Friday, December 30, 2005

Alaska Airlines

Since I'm on the topic of airlines (see below), I'll continue. Today I read this excellent post about a an Alaska Airlines flight that depressurized at thirty thousand feet. Before taking off, the plane was hit by a baggage cart, which apparently caused a weakness or small hole in the plane that became a large whole with the pressures of altitude.

This kind of accident could have happened to any airline, but it has cemented my refusal to fly Alaska Airlines or their subsidiary Horizon Air. I've been avoiding Alaska Airlines for a while due to their general incompetence in the customer service arena.

One interesting point is that the baggage driver who hit the plane was non-union. His position and 399 other baggage handling ones were eliminated earlier this year when baggage handling was outsourced. You could argue that a union driver would have been more secure in his job and might have been more likely to report the incident (it wasn't reported). It's a bit of a conundrum: how do you give people an incentive to report mistakes when they might be penalized for making the mistake?

Thursday, December 29, 2005

JetBlue amusement

I've flown JetBlue a bit lately. They have 36 channels of TV at each seat. Occasionally, this warning appears the TV:
Due to normal aircraft movement, programming is temporarily unavailable.
It inspires a New Yorker-style cartoon in my head: plane in a tailspin, engines on fire, tail sheared off, and that message on the tv screen.

Good-bye old design

Unfortunately, the cost is my old comments.

I haven't totally committed to the new design (which is taken in large part from Blogger Templates), but I won't have to lose my comments if I change it again. I love comments! Posted by Picasa

RKO Pictures Logo

Before I even started watching the 1933 version of King Kong, I was transfixed by this: Posted by Picasa

Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Sunday, December 18, 2005

i am sark?

i hate quizzes, but i'm such a sucker for alias stuff that i had to take this one.

You're quite remarkable, really.

none of the parallels seems particularly accurate, most especially the bed head part.

Thursday, December 15, 2005

Guitar like a computer log

I dreamed that a guitar is a cumulative record of every note it has played. My radio alarm was playing some song. I missed part of the chorus and thought that one could play the guitar backwards to get there, like rolling back a computer to a previous configuration.

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Sunday, December 11, 2005

Egg Roll/Jelly Roll

Yesterday, my neighbor came over to borrow some cornstarch. He's a puppy-ish young guy, very endearing. He had borrowed a hammer before, so this wasn't entirely unprecedented. However I was happily surprised when he returned two warm egg rolls with the cornstarch. He needn't have protested about his inexperience making egg rolls. Usually I don't like egg rolls, but they were fantastic.

This morning I saw a video of a jelly roll (ok, jelly donut) in a freestyle rap competition. The pastry hed his own, but what I really loved was the name of the competition: Tourette's Without Regrets.