Carousel of Hate

This is a letter I sent to Delta recently regarding my experiences trying to use their new paperless boarding passes.

Since I first heard that Delta was offering paperless boarding passes I thought how fun this would be to try. On my last few trips from LGA I decided to try checking in on my phone. The first time there was no option for online checkin, obviousy a problem that day. The second time I got my online boarding pass but it did not include the barcode so TSA could not use it. Today for my third time I got the barcode and figured everything was fine. I went through CLEAR for security screening and they did not have the computer to scan the screen. They went to all the TSA agents and nobody had gotten the computers out that day. Finally they found one person who had the computer. After some “fiddling about” they got the computer on and then tried to scan the barcode for about one minute. After they they “determined” that the barcode on my iPhone was not compatible with their scanner, I suspect they did not have any idea how to use the equipment. I was then sent back through the security line, I had to find a checkin kiosk that was free, print a boarding pass (so much for that tree) and then go back through CLEAR to be screened again. I am almost certain that this is not the process Delta had in mind when designing the paperless boarding pass system. Should I continue trying and getting frustrated or just use the old-fashioned paper boarding pass and be relatively headache free? If I choose tha later, then hours and many thousands of dollars are wasted on Delta’s part.

What should I do here?  Am I expecting too much?

I did some research today and came across a site that seems to put handy information together about the stimulus bill H.R. 1.  ReadTheStimulus.org has the text in PDF, and Text format along with a search on site.  They have references to external sites such as the Washington Post that has a very handy and easy to read chart breaking down the categories.  I cannot help but be frightened by the amount of money being thrown about.  Will we ever be able to pay it off?  And the cost per household is estimated at up to $20,000!  I will be making an attempt to read or at least skim through the document(s) but I am interested in feedback from others who are/have read it.

I hear a commercial this morning on the radio for a mobile probider that used the tag line “Unlimit Yourself”, immediately followed by the disclaimer “Limited time offer.” Does this make the anyone else feel a bit uneasy?

As I navigate the airports today interacting with the public at large I am reminded how infrequently people think of anyone but themelves. People get on the esculator or moving walkways and just camp out. Sometimes they stand next to people, other times they stand on the left for no apparent reason.

Similarly when geting ready to deplane the aircraft it is not unusual to have someone sitting behind you rush forward and not wait for their turn.

Can we all just look out for someone else a little more often? I understand you have to take care of yourself, that is great but there ought to be at least a few minutes of your day to make sure your actions are not the cause of anger, grief or inconvenience for the rest of us.

So what happens if I smoke?

Why are these placards always written in Title Case? And what is with the lack of punctuation. Think about how high the unemployment rate will be soon for commas.

Over the last few weeks I have been extending my knowledge of Windows Command Scripting, or to simple folks, writing batch files.  A few things really annoy me, like when people cannot grasp that something has changed.  News flash the acronym PCMCIA went away years ago when the decided to call it PC Card, cmd is a replacenment for the old command prompt, and batch files (.bat) have been passe for a long time now with command scripts (.cmd) being introduced in Windows NT 4.

As I have been trying to learn better ways of doing things I wondered today how I could find the current drive letter the command script was being called from.  I found people questioning it, I thought about writing an elaborate script to set a variable and parse it, but finally I found Rob van der Woude’s Scripting Pages which had the reference I needed.  What is the answer?  “%~d0″  Now how in the world would anyone ever guess or figure out that %~d0 returns the drive of the current command script?

First of all when did we start calling them meds?

Ok, so putting your old or unused medicine down the toilet is bad, umm kay!  We put enough crap into our water supply through all the scented cleaning products, soaps, shampoo (why does it need to smell like desert?), etc.  And how about all those unnecessary prescriptions that people do not even need but rush out to their doctor after seeing the commercial the night before, never mind the rashes, incontinence and other annoying after effects, you can now walk on the beach with your loved ones!

UPDATE: My friend Mike scanned this insert that was included in his latest water bill.

On my way into IKEA today I noticed this sign. Perhaps someone needs to tell the Swedes there is a “credit crisis” going on here.

After installing Vista SP1 under Parallels on my new MacBook, I decided maybe it was not as bad as I thought before.  I have been learning more about Vista and found some things I like about it, for example the new Backup application writes the backup to VHD files, wow Microsoft made a great decision with that one!

So tonight I was wondering what my options were for upgrading from my current Windows XP Professional X64 installation to a 64-bit version of Windows Vista (Edition?).  I found a Microsoft KB article Installation choices for 64-bit consumer versions of Windows Vista which has my specific scenario “Installing a 64-bit version of Windows Vista on a computer that is running Windows XP Professional x64.”  I followed the link to the Vista Upgrade Advisor download page and after running the installation file I am presented with this message.

Sorry, the Upgrade Advisor does not support 64-bit editions of Windows XP or Windows Vista.