Aimless Wandering

So I get on my delayed flight home last night. It had been quite a while since I had been on a flight where we weren’t given any information on a delay, and I was quite disappointed with how we were treated. Our flight was listed as “on time” even though we had reached the scheduled boarding time but there wasn’t a plane to board. Even when the inbound flight arrived 30 minutes late, we still weren’t told anything and the flight was still listed as “on time.”

But the weirdness really occured when we boarded the plane. Just before pushing back from the gate the Captain gets on the intercom and announces that it appears that we didn’t take on as much baggage as they had expected, so they had a heavier load of fuel than they had expected. He said it would be “faster” if four passengers from rows 1-12 moved to seats in the back of the plane instead of moving baggage around, and that the passengers would only need to sit back there during takeoff.

Once we took off and got up to around 10,000 feet the Captain got back on the intercom and asked that those four passengers move back forward again before he completed his climb out.

Now, I understand how important it is for an airplane to be properly balanced in order for safe flight, but I also wasn’t flying on a little regional jet. This was an Airbus A-320, it’s a decent sized jet, so I wouldn’t think that where 4 passengers sat on a mostly full flight would affect the balance of the aircraft all that much…

I’ve got to say that I’m quite frustrated by the drunken sloth who makes the selections for “featured podcasts” over on iTunes.

We’ve now had the podcast going on the Cruise Planners site for several months, there’ve been some hicups with getting the right feed and the right album art into iTunes, but all of those problems have been fixed for at least two months. We regularly update the podcast, publishing a new show at least once a week, although we normally put up two shows.

So then why is it that we can’t get the show featured in our category on iTunes? The other podcast that comes up when you do a search on “The Mail Buoy” is featured, this dispite the fact that the show is not updated very often at all, the last show was on Dec 9, which was the first update since September. On average they do a show once every month or two, but they’re a featured podcast.

Better yet, of the 90 featured podcasts in the Places & Travel category, 14 of the featured podcasts are Disney related.

Just like Google’s search algorithm, the method iTunes supposedly uses to select featured podcasts is “secret” however unlike Google’s search algorithm which works quite well, iTunes’ feature selection sucks…

Spotted this while I was waiting at Oakland Airport. I had to take a picture becuase I knew otherwise nobody would believe me…

Or, we don’t know when you’re flight is getting here and we have absolutely no idea when it might be leaving

So here I am sitting in the “lovely” Oakland International Airport waiting to board my flight.  I’ve done A LOT of traveling in the last 6 years or so, and as a result I kind of consider myself a bit of an airport connoisseur.  With that in mind, I’ve got to say that I’m not the least bit impressed with Oakland…  Actually, I’m thinking that it’s pretty close to a dump…  They tried, it looks like the local airport authority really tried to pretty the place up, but it’s really not that nice an airport at all.

Now, I understand that this is probably one of the busiest days to fly this year considering that this is the last weekday before Christmas, but this place is a mess…  For starters, it took me 20 minutes once I got on to airport property to get to the parking lot, traffic was that bad.  Once I got into the parking lot I realized that a) I didn’t know exactly how to get from the parking lot to the terminal, and b) of the two terminals, I didn’t know what terminal my airline departed from…  Figuring this out would have been much easier if there were signs!  There wasn’t a single sign in the parking lot that indicated how a passenger was supposed to get out of the lot…  lots of walls and barriers, but no signs.

So after a bit of wandering I finally stagger out of the parking lot and over to the terminal, and wouldn’t you know it, there’s no directory either that might be used to direct us poor schlubs coming from the daily lot over to the airline check in we might need…  Luckily I picked the right terminal.

Two things that went very well, check-in with no waiting at all and security which had a HUGE Disneyesque maze to get to security, but no wait at all.

The concourse however is an absolute zoo.  The few beverage locations had long lines and there’s trash everywhere…

I’m a big fan of public WiFi, especially free public WiFi and I salute those airports that offer free WiFi.  However, I can also sympathize with those airports that charge for WiFi access, but it would be nice if they told me what the charge was BEFORE I go through the effort to unpack my laptop maybe scout out a rare power outlet, boot up my computer, connect to the access point, launch my browser and discover that the WiFi provider wants $9.95 for 24 hours of access!  So, I’m writing this offline and it’ll get posted after I arrive at my destination.

Then there’s the tool sitting across from me in the waiting area who’s apparently very proud of the Motorola Razr phone he just got and therefore feels the need to serenade the entire waiting area with the full range of ring tones that came pre-loaded on the phone…  Yes, pal even though I’m staring at the ceiling when I write this, I’m witting about YOU, and I’ve got news for you  Razr’s are so last year, nobody cares about the ringtone on your phone, I’ve got a significantly COOLER phone than you anyway.  BTW, I think your herd went THAT WAY!!!!  Maybe I should whip out my phone and start watching the TV back at the house using the Slingbox.  Then again, I’m not really looking to assert my dominance as an Alpha Geek.

Now I’m going to sit back and watch the lovely crowd headed to Greyhound Airways Southwest.  That’s got to be good for some entertainment…  and heck there goes somebody who they had to have charged for a second seat!

Why yes, I am tired and grumpy, why do you ask?

Just in case you live under a rock or in a cave somewhere and therefore haven’t heard yet, Time Magazine’s Person of The Year is…. You. (I’d link to it but their site is misbehaving)

Well not just you, but everyone who creates content on the web from bloggers, to podcasters, to the drunken fratboys who post youtube videos of their buddies wrapped in bubble plastic drunkenly jumping from the third story window. Internet users who generate content for the internet are Time’s People of The Year.

Now that’s a pretty serious honor, so do you think I can use it on my resume? “2006 Time Magazine Person of The Year.”

So check out this story on The Smoking Gun. A 12 year old from South Carolina was arrested on December 5 for Petty Larceny after his mother called the police because he had unwrapped a Christmas present without her permission.

Ok, now I can understand taking the gift away from the child and returning it. I can understand punishing the child. But calling the cops and getting the kid ARRESTED! Are you kidding me?!?!

The boy’s mother (a 27 year old single parent… ok do the math, she had the kid when she was 15) said her son was disruptive and hoped the arrest would cause the kid to behave better. Now according to the police report, this kid is no angel. It says that the kid has caused trouble at home, was arrested for disorderly conduct for assaulting a Police Officer, and was kicked out of school.

Now with that out of the way, question number 1 is with the child so disruptive (a 12 year old who was arrested for assaulting a Police Officer!) exactly why did this child deserve a Game Boy? Why would you give a child like this an item that allows him to tune you out? Give him a few pairs of socks and maybe a nice outfit to wear to his hearing in court for assualting the Police Officer sure, but he sure as heck doesn’t deserve a Game Boy!

And what about the arresting officer? Odds are this kid is known by the local police department but still, do you really think he walked into the Police Station and was congratulated by his fellow officers for this spectacular arrest?

You know that sounds like a riveting case, maybe Dick Wolf will use it as the basis for one of his “ripped from the headlines!” Law and Order shows. Heck this sounds perfectly suited for the MCS detectives to investigate on Criminal Intent. The questioning for this could be right up Goran’s alley too!

Sheesh!

So the building that I work in is considered a “green” building. Designed and built around 20 years ago, it features all kinds of innovative and unique features intended to make it as environmentally friendly as possible. Of course many of those innovative and unique features only had a lifespan of about 3 years, but what’s a few years when the environment is involved right?

Take for example the heating and cooling system… When the building was built way back when, it was built without air conditioning. Instead an innovative system of temperature sensors and automatic skylight and window controls would be used to cool the building and provide airflow… never mind that the system was notorious for opening windows and skylights in the pouring rain and at other opportune moments. After 15 years it was realized that the natural system just wasn’t up to the task of cooling the building with the large number of computers that are now housed in it and air conditioning was put in. But since the building wasn’t designed to have A/C in the first place, it’s not uncommon for some rooms to freeze and others to roast in the summer.

There’s a similar effect in the winter, and as the building manager tells us on a regular basis space heaters just magnify the problem. Not that anybody listens mind you, we have a ton of “illicit” space heaters in use throughout the building…

With the latest bout of rain we’ve had, leaks have no become a big probem too… As a result the building manager sent the following e-mail out to everybody in the building:

I can change the temperature however I cannot stop the precipitation. The LH74 building is a green building, meaning that it designed to be environmentally friendly. This building is so eco-friendly that it brings the rain right into your classrooms. There is nothing more relaxing then the cleansing feeling of rainstorm.

Once again somebody with way too much time on their hands and a video camera has destroyed a piece of technology and posted it on the interweb. I’ve always gotten concerned about flexing my laptop screens after seening the weird distortions that pop up with just a little pressure. But check out what happens when you drill into a laptop display… With the laptop on…

I’m a big fan of GPS navigation systems.  I’ve owned several, I’ve played with several different software packages, heck I even had a car that came with a system built in.

As much as I like GPS navigation, and rely on it often I always have a degree of skepticism when I use them.  Even when I’m using one to get somewhere that I’m completely unfamiliar with, there are always some cues that let me know if the system is at least getting in the ball park.  In addition, no matter what my GPS says, I’m not going to let it guide me the worng way down a one way street or into a building like somebody in Germany did a few years ago. 

Every GPS I’ve every owned gives me some combination of distance to destination, estimated time of arrival, or estimated time remaining until arrival.  Knowing that the town I’m headed to is just 30 miles or so away, if my GPS shows that the distance to my destination if 450 miles I can tell right off the bat that there’s a problem…

But still every so often story like this one comes out.  How is it that an ambulance crew who’s instructed to transport a patient 12 miles away doesn’t realize that they’re off course until they’ve driven 200 miles!  This ambulance crew drove almost all the way across the country before realizing they had gone too far.  Did anybody bother to tell the ambulance crew where they were supposed to go? 

So I’m not exactly my boss’s boss’s biggest fan.  She’s a micromanaging controlling person, and when it comes to making difficult decisions she’ll avoid them like the plague unless she either knows that the fall out won’t affect her, or she has no other choice but to get up and act.

My boss while not the micromanager, does have to know EVERYTHING that’s going on.  If something happens without him knowing about it, he gets very upset.  Getting him upset is easy, and when he’s spun up he’s worse than a bull in a china shop.

My boss and his boss mix like oil and water…  Oh and they’ve been working together for nearly 10 years…

My boss’s boss is known for coming down to our office and providing tasking to the staff members without discussing it with my boss.  That’s something that irritates him.  Partly becuase he has to know all that’s going on, and partly because she ends up taking us away from other tasks and we end up missing deadlines.  Since we just have to have the never ending death spiral, our bosses boss reviews our projects and our deadlines, she will always call my boss on the carpet when we miss a deadline…  Even if she was the cause of missing the deadline. 

The situation came to a head last week, with some heated e-mails flying between the two of them and some loud “discussions” over the situation.  My boss now tells me that he wants to file a grevance against his boss…  Sadly, I don’t think it will go well, and things will just get worse for us as these two continue to clash…