a long long time ago?

• A cactus is kind of a shitty houseplant.

The stream exhibits a child-like wonder, coupled with a surprising breadth of interests. He’ll even share an important message about your eternal soul. Alternately, Michael Jordan simply enjoys Perry Bible Fellowship, just like you and me!

Perhaps these tweets have you thinking “Hey, Michael Jordan and I aren’t so different”. Jordan will quietly but clearly show you the error of your ways:

• Gotta love my champ rings.

Give the entire great, too-short stream a read. You’ll see that a peek inside the mind of the greatest basketball player of all time may just be the reason for Twitter to exist.

Update: I first saw this account many months ago and I recalled having seen a Verified badge, indicating it was real. There isn’t one there now, and presumably, there never was. The account is likely fake, though I’m not sure if that makes it better or worse.

The Seattle Mariners are a semi-professional baseball team currently playing in Major League Baseball’s American League West. This week, they’re at the center of two hilarious stories.

First up, a report has appeared that last week Ken Griffey Jr. missed a chance to pinch-hit in a game because he was napping back in the clubhouse. An unnamed Mariner told the Tacoma News Tribune:

“[Griffey] was asleep in the clubhouse. He’d gone back about the fifth inning to get a jacket and didn’t come back. I went back in about the seventh inning — and he was in his chair, sound asleep.”

A second unnamed player said:

“He doesn’t sleep well at night, he’s away from his family, he’s comfortable in the clubhouse.”

Griffey grew up in the big leagues around his father (Cincinnati Reds great Ken Griffey Sr.) and entered Major League Baseball at the age of just 19. It’s certainly possible Junior is more comfortable in the clubhouse than he is in his own bed. It’s also true that Griffey’s dreams may be the only place where the Mariners are actually winning. But still – what the hell?

Junior snoozing during a game is only the third-most embarrassing thing about the 2010 Mariners, however. The second-most embarrassing thing is the case of Eric Byrnes. Byrnes was picked up by the Mariners in the off-season, but he wound up hitting just .094 in 32 at-bats. That’s a woeful 3 hits, which even on the Mariners is enough to get you cut.

Ok, the Mariners had a lousy player, and cut him. That’s ordinary enough. The twist is that Byrnes didn’t join another big league club, nor even a minor league team. No, he’s actually switched sports. Byrnes is now playing slow-pitch softball in Menlo Park, California, and he seems quite happy about it:

“This is going to be a blast. Playing with my buddies. I can’t wait for my first hit. I’m going to ask for the ball.”

What makes Byrnes so nonchalant? It might be his famously laid-back attitude. It also might be the fact that he’s still earning $11 million dollars for 2010, making him the most grossly over-paid softball player since…well, ever.

To be fair, the Mariners only paid the league minimum ($400,000) to Byrnes. It’s actually the Arizona Diamondbacks, who signed Byrnes’ guaranteed 3-year, $30 million extension for 2008-2010, who are on the hook for the rest. That means that in 2010, they paid Byrnes $11 million dollars to get 3 hits, for another team, and then leave the sport entirely. Perhaps Arizona General Manager Josh Byrnes (no relation, supposedly) will be finding himself out of the big leagues soon as well.

Nevertheless, it was a Mariners jersey Eric Byrnes was wearing just a few nights before he stepped into a new batter’s box, aluminum bat in hand, waiting to wallop an underhand pitch tossed to him at roughly 10 mph. Seattle was his last stop in the big leagues, the last rung on his slide down the ladder.

So one of Seattle’s players was asleep during a game. Another was literally one step removed from a beer-league softball team. And yet the most embarrassing thing about the Mariners right now? It’s actually their 13-21 record.