Category: Rants

If I have a problem with something, here it will be.

Categories
General House Rants

Holiday Downtime, Drivers, and Renewals Oh My

After a short 3 days and change in OK, plus a day and a half in Tahoe, I get a short rest in San Jose for the next week.  Well, that isn’t really true, as I must now scramble to get all of the work done to make it to CES this coming weekend and all next week.  But at least for today it seemed a bit more subdued than usual, or maybe I’m just not sure what to call the time you have outside of work.

What did get me wondering about stuff is the temperature at the house, which is hovering in the 65F area and can’t seem to recover from that range.  Perhaps its from a week of having the heater turned off, but the poor thermostat just can’t seem to catch up to the temperature/time settings as they arrive on schedule.  In the meantime I’ll be wearing my fleece, thank you very much.

On the heavily annoying side of things are drivers who clearly don’t understand where they are or what they are doing, thus preventing me from making to or from any location in my usual speed and grace (which is to say I provide neither).  I’m not sure, but it seems that during the holidays people must fly to the Bay Area and drive around like lost, drunken lemmings just to spite me.

Finally I am spanked again for not having all of my end of the year memberships done.  I went to the R/C field to fly today and my membership in that club wasn’t completed, so I was sidelined.  I come home to find my AAA membership expired, and I’m sure all of my magazine and professional organization memberships have lapsed as well.  Can’t any of these things be setup on auto-pay?

Categories
Rants Travel

Grr! Holiday Air Travelers

I had to fly to Orange County, CA for work today and I thought that I’d have a pretty clean trip, what with it being Tuesday and all.  The day started off simple enough: get up at 5:30am, get to the airport by 6:10, and on the plane by 7:30.  No security lines, no delays, no parking issues.  This seemed great.

But when it came time to fly home tonight, via LAX, I could see the problems mounting.  Awful traffic getting to the airport (not unusual for LA), really crowded check-in areas in most terminals, spotty seating at the food court, and a band of unhappy and obviously very non-regular-travel-savvy people at the gate complaining about lost luggage, TSA confiscations, and the way the airports work.  When I arrived back in SJC I found a snarled traffic line leading well up into the 2nd story of the parking garage, people pulling into and stepping out of every possible space (just in time to be nearly hit by the cars), blinkers turning on in both directions, slow/lost drivers, and the general inability to understand how to get out of the airport.

Oh how I long for the ability to fly myself to and from smaller airports to avoid this nonsense.  People could save themselves, and more importantly me, a lot of headaches if they would just research the airport website and see how things work now, rather than tie up everyone as they wander around aimlessly looking for that perfect parking/storage/surprise space.  Geez!

Categories
Flying Rants

Flight Lessons 19, 20, and 21

I must have really bad luck with equipment, or something.  The 19th flight lesson was short because of the rapid onset of darkness (stupid wintertime!).  The 20th was fogged out with visibility of less than 500 feet.  The 21st was only 30 minutes long thanks to a weak engine.  Needless to say, I won’t be flying that particular airplane for a while.

If there is a silver lining out of all of this, its that I’m really learning not to trust the engine in the aircraft I fly in, so I’m extra paranoid about finding an emergency landing spot each time I hop in the cockpit now.  I guess that’s something to be thankful for, right?

Categories
Rants Review Technology Work

The "Fun" That is Windows Media Center and Xbox 360

Recently I went through a setup related exercise for work where I needed to get a Windows Media Center PC to talk to a Media Center Extender. An extender in Microsoft’s view is a device that attaches to a TV and enables interacting with a Media Center UI without the PC actually having to be in the same room as the TV. There have been a few of these devices shipping for a couple of years so I thought this would be a cakewalk. Boy was I wrong, really wrong.

I spend nearly two hours hooking up the Media Center PCs to my home network, getting them to see each other, display on the TV, then share content amongst themselves. Once that got done I added the Xbox 360 as my “extender” and had it talk to both Media Centers, as well as my home server PC. And next thing I knew another three hours was gone. I had very little to show for this time warp, other than a lot of cabling, noisy boxes, and a rather sore backside (me with the hardwood floors and all). In the end, I did get music, photos, and video up and running on the Xbox 360, but only from one Media Center PC at a time.

It seems that the Xbox 360 can only talk to one version of Media Center at a time. Trying to get two of them to cooperate, both an XP and the Vista version, met with utter failure or a host of “go to this web site, download some stuff, then come back and try again” messages. It was painful and I think I know why no one tries this at home. If I had to buy this stuff on my own I certainly would have taken it back for a refund by now.

It all works now, and I’m on my way to understanding how the different boxes work (or don’t) together. But my quick lessons are: one Media Center is all you need, sharing is tough, and PC’s don’t always love TV displays. Oh, and that the Xbox 360 is the noisiest thing I’ve ever heard in the living room.

Xbox 360

Categories
General Rants

Lost Wallets

I had the occasion last night and this morning to have completely lost my wallet.  This led to several panicked phone calls (sorry Steve and Paul) and a lot of tearing up the house.  In the end, I cancelled all my credit cards, my ATM card, and lost my Social Security card, requiring calls to replace them all.

I rarely lose things of such great value, but this time around I just sucked.  Moments after I put the call in on all these items I found my wallet, wedged into a small opening between the passenger seat and the rail it slides on near the carpet in the car.  This sucked, as I then had to go to the bank and watch them laugh at me for having the card they cancelled, then getting issued a new one while they cut up the old one.

I really do have to remember to put everything back in the right place when I’m done travelling, lest this incident become more commonplace and a lot more nerve wracking in the future.

Categories
Rants Travel Work

Back Home for a Bit

I have finally returned from my whirlwind tour of Europe and NYC.  Although my body isn’t sure which time zone it’s in, I am sure that I’m home again.  Where else can you say that the taxi drivers speak less English than they do in other countries?

I’ll be travelling again later this week, but hopefully this stop will be long enough for some clothes washing and a little sleep.  Yawn is the order of the day, for sure.

Categories
Rants Travel Work

Why Commercial Flights Suck, Again

This week I took a series of flights from San Jose to Austin, Texas, then on to Denver, Colorado, and back to San Jose again.  I shouldn’t be surprised at it any more, but the terrible conditions that now exist in airports is quite appalling.

Previously I would almost never check my bag.  Now, because I’d like to have toothpaste and shampoo available when I fly I must check bags in.  This leads to more time in line, more chances for missed flights, and of course, lost or severely delayed luggage.  Going through Denver, I experienced the severe delay and ended up leaving the airport far later than planned (1 hour later to be exact).

On the trip back I witnessed a conversation between a TSA agent and a weary traveler in the screening line.  In short, the agent told the passenger that if he had only limited his carry-on fluids to 4 ounces (or thereabouts) he could have gotten them on the plane.  In fact, the agent said that the TSA would have allowed the passenger to take on more than one container, perhaps shampoo, mouthwash, and toothpaste, if the passenger had been more smart about the packing.  In the end, the passenger departed with no toiletries.

At Denver I was given the choice to fly on my scheduled flight, but have my baggage arrive on a much later flight, or wait around for the later flight and go with the same plane that had my bag.  I took the later, and that was a huge mistake.  Nearly 3 hours late and a nearly unbearable wait later, I finally got on a plane an headed home.

The moral of these stories is to fly without toothpaste, shampoo, or any of the other comforts of home.  Give up trying to make things work the way they once did (and should again) and demand that hotels start providing these goods for the traveler.  Only then will some sanity return to commercial air travel.

Categories
General Rants Work

Commercial Flight Suckage

Again today I had to take a flight somewhere for just the day, then return home.  And again the wonderful TSA had to find a way to make it miserable.  In San Jose they have so few checkpoints that the line to get into the waiting area was out the door.  They also had only small paper signs telling people what could or couldn’t be taken on planes, so of course many people missed those signs and then got combatitive at the checkpoints.

On the way back, in Burbank’s airport, for an unknown reason all TSA checkpoints were shut down for at least 30 mins.  The national guard was on hand to randomly pick people for extra searches.  No explanation was given, but eventually the lines moved again, but not soon enough for a group of people to completly miss their flights to Phoenix, then get angry at the gate agent.

Thanks again TSA!  You’re the reason why we’ll all be traveling by bus in the not so distant future.

Categories
Flying General Rants

Birthday Day Stress and Lesson 5

The day started off a little rough, with an early awakening for a conference call, and didn’t really get much better from then on out. Yes, its my birthday, and my mother’s birthday, and now Steve and April’s newest born’s birthday. And sadly, it is also Ben Affleck’s birthday too. That was a real downer to learn about.

I did manage to sneak out of the office a little bit early and get in another flying lesson. This time it was all about not paying attention to the gauges and just “feeling” the plane. Good thing too, as the sky was busy with all sorts of other planes. In the end, I got a bit frazzled and really mucked up the landing, and made errors on the radio so that the tower people were confused, I’m sure.

Why is it that we celebrate birthday’s again? I think I’ll go sleep, then fly to LA in the morning, and think about it.

Categories
Flying Rants Travel

Crappy Commercial Flights

I had the great displeasure of flying from Oakland to Seattle this past Friday, just after the new “liquids ban” was put in place for all commercial aviation. This change seems to have completely fubar’d the airports, leaving an overworked air system even more in disarray.

All told, I spent 7 hours in two airports for 5 hours of meetings in a remote office. I would like to say that the face to face time was worth it, but I have to question how useful travel is when things are as painful as they now are at major airports. Kudos

Kudos TSA, you once again have shown you are as ready for handling disaster as FEMA is. And that’s no compliment, I assure you.