Dear readers, I am truly sorry if last week I was unable to publish any news on the site, and I would like to, once again, thanks Ike Leus for his help and effort to bring a few things online for us all. So what happened? Well Last week I was supposed to fly to the US for business and at my arrival at JFK I have been “flagged” for a “random check”. This is not the first time this happen to me in the US over the past decade, but this very particular “check” has been rather new to me.

Basically, as soon as I showed my ID I have been asked to follow one of the TSA agent to a room for a few minutes and left alone there to later been asked to come and pick-up my stuff. Once my luggage in hand I have been asked to let them check my bags, a first for me actually in the US, the last time I had to open my luggage to an agent was over 10 years ago in Japan at Nartia. Still I understand the need for such procedure and complied.

But when I started to open my Laptop bag things just went different. I brought with me two iPhones, one iPad and one MacBook Pro, and have been asked to separate personal devices from professional ones. I pointed out that the laptop was indeed a business one and then I have been told : “Ok, we are ONLY interested in your business devices and nothing else” then “Is your laptop encrypted?” (Which was the case) “Then sir there is two ways we can handle this, either you give us the master password now and you can go within an hour or you can refuse and this will make things much more complicated for you”. Since I have nothing to hide I gave them the master password. Ten minutes later the TSA Agent came with another Agent that introduced himself as the person that will handle my computer and announced that it will take at least two to three business days for me to get my computer back, actually it took four!

Anyway, I indeed received the laptop back and it was waiting for me at the hotel four business days after my arrival (5 in total if you include the day I arrived), and call me paranoid but I have yet used it for work and don’t know what I will do with the Laptop! So here you are I was in NYC for business without my business tool and was not able to update any news on AkihabaraNews for a week, I am very sorry for this and I came to the conclusion that next time I will fly to the US, I will either buy a new laptop once arrived or will bring one without any HDD.

Did I waist my time? No, luckily for me I succeed to manage and to ease my pain I succeed to stumble upon two actors that I really like with :

James Patrick Caviezel who was shooting for a new Episode of : Person of Interest

And Phil Burke of Hell on Wheels