low man on the totem pole

The DFW-SJC flight last night was mostly uneventful. It's the first time I've flown on business in about 2 years; at one time I was spending a week in California every month, so yes .. this is a novelty, although I did "practice" a trip to the same DFW Terminal D earlier in the day (to fetch Jill-Bob).

Most of American's flights on this route are MD-88s, which have about 30 rows of 5-across seating, and I heard the Flight Attendants [FA] saying that nearly every flight except Saturdays are full lately. This was no exception. I don't know if anyone was denied boarding (I wasn't in the gate area long enough to hear them say it was oversold, looking for volunteers for the next flight). Once we pushed back from the gate, the FA instructed us to turn off "anything with an on/off switch" which was better than the long list of stuff they used to read .. while I hoped they missed one/more of my omnipresent gadgets.

The worst thing about the Travel Gap is that I'm back to "Square One" in the Frequent-This and Frequent-That programs (airline, car rental, hotel, parking). This means I now must sit in the back of the bus (seat 28F on the outbound and 26F on the return) with the rest of the rifraff, and can't even qualify to use the upgrades I bought years ago, until I reach a minimum of Aadvantage Gold (unlikely anytime soon).

Some good things have happened since I last flew frequently: American Airlines' Rapid Check-In machines are a welcome departure from dealing with a Human ticket agent (which seldom speaks English). The machine which scans boarding passes at the gate have finally become fast (I used to groan whenever a flight was assigned The Boarding Pass Machine .. meaning the boarding would take twice as long as those conducted by Humans).

First, there was the obligatory TSA scan (metal detection; X-ray of my rucksack, shoes, laptop). Once on the plane, I found myself sitting next to a female "terrorist" - the only woman on the plane wearing an hijab. I was prepared to stab her with my plastic butter knife if she made any wrong moves. I must get some better noise cancelling headphones .. the earbuds I have from Turtle Beach are effective, but didn't shut out the nearby malevolent Demon Child shreiking for an extended duration at a pitch slightly less annoying than fingernails on a chalkboard.

Due to the (HR-induced) delays in marking me as an Active employee, I didn't get in an early queue for hotels in TBA* so I ended up at a $60/night Zero Service Hotel .. no daily maid, no room service, no onsite dining (I defy you to find anything open other than Denny's after 10pm in TBA!) and .. (gasp!) .. no Ethernet (just a quaint analog modem plug). They did offer wireless networking for $4/stay, and the hotel had indoor plumbing. I avoided the room's phone: 75¢/minute for long distance (and $2.78/minute for international calls .. after the first $14.62 minute) struck me as an absurd ripoff. The Ford Fusion rental car -- in the rain -- wasn't awful .. it's just not like JAC (Just Another Car) here at home.

* The Bay Area

yet another Texas embarrassment

In the past two weeks, I've been bombarded with direct mail pieces from Republicans running for every contested office. It's obvious the only real campaign is the March primary; it is acknowledged that even the most feeble Republican will easily defeat an opponent in the November general election. So, the various RINOs (Republican In Name Only) are pouring their money into this race.

In this state, you can vote in either primary (but not both - legally, anyway) so it's possible that Democrats wishing to sabotage an election could vote for a weak Republican in that primary (although .. believe me .. they're not organized enough to pull off such a stunt). The converse is also true.

I've received exactly nada from the Dallas Democrats, who have apparently decided to hibernate, knowing that Texans will vote only when they don't have to think. It all goes back to the sorry state of education here (50th in the nation).

One of the biggest wastes of space is Texas Republican Congre$$man Pete $e$$ion$, who participated in the Tom DeLay Republican Redistricting $candal that forced (very credible) Martin Frost from office. Since then, Congre$$man $e$$ion$ has done exactly nothing but collect a paycheck .. big surprise, huh? Well, I shouldn't say he's done nothing, $ince he did $end me a nice color brochure when it came time to re-elect him. He's unopposed in the primary, so his color brochure is another example of Republicans throwing money away.

Make no mi$take: Texans will re-elect him in the fall, unle$$ he'$ caught in a Real Doozy Of A $candal between now and then. Competence doesn't matter in this state.



Well, at lea$t he didn't take credit for doing anything (in his brochure). The cover $lam$ Democrats (as does the inside - in the vague, unsubstantiated way that Karl Rove ha$ taught them), but the inside repeats the phrase "Pete $e$$ion$ and the Republican-led Congre$$" a few times, while skillfully avoiding taking credit for anything other than fogging a mirror. Yee, hah ...

Me, well .. I'm saving myself for Kinky .. and have no plans to vote in the primary. It'll be the first one I've sat out in what .. 30 years?

cry me an IVR

There are some things that can be effectively outsourced at work, others .. I'm still not sure. Human Resources is one of those iffy areas. For the past two weeks, I've been fighting HR (which has been outsourced to a third party) to get added to The Database. As of today, that finally happened .. but not without a lot of phone calls to their IVR [Interactive Voice Response] system.

I feel like I'm on a first name basis with the female voice; I've memorized the IVR menu. "Internal or external?," she asks .. then "new hire questions" .. I've been through this every morning for the past week.

"This call may be recorded for quality control purposes."

.. which is probably a gentle reminder not to use profanity while interacting with the live human who will eventually take my call.

It's been over twenty (20) years since I worked for Texas Instruments, when their first generation of Speech Recognition products were sold at ComputerLand (remember them?). For the price of the PC itself (well over $3000 for even a basic model) you could add a board which would act as a Macro Processor when you uttered pre-trained phrases. Each user had to train the system with their voice (whatever you do, don't try to use this when you have a cold). Words/phrases had to be discrete .. separated by a Moment Of Silence: say "Open .. Spreadsheet" and it would do the Lotus 1-2-3 "File Retrieve" (ESC ESC /FR) command: WOW. I recall making a House Call to a quadriplegic who bought one of the first models; his stress-testing was significantly more demanding than the sales guy who wanted to impress his clients with a command to "Get .. Email" or "Call .. Hooker".

IVR has improved since it first appeared (the airlines deployed them, to handle routine questions from travellers wanting to know our gate assignment). I remember the euphoria I felt when Delta Airlines asked me to "press or say [ONE]" as a choice. I said "[ONE]" and it understood my (thick Nebraska) accent, without spending an hour or more training the system: WOW.

Evidently, the systems may be customized for a target audience. The IVR at Virgin Mobile (cellphone) is named Amber, and I can tell that she wants to smack her chewing gum, each time I call. I envision a saucy redhead with a few tattoos, and piercings here there and everywhere.

By the way .. the I in IVR is important: Interactive. Don't confuse this with the (thankfully relic) automobiles which told us "Your Door Is A Jar" but didn't expect a response.

The White Zone is for the immediate loading and unloading of passengers only. No parking.

Someday, I'd like to meet the woman who records the IVR system; I feel a certain bond with her. Will she be tall or short? A redhead or brunette? Will her eyes sparkle with mischief when she tells me to "please hold for the next available operator"? My heart goes pitter-patter at the thought. I'll bet she smells like lilacs after a gentle spring rain. Hopefully she won't pick her nose while we sip lattes alongside the Champs d'Elyse.

Perhaps the airlines will replace Flight Attendants with IVRs?

"I'd like a pillow, please" and poof! it'd drop onto my lap. "How's about another 7-and-7?" and it'd be sitting on my tray table .. shaken, not stirred.

"Please raise your seatbacks to a fully upright and locked position, stow all your carryons under the seat in front of you or in one of the overhead bins. Try not to whimper when you arrive at baggage carousel 3 and find your belongings ripped to shreds by our automated system."

Will all future customer service interaction be handled exclusively by IVRs - negating the need to converse with someone (code-)named Daisy in Bangalore? Time will tell. Until then,

Have .. A .. Nice .. Day.

you want fries with that?

Everytime I get a new PC*, I end up buying a few hundred dollars of peripherals to make it work gooder [sic]. This time, those goodies included some wireless-G (802.11G) stuff; a gigabit switch (replaces a 10 Mb hub that was manufactured when Teddy Roosevelt was President); and a Bluetooth mouse (for my PowerBook).

* defined very loosely .. includes everything from a Palm PDA to an Apple PowerBook. I figure that if it done got a CPU, it kin be kalt a PC.

If computer manufacturers were smart (and I now put Apple to the top of that list after my recent positive experience) they'd include incentives to buy more of their peripherals, soon after the PC purchase. Maybe they do, and I simply haven't noticed (which is as good as not doing it). Then again, sometimes a 3rd party peripheral is best (example: the Rhino case I selected for my PDA, after the Palm-branded one proved to be terribly inferior).

Also, I continue to be impressed/amused with Buy.com .. I ordered one of the wireless components through them, then opted for "FREE Budget Shipping" instead of Standard. The stuff arrived the next day (good thing I didn't pay extra for Next Day Delivery). To be fair, it shipped from Carrollton, Texas which is an easy drive from my home, so UPS didn't have to work too hard to pull that off.

a new addition to the family

Well, this was easy. I'm entering this blog posting from my new PowerBook G4 which arrived either 7 or 3 days early, depending on which shipping story you believe. I ordered it on my 2nd day back at work, long before my badge or LDAP entry was up. The setup was trivial; it didn't even ask for my timezone yet seemed to figure it out without any problem. Ditto for the Maxtor Shared Storage box, which is my home (300 GB) fileserver .. it found the CIFS/SMB workgroup and all I had to do was login. Windows XP itself should be this easy.

Photo: two currently popular laptops:
Apple's PowerBook G4 and Acer's Ferrari 4005

The Blogger interface is missing a few buttons but I'll probably figure that out in a day or so. I have a few networking issues to settle here at home, including upgrading my Ethernet hub from a 10 Mb variety to something of this century, and slapping a Wireless-G network atop my ADSL circuit. That can wait a few days, while I learn more about Mac OS X.

Mystery solved!

Someone finally explained to me what these bumper stickers mean (I've been seeing them on SUVs for the past few years). They identify the driver as mentally handicapped, and others are advised to maintain a safe distance between your vehicle and theirs.

the danger of Too Much Information

There are times when it's wise not to say too much. Such was the case when I went to get a document notarized this morning.

I was attempting to complete an affidavit for my attorney; it's for a small claims issue and is only a single page long. It states a couple facts and is targeted at mom's bank, which (due to acquisition) has branches here in Dallas. So, I thought it would be proper to have this notarized at one of those branches, since they could verify the account balance as stipulated in the affidavit.

I ran into a roadblock in the form of the branch's Vice President*; she refused to notarize the document, citing confidentiality laws. The trouble is that the role of the Notary Public is not to attest to the (presumed) facts in a document; rather, they are simply confirming that the person who signed the document in their presence is who he claims to be.

I left the branch and proceeded to another bank. This time, I simply advised I was there to have my document notarized. This Notary Public asked to see my Driver's License, watched me sign the document and then affixed her official stamp. Done. Was that so hard?

* Banks are notorious for paying small wages, and they compensate by giving grand titles to most folks who work there.

---

This morning (~8:30am) the weather forecast was:

...WINTER STORM WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM THIS EVENING THROUGH SUNDAY AFTERNOON...

FREEZING RAIN WILL BEGIN THIS EVENING...WITH PERIODS OF PRECIPITATION CONTINUING THROUGH SUNDAY AFTERNOON. SOME SLEET MAY ALSO MIX WITH THE FREEZING RAIN...BEGINNING ON SATURDAY AFTERNOON. TOTAL ACCUMULATIONS IN EXCESS OF ONE QUARTER OF AN INCH OF ICE AND SLEET ARE EXPECTED THROUGH SUNDAY AFTERNOON.

As such, the town's in a massive panic, and the lines in the grocery stores are long. There's nothing like fear to motivate the locals, who might otherwise run out of pork rinds and chicken wings during this impending catastrophe.