Southwest Airlines

I love these people! This past week I made travel arrangements on Southwest and then had to change them twice. Southwest put the changes through without any additional fees … AND … the flight I booked, using my frequent flyer points, only cost me five bucks despite the fact I booked the original flight on fairly short notice.

Things could have only gone better had I remembered to put my free-drink voucher in my carry-on before leaving for the airport an hour ago.

But wait… a little bit of time has passed since I typed that last period while sitting at the airport in Chicago and I’m now on a plane bound for Seattle. I’m at 38,000 feet and I know this as the header area on my web browser is keeping me updated. That’s right, we have WiFi on this flight.  It cost a mere five dollars.

One more thing i love about Southwest: As we were boarding the flight to Chicago the flight attendant was telling us that the flight was full and that smaller items should be kept under the seat so we’d have room for larger things in the overhead bin. As she finished that sentence she said, playfully, "And there goes another small bag in the overhead. You think I’m not watching, but I am."

I loved her sass.

(And the fact someone finally spoke up about people putting two bags in the overhead.)

The post I made about the North Carolina smoking ban reminded me of this.

Years ago I was at a Bob Evans in Maryland. As I sat there eating I couldn’t help but think how much better that Bob Evans smelled than the one near my home. After a moment I sorted out what the difference was — it smelled like food.

At this point in time there was only 25% of the local Bob Evans’ restaurant set aside for smoking and it was never full; but this was enough to mask the smell of sausage biscuits and gravy. Armed with these points — that the Maryland Bob Evans smelled like food while the one near me didn’t, that just 25% of the restaurant was set aside for smoking and never full (and that trying to sit non-smokers in the 25% of the restaurant that used to be smoking and abutted the smoking area was a fucked-up idea), and that I ate there once or twice a week — I sent a letter off to Bob Evans suggesting they make the entire restaurant non-smoking.

They sent a letter back, thanking me for my patronage but explaining that going non-smoking  at my local Bob Evans didn’t fit with their marketing plan for that restaurant. Which appeared to be to allow one or two smokers to mask the smell of blueberry pancakes for the rest of us.

By this time I’d been spoiled by the smell of food and decided to cut my trips to Bob Evans down as several other restaurants had gone totally non-smoking. Eventually a smoking ban came to the city I live in and all the restaurants observed it. By this time I was out of the habit of going to Bob Evans… it’s likely been years since I’ve been in one.

I read in the news, recently, that North Carolina is banning smoking in restaurants. This is a pretty bold move for North Carolina as they’re one of our big tobacco-producing states. I think they should be applauded for taking this step.

Naturally, not everybody is on board with this. In the same article that mentioned the smoking ban some people were interviewed who took the position the government leave this issue alone as they’d like to enjoy a cigarette with their meal.

In other words, what they’d like to do, is sit at their table and stink up the whole restaurant.

I think I’d better be able to understand their point if smokers, when they were driving, would keep their windows up. But they don’t. They’ll have it rolled down a little bit so the smoke is drawn out of the car — because, it seems, they don’t want to sit in a smokey car.

They want enjoy all the smoking goodness, they just don’t want to be in a smoke-filled auto.

Why is it so hard for them to understand I don’t want to be around any smoke at all? Especially when I eat.

Before I go any further, I want to say I know not all smokers think like this. I also know many smokers would like to be able to quit but that it’s hard to do. Finally, I think, if people want to smoke, they should be able to smoke… but, at home, away from everybody else. And not near children. (For the record, I’d legalize most all drugs. I don’t do any, but it’s easy to see that The War on Drugs is nothing but a big time and money suck. Why not legalize and tax them?)

I found this at The Huffington Post:

Dutch speedskater Sven Kramer won a gold medal on the first full day of the Vancouver Olympics. Afterwards, he wasn’t too happy about a request from a reporter.

[The reporter] asks Kramer, "If you can say your name and your country and what you just won here." Kramer quickly interjects: "Are you stupid? Hell no I’m not going to do that."

Dude. It would have taken just a couple of seconds to give the information asked for. It would have cut down on the chance of an error in the reporter’s written account.

You’re a speed skater.

Most of the world doesn’t care that you can skate fast. I wouldn’t say what you do is a terribly transferable skill. One day you’ll likely look back on this event and say to yourself, “I remember when people used to pretend to give a shit about what I did. Man, I miss those days.”

Chill out.

jrew.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close

F*cking jrew, I thought. It’s responsible for every software crash and blue screen of death since the dawn of man!!”

“Sugar Tits!” I screamed at my assistant. “Get in here with my Mountain Dew and be prepared to stay late. We’ve got some coding to do!”

Okay. Well, I don’t have an assistant. I don’t drink Mountain Dew either. And my coding is so poor it’s all I can do to keep Microsoft from hiring me and moving me to Redmond.

I did have a problem with JREW.EXE yesterday. And some non-JREW.EXE issues. Ones that lasted 9 hours.

I’ve had problems with Oracle clients before. The preferred client — the one we’ve been using since day one — has a timeout feature that kicks out an ODBC error if a query runs too long. A newer client … one that is just .0001 versions newer (or thereabouts) allows the query timeout feature to be deselected.

So, the newer client (clients, actually — we have a couple of versions) are better? Right? Well, sometimes they break Microsoft Access queries that have been running like gangbusters for years. And then those queries need to be rewritten. And some of them are a bitch.

The newer clients also break Cognos — which I’m able to fix in just a few minutes. That is, now, I can fix them in a couple of minutes — I invested a couple of hours learning how to do this several months ago. But now, I can do it in a couple of minutes. Unless, of course, my week has been a non-stop barrage of things-that-never-happen actually happening and Cognos not accepting the fix is one of a list of bizarre things that could happen too to make the week even weirder.

At 2 p.m. I sat at a coworkers PC to fix Cognos. I’d installed a newer Oracle client earlier in the week to fix the query timeout problem. I’d also applied the Cognos fix … and it was not working.

Yada yada yada. I edited the registry. I blew out and installed several sets of Java Runtime files (The “J” and the “R” part of JREW for those of you who don’t know and haven’t been bored to tears yet).

I uninstalled and reinstalled a couple of Oracle clients.

The one that works for everyone else (and may not break as many Access queries) wouldn’t even begin to install. I’d get an hour glass when I clicked the Setup icon and then nothing.

At one point I thought I’d get tricky and use the Universal Installer from an even newer version to install the older files. (Say it with me people! U-NI-VER-SAL). It tried really really hard to work and hung about 80% through. Universal crap never works … universal windshield wiper blades … universal mounting brackets for something you need mounted … all crap. Even Kirk had trouble with the universal translator every once in a while.

I did a custom install — deselecting things I didn’t need — and tried again.

It looked good. Eighty, ninety, boom one-hundred percent! And then the message advising me that a component wasn’t able to install. Naturally it was the component I needed.

Sometimes things would look great and when I went to tweak settings I’d get the JREW.EXE error. Or I’d find that the Oracle Data Access Component I needed wasn’t showing up in the ODBC Administrator. Or that it seemed to be there, but instead of a version number — which would verify that things would work — there would be a text string advising me that my coworkers were at home watching How I Met Your Mother while I was getting screwed by software; this message would eventually change to Two and a Half Men, The New Adventures of Old Christine, and, finally, Deep Throat (I assume the software was channeling for some of the sales guys at that point).

I finally downloaded an 80 meg file from Oracle — it was a newer client than either I had. But just barely newer. It started installing and then crashed with a JREW error.

However. Enough of it installed that when I next tried to reinstall one of the clients I’d tried to install before … it worked!

I was home just before the 11 o’clock news.

Information Regarding Your account:

Dear VISA Member! Attention!

Your VISA Credit Card has been violated!

Someone from Bulgaria tried to access your personal account from 2 different ATM’s but with wrong pin! We were forced to freeze your Credit Card until you will confirm your identity online!

Please click the link below and enter your account information to confirm that you are not currently away. You have 3 days to confirm account information or your account will be locked.

https://www.usa1.visa.com/verifiedbyvisa/usa1/update.asp

Click on the “Confirm identity ” link in the Activate Credit Card box and then enter this confirmation number: 1291-3821-1345-9233-3925

Thank you for using Visa!
Verified by Visa Team

Please do not reply to this e-mail. Mail sent to this address cannot be answered.

VISA Email ID VU294E22

I had almost deleted the above e-mail and dismissed it as a phishing attempt when something caught my eye. Something that spoke to me. Something that said this isn’t the work of some 15-year old in a basement but the is the genuine article — an item put out by an overworked and overstressed Visa customer service department.

It wasn’t the lack of Visa graphics. Everybody knows that phishers can easily insert those to make an e-mail look more legit. Phishers are that hip. That cool.

It wasn’t the reference to Bulgaria. As it happens, I summer there and make use of many of the 22,000 ATMs located throughout Albena, Sofia, Varna and Plevin. Of course, I always use the correct PIN.

No. It was neither of those things.

When you, I anyway, receive an e-mail that is obviously phishing it has an almost Barry White feel to it. It has a very smooth, sexy delivery. I get just a little turned on. I know when it comes to that phisher I’m his first, his last, his everything.

The item I received today that I’ve so cleverly put in a colored box at the top of this entry had nothing at all like a Barry-White delivery.

It was more Gilbert Godfried.

Your Visa card has
been stolen you
sonuvabitch!

Dear Visa Member !

Attention !

Your VISA Credit Card has been violated! Someone from Bulgaria tried to access your personal account from 2 different ATM’s but with wrong pin! We were forced to freeze your Credit Card until you will confirm your identity online!

Nothing says that this is an honest-to-goodness warning from a credit card company like the use of exclamation points. These people — the Visa folks — want to get my attention. They want me to know they care. They want me to know that they appreciate my business so much that they close with:

Thank you for using Visa!

Because saying, Thank you for using Visa you crazy sonuvabitch, we love you is not very business like.

The first time I met Rob I suspected he had issues of some sort. Maybe mental health, maybe some mild MR … something.

At the time, I was working for a rehabilitation facility in Columbus. I was a Job Coach — I’d help people with disabilities find employment, and then go to the jobsite to provide additional training and support. The point being, I was familiar with folks with varying degrees of special needs and I tried to be sensitive.

I was at a Sunoco station north of OSU campus. I must have been at a full-service pump because I remember I was sitting in the driver’s seat when Rob walked over and introduced himself. His approach seemed a little uncommon, but nothing alarming. He was friendly enough.

We talked just a minute before the attendant who was filling my tank came over, looked at Rob and said, “Get out of here. We don’t like your kind around here.”

Like I said, I thought Rob likely had some mental health issues. I thought the way the attendant talked to him was in poor form and vowed never shopped at that Sunoco again.

Time would pass. Probably just about six months — which would have taken us into the winter months.

I had flown somewhere and returned to a snow-covered Columbus, Ohio.

I caught the bus at the airport and started my trip to north of campus. At the downtown stop Rob got on. He was sitting several seats in front of me and across the aisle; I didn’t recognize him right away.

At some point early in the ride he turned around, caught my eye and started making odd hand gestures. My first thought — even though I’m a sensitive male — was if there’s a weirdo on the bus … he’ll find me.

The hand gestures continued, conversation eventually followed, and he told me his name was Rob.

“Rob,” I said, “I remember you. I met you at the Sunoco this past summer. You live up around Northern Lights.”

Rob seemed a bit caught off guard, but that didn’t slow his delivery.

He told me he’d been downtown — and I’m sketchy on some of this not because of the years that have passed, I just never had a firm grasp of the whole thing — visiting a buddy and his girlfriend and that the three of them had been engaged in some sort of activity that would take this entry to an R or XXX rating. His description of what was going was somewhat vague, but could have really meant only one thing. And as I type this I’m reminded of an LA Law episode in which the guy who would eventually go on to be Dharma’s dad gets arrested by a female vice cop — she thinks he’s trying to solicit sex for money from her when, in fact, he’s asking about the food at an Asian restaurant; I think the thing that pushed her to make the arrest was when he asked, “How much is the five-finger roll?”

(I can’t find anything about Asian food and five-finger rolls in Google. You hard-core LA Law fans will remember the episode.)

Anyway, Rob and I were not talking about food. The conversation I think he was having with me seemed to put some context to the hand gestures he was making earlier. He went on to tell me his father was unhappy with some of the choices he made … again, probably not menu choices.

The ride would soon be over. I was getting off just north of campus. Rob was going to Northern Lights. I wasn’t sure where it was, but I knew it wasn’t anywhere near where I lived.

The bus rolled up to my stop. I got off. Rob followed. And this caught me off guard. Was Northern Lights closer than I thought? (As it happens it is about 6 miles up the road.) Did Rob have business in the University area?

As Rob and I walked he continued his rap. Still being a bit vague he continued to tell me more along the lines of his father being unhappy with some of the sexual relationships he’d been involved in. I thought that maybe he was trying to tell me he was gay — which, even as a 27-year old from a small town — I was cool with. I told him that it was important that people be comfortable with who they are.

As we walked Rob turned up a side street and I kept going straight. Rob stopped, looked at me and asked, “Don’t you live up here?”

This is when I had the ah-ha moment. Rob thought he was coming home with me!

“No. I’m a few blocks up.”

The rap continued. I continued telling Rob that a person had to be comfortable with himself and the decisions he makes in life in order to be happy.

It would seem I was not catching Rob’s drift as much as he would have liked. He was, looking back, thinking I’d figure out what his vague references might really be about, but I was just too stupid to catch on. Subtlety was not working.

Rob finally said, “Well, I’ve puffed a pipe or two in my day.” Except he didn’t say puff and he didn’t say pipe.

“Rob,” I said calmly, “You’ve got to be careful who you say things like that to. Not everybody is going to be as understanding as I am and eventually somebody is going to push you down in the snow and step on you. Like I said, we all make decisions in life. I’ve decided I’d really rather not hear any more of this. This is my street. I’ve got to go. I’ll see you later.”

(I really don’t think people decide to be gay; sexual preference comes on us at birth. And I don’t know that Rob was gay, but I’m guessing the guy at the Sunoco was more put off by Rob soliciting male customers than anything else.)

In an article on New Ways to Become a Criminal in 2010 at CBS News there’s blurb on how texting while driving is going to be outlawed in New Hampshire, Oregon and Illinois (raising the total number of states to ban texting while driving to 19.)

This is being done to make the roads safer. Texting while driving is, after all, more dangerous than drinking and driving.

Banning texting, then, seems like a no brainer.

A No-Brainee to speak on the subject (as quoted in the CBS story):

Tina Derby, 42, of Warner, N.H., said she has no intention to stop texting while driving, despite the possible $100 fine she could receive.

"I’d better start saving my money," Derby said.

Because Tina’s need to send an LOL to a friend is far more important than your safety.

Let’s hope Tina runs into a dumpster and not a school bus full of children.

Try to stay warm.

The other day I was sitting in front of the TV, taking a break. As the remote was lost I was sort of stuck watching whatever came on as, being on a break, I was reluctant to make my way to the TV to flip around.

As I sat there the screen filled with a guy I see from time to time. Until today I had no idea what the guy was selling but I’d always had the opinion that whatever it was I’d never buy it based solely on the guy’s appearance. The man needs an image consultant — someone to tell him that if you are trying to sell folks something you should do everything you can to not look like a con man. Someone to tell him that while Pencil Thin Mustache is a fine Jimmy Buffet song it is a poor facial affectation. Especially when the types of things oozing out from beneath the mustache are things like your bowel movements should be the same size, proportionately speaking, as those of your four-year old.

I couldn’t find a pic of Klee. This one
of Boston Blackie shows a better
example of the mustache in question.

This brought to mind a BM one of my kids had that led me to comment “it’s almost as big as your arm.” (Those of you with little kids handy are probably familiar with them tracking you down to show you the poos that come out of them.)

Without doing any actual measuring I think my arm is about three-feet from the tip of my nose to the end of my fingertip. If we deduct some length for the shoulder and even the hand we’re left something over two feet. And I would argue that for the purposes of fecal-matter measuring, the hand should be considered part of the arm.

Even without taking into account the girth that is going to be a hard turd to pass. I suppose if it articulates about half-way down, like an elbow, it would be easier to evacuate. But it’s still going to be a bitch.

Based in this type of logic am I to think that my urine stream should have a fire-hose quality to it now that I’m older. Have you ever heard a four-year old urinate? It’s amazing the force of their stream doesn’t chip the porcelain. Adjusting this mechanism for age-appropriate size, adult men would have to harness themselves to the toilet to keep the force of their stream from throwing them back against the wall.

Klee Irwin, the guy from Dual Action Cleanse, states that there is something like 15 to 20 pounds of fecal material stuck in our bowels. I’d seen something like this on the Internets before which, of course, makes it true.

These people say that’s a crock of shit. A crock similar in mass to what a four-year old might produce (adjusted for size).

And I’m guessing they’re not sporting Boston Blackie facial hair.