My Two Wheeled Partner
Courtesy of the San Francisco Chronicle, a good look at my typical morning commute, as well as Charles, my co-founder of Loyalty Lab and the inspiration for my two wheeled commuting. (Psst...he's the one in the spandex in the photo.)

Labels: biking, commuting, news, photos

  ¶ 4:49 PM (0) comments links to this post

  A Good Virus Viral email. Viral websites. All examples of good viruses. Want another? Gmail solicited and got a viral video, showing how a Gmail really gets from the sent folder to the recipient's inbox. Savor and enjoy.

Labels: fun, Google, video

  ¶ 6:07 PM (0) comments links to this post

  Way to go, JetBlue We recently flew JetBlue back from Boston. While my flight was only marred by a finicky TV (fixed with an attendant's handily supplied folded up cardboard insert that defied electronic physics but worked), Amy's was much worse: no TV's on the flight worked at all. None. Coast to coast, with no DirecTV? Man, I may sound spoiled, but at least I have my laptop and movies with me; no such luck for Amy. Luckily, that new Harry Potter kept her entertained, but yeesh.

What came in the email this AM? Check it out:

Dear Amybeth,

Thank you for flying with JetBlue Airways on flight #477 from Boston on August 17, 2007. We apologize that the DIRECTV® programming was inoperable during your flight.

As a gesture of apology and goodwill, we have issued each customer on your flight a $15 JetBlue electronic voucher. When you are ready to use your voucher, please call 1-800-JETBLUE (538-2583) with your confirmation number XXXXXXXXX for this flight. The voucher is for you and is non-transferable. JetBlue vouchers are valid for one year and can be applied towards JetBlue Airways reservations or to the airfare portion of a JetBlue Getaways vacation package. Please visit our website's Help section for more information on how to use your voucher.

We thank you for your understanding, and look forward to a future opportunity to welcome you aboard JetBlue Airways.

Sincerely,
JetBlue Airways

No complaints from Amy. No angry mention to the gate agent. JetBlue realized one of their core values had been compromised and took proactive action to address. Now THAT'S an airline.

Labels: travel

  ¶ 9:22 PM (0) comments links to this post

  Twitter, meet Facebook A short while ago, I blogged about the overwhelming and, in my opinion, unjustified hype about Facebook. My opinion still remains the same: Facebook is still way too much of a closed network to take advantage of many of the obviously better properties of Web 2.0. It does have one effective by product, however: all that hype is driving critical mass. That means more people will use Facebook than other, more elegant solutions. It also means they don't have to embrace open standards: they can command a large enough audience to force other sites to create Facebook "applications" and include them in their buried infrastructure, as that's where the eyeballs are.

Take status updates, for example. Twitter seems to be waning in popularity, as Facebook is waxing. Sure, Facebook status updates are there, but they lack the sheer usability of Twitter. Can I get SMS updates of my friends' status messages? Who knows: on Facebook, you might be able to, but it's infinitely harder than Twitter. Still, that's where the eyeballs are. Do I have to update both??

Maybe not. Like Twitter, I can update my status in Facebook through SMS, albeit a bit kludgier. In a typical Facebook move, you can get an RSS feed of your status updates, though locating it takes at least 3 levels deep. With the addition of a free service called Twitterfeed and some pretty convoluted configuration, you can theoretically have your Facebook status periodically update your Twittering.

This type of hack is reminiscent of other similar techniques employed in the past by frustrated users of closed network systems, chafing at the bit. Remember Prodigy? AOL? CompuServe? The one thing we have learned is that, to survive and thrive, no community can be an island. Sure, Facebook is the belle of the moment, but they had better sell soon, before the rising critical mass deserts them for the next big thing. The most frustrating part is that they should know this: MySpace was so closed network that even the fickle teens cast it aside for Facebook, once they opened membership.

So, I'll keep using Facebook, as that's where the people are, while finding every crack I can to make it open and hope for the rise of Plaxo's Pulse. Enjoy this Facebook hack, hopefully the first of many.

Labels: Facebook, Plaxo, Twitter, Web 2.0

  ¶ 9:04 PM (0) comments links to this post

  Finally! Good Uses Of the Web In Video Games Since the major consoles and all PC's are almost sure to be connected to the Web these days, I've always been surprised that there have not been more developers taking advantage of the connected nature. EA, the largest maker of video games, finally has started to play in the space, introducing the ability to have the real-world weather affect the conditions in a game you are playing.

While limited to NCAA Football right now, "EA is encouraged by the weather feature's popularity and will add it to Madden and the entire sports portfolio soon." More interesting are some of the other areas EA has been playing in this regard that I was unaware of, including the ESPN sports ticker running live along the bottom of the screen, displaying real-world realtime information, and...gasp...automatic roster updates!!!

But take this further: Grand Theft Auto could advertise upcoming movies on billboards, and have them change as the release dates change. Need For Speed could introduce new car models, as the makers roll out their model years. Brothers In Arms could have interstitials from The History Channel. I know, the market for video games and ads has been elusive, but the type of marriage we are seeing here definitely adds eyeballs, and eyeballs = $.

Labels: business, Madden, Video Games

  ¶ 1:20 PM (0) comments links to this post

  A Sharper Guillotine Blade As Richard Solo waxes, it appears my old mates at The Sharper Image are headed for an ignominious end. With rumors of bankruptcy in the Ionic Breeze-laden air, investors are dumping stock, and the lawsuits are looming large. Personally, having invested a decade of my life in the company's success, I'd hate to see it end this way, but it sure seems headed that way.

What's needed now is an investment group to buy the company, liquidate/reduce the footprint of the stores, and focus on relaunching the brand as an online destination. For instance, a line of products from Engadget and Gizmodo: focus on taking preorders for the Optimus Keyboard, and the like. A clearing house for new, cool and hip products: Japanese phones, concept products, mixed with old reliables like USB-powered devices at low prices. And finally, they would need to mix the business model: RSS feeds of the cool blogs with pay per click ad revenue, mixed with revenue from product sales and affiliate commissions for indirect complimentary services, like music downloads etc.

In fact, I wonder if there's a point man the investors could look to. A proven innovator and enterpreneur. Could this be...the return of....RT?

Labels: 80's, business, gadgets, news

  ¶ 4:52 PM (0) comments links to this post

  Truth in Jest: The Line Is Often Blurry Sent from Inderpreet, whom we miss every day, it's amazing to see how much truth lies in humor.

See for yourself.

Labels: business, silly

  ¶ 5:02 PM (0) comments links to this post

  Your Second Life Comes SECOND Um. I don't know what to say. There are so many ways to look at this article from WSJ about a man's Second Life "marriage" interfering with his real life, I hardly know where to begin. For instance, when did the Wall Street Journal become the Jerry Springer Show (Rupert??? Hello????)? Why did these people agree to all participate in the article, knowing they'd be exposed for the absolute insane people they are? And, most of all, given the clearly irreconcilable differences here, why is this not just a case for a quickie divorce? Read for yourself to see a cross section of online society becoming a supermarket tabloid:

Is This Man Cheating on His Wife?
Alexandra Alter on the toll one man's virtual marriage is taking on his real one and what researchers are discovering about the surprising power of synthetic identity.
By ALEXANDRA ALTER
August 10, 2007; Page W1

On a scorching July afternoon, as the temperature creeps toward 118 degrees in a quiet suburb east of Phoenix, Ric Hoogestraat sits at his computer with the blinds drawn, smoking a cigarette. While his wife, Sue, watches television in the living room, Mr. Hoogestraat chats online with what appears on the screen to be a tall, slim redhead.

He's never met the woman outside of the computer world of Second Life, a well-chronicled digital fantasyland with more than eight million registered "residents" who get jobs, attend concerts and date other users. He's never so much as spoken to her on the telephone. But their relationship has taken on curiously real dimensions. They own two dogs, pay a mortgage together and spend hours shopping at the mall and taking long motorcycle rides. This May, when Mr. Hoogestraat, 53, needed real-life surgery, the redhead cheered him up with a private island that cost her $120,000 in the virtual world's currency, or about $480 in real-world dollars. Their bond is so strong that three months ago, Mr. Hoogestraat asked Janet Spielman, the 38-year-old Canadian woman who controls the redhead, to become his virtual wife.

The woman he's legally wed to is not amused. "It's really devastating," says Sue Hoogestraat, 58, an export agent for a shipping company, who has been married to Mr. Hoogestraat for seven months. "You try to talk to someone or bring them a drink, and they'll be having sex with a cartoon."

Mr. Hoogestraat plays down his online relationship, assuring his wife that it's only a game. While many busy people can't fathom the idea of taking on another set of commitments, especially imaginary ones, Second Life and other multiplayer games are moving into the mainstream. With some 30 million people now involved world-wide, there is mounting concern that some are squandering, even damaging their real lives by obsessing over their "second" ones. That's always been a concern with videogames, but a field of study suggests that the boundary between virtual worlds and reality may be more porous than experts previously imagined.

Nearly 40% of men and 53% of women who play online games said their virtual friends were equal to or better than their real-life friends, according to a survey of 30,000 gamers conducted by Nick Yee, a recent Ph.D. graduate from Stanford University. More than a quarter of gamers said the emotional highlight of the past week occurred in a computer world, according to the survey, which was published in 2006 by Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press's journal Presence.

"There's a fuzziness that's emerging between the virtual world and the real world," says Edward Castronova, associate professor in the Department of Telecommunications at Indiana University, Bloomington.

Weekends As 'Dutch'

A burly man with a long gray ponytail, thick sideburns and a salt-and-pepper handlebar mustache, Mr. Hoogestraat looks like the cross between a techie and the Grateful Dead fan that he is. He drives a motorcycle and wears faded black Harley-Davidson T-shirts around the house. A former college computer graphics teacher, Mr. Hoogestraat was never much of a game enthusiast before he discovered Second Life. But since February, he's been spending six hours a night and often 14 hours at a stretch on weekends as Dutch Hoorenbeek, his six-foot-nine, muscular, motorcycle-riding cyber-self. The character looks like a younger, physically enhanced version of him: a biker with a long black ponytail, strong jaw and thick handlebar mustache.

In the virtual world, he's a successful entrepreneur with a net worth of about $1.5 million in the site's currency, the linden, which can be earned or purchased through Second Life's Web site at a rate of about 250 lindens per U.S. dollar. He owns a mall, a private beach club, a dance club and a strip club. He has 25 employees, online persons known as avatars who are operated by other players, including a security guard, a mall concierge, a manager and assistant manager, and the "exotic dancers" at his club. He designs bikinis and lingerie, and sells them through his chain store, Red Headed Lovers.

"Here, you're in total control," he says, moving his avatar through the mall using the arrow keys on his keyboard.

Virtual worlds like Second Life have fast become a testing ground for the limits of relationships, both online and off. In the game, cyber sex, marriage and divorce are common. Avatars have sued one another, as well as the site's parent company, Linden Lab, in real-life courts for in-game grievances such as copyright infringement and property disputes. The site now has more than eight million registered "residents," up from 100,000 in January 2006, though the number of active users is closer to 450,000, according to Linden Lab's most recent data. A typical "gamer" spends 20 to 40 hours a week in a virtual world.

Academics have only recently begun to intensively study the social dynamics of virtual worlds, but some say they are astonished by how closely virtual relationships mirror real life. "People respond to interactive technology on social and emotional levels much more than we ever thought," says Byron Reeves, a professor of communication at Stanford University. "People feel bad when something bad happens to their avatar, and they feel quite good when something good happens."

On a neurological level, players may not distinguish between virtual and real-life relationships, recent studies suggest. In an experiment conducted at the University of Washington's Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, test subjects were hooked up to neuroimaging machines while they played a simple computer game in which they moved colored discs to form a pattern. When told that they were playing with a person rather than a computer, participants showed increased activity in areas of the brain that govern social interaction.

Other experiments show that people socializing in virtual worlds remain sensitive to subtle cues like eye contact. In one study, participants moved their avatars back if another character stood too close, even though the space violation was merely virtual, says Jeremy Bailenson, director of Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab, which was created five years ago to study social behavior in virtual worlds. "Our brains are not specialized for 21st-century media," says Prof. Reeves. "There's no switch that says, 'Process this differently because it's on a screen.' "

A Full-Blown Dance Party

On a Saturday afternoon in July, Mr. Hoogestraat decides to go to the beach. He lights a cigarette and enters Second Life, one of 42,752 people logged on at the time. Immediately, he gets an instant message from Tenaj Jackalope, his Second Life wife, saying she'll be right there.

They meet at their home, a three-story, modern-looking building on a grassy bluff overlooking the ocean, then head to his beach club by teleporting, or instantly moving to a new screen by typing in a location. A full-blown dance party is under way. A dozen avatars, digital representations of other live players, gyrate on the sand, twisting their hips and waving their arms. Several dance topless and some are fully nude. Dutch gets pelted with instant messages.

"What took you so long, Dutch?" a dancer asks.

"Howdy, Boss Man," an avatar named Whiskey Girl says.

Before discovering Second Life, Mr. Hoogestraat had bounced between places and jobs, working as an elementary schoolteacher and a ski instructor, teaching computer graphics and spending two years on the road selling herbs and essential oils at Renaissance fairs. Along the way, he picked up a bachelor's degree in education from Arizona State University and took graduate courses in education and instructional technology at the University of Wyoming and the University of Arizona. He currently works as a call-center operator for Vangent Inc., a large corporation that outsources calls for the government and private companies. He makes $14 an hour.

Mr. Hoogestraat learned about Second Life in February, while watching a morning news segment. His mother had just been hospitalized with pancreatic cancer -- she died two weeks later -- and he wanted a distraction. He was fascinated by the virtual world's free-wheeling, Vegas-like atmosphere. With his computer graphics background, he quickly learned how to build furniture and design clothing. He upgraded his avatar, buying defined stomach muscles, a furry chest and special hair that sways when he walks. Other, missing anatomy was also available for purchase. Before long, Mr. Hoogestraat was spending most nights and weekends acting out his avatar's life.

When Mr. Hoogestraat was diagnosed with diabetes and a failing gall bladder a few months ago, he was home-bound for five weeks. Some days, he played from a quarter to six in the morning until two in the morning, eating in front of the computer and pausing only for bathroom breaks.

During one marathon session, Mr. Hoogestraat met Tenaj (Janet spelled backward) while shopping. They became fast friends, then partners.

A week later, he asked her to move into the small apartment he rented in Phantom Island, an area of Second Life. In May, they married in a small ceremony in a garden overlooking a pond. She wore a strapless white dress that she bought at a Second Life yard sale and he wore a tuxedo. Thirty of their avatar friends attended.

"There's a huge trust between us," says Ms. Spielman, a divorced mother of two who works in office sales in Calgary, Alberta, and began logging on to Second Life in January. "We'll tell each other everything."

That intimacy hasn't spilled into real life. They never speak and have no plans to meet. Aside from the details they share over Second Life instant messages, each knows little about the other beyond what's posted on their brief online user profiles.

Mr. Hoogestraat's real-life wife is losing patience with her husband's second life. "It's sad; it's a waste of human life," says Mrs. Hoogestraat, who is dark-haired and heavy-set with smooth, pale skin. "Everybody has their hobbies, but when it's from six in the morning until two in the morning, that's not a hobby, that's your life."

The real Mrs. Hoogestraat is no stranger to online communities -- she met her husband in a computer chat room three years ago. Both were divorced and had adult children from previous marriages, and Mrs. Hoogestraat says she was relieved to find someone educated and adventurous after years of failed relationships. Now, as she pays household bills, cooks, does laundry, takes care of their three dogs and empties ashtrays around the house while her husband spends hours designing outfits for virtual strippers and creating labels for virtual coffee cups, she wonders what happened to the person she married.

Just a Game

One Saturday night in early June, she discovered his cyber wife. He called her over to the computer to show her an outfit he had designed. There, above the image of the redheaded model, it said "Mrs. Hoorenbeek." When she confronted him, he huffily replied that it was just a game.

Two weeks later, Mrs. Hoogestraat joined an online support group for spouses of obsessive online gamers called EverQuest Widows, named after another popular online fantasy game that players call Evercrack.

"It's avalanched beyond repair," says Sharra Goddard, 30, Mrs. Hoogestraat's daughter and a sign-language interpreter in Chandler, Ariz. She says she and her two brothers have offered to help their mother move out of the house.

Mrs. Hoogestraat says she's not ready to separate. "I'm not a monster; I can see how it fulfills parts of his life that he can no longer do because of physical limitations, because of his age. His avatar, it's him at 25," she says. "He's a good person. He's just fallen down this rabbit hole."

Mr. Hoogestraat, for his part, doesn't feel he's being unfaithful. "She watches TV, and I do this," he says. "I tried to get her involved so we could play together, but she wasn't interested."

Family-law experts and marital counselors say they're seeing a growing number of marriages dissolve over virtual infidelity. Cyber affairs don't legally count as adultery unless they cross over into the real world, but they may be cited as grounds for divorce and could be a factor in determining alimony and child custody in some states, according to several legal experts, including Jeff Atkinson, professor at the DePaul University College of Law and author of the American Bar Association's "Guide to Marriage, Divorce and Families."

This past June, the American Medical Association called for more psychiatric research on excessive gaming, but backed away from classifying videogame addiction as a formal disorder.

Some gamers say the addictive dangers have been overstated, citing surveys that show most players spend fewer hours online than the average American spends watching television. And unlike television, online games are social. In June, when Mr. Hoogestraat first logged on to Second Life after he had his gall bladder removed, he was greeted with 50 messages from virtual friends asking him how the surgery went.

Still, some antigaming organizations and psychiatrists say the social aspects of such games may be driving up pressure to play for longer stretches. Kimberly Young, a clinical psychologist and founder of the Center for Internet Addiction Recovery, said the majority of the 200 cases a year she sees for counseling involve interactive fantasy role-playing games. "They start forming attachments to other players," she says. "They start shutting out their primary relationships."

Back in the world of Second Life, Mr. Hoogestraat's avatar and Tenaj have gotten bored at the beach, so they teleport to his office, a second-floor room with a large, tinted window overlooking the stage of the strip club he owns. Tenaj plays with her pug, Jolly Roger, commanding the dog to sit and fetch its toy. Dutch drinks a Corona, Mr. Hoogestraat's beer of choice in real life, and sits at his desk. For a while, Mr. Hoogestraat, sitting at his computer, stares at an image of his avatar sitting at his computer.

The next morning, he's at his computer at 10 a.m., wearing the same black Harley-Davidson T-shirt. It is Sunday. He's been logged on to Second Life for four hours.

Staring purposefully at the screen, he manipulates his avatar, who is shirtless in cut-off denim shorts and flip-flops and renovating the lower level of his mall. "Sunday is my heavy-duty work day," Mr. Hoogestraat explains. Earlier that morning, he evicted 10 shop owners who hadn't paid rent, and signed up four new vendors, including an avatar named Arianna who sells virtual necklaces and women's shoes.

From the kitchen, Mrs. Hoogestraat asks if he wants breakfast. He doesn't answer. She sets a plate of breakfast pockets on the computer console and goes into the living room to watch a dog competition on television. For two hours, he focuses intently on building a coffee shop for the mall. Two other avatars gather to watch as he builds stairs and a counter, using his cursor to resize wooden planks.

At 12:05, he's ready for a break. He changes his avatar into jeans, leather motorcycle chaps and motorcycle gloves, and teleports to a place with a curvy, mountain road. It's one of his favorite places for riding his Harley look-alike. The road is empty. He weaves his motorcycle across the lanes. Sunlight glints off the ocean in the distance.

Mrs. Hoogestraat pauses on her way to the kitchen and glances at the screen.

"You didn't eat your breakfast," she says.

"I'm sorry, I didn't see it there," he responds.

"They probably won't taste any good now," she says, taking the plate.

Over the next five hours, Mr. Hoogestraat stares at the computer screen, barely aware of his physical surroundings. He adds a coffee maker and potted palms to the cafe, goes swimming through a sunken castle off his waterfront property, chats with friends at a biker clubhouse, meets a new store owner at the mall, counsels an avatar friend who had recently split up with her avatar boyfriend, and shows his wife Tenaj the coffee shop he's built.

By 4 p.m., he's been in Second Life for 10 hours, pausing only to go to the bathroom. His wrists and fingers ache from manipulating the mouse to draw logos for his virtual coffee cups. His back hurts. He feels it's worth the effort. "If I work a little harder and make it a little nicer, it's more rewarding," he says.

Sitting alone in the living room in front of the television, Mrs. Hoogestraat says she worries it will be years before her husband realizes that he's traded his real life for a pixilated fantasy existence, one that doesn't include her.

"Basically, the other person is widowed," she says. "This other life is so wonderful; it's better than real life. Nobody gets fat, nobody gets gray. The person that's left can't compete with that."

Labels: news, silly

  ¶ 1:14 PM (0) comments links to this post

  Two Great Passions Come Together Ooooh....it's here. Madden '08 for the Wii! I'm looking forward to a Madden to truly enjoy for the first time in years...and one that actually (thanks to the Wii) getts you truly into the game.
See what I'll be looking for:

Labels: football, Madden, Video Games, Wii

  ¶ 1:06 PM (0) comments links to this post

  Closed is NOT the new Open Seth Goldstein is a man who's views on Web 2.0 I tend to value. His blog recently proclaimed that "closed is the new open." In essence, that closed networks, like Facebook and MySpace, done right, are better than the random collection of open network tools, like Flickr and Twitter. Apologies to Seth, but I most vociferously have to disagree. Case in point: today's launch of Plaxo's Pulse network.

I'm a big fan of Plaxo, as it solves one of the most frustrating problems of people like myself with large contact lists: it creates the ability for someone to update their information in one place, and Plaxo subscribers immediately have their address books updated with the new information. Although my 7000+ contacts seem to frequently cause performance issues with it, I have stuck with them, and even upgraded to some of their premium services. For instance, the ability to immediately be reminded of an upcoming birthday, and send an e-card, personalized. Fantastic stuff for someone who never has enough time to be as thoughtful as I aspire to be.

Plaxo has gone one step further. They have created their own social network, Pulse, so you can get updated whenever your Pulse friends update anything. And I mean, anything. Want to get notified when a friend adds to their Amazon wishlist? Got it covered. Read the latest post from their blog? Gotcha. Post some pictures to Picasa or Flickr? Check. See what they are digging on Digg? Yup. I mean, this is what's been needed: a single network, to pull together the content from these purpose driven sites, and syndicate them. I want to know when Charles adds a new DVD to his wishlist. I want to see some new pictures from a faraway family member or friend. I love the push of a blog entry. Man, this is what it's all about: push me the content I want, for the people I want, saving me from 100 different "pulls". Timesaving, elegant, and superb. I would GLADLY pay for this service, and will, as soon as their tech support people figure out how I can use Plaxo Premium without destroying the performance of my already bloated Outlook account.

I mean, check out the range of services they pull in. Add in Facebook and LinkedIn, and sayonara any other service. Open is flexible, extensible, and always with the times. My NetVibes page does the same with my homepage (so does Pageflakes, and even the new MyYahoo), so this is just a natural extension. With this architecture, Plaxo can add new feeds for the new properties. So, yesterday's MySpace fades away, and gives rise to Facebook. Google Video gives it up for YouTube. Who knows what comes next? One thing's for sure: Plaxo will be the source to find it.

Labels: Software, Web 2.0

  ¶ 10:22 PM (0) comments links to this post

  24 hours of Travel = endless stories. Random thoughts from a recent whirlwind business trip to Cincinnati (24 hours; 12 of it on a plane):

United's 777's are huge. With a 2-5-2 seating configuration and three separate sections in Economy, each the size of a normal 737, this thing packs them in. However, it is easily one of the most poorly designed planes I have ever been on:

- The seats in Economy are so tightly packed, it's insulting. Especially when you compare to JetBlue or even Southwest.

- Why don't people ever learn that design and compromise almost never go well together (Ayn Rand taught us this, folks.) For instance, who's the brain surgeon who said "we want a multimedia system at every seat in Economy" and then followed it up with putting a metal case the size of a desktop PC under every seat? This lovely setup gives you a choice: a place to put your bag, or a place to put your feet. Nope, you can't do both. Outstanding.

- Those first class "pods" are truly something special. One button, and your seat becomes a bed, complete with white noise on the built in entertainment system and a desk with a charger for the laptop. As you drift off to sleep, a massage lulls you. United missed the boat: they need to sell these suckers in Hammacher Schlemmer for the home.

- I get the plane is huge. Any reason United doesn’t seem to? They put the thing at the smallest gate in the terminal in both San Francisco and Chicago, ensuring that there is absolutely no way to load the craft in anything approaching an efficient fashion. Yep, nothing like a half hour in the boarding chute to make you love those frequent flyer miles.

- Kudos to United for their onboard mapping application. Us seasoned travelers dig it, but I always wondered why everyone was still using MapQuest's maps from 1999 (that wonderful copyright is omnipresent in most systems). United's also gives you periodic updates on airspeed, time left, and time at the local destination. And the one-touch map button on the control arm is a godsend. Psst...hook up with Google Earth next time and put that screen to work!

United also seems to have taken inefficiency to a new surreal level:

- On boarding the last leg of my trip, we were cheerily informed that, while we were absolutely certain to be late in departing (partially due to said cattle chute), we would still arrive on time because the original planned departure time was cleverly calculated in advance to be early. WHAT???

- Stuck in the boarding tube from hell, a harried flight attendant burst through the throngs, announcing to any and all that the plane had no power. Oh, and had anyone seen any pilots in the crowd? I kid you not.

- Remember how big those 777's are? Amazing that on not just one 777 flight, but two, they were BOTH overbooked. Luckily, you could get a free RT ticket for giving up your precious overheated, no-place-to-put-your feet seat for a flight the next morning. Um…we have computers now, folks: isn't air travel advanced enough not to have to ask Las Vegas to lay odds for them on successfully getting X asses into X seats?

Other surreal moments:

- Blearily stumbling through O'Hare at 5:30 AM to make a connecting flight (on the other side of the country's busiest airport, of course) and almost bowling over…Al Sharpton. Yep, can't make this stuff up.

- Boarding my first United Express jet…and noticing it's just like a real plane, but everything is perfectly scaled down by 1/3. Headroom? 1/3 less. Aisle width? Yep. Overheads? You bet: 1/3 scale. In flight magazine? 1/3 less pages. But nothing capped the drink cart: you haven't lived until you've seen one of these in action. This plane instantly makes you feel like you've accidentally grown to 9 feet tall.

- Landing in Dayton, Ohio, and immediately heading for the nearest cup of coffee…at something called Boston Stoker? And, at 7:30 AM, a place called Boston Stoker Coffee, proudly proclaimed as Dayton's best coffee, located at the airport, with no other coffee choices…hadn't brewed any coffee yet. Oh, the joy of the slower pace of the Midwest.

- Going to the rental car location, we exited the Dayton airport…into a cornfield. In fact, the entire airport is essentially carved out of a cornfield. Field of Dreams? Luckily, the car rental was only 120 ears away.

- I'm sure there's a perfectly good reason for it, but something called Fifth Third Bank seems like a bad place to put my money. They don't seem to have a head for figures.

- You ever notice on some longer flights that the flight attendant will, later on, bring a bottle of water and cups through the cabin for any thirsty folks? On the flight to SFO, United's flight attendant randomly decided white wine would be much better instead. I figured she was either trying to finish a bottle from Business class or just had lost her mind. Luckily, it was the latter: she finished off the bottle, and immediately headed for the galley for a new one, and resumed pouring for us stunned Economy passengers. Think this only happens on flights to Wine Country?

- Kevin Smith waxes poetic about Tim Horton's, so I had to stop and pop the pastry. Sorry, Sir: Dunkies has it beat cold. Hell, even lowly Happy Donuts in San Francisco could top those poor excuses for fine carb laden cuisine.

- What seems like a good time saver but really turned out to be a bad idea: bringing a new men's shirt, still in the plastic, for the morning airport men's room stall quick change. Even the vast expanse of the sole handicapped commode could not overcome the sheer torture of trying to undo the mixture of origami and camouflaged pin inserting that men's shirts are plagued with. And someone PLEASE explain why there is an entire forest of cardboard in there with it???

- GPS is simply a godsend for business travel: hit the address, and start driving. That's it. Reminds me of when I first started to use Google: why would I ever need to clutter my brain up with useless information again? TomTom, I salute you.


And finally,
- SFO: great idea, letting you insert your credit card when you enter the garage instead of having to get a ticket. Um…maybe you want to close the loop by putting a checkout lane I can just insert my card and get the receipt, WITHOUT the forlorn cashier sitting next to me, watching me take away his job, one slip at a time? Two words: Unmanned lanes.

Glad to be back. Next week, I get to do it all again!

Labels: bullshit, GPS, Kevin Smith, travel

  ¶ 2:50 AM (0) comments links to this post