Friday, January 19, 2007

Colbert + O'Relly

Colbert on The O'Reilly Factor


O'Reilly on the Colbert Report


Remarks:
O'Reilly likes to yell, and Colbert didn't rise to it, although O'Reilly was baiting him.
Colbert was so patronizing that O'Reilly couldn't find anything to yell and get angry about.
Seeing O'Reilly on the Colbert Report was kind of anticlimactic.

Monday, January 15, 2007

(Belated) New Year's Resolution

The Alpine Meadows National Ski Patrol is looking for more patrolmen. They have a "ski check" that you have to pass to be a patrolman. Well, I ski most of their terrain, but not their double blacks or some of their off piste terrain.

In 2007, I want to get in good enough shape so that in the 2007-2008 ski season I can train to be a patrolman. Basically this is a 2 year resolution: year 1, fitness to train. Year 2: train on the terrain and gain a bit more strength to be able to take a loaded toboggan down all of that terrain. Then, fall 2008, take that ski check and pass it.

Friday, January 12, 2007

"But daddy, I'm only 5"

University Ave, Palo Alto. A father has his five year old son in his arms.

Father: "You have to be, pretty much, first in your class every year for that"

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Zombies!

On New Year's Eve, Helen and I went to one of her LA friend's parents' house for a small party. One of the other people there brought a student movie he acted in for us to watch.

Towards the end of the movie, there are zombies and there's a non zombie guy who is leading the zombies. This dialog still makes me smile:

Leader: What do we want?
Zombies: Brains
Leader: When do we want it?
Zombies: Brains

Edit: apparently this wasn't as original as I'd thought.

Thursday, January 04, 2007

Loyalty: hard to earn, easy to lose

Usually, mileage from United Airlines flights posts on my US Airways account within a couple days. When I flew back from Pittsburgh in early December, I didn't get my miles normally debited. So I mailed in the ticket stub, as they say to do after a couple weeks. A couple weeks later, no miles posted.

So I email them:
... I haven't yet received the miles, and miles are always deposited within 2 days. I even mailed in the ticket to the
mailing address you specify...


They reply, 8 days later:

To credit missing flight activity ... in your Dividend Miles account, we require both a copy of the ticket receipt and the original boarding passes to be submitted ...


Ok, at least pretend to read my email, please.

So I call. I have status on US Airways, so I call my spiffy elite line. I figured I'd get some perky, happy customer service rep - I mean, shouldn't frequent flyers get better service? Nope, the CSR was completely unenthusiastic and bored.

I used to be happy with US Airways: usually on time, usually pretty good service, usually just kind of another mainline carrier. In 3 events (miles not normally posting, lousy and slow email support, unenthusiastic customer support reps), in the span of a month, I've completely lost any enthusiasm to fly with them.