The State of Flying
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Business
As many of you know, I went to visit family in the Seattle area for a few days last week before going to Utah for my Orientation at the U. Well, I flew one of my least favorite airliners to Seattle, of which I won’t name but it begins with “U” and rhymes with “spited.” Well actually, I was having a pleasant experience for once. I had a spacious window seat in a CRJ jet from Manchester, NH to Washington Dulles, and a “Premium Economy” seat from Dulles to Chicago O’Hare. Well, at O’Hare, Spited gave me a chance to get free tickets if I agreed to get bumped to another flight to Seattle on a rival airline leaving an hour later. I won’t name the rival airline but it shares an acronym with a support network for Alcohol abusers.
Well, I happen to like flying Alcoholics Anonymous, so I agreed and got a free round trip to anywhere in the lower 48. I also figured that anything would be better than what would be a middle seat on a Boeing 757, a plane that should not exist. Being in the middle seat of a 757 for 4 hours is like sitting on a barstool for 4 hours with 300 pound man sitting on your lap. The only catch was, I had 20 minutes to get to the next terminal over. Doesn’t sound like a big deal to someone who doesn’t travel much, but usually it is a complete nightmare. But, that’s another rant for another time. My question to you, the reader, what is the definition of irony?
Well, irony is getting out of what could be a bad situation (like a middle seat on a 757 for 4 hours) and ending up in an even worse situation. When I got to the gate (“Hi, my name is Andrew Davis, and I’m a passenger”) and found that I now had a middle seat on an MD-80. Not only that, but it had rust on the wings and when the engines started up, it sounded like a 20 year old Chevy pick-up with a bad ignition. How are those freaking things still in service? When we landed at SeaTac, I crossed myself, praised Allah and Yahweh, and said many prayers of gratitude. I looked at pity at the people who were waiting in the terminal to take that same plane to San Jose.
Why is it that we spend literally hundreds of dollars flying across the country only to have to make three or four stops, sometimes in cities that aren’t even on the way to your final destination, in planes 20 years old and rusting, either baking like an oven or freezing your fingers off, and if you want a blanket, it’ll cost you ten bucks. You don’t get a personal entertainment system, you don’t get nuts, and you have limited drink choices. Where is all that money going? I know they have to pay for fuel and personnel, but they seriously have no money left over for maintenance and updating their aircraft? Just mull it over next time you lose the feeling in your knees while some kid kicks the back of your chair.
My Day at the U
Posted by Andrew | Filed under General
I recently spent a day at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City for Orientation and Advising. I’m going to start classes there in August and officially move away from my current home in Maine and live in Utah, pretty much full-time. The U offers all of their students in-state tuition despite residency for the Summer term, something that I think I will take advantage of this upcoming year. I like to save money, and it would be nice to accelerate myself to my degree.
I will be going after a Bachelor of Arts in “Film Studies.” Which also includes taking four whole semesters of a foreign language which I have mixed feelings about. I love languages, but judging by my struggles with Dutch (being half Flemish (being half of Belgium)), I don’t learn them that well. But, here I come German, once I figure out how to fit it into my schedule without having to drive to Sandy.
So, here is a question, I am totally and completely ADD? Listen to the titles of the classes that I’m taking for my first semester this Fall. For my Major, I’m taking “Introduction to Film,” which makes sense by itself, but when combined with my other three classes, being “Earth Environments,” “Foundations of Business” and “U.S. National Government.” Yeah, it sounds totally and completely random, I know. But, like most Universities, they require a certain amount of credits in different fields, which is fine by me. For example, “U.S. National Government” fulfills my “American Institutions” requirement.
All I know is this. I am very excited. Salt Lake City is beautiful, I don’t care what anyone says. Many people I have met think Utah is some horrible alien world with nothing but salt water and desert sand, and trees don’t grow there, but overall the worst thing is that the place is run by Mormons. None of that is true. Mormons are actually in the minority there, like the rest of the world. Trees grow fine with the amazing chemicals that are available at the gardening section of Wal-Mart. Plenty of fresh water from the mountains, and as evidenced by the pictures I posted on Flickr, it is absolutely gorgeous.
So, I Left Facebook…
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Social Networking
…and I have never been happier. At least as far as my online social life is concerned. I logged onto Facebook for the first time in nearly three weeks last night, and it was just the same crap hole that I left. I can’t believe that I even gave Facebook the time of day. The only reason I left it open was so that my “friends” (those quotes mean something) could still find my email address and phone number so that they could contact me in real life. My about me right now goes a little something like this:
Do not send me a message, do not post to my wall, do not poke me, and do not invite me to your stupid applications and groups. Seriously, here’s my email address and my phone number. If you don’t know how to use either of those, then I don’t want to hear from you.
I’m happy because if I want to share photos with people online, I can use Flickr. If I want to share some video that I made, I can use YouTube. If I want to update my status, my Twitter account is always up for the job. At least most of the time. FriendFeed ties it all together very nicely for me, and they all work a thousand times better than Facebook could ever hope to work at this point.
Twitter is now the talk of the town, and I’m not referring to Leo Laporte’s obsession with it. Nope, it is the talk of all the major news sources. And I think Mark Zuckerberg (if I misspelled his name, well, whatever) should be afraid of Twitter. People are quickly moving to more open systems of social networking. We no longer want to just talk to our 5,000 closest friends. No, we want to broadcast to the entire world in simple messages. Eventually, the free exchange of ideas, links, videos, and photos of cats will win out against what is really an outdated communication technology.
My MacBook Pro Repair Saga
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Customer Service
So, this last week for me has been absolute murder. On Monday, I started up my MacBook Pro (last generation 15″ model) to find that nothing was appearing on the screen, which was a bit of a problem honestly (I know, I’m a real perfectionist). So, I tried mounting the drive via FireWire on my parents’ iMac G4 and it worked, which was really good news, cause it meant the hard drive still worked. So, I made a fresh back-up of all of my stuff and ran to the Maine Mall Apple Store to see the miracle workers at the Genius Bar.
Well, they preformed a miracle, they got it to work, and it only took them 30 seconds to do. But some miracles are short lived. Two hours later, the screen gave out again. I tried the trick that the Genius had showed me, where you hold down the power button, the command and control keys until you here a very loud beep and the machine should start up normally. Well, it didn’t work, and I had a video that I needed to edit. So, it was back to the Apple Store for another visit with the Geniuses. This time, there were no miracles. My beloved MacBook Pro had to be sent to the depot to have it’s logic board replaced.
So, I spent the next four days knowing that I had a video to edit for school, a Photoshop project due soon, and a number of final papers to write. Not to mention the complete disconnect of not having access to the web in a proper browser. Sorry, the BlackBerry is great for email, and I could still Twitter, but everything else was out of the question. Well, on Friday, I got a call from the Apple Store to let me know that my MacBook had returned and was ready to be picked up. So I drove at what many would call an excessive speed to the Maine Mall to grab it and get my daily fix back. Well, it wasn’t really what I was hoping for.
They brought it out of the back room still wrapped in the bubble wrap from it’s shipping. They took it out and handed it to me, I opened it up and found a large scratch between the keyboard and trackpad. I asked the associate who got it out of the back room about it and he talked to the store manager and they said that if they had the part (they called it the “top case”), they could replace it, but I would have to wait another day. Great.
Well, I got it back Saturday afternoon sooner than they told me it would take. Needless to say, I spent all of Saturday night/Sunday morning catching up on my finals work. I’m exhausted and still behind on everything. But, at least it didn’t cost anything to fix my laptop. Here’s a question though, my MacBook came back with a scratch, and they repaired it for free, but it took another day of work way from me. Good customer service or bad?