Archive for September, 2008

For those of you who don’t know, around this time of the year, New york city beams twin towers of light where the world trade center towers used to stand. i took a couple shots tonite from my roof in brooklyn.

[that's an airplane next to the right one]

and here’s one i took of the moon, which turned out to look more like the sun…

This is a great lecture from Randy Pausch at Carnegie Mellon on achieving your childhood dreams. Definitely worth the hour & 16 minutes. I’m pretty sure I attended Pausch’s course & spoke with him when I was up there as a high school senior, thinking i’d attend CMU [ i didn't end up there, principally because i wasn't accepted...]. Anyhow, enjoy!

Here’s the other letter I sent today. This one’s to Richard Anderson, CEO of Delta Air Lines.

Mr. Anderson,

I write to you today to commend you on what a fabulous job you are doing. On my recent trip from New York/JFK to Atlanta, I nearly missed my flight due to highway traffic. I arrived some 25 minutes before my flight was due to take off, frantic and sure I would not make it. I ran up to the First Class check-in desk, as it seemed to be the least busy, and I explained my situation. Graciously, the gentleman checked me in ahead of waiting First-Class patrons (of which I was not one).

I ran to security and to my gate and just made it as the plane was boarding. I do not recall the gentleman’s name, but he should be honored! I was even more surprised when my bag arrived in Atlanta! I had just recently had an altercation with an airline who will not be named, where I arrived at the airport about an hour before my flight was to depart, and they lost my bag! Barbarians, I tell you!

Another pleasant surprise came on my return flight when I arrived at JFK some 40 minutes early! Quite lovely, if you ask me.

I understand that these are trying times for you, and I commend your dedication to customer service all the more.

I sent off a couple of letters today. Here’s one I sent to Bob Fornaro, President of AirTran Airways. I will post any response I get from AirTran.

Mr. Fornaro,

Lose my bag once, shame on you.

Lose my bag twice, shame on me.

That’s right. On my last two trips with AirTran, my bags have been lost.

The first trip was Atlanta to New York/LaGuardia on September 2, 2007 when I was moving to New York City. I had paid an extra $50 to bring a third bag, which happened to contain the sheets and pillows I intended on sleeping on that night. Why did I pay an extra $50, when the bag never even made it on the plane, or even to New York on the same day as myself? When I asked for my money back at the very least, the manager flatly refused.

The second trip was New York/LaGuardia to Newport News, VA on July 18, 2008, when I was traveling to Williamsburg, VA for a friend’s wedding the next morning. On this trip, you lost my only bag, which contained all of my clothes. I couldn’t very well go to a wedding in shorts, a t-shirt, and flip flops, and I couldn’t be sure when my bag would arrive the next morning, so I was forced to travel the 20 miles back to the airport at 1am.

The AirTran representative I dealt with at PHF was congenial and gave me a $25 credit, but that’s not enough for me to consider flying with you in the near future. Not by a long shot. That does not even cover the $50 I paid for you to lose my bag in September 2007, or the exorbitant price of gas I had to pay to get back to the airport in July 2008.

The essential problem is that you have become unreliable, while simultaneously raising your prices to the levels of other airlines. In fact, because I have to pay for such conveniences as sitting in an exit row, I end up paying more than I would on a similar flight on, say, Delta. Plus, they have the added bonus of not regularly losing my luggage.

You have left me no reason to fly with you.

While I have your undivided attention, I wanted to bring one more issue to light. On the aforementioned LGA-PHF flight, it took me some 30 minutes to check in, even though there were several AirTran employees assisting customers and not very many customers in line. The employees were extraordinarily slow and rather surly when I finally made it to the front. I suggest sending spies to LaGuardia’s Terminal D or Atlanta’s South Terminal to find out how a 21st century check-in system works.

* he’s toeing the line between aligning himself with and distancing himself from bush
* while palin belittled & demeaned obama during her speech, thus energizing the republican base & leaving behind the center, mccain seems to respect him, thus recentering his campaign to a degree.
* during the speech, do you think he’s aware there were protesters being led out?
* palin knows how much gas costs. does that mean mccain doesn’t?
* the republican party’s somehow running on a platform of change.
* mccain liked your favorite band before they were cool
* what’s wrong with losing a war?
* isn’t the purpose of the supreme court to keep the executive & legislative branches in check? doesn’t that ensure their right to ‘legislate from the bench’?
* mccain says government should offer more choices for americans, not tell them what to do.. ahem
* war’s bad
* mccain’ll work with dems & independents, possibly even including them in his cabinet?
* it’s awful that mccain was a pow. but what does it have to do with whether he’d make a good president? the only correlation i see is that it’ll temper the administration’s predilection for torture, as well as possibly prevent future war and close gitmo. but it seems obama would do the same thing. so once again, why do we continue to hear about what happened to him some 40 years ago?
* does “country first” sound communist to you?
* “i’m not running for president because i think i’m blessed with such personal greatness that history has annointed me to save our country in its hour of need” — john mccain, in sharp contrast to our current leader

i do like how both presidential candidates recommend those dissatisfied with politics, the country, etc, should get off their asses and do something about it themselves, rather than just bitch & moan.

obama might just be a rational, normal human. this doesn’t seem to be politics as usual… thoughts?

I went record shopping today & picked up some albums I had been meaning to get for a while, and some other albums I didn’t even know i wanted until today. so it goes

Beck – Modern Guilt
Dr. Dog – Fate
The Supreme Genius of King Khan & the Shrines
She & Him – Volume One
Santogold
Black Kids – Partie Traumatic
My Morning Jacket – Evil Urges

More to come on this later …

loretta lynn – little red shoes