Windrose Meanderings

The SCA’s travel agent is on the west coast.  So in my efforts to get my Seattle flights changed, she and I are a little out of sync because of the 2 hour time difference.

Yesterday morning it was gonna run me $207 to reschedule my outgoing flight.

This morning, I open my email that came in after I left last night.  Now it’s gonna cost me $306 to reschedule my flight.  But wait … she’s showing a rescheduling of both outgoing and return flights.

I don’t need the return flight rescheduled!

So I’ve sent her an email to see what’s going on.  It’ll be at least 2 hours before she gets into the office, while I sit and stew.

None the less … how is it that the price jumps one hundred frickin’ dollars in 8 frickin’ hours?!

$300 because I am going to the exact same place, one week later.  This is just utterly insane.

‘Scuse me while I froth and foam at the mouth a while.

Update:  American Airlines has apparently decided in their infinite black hearted little souls that if you reschedule one part of your flight, you have to reschedule ALL of your flights.  My return flight leaves early, has a long layover, and gets me home late. 

And here I thought I was getting NOTHING for my extra $300.  Silly me.  I got to buy a big ole helping of inconvenience.

Over the past 3 years, I’ve done a fair amount of flying.  I’ve discovered I don’t much care for the business practices of airlines.  The non-refundable ticket paired with the change fee is what has done it for me.

You buy a ticket for a flight.  Then, for whatever reason (unexpected change in plans, you made a scheduling goof, whatever), you can’t make that flight.

Too bad.  So sad.  You cannot return the ticket for a refund.  The best you can do is get a “credit” that will allow you to re-book the flight.  You can go anywhere you want that the airline flies, and you have a year to use the credit/ticket.  If the price of the new ticket is higher than the original one, of course you have to pay the difference, but that seems fair.  If you don’t use the credit/ticket within a year, well, you’re just out of luck.

Oh.  And you have to pay a “change fee”.  Change fees start at $100. 

Talk about a nice little revenue generator.  Did you know that as a matter of course, flights are oversold?  Once every seat is sold, the airline starts reselling seats on that flight, because a fair number of people will end up missing or cancelling their flight.  This way, the airline tries to insure a full flight.  The airline pockets the change fees from people who have to cancel/change their flights, and if the person never uses the credit, the airline gets to keep the unused flight ticket revenue, too. 

Confused?  Suppose it were Wal-Mart selling a CD. 

• Wal-Mart reserves the same physical CD for 2 different people. 
• Each person pays Wal-Mart $10 to hold the CD. 
• Wal-Mart now has $20 for a CD that sells for $10. 
• The first person to show up, takes the CD. 
• The other person says, I changed my mind.  I want another CD, or maybe I’ll just buy another CD later. 
• Fine, says Wal-Mart.  We are keeping your $10.  If you buy another CD within the next week, you can apply $5 of your original purchase to the purchase of that other CD, but we are keeping the other $5.  If you don’t buy another CD, we are keeping the entire $10.
• Either way, Wal-Mart ends up with a pure profit of $5 to $10.

We had a little vacation planned around an upcoming Board meeting.  Our schedule got disrupted, so that vacation is dead.  I had to reschedule my flight to the Board meeting.  Between the increased cost of the flight and the change fee, it’s costing an additional $207.  (I will be reimbursing the SCA the overage, of course.) 

I wouldn’t mind paying for the difference in the actual plane ticket price.  That seems reasonable & fair.  It just chaps my ass that I have to pay an extra $100 so that my travel agent (not even an employee of the airline!!!) can take 2 minutes to delete the flight, look up another flight, and then re-book the flight.  Online. Directly to the database. No airline employee involved in the action.

We hope to re-use Himself’s ticket within the year.  We figure it will cost us at least the $100 change fee.

Lovely.  For a vacation we aren’t even taking, we are now out $300 - possibly as much as $600 total if we can’t use his ticket.  (Oh yeah, you can’t TRANSFER tickets either.   Either the person in whose name it was bought uses it, or it’s void.)

I can’t even say, “Fie on you, American Airlines, I’ll use your competitor next time! Ha HA!”

Because the non-refundable, non-transferable ticket with the change fee is industry wide. 

I’m all for companies making a profit and staying in business.  But it seems wrong to me that an entire industry has decided that customers who cancel a purchase not only are not refunded for a service not rendered, but are in fact penalized.  Especially when such companies are pretty much assured that there is a buyer for that item, even if the original purchaser changes their mind. 

And you wondered how airlines could afford multi-million dollar CEO salaries and six figure bonuses for top executives.  It’s not by offloading pension liability onto the government (yes, thank you, I’d LOVE to pay your employees’ retirement expenses, even if I never purchase another airplane ticket again, because I love paying higher taxes), and it’s not by busting a transportation union (because it’s much better to reduce a baggage handler’s benefits than to fire an incompetent, overpaid CFO). 

Nah.  They just stole my wallet when it was going through TSA’s xray machine.

I’m experimenting with a set of driving techniques called hypermiling to see if I can improve my gas mileage.   I’ve just started in the last week, and I haven’t done much with the cruise control yet, but it’s an interesting experiment.

The basic techniques require a certain amount of patience, and I’ve found that if I’m in my “hypermiling mindset”, my general stress level during driving is lower.  Since I’m thinking about my driving, it’s more of a game; and I set out expecting to take a little extra time on my drive.

I’ve discovered that you can go a really long distance without using the accelerator, but you do it really slowly.  Deceleration via coasting takes a long time, and you lose most of your speed really quickly at the beginning of your coast.  So, you can take your foot off the gas, decelerate from 30 to 5 in about 10 seconds, and then you decelerate from 5 to 0 over the next 5 minutes.

This works best if you are:

• not in a hurry
• not being followed by other drivers
• confident that the drivers behind you are not armed

A lot of hypermiling is about smart techniques that minimize the use of your brakes, and that keep you moving as much as possible.  Slow acceleration & deceleration are big concepts.  Keeping plenty of space between you and other cars can also help prevent stop & go traffic if you do it right.   

Since I’ve only been doing this a little while and I’m not very good at it yet, I’ve seen only extremely modest gains … about 1 mile per gallon improvement.  But … every little bit helps.  I’m looking forward to amusing myself by trying to improve on that by using sensible techniques, while finding the balance point that keeps me from completely pissing off all the other drivers around me. 

I had come to the conclusion that my cats must have had earlier lives in the workshop of the Roman who invented concrete — that’s where they had to have gotten the idea.  Clumping kitty litter my ass.  Try breccia.  The stuff bonds to the bottom of the kitty litter pan and sits there like a slab of hardened roadway.  No wonder the automatic scrapy thing doesn’t work (electric kitty litter pans … a nice idea that fails in the execution).  It hit the “clumps” and gave itself a hernia trying to budge them.

Since the electric pans really aren’t functional, and since I’m vaguely exploring more environmentally conscious decisions for household products, I decided to get rid of the machinery.

I picked up a couple of cheap plastic pans.  Then I got some of those pressed waste-paper pans to use as inserts.  Better than using plastic liners.  I found paper lunch bags to dump the daily scoopings into, rather than more plastic bags.

Then I looked at the kitty litter products.  Saw some boxes of “Feline Pine Litter”.  They were on sale.  There are minimal ingredients and no unpronouceable chemicals.  What the hell.  I gave it a try.

I got home, chased the cats away (because ya know, when you change the kittly litter, they have to go RIGHT NOW), and set up the new litter pans.  Opened the box, and started pouring. 

It’s just pine sawdust.

But ya know what?  Amazingly, it’s the best stuff I’ve used yet.  The manufacturer says that pine naturally absorbs ammonia odors, and it does.  It does a pretty good job of clumping the liquids.  And on top of all that, I no longer have to battle with concrete clumps.  Everything comes out easily and painlessly.

My mom & dad use sawdust in their horses’ stalls … so much easier to clean out than straw.  It just never occurred to me that it would be effective in the kitty litter pans, too.

I’ve heard/seen several stories in the news over the past week about the aftermath of the cyclone in Myanmar.  For the past week aid agencies have been trying to get food, water, medical & other relief supplies to the population of Myanmar.  The folks in charge in Myanmar have in essence told the international community:  “Thank you for any supplies you want to share.  Deliver them to this specified location and we [Myanmar's government] will handle distribution.  Your aid workers, staff, media, etc., are not welcome.”

There has been concern that the government failed to adequately warn the population of the dangers of the storm before it hit; there is substantial concern that they cannot effectively distribute supplies in a timely manner.  There also appears to be concern that the government will simply appropriate all supplies and not distribute them at all.  In the meantime, 10s of thousands of people have already died and 10s of thousands more face the potential of disease and death through starvation, unclean water, lack of sanitary facilities, and exposure.

I am trying to avoid a “partisan” stance.  Apparently Myanmar is ruled by a military junta that overthrew the most recent government.  I am, however, poorly educated about this country.  All that I know is the snippets I am hearing on the radio.

I am saddened and disturbed by the idea that thousands and thousands of people are suffering and facing an ongoing crisis that could be alleviated by aid agencies well versed in the efficient distribution of relief supplies.  I am concerned that people face long term disability & death from easily treatable diseases, when there are trained medical professionals ready and willing to help out.

The international community is in an uproar.  I think it’s pretty much a given that everybody outside of Myanmar thinks that the military junta is going to abscond with any and all aid and doesn’t give a damn about the people in the country who are dying.  I’ve seen comments from aid agencies saying that it’s their [the agencies'] “right” to be go into Myanmar and handle the distribution of the supplies they are bringing.

And yet, there is another side to that story.  Myanmar is a sovereign nation.  No matter how the people in charge got there, they are the current government.  Do they not have the right to determine how they will handle national crises?  Is it not their perogative to determine how best to care for the people of their country?  Is it possible that Myanmar’s government can in fact make sure that it’s population receives the necessary aid?  Does it absolutely follow that because a military junta runs a country in a secretive fashion, that government will automatically hoard supplies and let 10s of thousands die?  Does the rest of the world have the “right” to disregard the sovereignty of a state for the good of that state’s people?  If so, where does the line get drawn between acceptable and unacceptable interference?

I’m not saying that either Myanmar’s leaders or the international community are in the wrong or in the right.  I don’t know enough either way to make a truly informed decision.  But for all that my heart aches for the misery so many people are experiencing, quite possibly needlessly, I can also understand the view point that says “thank you for helping, but please let us manage this our way.”

In a perfect world, offering charity should not give you special rights, and accepting charity should not have to mean accepting unwanted conditions. 

In an imperfect world, how do we keep the spirit of charity alive and the application effective, both in the giving and in the taking? 

Do you have any idea how irritating it is to be a not-particularly-good fighter in a fashion season where cap sleeves are all the vogue?

First off, let me say that fat women should never be forced to show that much jiggly upper arm (for the love of Pete, if you’re gonna design for fat women, you should LOOK at us on occasion, Moron).

Second off, somehow it’s just not terribly professional to show up for work and sit at the front desk with 4 bruises marching down the right arm from shoulder to elbow, and one adorning the bicep of the left arm. 

Grumble. 

Mind you, it’s my own damn fault for not keeping my arms back behind the shield. 

But still.  Along with all the other stuff I have to do this summer, now I need to add making work clothes to the list. 

Stupid fashion designers.

I am largely okay with immigrants in this country.  I’m even pretty liberal about immigrants who choose to continue speaking a language other than English when they move here.

But, for the love of all that is holy, if you are an immigrant and you operate, hypothetically, a pizza place that, hypothetically, delivers to me, HIRE AN AMERICAN TEENAGER AT MINIMUM WAGE TO ANSWER THE FREAKIN’ PHONE AND TAKE MY ORDER.

I’m sure your cousin is a very nice guy and a hard worker and a spectacular pizza baker.  But it should not take me 10 minutes (of actual talking time) to order a pizza, a side, a salad, and 2 cold drinks. 

We finally cut the grass yesterday.

Holy dog crap, Batman!

Oil companies are making record profits.  Gas costs $3 + dollars a gallon, but big oil companies say they aren’t making their additional profits through the higher prices of gasoline. 

There was a story on the news this morning mentioning the fact that big oil companies have been the beneficiaries of substantial and generous tax breaks over the past few years.  Maybe they aren’t pulling in more revenue.  Maybe they just have lower tax expenses.  That would result in bigger net profits.

The story went on to suggest that perhaps the big oil companies should be “encouraged” to sink a substantial amount of their profits into alternate energy research if they want to keep those generous tax breaks.  The big oil companies are balking at this. 

I’m not really going to address the idea of “forcing” the big companies to plow their money into R&D or new wells or whatever.  Either way, I will still end up paying more money at the pump, because any expense will be passed on to me so that the oil companies & their investors (and I’m probably one of them through a pension plan somewhere) can keep their profits.

No, what really annoyed me was the statement made by a congresswoman who I once respected.  Over the past few years, she’s lost a lot of my respect.  Her statement today is just another instance of why that’s the case.

She thinks it’s a bad idea to pursue alterate energy research, because we’ve tried that and it hasn’t worked.  So instead, we should encourage funding for developing new oil reserves in the US.

The US doesn’t have the oil resources to sustain our energy needs independently, and the world doesn’t have the oil resources to sustain global energy demand indefinitely.  At some point, the oil is gonna run out. 

If production of cheap, clean, abundant energy was easy, we’d already be doing it.  I am firmly convinced that the answer is out there, we just need to keep working on it.  Giving up is not an option, and to say that we’ve already hit the wall on research & development is to write off the human ingenuity that brought us gasoline powered automobiles in the first place. 

My issue in this case has nothing to do with who will pay for what & whether they will do it voluntarily or by force.  My issue is with a woman I know to be intelligent, who has apparently decided that sticking her fingers in her ears and singing “LA LA LA” at the top of her voice is a viable method of arguing the merits of important issues.

I’ve been listening to the news and there have been a rash of little stories about the suggestion that President Bush not attend the Olympics in Beijing.  This is felt to be a good way to voice the United States’ belief that China has a poor human rights record.

I think that:

• The United States needs to stop pretending that we are all that and a bag of chips when it comes to human rights, since we are apparently unable to clearly articulate what torture is, much less condemn it as a bad thing that we don’t tolerate; and
• If we are so determined to encourage China to improve their human rights record, then perhaps it would be better to … oh, I don’t know … stop buying their products?  break off diplomatic relations?  find a way to reward positive actions taken by China when they do good things instead of bad things?

If the United States is going to stand up as a nation and proclaim that we are champions of human rights, then we need to get our own house in order first so we are not blatant hypocrits, and then take substantive actions that would actually make a difference.  

Grandstanding, and in my not humble at all opinion grandstanding is all this would be, is not an effective tool to promoting real and lasting change.