I'm back from JR's Family's Lake Erie Reunion. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, and indeed, I actually had a little fun. However, the major excitement was Sunday when we arrived at the airport to fly home. Somehow, I made the colossally idiotic mistake of buying my ticket for Monday the 18th instead of Sunday the 17th. I'm not quite sure how it happened because I AM quite certain I never entered the 18th as an option for flying. I do take responsibility for not confirming the information on my ticket was correct before buying it and for not checking it sooner to make a change.
I hoped the flight hadn't sold out and that I would be able to sweet-talk my onto the plane at minimal extra cost. At worst, I figured, I'd pay the industry-standard $100 change fee. When I went to the Continental counter, the woman told me Continental has a strict policy of not allowing people to fly standby until the day of their original flight. She also informed me it would be $320 on top of what I had already spent in order to change my ticket to fly that day. Flabbergasted, I asked her how much it would cost to skip my original flight and buy a new ticket on the flight I had planned on taking. Incredibly, buying a new ticket and forgoing the next day's flight would only cost $280. I didn't understand how buying 2 tickets could be cheaper than changing my old ticket and if I was going to buy a new ticket, I wanted to do some comparison shopping.
First stop was Southwest Airlines where the woman was shocked Continental wouldn't change my ticket or allow me to fly standby. She seemed genuinely offended as an employee of the airline industry that another airline would have such ridiculous policies. She informed me that the best she could do was a flight from Cleveland to Baltimore to Providence for $185. She even reserved the ticket for me without making me pay so I could check with some of the other airlines. She also suggested I call Continental to try to talk to a supervisor. United was $611 and Independence was $250.
Having collected my facts, I dialed Continental's 800 number and waited on hold for several minutes before reaching Helen. Helen told me the same thing the woman behind the counter had, that there is a strict policy against allowing people to fly standby unless it's the day of their original flight, that the cost to change the ticket would be $320, and that a new ticket would be $280. Helen didn't seem to care when I argued that it didn't make sense they would charge me so much (or charge me at all) since they obviously had seats available. I mentioned that Southwest was willing to fly me for $185 and told her that they may get the $280 out of me because I was desperate, but I would never fly Continental again. I also mentioned I would spend the next month telling everyone I knew how stupid I had been to buy the wrong ticket, but especially how greedy Continental had been in trying to take advantage of it. Helen told me there was nothing she could do and something to the effect of "You should probably fly on Southwest if you don't want to pay $280." She then suggested I try to get someone at the airport to do something about it.
I got back in line steeling myself for what I knew could be an epic battle. The problem as I saw it was my total lack of leverage. Continental didn't need to do anything for me because I had already paid for a ticket for the next day's flight. They didn't need to do anything for me because they had their money and that was final regardless of what I decided to do. I had a minor scuffle with the woman directing people to the counter after she was offended I was talking on my phone while in her line. I don't remember much about the incident, but I include it as further proof that Continental needs to focus harder on customer service.
I approached the woman at counter 19 tingling with trepidation and excitement. I felt excitement because I envisioned an intense match of verbal sparring where I could pontificate loudly on issues involving efficiency, logic, customer service, money, and right and wrong. I felt trepidation because the last thing I wanted was to spend $280 more than I had already spent.
And then nothing. I explained to the woman behind the counter that I had mistakenly purchased a ticket for Monday's flight when I really wanted to fly today. She nodded and told me she could change my flight, but she'd have to charge me a $100 change fee. I quickly handed her my credit card before something happened to increase the price of my fare and walked away stunned after telling her she had made my day. I think she really appreciated me saying that. I had never been so happy to spend $100.
I don't know if Continental thought someone else was going to rush into the airport 25 minutes before boarding willing to pay the premium price they had assigned to the ticket. That can be the only explanation for not allowing me to fly standby on a flight that clearly wasn't full. And I don't understand why 2 different employees refused to let me fly standby or pay $100 to change my ticket citing strict company policies before a third employee did so without pause. You'd think Continental and every other company would try to fill up every plane all the time and would willingly sell tickets to people at some small margin above cost 25 minutes before the plane boarded. Much like an ice cream store giving out ice cream in the event of a power outage, giving it out in exchange for good will and nothing more, Continental should have welcomed me aboard in an effort to fill up every sellable bit of space on that plane. (Empty seats are giant tubs of melted ice cream, as it were) In the end, the flight took off an hour late further lowering the value of the service Continental provided me. As far as I'm concerned, every flight I take on Continental leaves at least an hour late as my flight from Boston to Cleveland took off an hour and a half after it was supposed to.
In the interest of full disclosure, what I said to Helen about never flying on Continental again isn't totally true. At this stage in my professional career, I can't afford to be so stubbornly principled. The next time I'm looking for flights, I'll fly on Continental if it's significantly cheaper than any other option. This means that the Continental flight will have to be direct and cost at least $40 less than the next lowest option. So in reality, what I should have said to Helen was "You may get your $280 out of me, but it's going to make each of your flights appear $40 more expensive than they are for the next 5-15 years. However, I will certainly stop flying Continental as soon as I make enough money to base economic decisions on terrible prior experiences."

We knew we wanted something light for dinner, and I wanted to use up the chipotle mayonnaise that I'd made for a picnic last week, so I thought I'd try to tackle the Crab Towers with Avocado & Gazpacho Salsas from America's Test Kitchen.


I ended up deviating from the recipe in quite a few areas:

1. For the crab salad, I just used my homemade chipotle mayo and added lime juice and a little salt and pepper, rather than adding mustard and lemon zest.


2. In order to stay with the same theme as the chipotle, I went with a little ground cumin in the avocados' lime juice rather than coriander. (Also, I had ground cumin in a jar and didn't feel like grinding coriander seed. I am shamed.)


3. I left the celery (because I forgot) and the jalepeno (because Rachel doesn't like spicy, and we already had the chipotle mayo) out of the gazpacho salsa. I did make sure to use sherry vinegar, though, which is really great stuff. Don't fall back on red wine vinegar, it won't be the same.

Also, Rachel found some freshly cooked lobster tails at the seafood counter, and even though they were ridiculously expensive they made a crab and lobster salad that was out of this world. Oh, and the grocery store didn't have frisee, so I used watercress. Came out pretty delicious, although I had trouble getting the tower to hold together. The top layer didn't really compress all that well, and tended to scatter if I wasn't careful.

I wouldn't make it every day, but it was a treat.

(And, man, if I'd known Rachel was going to take such a food porn-y picture of them, I'd have sprinkled some kind of Emerilesque bam-age around the plates.)

A brother of my friend got himself into a sticky situation. He's been charged with selling a small amount of marajuana to an undercover police officer. The undercover police officer spent last summer gaining the trust of my friend's brother and 15 of other kids from Western Mass before buying different amounts and types of drugs from them. These kids are not big time drug dealers and most of them only sold the drugs because they thought they were doing a friend a favor. Since the sale took place in a parking lot less than 1000 feet from a church basement nursery school which was closed for the summer, the DA has decided to utilize school zone drug laws which carry a 2 year mandatory minimum. Mandatory minimums for first time offenders are ridiculous.

One thing you can do is go to the Berkshire Eagle website and scroll down the page to the poll where you can voice your opinion on the DA's plan to utilize mandatory minimums. Also, if you see somewhere to post comments feel free to do that as well. Thanks for spreading the word to your friends as much as you're inclined!

One article
and another

Apparently, the FCC is considering lifting the ban on cell phone use on airplanes. I'll be honest, I don't really have an opinion on this issue. I've always thought the "safety" argument was pretty ridiculous, since people accidentally leave their phones on all the time, and I don't believe there's ever been an instance of a wireless phone causing interference to an airplane's instruments. Oh, look, I'm right:

One committee member questioned safety concerns raised by the FAA and DOJ. Although mobile phones are accidentally left on during potentially dozens of U.S. flights each day, no U.S. aircraft has ever found interference from phones, said Representative Ted Poe, a Texas Republican.

Thanks, Ted. Anyway, the remaining arguments against in-flight cell phone use are pretty weak. First, there's the terrorist argument:

Representatives of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) told a House of Representatives subcommittee that wireless systems now being tested by two airlines could give terrorists a reliable link to friends on the ground, and mobile phones could be used by terrorists to remotely set off bombs on airplanes.

Riiiiight. Because the only thing stopping a member of al-Qaeda from using a cell phone to communicate with his buddies or to set off a bomb is the announcement from the flight attendant telling him to turn off his phone. "Sorry, Osama, our glorious martyrdom operation failed. The nice lady told me to turn off all electronic devices!"

I'm also annoyed by the "closing the barn door after the cow's gotten out" philosophy that governs all airline security. The 9/11 hijackers used box cutters? No nail files! Richard Reid had a bomb in his shoes? Take your shoes off! Al-Qaeda's last attack in America involved airplanes? Time to freak out about airline security! The recent bombings in London were on subways and buses. I haven't heard anything about plans to outlaw cell phones on subways, have you? I'm tired of our government's perpetual desire to outlaw technologies just because they have illegal applications. So is Bruce Schneier, who knows what he's talking about:

This is beyond idiotic. Again and again, we hear the argument that a particular technology can be used for bad things, so we have to ban or control it. The problem is that when we ban or control a technology, we also deny ourselves some of the good things it can be used for. Security is always a trade-off. Almost all technologies can be used for both good and evil; in Beyond Fear, I call them "dual use" technologies. Most of the time, the good uses far outweigh the evil uses, and we're much better off as a society embracing the good uses and dealing with the evil uses some other way.

We don't ban cars because bank robbers can use them to get away faster. We don't ban cell phones because drug dealers use them to arrange sales. We don't ban money because kidnappers use it. And finally, we don't ban cryptography because the bad guys it to keep their communications secret. In all of these cases, the benefit to society of having the technology is much greater than the benefit to society of controlling, crippling, or banning the technology.

So, yeah, suck on it, DOJ.

The other, louder, argument against the use of phones on airplanes is that it would be annoying.

"If you're on an airplane, it's very annoying when you have a chatterbox sitting next to you, or a small child," said Representative Lynn Westmoreland, a Georgia Republican. "I can't imagine somebody sitting next to me talking in Arabic or some other foreign language on a cell phone for an hour-and-a-half flight." Westmoreland didn't explain why someone talking in another language would be more annoying to him than someone talking in English.

Yeah, I bet he didn't.

Look, it's not the role of government to outlaw things that are annoying. I'm sorry, but it's not. It's annoying when people talk on cell phones on trains and buses, in restaurants, and in frankly almost any public place. But that doesn't mean it should be against the law.

Ok, I guess I have an opinion on this after all: that the ban should be lifted, but that individual airlines should be free to decide their own policies about cell phone use. But mostly I think that the law enforcement people should get their heads out of their asses, and that the people annoyed by people talking on cell phones should get an iPod.

Seems like I may be the lone voice of this place. Hopefully people will start writing again. Anyway, here are just a few things from lately.

This weekend, JR and I went to DC to see JT and NP and take in a Sox-Orioles game. Camden Yards is a really beautiful stadium and the fans are the most affable second place fans around. There were loads of kids and also TONS of Sox fans. Every few batters, a "Let's Go, RED SOX" chant would start up pretty fervently and the Oriole fans would boo lustily. It got to a point where anytime the Orioles did something good (they won 4-1), this drunk guy a few rows down would stand up and point to all the Boston fans. It kind of made me feel sad, because this guy shouldn't have anything to prove in his home ballpark. He was outnumbered in his own section and that can't be a good feeling a few miles from his bed.

We flew on Independence Air and that was OK, except our plane coming home Sunday night was delayed over an hour which was a major bummer. While waiting, we heard an announcement that the customers flying to Syracuse should use the rest room now because the toilet on the airplane was broken. While we were preparing for take off, the pilot said something along the lines of "Sorry the flight was delayed, the plane we were supposed to take had some maintenance issues, and luckily for us this one was available. I was thinking to myself, "It's not lucky for us, it's lucky for you and the rest of the "Fly I" staff. I'm glad you're not making me fly on a broken airplane, but really, the ticket I bought was for an on time flight on a well maintained airplane." The same type of thing happened this afternoon while on the phone with Staple's customer service. I had ordered file cabinets for work and the sales rep had said they'd match all the locks for me so they had just one key. She said if the locks for the cabinets didn't end up matching when we got them, I could call Jill and get them ordered free of charge. Wouldn't you know it, the 7 cabinets came with only 1 pair of matching locks and when I called Jill to get the new locks, she said there would be a $14.99 charge for each lock. I told her what the sales rep had told me and she said Staples would pay for half. At the end of the call she said, "I'm sorry for the error, sorry for the misunderstanding." I almost said, "There was no misunderstanding at all, I understood perfectly what your sales rep said." Oh well, maybe next time.


2 political conspiracy theories:
-The editor of Time released Matthew Cooper's notes because of politics, not ethics? Maybe? I don't know anything about him and if political reputation means anything, wouldn't the NYT have released their notes sooner?
-The evangelical right came out opposed to AG Alberto to make him seem more appealing to the Democrats. By declaring that they would oppose even him, Democrats may think of him more fondly. Already I've seen several places that opine Alberto may be the least of all evils when it comes to potential nominees.

This weekend I'm going to JR's family reunion in CLEVELAND. I'll post again shortly if I make it through!

This evening, JR and I went to the Royal Buffet in Loew's Plaza in Cranston. After surveying the buffet options and sitting down with our first plate, JR said "This is a great place to blog about" and so I am. Although this place comes off as a Chinese buffet, more than half of the buffet options were of non-Chinese options. (Note: Chinese in this instance refers to what Americans think of as Chinese and not traditional Chinese cuisine.) There was french fries, hard rolls, onion rings, stuffed mushrooms, and apple pie. And there was seafood as well, which is how I think they pack them in. I don't go in much for seafood buffets, but I thought I'd check out the crab legs because it seemed like everyone was piling their plates high. The best part about this restaurant was what they were playing on the stereo right before we left. A cover of Michael Jackson's Beat It, in Chinese. Brilliant.

We got Jersey Girl from Netflix, the power of the queue and Kevin Smith. Anyway, this is one of those times where you watch a train wreck involving an actor or director you've previously enjoyed knowing full well all previous happy memories will be forever tarnished. It's unfortunate, when this happens, but what can you do? There are those that would say Kevin Smith's train wrecks started with every movie after Clerks, but I liked Mallrats and Chasing Amy. (Incidentally, JR has been laughing quite a bit, it's a little embarrassing.)

Sandra Day O'Connor announced her retirement today. I know there's going a knockdown dragout about who Bush nominates to replace her and probably again if/when Rehnquist leaves. We're about to weather some major political storms, but I wonder how the next several months will be remembered in history. It's likely BushCo will nominate someone totally reprehensible to the Democrats, but it's possible that that nominee will serve the court with distinction and not be a board member for Haliburton. If that's the case, history will soon forget the contentious months we're about to experience.


And finally, this is latest gadget I covet, a teenie, weenie, digi-cam.