Month: August 2002

Airtran Considered Harmful

Ashley Bischoff8 Comments

I had quite an adventure with airlines over the past few days. The result: Airtran considered harmful. It all started a few days ago...

I had flights for Sunday through Saturday with Vanguard Airlines. But, of course, Vanguard went bankrupt on me. To make things more interesting, I had already used one leg of my trip at the time of the bankruptcy.

At the time of the bankruptcy, Vanguard had arranged special deals for stranded-travellers with Frontier and National airlines. However, I quickly found out that neither Frontier nor National flew to both Pittsburgh and Dallas :-/. So, that’s where Airtran comes in.

I had checked the usual sites, but Airtran consistently had the best fares for one-way trips from Pittsburgh to Dallas. Of course, “best” is all relative, as the one-way flight that I ended up booking with Airtran cost only $10 less than the two-way flight that I had booked with Vanguard.

The flight with Airtran was for Saturday evening, via Atlanta (so far, so good). The flight to Atlanta was scheduled to leave Pittsburgh at 8:05pm EST, but it only ended up leaving at 9:30pm. So, even though the Atlanta-to-Dallas flight was running an hour late, that didn’t cover the difference — I missed my connecting flight from Atlanta to Dallas.

Of course, Airtran arranged for hotels for us. But, because virtually everyone on the Pittsburgh-to-Atlanta flight had a connecting flight (that he or she ended up missing), there were a couple hundred people in the line for the Airtran customer service counter. So, two hours of standing-in-line later, I had a voucher for the local Crown Plaza. The customer service agents were handing out vouchers for various local hotels, and the Crown-Plaza-bound bunch of us boarded the shuttle to the hotel.

Upon arriving at the Crown Plaza, however, they informed us that they had no vacancies (“The airlines don’t always keep track of how many vouchers they hand out&rdquo, we were told). Luckily, the Crown Plaza was able to arrange for rooms for us at a nearby Holiday Inn. Frickin Airtran.

The morning flights were mostly uneventful. I had asked for a later flight (around lunchtime), as I wanted more sleep than a first-thing-in-the-morning flight would have afforded me. The flight was scheduled to leave at 12:05pm. And, we boarded the plane about 20 minutes before scheduled takeoff (fairly normal).

After boarding, though, we sat on the runway for about an hour. At that point, one of the crew members came over the intercom to let us know that “We’re just waiting on one more crew member. Once he gets here, we can head off.”, to which he added sarcastically “Welcome to the airline industry”. So, it wasn’t even weather-related or even mechanical — they just couldn’t keep their appointments. The AWOL crewmember did eventually arrive, about 20 minutes after that announcement.

As such, I will hesitate in flying Airtran ever again.

Juicy Lucy

Ashley BischoffLeave a comment

The e-mail discussion list for the American Dialect Society offers this description for a food apparently known as a “Juicy Lucy”:

Juicy Lucy—This is a cheeseburger, but with the cheese inside the burger. It appears to be the product of Matt's Bar, 3500 Cedar Avenue, Minneapolis, MN, but several other places in that town also offer it. Not recorded in Mariani’s Encyclopedia of American Food & Drink or in DARE.

To be honest, the idea of having cheese inside my burger initially sounded a bit gross to me. But, perhaps I was just thinking in an American-cheese state of mind. And, come to think of it, I would imagine that a “Juicy Lucy” made with blue cheese could be quite delicious!

Grocery Discount Cards

Ashley BischoffLeave a comment

Brad Templeton, of 10-Myths-About-Copyright fame, makes some good points about those supermarket “savings” cards (I put “savings” in quotes because the cards only allow users to access the sale-prices, and nothing more).

While I suspect many of your readers will be aware of the concept, some may not so let me remind them, when they go to parties or meet other people who are concerned about privacy, to simply trade their grocery affinity cards.

My first card was in the name of Mickey Mouse of Anaheim, and you might find that to be protection enough — the Safeway staff would always say “thank you Mr. Mouse.” When I traded it, I told the receipient to always trade with somebody who lives east of him. I presume my card has made it to the east coast by now.

At parties, have everybody put their cards in a bowl and draw another one at the end.

The cards do save a lot of money, so it’s a serious cost to avoid them, but with these techniques you can protect your privacy and not spend the cash. […]

Hmm, perhaps Leia could be conviced to try this at the next DFWBlogs Cocktail Event ;).

Suing Fast-Food Restaurants

Ashley Bischoff5 Comments

The Libertarian Party offers a well-deserved dose of sketicism towards the recent lawsuit blaming the major fast-food companies for one man’s diabetes, high blood pressure and series of heart attacks:

“This lawsuit isn’t just an attack on Burger King and McDonald’s; it�s an attack on the very notion of personal responsibility, without which a free society can�t function,” Dasbach said. “Does anyone really believe that Mr. Barber was too dumb to know that repeatedly gorging himself on saturated fat was less healthy than ordering, say, a fruit dish or a chef salad? Has he never heard of the words ‘dieters’ platter,’ ‘health club,’ or ‘No, thanks?’ And does anyone want to reward him for that behavior by forcing the restaurant industry to fork over millions of dollars? […]

HP Threatens Security Researchers

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

As mentioned on Politech, HP threatened to sue a team of secuity researchers if they published a flaw in HP’s Tru64 operating system:

In a letter sent on Monday, an HP vice president warned SnoSoft, a loosely organized research collective, that [via the DMCA] its members “could be fined up to $500,000 and imprisoned for up to five years” for its role in publishing information on a bug that lets an intruder take over a Tru64 Unix system. […]

As of now, I’m boycotting HP/Compaq over this. When I replace my aging HP LaserJet 5L, I guess I’ll buy another brand. Or, I may just buy a used HP printer, as HP gets no additional revenue from used sales (their products are fairly decent, after all).

Update: Hmm, it looks like there may have been some misunderstanding, sort of a right-hand-not-knowing-what-the-left-is-doing, as HP is now saying that throwing its weight around, DMCA-style, is not its bag:

Where and how the DMCA should be applied is a matter of great controversy. The reported letter to SnoSoft was not consistent or indicative of HP’s policy. We can say emphatically that HP will not use the DMCA to stifle research or impede the flow of information that would benefit our customers and improve their system security. […]

So, err, nevermind on that “boycott”. Nothing to see here; move along ;).