not cool

I went to the gym today at lunchtime, as I always do on Fridays. I went to the locker room, changed, put my things in my gym bag, put the bag in a locker (no lock, like all lockers in our gyms), and went to class. After class I showered and changed back, and then looked for my phone, which I had put in a pocket of my bag. I couldn't find it.

I was pretty sure I'd had it on me, so I checked the locker again, and then the bag. I still couldn't find it, so I went back to my desk and checked my purse. No phone.

I went on Latitude and tracked myself. My last known location was 11:51am at the gym.

I called my phone. It went straight to voicemail.

I called the gym. They hadn't found any phones.

I called security. They were able to tell me that I swiped into the gym at 11:48am, but as there were no security cameras in the locker room (duh), they couldn't do much else for me. They also said no phones had been found.

I called techstop, and they sent a wipe command to my phone. They advised me to wait a few hours to see if the thief would attempt to turn on the phone, thus executing the wipe, and then to file a police report and call my carrier.

The City of Mountain View has a nice online form, so I filed a report immediately.

Looks like I'll be talking to T-Mobile tonight.

I'm pretty bummed that I lost my brand-new unlocked smartphone, not to mention my SIM card. I'm also sad that someone here at work would steal from a fellow employee. Plus, I feel oddly naked without a phone. Sigh.

warning: much whining follows

On Saturday, I sprained my knee getting off a chairlift, which meant the end of my ski weekend. I spent Sunday in the lodge watching football, which would have been kind of okay, except I also had stomachache (probably from eating ramen and s'mores all day).

On Monday, I came down with a horrible cold and went home early. On Tuesday, I stayed home entirely, due to being incapacitated by that cold. On Tuesday night, D came home from work with my cold. Due to both our colds and my knee not recovering very quickly, we had to cancel our Tahoe trip for next weekend. Grr.

This morning, I went to the dentist and had some fillings. During the process, the dentist said "hmm...", took a bunch more x-rays, and then told me I'd have to come back for more fillings. Twice.

It is really not my week. I wonder if I should hide in a bunker on Friday.

fire drill

I took a train earlier today from Dijon (France) back to Zurich. After a 5-hour ride, I went to dinner with some coworkers. I got back to my hotel after that and checked my email at 9pm CET. I had a 15-minute-old Google Voice transcript from the guys who were supposed to deliver our furniture. I checked the timezones, and it was 12pm PST. They were supposed to come between 1-4pm, and they were going to arrive at 12:15pm. Plus, I had called earlier in the week and specifically told them to call D on his cell, not me on mine. WTF?

I quickly dashed off an email to D hoping that he would check his phone even though he was supposed to be at basketball until 12:30pm. I then tried calling him using the "call" function inside of Gmail for the first time ever...straight to voicemail. I must have tried ten times before I realized it was useless and called the delivery people instead. They seemed very confused. "Where are you? Belmont?" "No, Switzerland!" Finally I told them that D would be there at 1pm, even though I couldn't confirm that because I had no way to reach him. Unfortunately the furniture delivery company and the furniture making company are not the same company, and according to the delivery guys, they were not told to come between 1-4pm, they were merely told to deliver today. ARGH.

I was really afraid they weren't going to wait, so I called our friend up the street who has a key to our house. No dice. I randomly complained to another friend online, but she lives over 30 minutes away and doesn't have a key. Finally I tried again and got the first friend, and he said he'd head over. I took a quick shower to rinse the train smell off, got back online, and found out that he had gone down there only to find no one there. I then asked his wife to call the delivery guys and figure out what was up. They had gone to lunch. Of course.

I heard that in the end they came back and D met them there, but I'm still in Switzerland and I still have no idea what happened. Anyway, this whole episode just stressed me out to a stupid degree. I know delivery guys are always late, but since when do they show up EARLY? I hate the service industry.

caution: incoherent rant

D and I have a Wells Fargo mortgage. A couple of weeks ago, a guy called us up and told us that we could refinance through their program to a much lower rate, with no fees and no new appraisal. The only catch was that we'd have to take our home out of trust and then put it back after closing. Normally this requires notary costs ($10 per signature) as well as recording costs ($15 for the first page). However, the mortgage rep claimed that we could walk into "any Wells Fargo branch" and have the deeds notarized at no fee because they would be Wells Fargo documents.

Bright and early this morning, we trekked down to Santa Clara to get the deeds from our attorney. Then, we visited two Wells Fargo branches and had them call at least three other ones in a futile attempt to get our papers notarized. Washington Street (Santa Clara) said they used to have a notary but she left. North First Street (San Jose) said that they had one on staff but that she was on vacation. They called Rivermark (Santa Clara) for us, but their notary was on maternity leave. Winchester (Santa Clara), Arques (Sunnyvale), Park Center (San Jose), no dice. Everyone was either on vacation or on some kind of leave. WTF? Do people not work anymore?

Finally, as we retreated in defeat and headed to work, I started dialing branches near home. San Carlos said their notary was on vacation (of course) and suggested Belmont. In the end, out of eight Wells Fargo branches, Belmont was the only one who actually claimed to have a notary in the office today. So much for "any branch". Anyway, we're going to try to head over tonight before they close at 6pm. I remain skeptical.

P.S. Someone should start running businesses that open just from 6am to 9am and from 6pm to 9pm. I am convinced that here in Silicon Valley, they would make a killing.

yeah, right

I dislike companies whose employees lie to me.

Today I called Citibank to request a reward check for my Citi Platinum Dividend card. Normally I'm able to request the reward check online, but for some reason the online interface wasn't showing me that particular link today. The person who answered the phone had a heavy Indian accent and identified herself as Susan. Interesting, but okay, whatever.

I asked her to send me my check, and she said that she wasn't able to see any dividends in my account, because it was "under conversion" to a new type of card. She said I should call back in a few days to request my reward. I asked if the dividends would be properly transferred to the new account, and she assured me that they would. I asked if I would be able to request the reward check online once the conversion was done, and again she said yes.

As I was about to hang up, I asked if she could give me her extension so that if I had to call back, I'd be able to tell the next rep who I'd talked to previously. She said she was unable to give me that information. I asked for her last name, and she said "Smith". Then, she wished me "a pleasant evening". This was at oh...9:30am Pacific. Susan Smith? Yeah, right.

I guess I really don't care as I'm cancelling this card once I get my money out anyway. The new rewards system (as of July 1st) totally sucks.

airline suckage redux

I've been hating on airlines more than usual recently.

Yesterday evening I paid over $1200 for a three-legged post-Christmas route between the Bay Area, Maui, and the Big Island. I'd been watching the fares since May (which was unfortunately before we decided to go for sure) and this particular route had never gone below $983. I finally pulled the trigger because they were down to three seats left on only non-stop flight between Kona and the Bay Area. Grr. (On the other hand, deals for early December are plentiful; I've seen ads for sub-$350 roundtrip flights. Darn high season.)

Then, I discovered this morning that because we'd booked our upcoming East Coast trip through continental.com (using Continental miles) on flights operated by United, we had no seat assignments. We would have gone seat-less ("you will get a [super-crappy] seat assignment at the gate") except that I pulled United Premier rank to get us Economy Plus seats. Whew.

Finally, I randomly checked our October DC itinerary online and discovered that it listed our status as "Schedule Change" instead of "Confirmed". It had a red warning that instructed me to call customer service to confirm. I spent over 20 minutes on the phone with the rep just to reconfirm that flight. WTF? Last month I got an email from Virgin America with a schedule change, which required about ten seconds and two button clicks to confirm.

American paranoia

There are so many things that we are paranoid about in this country, that people in other countries seem not to worry about.

The list of foods that pregnant American women "can't eat" grows longer every year: alcohol, sushi, raw meat, processed meat, pate, most seafood, soft cheeses, unpasteurized milk/juice, caffeine. I even saw a pregnant woman the other day avoiding beans. I have no idea what could possibly be wrong with eating beans. In Europe, pregnant women drink wine. In Japan, pregnant women eat raw fish. Neither seems to be a problem.

We refuse to let children eat peanuts and shellfish at a young age, in case they happen to be allergic to them. Yet, I wouldn't be surprised if we had the highest incidence of food allergies in the world.

We use anti-bacterial soaps and lotions for everything, on an everyday basis. I'm not a doctor, but I'm pretty sure the more that we use anti-bacterial products, the stronger the remaining bacteria become. I'll bet the US has more drug resistant bacteria than any other country, by now.

I can't think of any other examples off the top of my head, but I'm pretty sure there are more...

learn to read, people

I have a pet peeve about people in our gym locker room. It's very simple. What part of "please do not dress in the shower area" is so hard to understand?

I was especially annoyed today when five people were waiting in line and someone (who had spent a good fifteen minutes inside) walked out of her shower stall dressed in at least three layers of clothing, including an overcoat, nice sweater, and knee high boots. Argh!!

institutional stupidity

As I mentioned before, last year I received a RSA SecurID crypto keychain intended for someone else with my same name, at my office address.

A few weeks ago, I received another one, so I finally called Wells Fargo today. After talking to one customer service rep on the consumer side, his supervisor, another customer service rep on the business side, and her supervisor, they told me to return the package as undeliverable so that the account would get flagged in their system. I told them that the package was delivered through UPS and not USPS, and they said I should call UPS.

I called UPS, and after talking to another rep and supervisor, I was told to call Wells Fargo to get a new package label to return the item. The rep told me (somewhat accusingly, I might add) that because I had opened the package, it could not be returned without a new label. I asked her how I was supposed to know the package wasn't intended for me without opening it to read the letter inside, but she didn't have a good answer for that.

I gave up at that point. I mean, even if I were to succeed in returning the keychain, I'd get nothing from the whole exercise; I was just trying to help Wells Fargo and my mysterious namesake. I'm pretty sure Wells Fargo isn't going to know how to bill the return shipping cost, I'm not paying for it, and it all just seems like too much hassle for what was supposed to be a small good deed on my part. Sigh.

another pet peeve

I hate when people misquote Google's company motto. It's not "Do no evil", and it's not "Don't do evil". It's "Don't be evil". C'mon guys, it's three words. Yes, it matters.

tossing traditions

I object to the traditional "bouquet/garter toss" that often takes place at weddings. As I've mentioned before, I go to a lot of weddings, so during wedding season I often find myself explaining why. I've listed my primary reasons below.

Reason #1: Trivializing marriage
In my opinion, deciding to get married is a serious relationship change and both parties should spend a lot of time carefully thinking/talking it out and making sure it's what they both really want. The idea that something as trivial as catching a bouquet or garter could affect such a serious decision at all...well, it seems silly and even insulting to rational adults. Basically, it makes light of the institution of marriage, at an event intended to celebrate a marriage.

Reason #2: Trivializing other committed long-term relationships
This is very similar to Reason #1, but I want to mention this angle specifically because I think it often gets overlooked. People are expected to want to catch the bouquet (and to some extent, the garter). This would seem to indicate an absolute belief that marriage is the "best" relationship state for everyone. I object to passing judgment on people's life choices. Many adults are in committed long-term relationships. Some of them don't believe in marriage. Others are gay and are not allowed to be married in their state/country of residence. Others may feel that they (or their partner, or their relationship) are not ready for marriage at this time. Why would any of these people want to participate in these rituals?

Update: A friend just made another good point corresponding to Reason #2. The bouquet or garter toss defines people who are in committed long-term relationships as "single", thus trivializing those relationships and portraying them as "lesser" states compared to marriage. The obvious solution would be to allow people to define their own singleness, but what ends up happening is that purportedly "single" people who don't consider themselves single are pressured to participate anyway.

Reason #3: Awkwardness
One would think that at a party, the objective of the hosts would be to maximize the enjoyment of the guests. At a wedding reception, the bouquet and garter toss are often the most awkward moments for said guests. I'll focus on the bouquet toss first...

There's this outdated notion that all women want to catch the bouquet because all women desperately want to be married as soon as possible. In this day and age, that's simply not true. Some women are happy to be single, and some aren't. Some women want to catch the bouquet, and some don't.

I think we can define three groups:
A. Women who are happy about being single
B. Women who are unhappy about being single but don't believe in bouquet tossing
C. Women who are unhappy about being single and do want to catch the bouquet

Women in Group A are happy about being single, and thus don't want to catch the bouquet. Women in Group B are are unhappy about being single but think bouquet tossing is silly and thus don't want to catch the bouquet. Women in Group C are unhappy about being single and do want to catch the bouquet. So, the argument could be made that bouquet tossing is for Group C, right? The problem is, Group C women are unhappy about being single. Making them stand up in front of a large group of guests to "fight" over a bouquet only emphasizes their singleness, which is pretty much guaranteed to make them unhappier. Thus, by definition, no one is ever all that happy to catch a bouquet.

In reality, nearly all of the women who participate in the bouquet toss are usually present due to peer pressure or a sense of duty/friendship. I've attended multiple weddings at which everyone ducked the bouquet and it fell on the floor. Talk about awkwardness! More frequently, some poor bridesmaid will sacrifice herself and catch the bouquet so that the bride will be satisfied.

I've decided I'm not even going to get started on the garter toss. My thoughts are pretty much summed up by "ick". It's sad that sexism is so unapologetically rampant at weddings.

pet peeve of the day

To all those bikers who for some reason think that they're pedestrians:
1. No, it is not okay for you to ride on the sidewalk and endanger real pedestrians. For one thing, you're taking up the whole sidewalk, which doesn't really allow for two-way traffic, does it?
2. It is also not okay for you to stop car traffic by riding in the crosswalk; you are not a pedestrian and do not have the right-of-way, unless you are off the bike and walking. Yeah, that's why all those other bikers are stopped back there waiting for the light to change.

stop calling me

I just want to listen to music, damnit.

Someone from the "Friends of the SF Symphony" called me on my cell phone yesterday, while I was at work. The conversation went something like this.

her:	I'm calling from the Friends of the SF Symphony. Do you have a minute?
me:	No, I'm at work.
her:	Is this a cell phone? Let me make a note...when can I call you back?
me:	What's this about?
her:	I thought you wanted to get off the phone.
me:	Can't you tell me in one sentence what this is about?
her:	What about between 5pm and 9pm?
me:	Exactly what are you calling about?
her:	How about Saturday?
me:	I'd like to know what you're calling about. Is this about tickets?
her:	No, I'm calling from the Friends of the SF Symphony, we help keep music in schools.
me:	I'm not interested, please take me off of your list.

The caller hung up all huffy. I think I must have gotten on her list because I bought some tickets to the symphony last year. I hate that this happens. Is there no way that I can buy symphony tickets and not have to deal with this kind of crap?

On a somewhat related note, someone named Gina Papan keeps sending junk mail to my house. I think she's running for some kind of office. If I ever see her name on a ballot I'm going to vote against her just because of all the trees she's killed. I wish there was a box on the voter registration form for "decline to state party affiliation and don't send me junk mail, either".

passport pages

Last week I went to the San Francisco Passport Agency to get more pages added to my passport.

Normally you can get new pages via mail, but it takes "3-6 weeks", and by the time I figured that out, I had maybe a page and a half of space left, and it was nearly December. Unfortunately, I didn't have a gap of 6 weeks at any time between December and April, and during that time, I had plans to go to Taiwan, Japan, Canada, Cambodia, Vietnam, Argentina, and potentially Brazil, which meant at least two visas and several entry/exit stamps. So, I scheduled an in-person appointment, and it ended up pretty much sucking all around, for a variety of reasons.

First, I left my passport at home, so I had to turn around and get it, which meant 15 minutes lost.

Then, I stupidly took 101 to 4th Street instead of taking 280 to 6th Street, and got stuck in traffic. It took me 20 minutes to go 2 miles.

After a few futile efforts to find street parking, I ended up parking in a lot that charged $2.50...per 15 minutes.

At this point I was 45 minutes late for my 9am appointment, so when I got to the security checkpoint and the guard objected to my 1.5 inch long Swiss Army knife, I told him to throw it away. He wouldn't do it. He said that I would have to take the knife downstairs to the lobby where there was a trash can. Instead, I took the knife and hid it in a nearby bush outside the building, and then headed back up, where there was now a line at the checkpoint.

By the time I got to the check-in counter, it was nearly 10am, but luckily the passport agency isn't too strict about appointment times. However, the woman at the counter made me fill out my application (yes, they have an application just to get more pages) before giving me a number.

After a 15 minute wait, my number got called, and I handed the application to the agent, who told me the fee would be $60. I was a bit confused, since on the website it had said adding extra pages was free, but he said that since I was leaving the country in a week, my application was for "expedited processing" which cost $60.

I grumbled and paid him, and then he asked me if I would like to pick up my passport at 3pm or at 11am the next morning. Confused, I asked how long it would take; somehow I'd gotten the mistaken impression they would just add the pages on the spot. His response was that the designated passport pickup times are 11am and 3pm. To his credit, he did hint that if I showed up at 9am they would probably let me pick up my passport anyway. I asked for a 3pm pickup time, so the passport would at least be ready (although potentially not available) at 9am the next day, and resigned myself to another morning of driving to the city.

On the way out, I retrieved my knife from its bush and paid $7.50 for 40 minutes of parking. Then, I headed to Tartine to buy a cake. Even a crappy day feels better when you know you have a scrumptious devil's food cake stashed in the fridge, ready to serve to your dinner guests.

Things went much more smoothly the next day; I had no passport to forget, I navigated traffic smoothly, and I found street parking in time to wait outside the agency with the other 20 or 30 people who had gotten there before 9am. I was able to retrieve my passport outside of the designated pickup time, but I was a bit surprised when I got it back and discovered that the way they add pages is to glue a stack of them into the middle of the book. Plus, the pages were glued in kind of crooked, and the new pages don't match the existing ones, so the whole thing looks really ghetto; like something I could have done at home. Apparently that's what you get for your $60, courtesy of the US government.

As an aside, I think the fact that they only give you 24 pages for a 10-year passport is a bit silly. Several people have disagreed with me on this; they think that lots of people get passports and travel only a few times. However, both use cases would be served if passport applicants were able to specify on their applications if they wanted a 48-page (or larger) passport book. Unfortunately, the passport agency really has no incentive to provide this option; in fact, in my particular case, they would have lost $60. Although, even I'm not paranoid enough to believe that they issue small books on purpose. I think.

and now, for the depressing post of the week...

I read two things this week that made me sad.

The first one was a reminder on a women engineers' mailing list, that December 6th was the anniversary of the École Polytechnique massacre. What massacre, you ask? I'd never heard of it, so I checked on Wikipedia:

The École Polytechnique Massacre, also known as the Montreal Massacre, occurred on December 6, 1989 at the École Polytechnique in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Twenty-five year-old Marc Lépine, armed with a legally obtained semi-automatic rifle and a hunting knife, shot twenty-eight people, killing fourteen (all of them women) and injuring the other fourteen before killing himself. He began his attack by entering a classroom at the university, where he separated the male and female students. After claiming that he was "fighting feminism", he shot all nine women in the room, killing six. He then moved through corridors, the cafeteria, and another classroom, specifically targetting women to shoot. He killed fourteen women and injured four men and ten women in just under twenty minutes before turning the gun on himself.

I had to look twice at that date. 1989 is the same year as the Loma Prieta quake, so I would have been in sixth grade, and I definitely would have been reading the news by then. How did I not hear about this before? Maybe the US news media doesn't care about Canada? And, how, in North America in the late 20th century, does someone grow up hating women? Ugh.

The second item was an article in the NYTimes, sent to me by a friend who is a lawyer in New York City. It seems that for about a year now, the elevators at the Bronx Family Court have been so bad that people wait for hours outside the courthouse, in lines that go all the way down the block:

In some cases, warrants have even been issued for people who are downstairs waiting for an elevator; judges know only that they are not in the courtroom, said Bill Nicholas, the assistant attorney in charge of the Legal Aid Society’s office at the court.

The judges have less trouble getting upstairs because they use a bank of elevators reserved for court personnel. The public is not allowed on those, and may not use the stairs because of security concerns. Among them, there are no cameras in the stairwells, and the narrow stairwells are impractical for small children or people pushing strollers. So they must wait.

I usually hate personal stories from random people in news articles (abuse of ad hominem!), but this one kind of broke my heart:

Bernard Wilkerson, a construction flagger for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said his custody and child support case against his wife had been dismissed three times because each time he was delayed in line and missed a hearing. Each time he had to petition again to restart the case.

Now he carries the court clerk’s number with him, so he can phone in when he is downstairs. Even with the steady rain beating down on his coat, he said this morning wasn’t that bad.

He was standing only 20 yards from the entrance of the building. Even with the long line inside, he would probably be upstairs in about an hour, certainly less than two. The thought cheered him.

“Sometimes I arrive here and I am standing outside Law and Government High School,” he said, referring to the Bronx School for Law, Government and Justice several hundred yards away.

1800flowers sucks

A month ago, I ordered a cute bouquet of flowers in a blue piggy bank, for a friend who had just had a baby. The flowers were delivered on the same day, but the piggy bank never appeared. I called 1800flowers and was told that the florist was out of piggy banks, but it would be delivered later that week.

The next week, my friend still hadn't received the piggy bank, so I called again, and was told that the florist still hadn't received the piggy banks, but he was expecting them to arrive the following week. The customer service rep issued me a $10 gift certificate applicable towards a future purchase, for the inconvenience.

The following week I was vacationing in Canada, so I didn't bother to check, but after I got back, I discovered the piggy bank still hadn't arrived. I called yet again, and was told that the florist was expecting the piggy banks to arrive any day. The customer service rep offered to issue me a refund, but at this point I figured I might as well wait it out.

This morning, after a month of waiting, I called 1800flowers again and was told that the florist still hadn't received the piggy banks, and in fact he was waiting for them to arrive from 1800flowers. So, I asked the rep, since she worked for 1800flowers, when the expected arrival date might be. She said she had no idea. I asked if it would be another year, and she said no. I asked if it would be another month, and she said she had no idea. I asked who I could talk to that would be able to give me more information, and she gave me a number for "corporate headquarters" which I could call if I wanted.

I called that number and discovered it was a wrong number, so I called back and talked to a different rep. This one was actually sympathetic and took the time to call several florists and locate one who actually did have the piggy bank in stock. (Why this couldn't have been done a month ago, I don't know.) He said he would cancel with the original florist and order with the new florist. I hung up the phone somewhat satisfied.

Twenty minutes later, he called me and asked me to contact the florist directly, to give her my credit card number. I was confused; hadn't I been charged already? He said that 1800flowers would issue me a refund and that I would be charged again by the new florist. Fine.

I called the florist and gave her my credit card number, and she said she was going to charge me for the entire order, flowers and piggy bank together. I was a bit worried about this, since I wasn't sure 1800flowers was going to refund me the entire amount, so I asked her to ship just the piggy bank. She said that was fine, but the delivery charge was as much as the cost of the piggy bank itself. I told her to hold that order.

I called 1800flowers back and talked to yet another rep, who said the refund was for the cost of the piggy bank. After several minutes of me complaining, she agreed to refund me the delivery charge as well.

Just now, I called the florist and told her she could process the order, delivery fee and all. We'll see if all these charges and refunds actually come out right on my credit card bill.

Regardless, I'm never ordering from 1800flowers again.

AMT suckage

Yesterday I got my tax return back from my CPA, and had a bit of a nasty surprise when I realized that I owed a couple of hundred dollars, instead of being owed a few thousand.

It only took me a few minutes to figure out what had gone wrong. The AMT figure was significantly higher than the ordinary tax number. I had sold some stock in 2005, had paid lots of state and federal taxes on the gain in 2006, and now was being punished for having paid those same state taxes. It feels like I'm being taxed twice!

I do love living in California, and I'm already resigned to the real estate prices, but when faced with the reality of also paying thousands of dollars a year to the federal government for the privilege, well, I start to entertain vague notions of moving to Seattle.

I've known about AMT for many years (my dad being a retired CPA), and it's even affected my taxes a bit for the last two years, but this is the first year that it's impacted my tax burden significantly, and let me just reiterate that it sucks very much. It's much worse in practice than in theory.

I'll say right now, that if a presidential candidate that I'm otherwise undecided about (not anti-choice, not anti-gay, not anti-Taiwan, not crazy) pledges to fix this broken system, I'll vote for him/her in November.

holiday travel

I'm back in Taipei again, and will be here for the next couple of weeks, with the exception of a few days when I'll be visiting Hong Kong.

I must have a really bad memory, or awesome denial skills. Every year I travel during the holidays, and it sucks. Then, by August/September-ish, I decide it can't have been that bad and book another trip. So, I have to brave the holiday rush, and it proceeds to suck, as I should have remembered it always did.

This year the suckage started early. We were booked on American Airlines from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and then on Delta (codeshared with China Airlines) from LAX to TPE. I had chosen this particular itinerary because it was insanely cheap for a holiday season ticket to Asia, but I probably should have known better than to book unnecessary connections.

The previous incoming flight was forced to circle SFO for 30 minutes due to fog. After the plane started to run low on fuel, air traffic control sent it down to SJC for refueling. Shortly afterward, we were told that the weather conditions had worsened, and that type of aircraft was not allowed to land in the now-super-dense fog. Another plane was located, also at SJC, prepped, and flown up, but the whole debacle took two hours, causing us to land in LAX 15 minutes after our connection flight to Taipei had departed.

While we were waiting for our plane at the gate in SFO, I called the Delta reservations desk and told them we'd likely miss our 2pm connection, so the agent put us on the next connecting flight, which was at 9:15pm.

I was pretty worried about getting to LAX at all, so I asked about direct flights. It turned out there were actually four SFO-TPE direct flights that day, but two had already left and a third was full. The fourth was an EVA Air 4:10pm flight that would have put us in Taipei an hour early. I decided it was worth it to trek out to the EVA counter to see if they could put us on it. After visiting the EVA, Delta, and American counters, and running in a circle around the airport, we were told that no one would pay for the reissue (I guess the only real possibility would have been American), and we'd have to stay on the 9:15pm LAX flight after all. So, we waited through security a second time, and got back to our gate just in time for boarding.

After arriving at LAX at 2:15pm, we tried to verify our passage on the 9:15pm flight at the China Airlines counter, only to be told that the morning shift was going off duty. After two and a half hours, we finally got to talk to an agent, who told us that we weren't in their system, the flight was full, and furthermore, our (paper) tickets were invalid, so they'd have to be reissued by Delta.

I called Delta again, and the telephone agent told me that we were on the flight, since Delta had made a reservation, but that since we had paper tickets, we had to go to the Delta counter and get them reissued.

At the Delta counter, another agent told us that since our late flight had been on American, we'd have to get American to do the reissue, since they were the ones who had to pay for our new tickets.

The American agent was pretty confused by the whole thing, and we had to explain multiple times that we had been on an American flight which had been two hours late, and that we needed a reissue of a paper ticket, and the flight might look full, but Delta had already made us a reservation. After some wrestling with the computer system, she managed to print us out our reissued tickets, and I pretty much grabbed them out of her hand the moment she took them out of the printer.

Back at China Airlines, we talked to yet another agent, who told us that we weren't in their system, and that our tickets were invalid because they had been issued by American. I got to brush up on my Mandarin as I spent several minutes trying to explain the situation, and we had to call in a supervisor to help us, but we did finally get our boarding passes, which even had seats assigned already.

It wasn't until we overheard some other passengers talking about it that we realized the 9:15pm flight had a stopover in Anchorage, which was somehow not mentioned anywhere on the itinerary, the paper ticket, or the boarding pass. So, after four and a half hours of flying, we touched down in Alaska, where we weren't allowed to get off the plane while they refueled and changed flight crew. I slept the whole rest of the way (9 hours), and was pretty awake upon our 6am arrival. This turned out to be useful, since we soon realized our luggage hadn't made it with us onto the second flight. We filled out the "irregular baggage handling" forms (third time in two years), and left the airport as quickly as possible. Total travel time: over 28 hours.

On the bright side, China Airlines had on demand movies (with pause, rewind, and fast forward), and I got to see The 40 Year Old Virgin, The Skeleton Key, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and about 30 minutes of Four Brothers. And, we did get the luggage back by midnight on the day of our arrival, albeit too late for our Christmas dinner party.

I'm still a little worried about our return flight, though. Delta claims we still have our reservations and are in the system, but China Airlines doesn't show us on the passenger list. I'll probably call back in a couple of days, but right now I'm pretty sick of dealing with airlines and their computers.

stop making up words!

I was just reading an article that quoted some presumably important person, who praised an event as "...focused on relevant and impactful training."

Argh!!! Corporate marketing droids everywhere, please note, "impactful" is not a real word. Yes, I know, it's perfectly cromulent, but I still hate it.

companies that suck

As I've said before, I use sneakemail to manage my email. By creating a new, disposable email alias for every website, I can track which companies are selling my email address, and I can easily create a new, clean alias, and cut off the old one.

Among the companies that have recently sold me to spammers:

SBC - I use them for phone service. I would prefer not to, but my condo complex has a gate that's hooked up to a phone, so I need a land line. Plus, I have DSL. They sold my email address to a spammer that wanted to manage my online payments.

Chase - I use a Chase Perfect card. I like that your rebate is credited to your account about two months after you earn it. I almost didn't believe this: they sold my email address to a porn site.

DirecTV - They sent me marketing spam, about their own services. I suppose this might not qualify as spam, since we have an "existing business relationship" but their email was malformed and sent from an outside marketing agency, so it's pretty borderline, in my view.

Macy's - Macy's marketing sucks big time. Never, ever, ever use your real email address to buy anything from Macy's or any other company that uses WeddingChannel.com. They use an outside spammer company to send you spam for the rest of your life. They've somehow managed to send me several pieces of spam, through a completely unpublished email alias. I can only conclude that they've stooped to dictionary attacks.