Air Canada - Craptastic Service
This Monday, I was up until the wee hours preparing for a business trip. I woke up early, caught a taxi to Toronto's Pearson airport, and after making it through customs (I didn't get asked ANY questions this time... weird) I proceeded down to my gate to wait for my flight.
And so started a 12 hour ordeal that should have been a short 4 hour trip...
The initial indicator of a problem was the fact that we were scheduled to leave at 9:45 am, and yet at 10:15 am we were still sitting in the plane waiting for it to back off from the gate. At 10:30am they tell us that we have to de-plane. Why?
Technical problems. A hydraulic pump of some sort had failed or was broken. As nice as it would have been for them to have found and fixed that a little earlier in the program, I echoed a fellow traveler's sentiments "Good call!" someone declared. No one would have wanted to take off and have that discovered mid-flight, or perhaps mid-crash.
So no, the technical problem and the de-planing are not really the source of my feelings of resentment towards Air Canada and their delightfully craptastic service. No, I don't blame them at all for having to de-plane us. These things happen. Amazing the plane made it in with the wrecked pump though...
On to the rant: So now we get off the plane and are shoo'ed onto a little bus to take us back to the main terminal. When we get there, the one Air Canada employee at the gate is absolutely clueless. She doesn't know we were coming, she doesn't know where we are supposed to go, and she doesn't say anything to the huge crowd (a recently de-planed plane full of people) gathering at the bottom of the bus-loading area for the gate.
People wait, and wait. Finally people start to get pissed off. We're standing around with no idea what we are supposed to do. We just had our flight cancelled (without them telling us that directly) and many people have connecting flights or meetings to attend at the other end of that cancelled flight.
Finally a lady who knows something shows up and leads the train of passengers through tight back corridors and at last we emerge... back where we had originally started our airport adventure: at the terminal entrance.
So now we haven't been told where our bags are, or what Air Canada is going to do for the 50 or 60 of us to get us to our destination. In fact, we've just been rather unceremoniously dropped off at the door and told to fend for ourselves.
Even at the "Executive Check-In" counter (where I am fortunate enough to be able to bypass the incredibly long lines mere mortals use) they feign impotence and tell us to "Go through the double doors, and go to the left... there are some phones there. Pick one up and talk to an agent."
I wander around, get my bags from a lower level, come back up, go through the magical double doors, and head over to a table with a dozen cheap plastic phones. The funny part is the phone books. Yes, they have lots of phone books on this table, and yet the phones have no buttons. They are hard-wired to call Air Canada agents as soon as you pick up the phone. So are these useless decoration? Not really, they serve as an expressive outlet for pissed off patrons. It's impossible to find a phone book that doesn't have its cover ripped off and "AIr CanADa SUcKS!" scribbled on it.
I did make it to St. Louis, 9 hours later than I was supposed to, and 6 hours after my customer meeting was already done. I had to go away from my final destination, fly to New York (JFK), and then transfer to fly back to St. Louis. Of course I should mention that when I arrived at JFK, they had us run to the other end of the terminal, just to tell us that the gate was changed to... wait for it... the exact same gate we just ran all the way FROM.
I won't even waste your time complaining about the Hilton suite I stayed in where the bathtub was clogged with hair, the sink stopper was broken (so it wouldn't empty my tooth-paste-saliva-spittle on its own, and I had to hold the stopper open with my hand), and the TV changed channels on its own.
Nope, because you have better things to do. Like avoid
giant sink-holes.
EDIT: (updated link to PDF file... last one disappeared)
Labels: business trip
Jesse James and his Women Problems
A Lict remix, not the best, nor necessarily the first, but hopefully not the last. If Jesse James had women problems, and if he rapped, and he rapped over
Derelict's latest instrumental (track 2), it just MIGHT sound like this:
JesseJamesRap.mp3 . That is of course, if I was the one editing it together and I spent a shoddy couple of hours on it.
Update: The MP3 has been updated with a tweaked version to improve timing. Comments welcome.
Off the Hook Desu
Cibbuano has already enlightened us about
the black power movement prevalent in China, Korea, and indeed Japan. Further strengthening his case is a new piece of amusing evidence, the first (?) entry into "
Conversational Ebonics" aimed squarely at Japanese consumers who always wondered what the true meaning of "Once you go black, you never go back" really was.
I think that it's great that we can all pretend to be P.I.M.Ps even if we're wearing
G.R.E.E.N L.E.A.V.E.S and screaming out "Yatta!" at the top of our lungs. Even if
it all turns out to be Irrational Exuberance, you have to love it. Hell, I'll sing it at Karaoke, even if I don't bring my own "happa".
G, R, double E, N, Leaves!
Yatta!
Section 31 Files
I have to give some props to
Darker Projects for the very entertaining unauthorized audio fiction programs they've been letting me enjoy for free.
Specifically, I've been listening to "The Section 31 Files", a gritty and intense series of 20-30 minute long radio-show style episodes. The voice acting is very good, one could say professional, and definitely does NOT come off as a "fan" production. The sound effects and music are perfect, obviously some have been skillfully lifted from the movies and TV series we know and love (or not).
It's actually a nice way to wind down before I sleep, I just put the mp3 on play and listen in the dark lying on my bed. If I fall asleep before it ends I can continue where I left off as I head to work.
And speaking of work, I've been going to work super early (for me)... first 9, then 8, and now I have to be in at 7am tomorrow! Trust me, that's very unusual for me. I often work late hours but no-one would confuse me for a morning person.
This week I've been the technical lead in charge of that big account that has come to Toronto to listen to our technical pitch. So far it has gone really well, and I'm feeling good about that. That, and the fact that after tomorrow (Thursday) I'm FREE!
FREE as in speech, not beer of course. I'll be flying down to Edmonton to hang with Lobo, Derelict, Beav's parents, and - of course - the Rockman clan.
So get your chocolate bunnies prepped, and those mini-cadbury eggs ready, because I'm bringing my appetite!
Technorati Tags:
darker projects star trek section 31 podcast
Mess Your Pretty Face Up
What if Lobo was white and Beav was yellow?
I thought that I had lost the link to the
magic face manipulation tool that I had found sometime last year, but searching in Google for "race image upload asian" found it!
It provides hours of great fun. I mean, who doesn't like turning their friends into apes?
Damn Those Singularities
Work has been intense these days. I just didn't feel like I had enough time in a day to get everything done. I have 4 or 5 projects on the go at once, and as fast as the deadlines approach, more projects get added to my queue.
Case in point: A first of a kind proof of concept to be shown to a major American corporation next week.
I have to have it finished by Monday, and do the knowledge transfer so someone else can present it convincingly.
Well guess what, Monday night I travel to Chicago to act as a "Senior Product Architect" with another massive American corporation. And the day I get back (Wednesday) I hit the ground running on another multi-million dollar project.
It wasn't until I read
"Singularity" by William Sleator that I realized the solution to all my problems.
You see, by harnessing the power of the time-distorting properties of an interdimensional tear, I was able to get all my work done before daybreak today. While mere hours of your time elapsed, I was spending years toiling away to ensure a successful PoC.
Of course, the downside is that now I actually look like a senior product architect.
But hey, the chicks dig older guys right? Right? Hmm perhaps I've miscalculated the importance of spending my life on work. And because my birthdate hasn't changed, I'm still not eligible for those senior discounts, and I'll probably die before I'm old enough to retire.
Damn you William Sleator and your singularities. Who says that time resolves all problems? It's a problem all on its own damnit! In fact, the root of all problems! If time ceased to exist, who'd have time to worry about anything anyway?
Think about that.
This Monday, I was up until the wee hours preparing for a business trip. I woke up early, caught a taxi to Toronto's Pearson airport, and after making it through customs (I didn't get asked ANY questions this time... weird) I proceeded down to my gate to wait for my flight.
I wander around, get my bags from a lower level, come back up, go through the magical double doors, and head over to a table with a dozen cheap plastic phones. The funny part is the phone books. Yes, they have lots of phone books on this table, and yet the phones have no buttons. They are hard-wired to call Air Canada agents as soon as you pick up the phone. So are these useless decoration? Not really, they serve as an expressive outlet for pissed off patrons. It's impossible to find a phone book that doesn't have its cover ripped off and "AIr CanADa SUcKS!" scribbled on it.
Nope, because you have better things to do. Like avoid giant sink-holes.
