Travel

Civilized Travel

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I don’t want to jinx my trip (i am currently in the air) but so far Jet Blue knows how to make air travel civilized. They had automated check in Kiosks. That isn’t new. Plenty of airlines have them. What was nice is that they have a ton of people around while you use them. Twice while I was at the machine I saw someone who could help me if I needed it. As I waited to hand in my checked luggage I saw 2 others who answered some quick questions for me. Total time at check in (including the line for handing my luggage) maybe 10 minutes. And I d mean maybe that long. Security was quick, but since I was there at 9AM on a sunday even the worst airline would be quick.

I found some breakfast, bought a book, a few magazines and some snacks and then went to the gate. As I read before I got there, they do have FREE WIFI. A big center area with power adapters and everything. I got a quick sync of my email done before I boarded. I also got the latest news feeds onto Netnewswire. It was nice. Like I said civilized. Well thought out. I am sitting here now writing on the powerbook, but I could be watching Superman on A&E, something interesting on SCIFI, MSNBC, or any other of a dozen channels. They did have some issues with the system at take off. A few resets seemed to fix it.

And no, I don’t work for the airline. I am just (finally) happy with an airline that thinks about its customers. This is a far cry from my last Delta experience.

Clean Up

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I got a bunch of misc. items done today and yesterday in anticipation of my week in Vegas next week. I will be out at the Cisco Networkers conference. Unfortunately they hold it in Las Vegas:) So I will have to suffer.

I sat with Bob yesterday and discussed the project plan for our major new site redesign. It sounds super interesting. It will be just stressful for me and my team. I keep telling myself I will be bored if we were not as busy as we are. It is still hard having a queue of stuff to get to, and some of it won’t get worked on for months.

Kai and I are both out next week. he is on vacation and totally unavailable. I will be reachable, so that is good, but the team will be short handed by 2 next week.

James was off today so I ended up doing some grunt phone configuratin work. That meant besides working on the Definity I had to go under desks doing some wireing. Not fun, but I got everything that needed to be done taken care of. I have to repeat what I have said before, working on the Call Manager is so much easier and straight forward than working on the Avaya Definity or any other Avaya switch I have worked on.

Still Recovering

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I thought I had recovered from my reverse (nights awake, days sleeping) schedule of last week. That was until I had to stay up late again monday night. My body clock is all screwed up. I can’t goto sleep, but then I can’t get up in the morning. Just cant win this week. For that reason and because I have had a crazy week at work I haven’t written much. I am just tired. I need to get ready for my trip to Vegas next week. I haven’t even seen if I have my luggage or if I lent it to my parents. I realized this weekend that my flight is early on Fathers Day. that means I don’t get to see dad. Of course that also means he doesn’t need to pay for me when he takes everyone out to dinner that night!

Hotspots

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Yesterday Jayson, Danny, & I took off to Starbucks to study (tech books), talk about work, etc. We have wanted to try that for a while but have been busy. We finally made it out. James joined us for a bit, but was busy and had to go. First, the starbucks in Union Square was noisy. Yes there are actually 2 Starbucks in Union Square but I assume the other one was as noisy as this one. Jayson says the one by his house is not as bad and he has gone to read and drink coffee for hours without problems. I felt like I was back in High School with two tables of extremly loud high school girls sitting rite by us. The place was packed. 4 of us sat at a table made for 2. Totally not the laid back experience we were looking for. not sure if I will suggest that again.

We did make productive use of our time while we were there. I tried out the T-Mobile Hotspots. I used it in Delta crown rooms before but I wanted to give it a shot at Starbucks. There were 3 free networks in range (or so the laptop said), but I couldn’t connect to any of them. So I paid. it is not cheap, but it works great. We ended up shopping for an LCD TV online. as I said in my post yesterday the specs I want are just too pricey right now.

The Long Travel Day

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I woke up at 6AM today.  Almost a good 2 hours earlier than normal.  Am I stupid you may be asking?  Well, yes in a way.  I went up to our Kingston office today.  I had 4 things to take care of.  As with any Kingston trip I am lucky to get anything I plan on doing done, since other stuff always comes up.  This trip I wanted to get 2 interviews done.  I wanted to sit with Kai and Brian about DNS modifications.  Then I wanted to work out some on call paging issues.  Lastly I wanted to meet with Craig and Kai about some email issues.  Actually when I look at all the stuff I needed to do I got 3 out of 4 of them done.  I cannot really count meeting with Craig since when I was in Kingston he was in NYC.  The other tasks were actually completed.  So I feel good that I had a productive day, even though I don‚Äôt feel productive.

The trip up was longer than expected.  Track work slowed the train trip down.  Then I got to the station and there was no taxi‚Äôs.  Kai had to come get me.  At least I rate enough to have someone come get me

I am offline now writing this entry on my way back home.  This trip is going slow also.  I assume track work.  To guarantee a seat I paid the extra $9 for a business class seat.  I got lucky.  This train has newly renovated seats.  These seats rock.  They have leg and foot rests.  Almost as nice as the automatic seats on Delta Biz elite.   If my treo could take low light photos I would have gotten a shot of them.

The interviews went well.  I was (still am) looking for a good support candidate in Kingston.  Both guys I spoke with seemed smart, but had very limited experience.  Now I find out that someone I know very well is looking to relocate and is very interested in the position.  I think this person would be perfect for the job.  The only problem is he would not be able to start till January.  I need to have Kai tech him out and see how smart he thinks he is.  This is another case of someone I would never believe would be willing to move, stand up and say I would do that.  Hey I want to move.  If jayson can surprise me, why can‚Äôt other people?  I want to be impartial so I will send Kai the resume and see if things work out.

Another Week, Another Trip To Boston

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I am back on the Acela Express up to Boston today. Gus and I are on the 8:03 again. Dan couldn’t make it, so he bailed on us. David, and Kai are both driving and meeting us once we get up to the site. Today we are visiting the Cisco Customer Briefing Center. I have never been. I hear it is nice. 2 of our Cisco engineer’s are also on the train. I stopped and said hi to one of them.

I have been trying to (with mixed results) use my T610’s bluetooth connection to download email on my Powerbook. Not very reliable today. At least I have my blackberry with me. I got no movie watching done on the train. I just did work, and followed up on email. I have no life…

Delta Airlines Sucks

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I hope they go bankrupt. I dare any Delta Airlines executive to email me and want to know why I dislike them. They hide behind their dumb-ass rules and even if there are extenuating circumstances they continue to screw the passengers. When did the customer become cattle, and no one care?

I got a response to my generally angry, but civilized email to them. They told me in the nicest way possible to go F myself. My account of the ordeal is here. If my company treated customers like I was treated (by supervisors and everything) we would be out of business. I am going to upload the letter I wrote (minus the date and flight number) and you tell me if situation I endured was not out of the ordinary enough to warrant some compensation.

I even had one moron of a rep tell me that it was my fault for not looking at the weather report before I went to the airport. This is after I told him that I asked the delta ticket agent at the airport if everything was fine. I even volunteered to not fly if the weather was questionable. I was assured things looked fine. Their response was weather shifts and things change minute by minute. How the hell do you go from no real delays to massive hurricane closing airport in 2 hours with out anyone realizing that it will happen?

My goal of getting back the points and / or getting a free ticket to compensate me for my messed up ticket is looking bleak right now. My last resort is to write to the corporate office, and plead my case. They will most likely be assholes like the rest of their company and say nothing, but it is worth a try.

The Trip To Nowhere

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I am writing a summary of my trip to nowhere from the 16th. It is a slightly edited version of the letter I wrote to Detla complaining about the horrible trip. On Thursday September 16, 2004 I was on flight 404 from LGA to Atlanta. I was to transfer there and go onto Las Vegas Nevada for a mini vacation to visit my friends Sean & Kelly.

The flight left over an hour and 20 minutes late. We then slowly moved down to Atlanta. We were told by our flight crew we would circle Atlanta due to the weather. We did this for at least an hour, probably more. We were told several times we were on “final approach”. We never landed in Atlanta. A few minutes after we were told one more time of our final approach into Atlanta we were told due to fuel issues we would be diverting to Knoxville TN.



Arriving in Knoxville we proceeded to sit on the jetway for over 4 hours while Delta tried to get a fuel truck to refuel our plane. We were not allowed off the plane, nor was any food provided. During this time the flight crew did their best with the situation, but we were given no information other than we should have news in 20 minutes, or this or that should take 20-40 minutes.

We finally left Knoxville around 7:30PM en route to Atlanta. Once there the weather was still bad, or so they said. We made at least two abortive landing attempts in Atlanta and then the pilot decided it was not safe to land. We were rerouted to Jacksonville Florida. We landed around 9:30 – 10PM. The times are becoming blurry at this time since we were on the plane for at least 7 hours. In Jacksonville we were told the flight would be meet by ticket agents to help us with our travel issues. When we got off the plane there was no one at the gate to help. Several of the people on the plane finally found a baggage agent and she had no idea that there was a flight diverted. We were given mixed information for the next hour and half to two hours. Only one PA announcement was made, and that was an hour after we landed. How do you expect people to know what is going on if your airline doesn’t do what they say they will do, and no one is around to provide any consistent information.



I was finally able to get my luggage after 2 hours of not knowing what was going on. Are you going to blame the 2 hour delay on getting luggage off the plane on bad weather?



When asked the flight attendants they said that delta would probably help us our with overnight accommodations since we were diverted twice that day. On the ground we were told that delta does not accommodate people due to weather. That’s great. Under normal circumstances I can understand that. Why then were we diverted twice and other flights made it into and out of Atlanta with no problems, or some delays when we were diverted twice. If I was warned of potential problems I would never have gotten on the plane in NYC.



With no help from Delta I found a hotel and had to pay for a room for the night. The next morning I arrived at the airport and was told I was rebooked on afternoon flights to my final destination of Las Vegas. Up until that time no one told me anything. By the time Delta would get me to Vegas I would have already wasted half the time I had with my friends. That was the whole purpose of my trip. Instead of wasting even more time in the air for very little time in Vegas I asked to just get me back to NYC.



I understand to a point that weather can cause problems. When I am trapped on a plane for 7 hours with no options, diverted to 2 different airports and had to spend the night in a city that was not my destination with no help from Delta, I am past understanding about weather.



I used to travel for a living. I have had lots of delays and problems due to weather, mechanical or personal issues. This is by far the worst experience I have ever been through. This is from a person who has flown through countless blizzards, storms, etc. At what point does an airline stop hiding behind the excuse that they don’t have to do anything for you due to weather? I am just glad to be home.

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The Travel Blog

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As I write this (no idea when it will be posted) I am around 35,000 feet. I am on the first leg of my Vegas vacation. It is short, but I hope to rest, and party a bit. So far no rest was possible. I sometimes forget why I stopped traveling for a living. Going away on a short vacation always reminds me. this trip is no different. Due to the hurricane my connections in Atlanta caused me huge delays. my flight left about 1:30 minutes late. I will miss my original connecting flight. Thankfully I got a page from Delta about the delay and called before I went to the airport. I was able to call and get confirmed on a later flight out of Atlanta to Vegas. problem 1 fixed. Problem 2 was that since I made a change on my plans I had to goto the ticket counter instead of the self service check in. it took allot longer but I was still early for my trip.

I had time to kill so I tried out the Delta Crown Room. In all my travels I never used airport clubs, and as I said I am well traveled. When I was at IBM my boss was going to take us to one on a few occasions, but we never ended up there. With my Amex card I get free admission to a few of the clubs, so today I decided to try it out. All I can say is, NICE. comfy chairs and a bar awaited me. T-Mobile hotspot access also was nice. I had to pay for that, but it was worth the $9.99 for the full day of usage. I only had time to download my mail before they called my flight, but I had stuff do to on the plane. I also plan on using the day pass in Atlanta during my layover.

Since I planned ahead I even got my aisle seats. The rescheduled flight is a good seat also. The customer service people were cool. After you have been flying allot you get to want things done in a specific way. I will freely admit I am a travel snob. I for example am grateful that the 2 dogs in little cages 2 rows in front of me are quiet now. they weren’t when I started this flight. Now I said planning ahead is good. Lets see if my plans hold water for the entire trip. They say best laid plans fall apart at step 1. Hopefully my next flight will not be delayed that much, and I can catch a decent dinner at the hotel tonight. My plans for a late afternoon swim or spa session is dead now that I wont be getting in until 8PM ish. I hope to do either or both of those things tomorrow while I wait for Sean to finish work.

Now that I have told you about my woes today, I can go backwards and tell you how this trip started. Before the flight I went to breakfast with my dad. He was still having issues eating after gum surgery, but we went to his usual breakfast place. My mom was busy doing something and passed on food.

I stayed over at my parents last night since the first night of the Jewish new year was at their house. Carrie, Mike, Morgan, Donny, Herb, Na, Loren, Andrew, Tina/barry and their kids Lindsey and Cory were over. It was crowded since my parents don’t have their new dining room set yet. Their old one is sitting comfortably in my apartment.

We got to play with Morgan, so the night was perfect. She even was giving out hugs and kisses without being asked. I love my niece. she is becoming talkative. it is very cute.

TRAVEL UPDATE: Sorry in this blog I jump around allot, but I am still stuck on the plane. We are over Georgia somewhere. We are in a holding pattern into Atlanta at this time. We have been circling for maybe 20 minutes or more and they say we will be doing it for another 30 before we can begin our final approach into Atlanta. This flight is way longer than normal since the flight crew also said before we started circling that we were moving slower than normal to avoid circling allot. Eventually I will get there.