Stupid flying

There's a new website called farecast.com that lets you check out pricing trends for different flying routes to figure out if prices are rising or falling, or when flying will be cheapest. So I'm trying to buy tickets to travel from Detroit to Portland over New Years, and I'm finding it really tough to get cheap tickets. The graph below from farecast explains why:

So apparently, right around Jan 1, all the flights are really expensive before dropping back to their reasonable price of about $320. I understand supply/demand and all that, but I have to say this really sucks. No other type of transportation works this way. Trains, tolls, bus fares, or ferries don't raise their rates around certain times of the year by almost 100%. I would even prefer if they just flattened the prices at a slightly higher rate rather than gouge people who have to fly during specific times. This is yet another reason why airlines sucks and they all deserve to go out of business.

New friend

I'd like to give a shout-out to Mr. Hound Blog and his new site, the appropriately named
hound-blog. Check it for pictures hounds doing what hounds will, which as far as I can tell mostly involved sleeping and looking dopey.

Boo to AT&T Universal Card

I just got off the phone with a representative from AT&T Universal. I was trying to cancel my credit card because I have something like half a dozen, and I just got a new Northwest Card. To my dismay, the AT&T person got all hostile. She asked me why I was canceling this card, and I said it was because the card is not linked to any incentive program. This was not a lie because I got the Northwest Card for the miles so that the airline doesn't treat me like shit, which it does if you don't maintain Elite status. The AT&T card gives me exactly nothing.

We enter in medias res.
(How did you decide to cancel the card? Randomly. What? No rewards. So then she went on about how she could give me this great card with cash back on all purchases.)


AT&T Rep: Blah, blah. You'll have Blah blah interest rate and blah blah cash back rate blah blah.
ME: I really just want to cancel my card.
AT&T: What interest rate are you getting on your other cards now?
ME: I don't carry a balance.
AT&T: (Pause) Well this is a cash back offer. Who doesn't want cash back?
ME: Look, I don' t want to mean, because I know this is your job, but I am very committed to canceling this card. (Searching on LLBean website for boots. It's snowing!)
AT&T: You said you wanted rewards. So what do your other cards have that I can't offer?
ME: I would really just like to cancel my card.
AT&T: You don't care about getting cash in the mail? (Playing her ace card)
ME: No. I am not motivated by cash.

I can't believe I had to say that. I felt like a jerk. Realistically, a 1% return rate on all of my purchases is not sufficiently motivating.

AT&T: (long pause) What is your address?
ME: Why?
AT&T: (pause) So we can send you your cancellation notice.
ME: Oh....

Everyone always wants to know why I don't like to use the phone or make business calls. I'm afraid of unpleasant conversations where I feel like I have to be rude to get my point across. Luckily, I'll be on AT&T's records for a year in case I decide I want to reapply for my card.

Artsy cat photo

I took this nice picture, and even though Monday night catblogging is even less traditional than Tuesday night catblogging, I just had to put it up.


Don't you feel like Andre and TT are having complex thoughts about life at this moment? There's something almost philosophical about their gaze.

Controversial post

Given our apparently low readership, I was surprised to find that Ms. Boo's post on Sri Lankan Air was apparently quite controversial. Quoting commenter "Nike" (presumably not his/her real name?):

Fuck off you racist pricks!

I'm gonna fly SriLankan and there is nothing you can do about it

http://www.srilankan.aero

Which begs the immediate question - how on Earth did he/she find our blog?

Or perhaps the more pressing question - is this post really racist? I don't really see how that particular post could be so construed, although I suppose it does display some disregard for non-FAA regulated state-sponsored airlines. Looking up Sri Lankan airlines on wikipedia, it is apparently a well-regarded if somewhat small airline, winning international awards recently:

In March 2003 the Skytrax Research Agency’s worldwide passenger survey voted SriLankan, for the third consecutive year, Best Airline of the Year for Central Asia. In that same year TTG(Asia) voted SriLankan Best Airline in South Asia. In 2001 the UK’s Wanderlust magazine placed SriLankan eighth in its Top Major Airlines travel award category.

However, the incident referenced in The Week hardly makes on feel confident about flying Sri Lankan, and it would be hard to imagine any similar situation happening with a US carrier. That's why I would attribute Ms. Boo's humorous view more to "general queasiness about flying" than to "general ridicule of Sri Lankans." We are, of course, interested to hear from our diverse readership on this important issue.

Abbott's transformation

One consolation of Ms. Boo living far away in the Northern Mid-West is that we've been holding out great hope for Abbott to return to his Maine-Coon roots and become shaggy. Here's Abbott as recorded by Ms. Boo's camera phone shortly after she moved away in August.


And here's the shaggy little beast now.


I think it's working!

Optimism

I recently bought a domain name, and while checking prices I noticed that the Network Solutions pricing chart lists .com domain at $9.99/year if you reserve it for 100 years. If you think this isn't unreasonably optimistic, check out this talk on just 10 of the many ways that the world could end (full talk is here):

TT and the bed

I realize that it is not Friday, the traditional day for catblogging. But while we've been away from the game for so long, the cats have continued to do blogworthy things at their typical pace. Therefore I've decided to start working on the backlog. Hence the unorthodox "Tuesday night" catblogging.
My cat TT (long story about her name, but suffice it to say that the proper spelling is either "TT" or "TD" and the pronunciation is "tee-dee") has decided that with Ms. Boo living in another state temporarily, Mr. Boo shouldn't be sleeping alone. So she has begun the curious habit of working her way under the covers while I'm sleeping and curling up in a ball under the blanket next to my belly in the middle of the night. This morning, I got out of bed without disturbing her, and snapped these pictures. The first demonstrates how clever is her camouflage, that she is completely hidden under the covers.
For the second pic, I lifted the covers and snapped a shot. Apparently she was still sleepy, since after dropping the covers, she fell back asleep and hadn't gotten up when I left for work.

Orders of magnitude

This graph plots the amount spent on the war in Iraq versus different types of energy R&D (coal, nuclear, etc.). Methinks that maybe, just maybe, the financial calculus of the war doesn't add up? Makes you wonder what's the real reason we invaded...

Beware of Sri Lankan Air

From The Week:

Good week for speaking up, after passengers aboard a Sri Lankan Airlines flight
from London to Colombo rebelled and refused to let the plane take off because it
was missing a jagged, 5-foot section of one wing, sheared off in an accident the
previous day. Sri Lankan Airlines insists the plane could have flown safely,
explaining that the tips of the wings "are purely for aerodynamics."
[Italics mine]

You have been warned.

Jay-Z and Giselle

Jim Cramer, host of "Mad Money," had commented on the news that Giselle demanded payment recently in Euros, and Jay-Z can be seen flashing 500 Euro notes in his latest video, saying they were partially responsible for the drop in the Dow. Speaking to the Boston Herald about it later, he had this to say:

"I write a column that is tongue and cheek. Is Gisele really to blame? No,” Cramer told the Track. “But when things have gotten to the point that even people like Gisele and Jay-Z realize the dollar is too weak, things have gotten out of control. (Italics mine).

Now I can appreciate what Cramer was trying to say, but isn't this just a little bit racist/sexist? Given that Airbus is considering pricing new airplanes in Euros rather than dollars, apparently lots of people are noticing that the dollar is sinking. Jay-Z happens to be the CEO of Def Jam Records, and is reportedly worth about half a billion dollars. So I would think that qualifies him as a "successful businessman." Presumably, managing hundreds of millions of dollars in assets would imply a certain amount of sophistication and knowledge of the relative strengths of different currencies. This smacks of a kind of off-hand "soft" racism/sexism to me along the lines of "What would a black person/woman know about Euros?" Replace "Gisele and Jay-Z" with "Airbus," and the quote doesn't make any sense at all.

Marc Cenedella hates American Airlines

As part of my job search, I signed up for this service called www.theladders.com, which is a pretty good job searching/networking/recruiting website. Part of the service consists of a weekly newsletter, ostensibly written by Marc Cenedella, the CEO, about how to improve your resume, find a job, network effectively, whatever. The letter this week is just crazy, though:

Man, I hate American Airlines

A grumbly Monday morning to you. Folks, other people’s travel hell stories are about as interesting as other people’s "kids" or "new exercise regimen" stories, so I’m not going to bore you with one of those. And as a matter of fact, my recent flight on American wasn’t uniquely miserable. It was just run-of-the-mill lousy.

That's a strong start. You don't normally see the CEO of one company specifically criticizing his personal experience with another, especially in a professional newsletter.

But what really got me bummed out was my flight attendant’s outfit. Katherine had gone to the trouble of wearing buttons with all sorts of sayings on her uniform [...] And so as Katherine approached me I strained to get my work weary eyes to read the fine print on her button. It was a light blue button with dark blue writing, and I could just about make out the words:

"I"

"Have"

"No"

"Idea"

"Why"

"I"

"Work"

"Here"

And you know, Katherine and her type stand for everything that’s bad in the world. For every one of us trying to achieve great things, there’s a Katherine standing nearby ready to tear it down. For each of us trying to make the world a better place today, this hour, this minute, there’s a Katherine in the wings sticking her tongue out. And not only is there a Katherine, but there’s a company willing to hire her. Like American Airlines. And while Mom said if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all, I wish the Katherines and the American Airlines of the world nothing but failure. Failure in their campaign to pull down the productive people, failure in their efforts to keep winners from winning, and failure in the marketplace so that better people and companies can serve American Airlines customers. (Italics mine).

Now, I agree that this is as unpleasant a button as a flight attendant could possibly wear. And flying sucks enough without dealing with a flight attendant's job dissatisfaction, too. But still, doesn't a statement like this seem a bit out of place? Marc must have really hated his flight to put out something as damaging to his image as this. TheLadders is all about helping job seekers communicate their professionalism and qualifications to potential employers, so it seems weird that their official newsletter would be this unprofessional. I wonder what the story behind this is - is some marketing director feverishly writing an apology email right now to their AA corporate clients? I'll keep you posted...

Hiatus

Back from hiatus. Now that I have nothing to do at work for the next 3 weeks, I'll be posting a lot more. Also, setting up my web site. But no, I'm not going to link to it since the whole point of this blog is that we're anonymous...