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| Tuesday, March 30th, 2010 | | 7:00 pm |
I'm no longer scared of black people!
While I don't generally consider myself to have any "racial hang-ups", while living in Baltimore I always found myself more nervous when approached by black strangers than white ones. I'd never felt that before living there. My wife and I were warned that public transit wasn't safe for "white people". All of the most heinous crimes we heard about while there were perpetrated by black people - of course, Baltimore is a predominantly black city, so this is statistically likely. It was a predominantly black school (you may know it from season 4 of "The Wire" - yes, that's a real school...) my wife walked by every day on her way to work, where one morning a couple of feral children - black - shouted "hey white bitch, we're going to kill you" from the other side of a chain link fence. One day while walking the dogs in the park, I was approached by a black man, around 25 years old, wearing a hoody. As he came closer he started rolling up his sleeves, walking straight towards me. I could see badly drawn tattoos on his arms, and shiny precious gems in his teeth. When he was perhaps 10 feet away he crouched down, held his arms out for my dogs to sniff, and asked if he could play with them. He loved dogs, had pit bulls at home (an incredibly popular pet in Baltimore), and my dogs obviously had no problem with him - in fact, they loved the attention. Obviously my own fear was unjustified. Well, I don't live in Baltimore anymore - I'm living in Montreal now. Once again I'm surrounded by not just white and black (and the occasional mexican), but also by a spectrum of brown and yellow. I'll hear more different languages spoken on an average day than I heard in my entire stay in Baltimore. The other night I was walking down the street after dark (another Baltimore phobia), and passed a black man walking in the other direction. It wasn't until a few minutes later that I realized I'd felt no worry during his approach. Perhaps I can finally get back to hating everyone equally, regardless of ethnicity. PS. the movie Crash is a piece of shit. The one about racism, anyway. Never bothered to watch the one about crashing cars and fucking. Current Mood:  optimistic | | Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 | | 6:57 pm |
A Coalition of Losers
Did I dream this? It seems almost surreal. The elected government is on the brink of being overthrown without election by the political entities that lost. Three parties whose platforms share little to no common ground are banding together to form a proposed single ruling body while still maintaining themselves as separate political parties. The last hurdle in implementing this bloodless coup is approval from a woman appointed to position by the queen of another country. Perhaps I'd not be surprised if this was news from a country whose name ended in "stan", but to hear it from my home country of Canada is a little shocking. What bothers me most is that some people seem to be ok with this. While Harper is a cunt in a suit, he's Canada's duly elected cunt in a suit. If his party is to be removed from office, the people of Canada should be allowed to choose his replacement. I didn't vote for a coalition. The people of Canada didn't vote for a coalition. We weren't given the option - and we never will be. The parties involved don't share a common platform, and will never merge into a single political boy band, dominating the dance floor on this season of "So You Think You Can Vote". Their common ground is their disdain for the difficulty of getting elected via the normal voting process, and the belief that they should represent the people of Canada without having been asked to. I can only hope that after the parliamentary recess, Dion will face the camera, tear off his face revealing the hideous countenance of Luba Goy, and admit that this whole thing was just The Royal Canadian Air Farce's very last unfunny political skit. | | Monday, February 4th, 2008 | | 3:16 pm |
Road Rage
Every time I consider a large purchase I find some reason to be terribly angry. Most recently, I'm considering the purchase of a new car. The Canadian automobile market is a load of shit. Currently, the Canadian dollar is worth almost the same as the American dollar. One might expect the prices to be the same on both sides of the border. Volkeswagon Rabbit: Canada - base model is $20,175. United states? $15,490. The difference? Maybe daytime running lights and a block heater. The Honda Fit: Canada - $14,980. United states - $13,950. Still completely unreasonable, but doesn't look THAT bad... at first. Until you realize that the Honda Fit has 3 trim levels in Canada, and 2 in the States. The Honda Fit DX, the $14,980 Canadian model, has no power door locks, no cruise control, and no air conditioner(and it's not available as an option). You simply can't remove these options from the American "base" model. To match the American base model, you need to buy the Honda Fit LX for $17,380. Both countries have a "sport" model available, which as far as I can tell is equivalent. $15,270 US or $19,580 CDN. So Honda's created a ghetto line specifically for Canadians to artificially make the comparison seem fair. Honda, by the way, refuses to honour warranty on an "American" car imported to Canada. Volkeswagon's done something similar. They've introduced the "city golf" and "city jetta" lines. They're not available in the United States, and the City Golf is priced at $15,300. This car is also known as the "Mark IV Golf". Discontinued in most 1st world countries in 2003. Now they're selling the Mark V Golf under the name "Rabbit" in Canada and the US. So, instead of pricing their vehicles fairly in Canada, they've decided to hand us the 3rd world ghetto-mobiles they've been selling in Mexico and Brazil, and price it on par with modern American cars. Also, good luck getting anything Diesel powered from VW in Canada, I don't think any of their current Diesel products are available here. Normally this wouldn't bother me so much, but with our impending long distance move a car would be a real convenience right now, and buying one in the current market sends a clear message to manufacturers that Canadians like it in the ass - which already seems to be common knowledge based on Ford spokesman Jim Cain's brilliant revelation: "We price at what the market will bear.". I'm not sure I've ever seen "fuck you, customer!" voiced more clearly in my life. Oh, and while I'm at it, has everyone familiarized themselves with the Canadian government EcoAuto rebate program? You can get a $1000 rebate on a Honda Fit or Toyota Yaris because of their lessened environmental impact. You can also get $1000 back from certain SUV models because they suck less (in environmental terms) than their counterparts. You're still supporting terrorism, but since you're doing it a little less avidly than average, we'll give you some gas money. Current Mood:  sick | | Sunday, December 2nd, 2007 | | 1:52 pm |
When life gives you lemons...
Last Tuesday marked the end of the Denmark Money Hemmorhage. Huzzah. While I can no longer claim to have a summer home in Denmark, it's nice not to have to sink $1700 a month into an apartment I'll never see the inside of. Also, I can't decide if I should be upset that my grad school application was rejected, or just annoyed that it was rejected after I asked them to withdraw it from consideration anyway. Current Mood:  gloomy | | Wednesday, December 13th, 2006 | | 11:14 pm |
Well Hung
Hanging a 150" projection screen in a small apartment isn't quite so simple as it sounds. My first step was to purchase a drill and mounting hardware. Failure. The local tools who sell tools were rather gibbonesque of stature - both mental and physical. I walked out of that exchange with a handful of philips head tapcons, a couple of zinc plated safety hasps, a pair of S shaped chunks of metal, and a $20 "Superior" drill - I'd initially tried to purchase a much better DeWalt drill, but was told they didn't have any in stock, but I could have the absurdly filthy floor model for only 100% of the regular price. I told the chump I'd just buy the $20 piece of shit and throw it out when I was finished. Which wasn't far from the truth, the chuck is already mostly shot. The staff were surly, unhelpful, and unintelligent. They weren't just bad at their jobs, they were genuinely stupid. Philips head screws are foolish. Why they even make tapcon self-tapping concrete screws with philips heads on them puzzles me. Why I bought them puzzles me more. It wasn't until later that I did some light reading on the different types of screw heads and discovered that philips heads were designed to prevent overtightening. Not helpful. On the second trip I bought hex head tapcons and a socket set. As shitty as my new drill is, it still managed to spin the head off a tapcon. My "guaranteed for life" mastercraft screwdriver now allows independent rotation of handle and shaft. Tape measures can sag measurably over long distances, and this sag should be dealt with before the drilling begins. I was lucky - the hasp parts mounted to my ceiling are only about 6 inches too close together, and that's within the tolerance of the big S clips between the hasp and the screen, they just toe in a bit. In the end, I found the easiest way to drill holes in concrete is to hand my girlfriend the drill and go do the dishes. Tomorrow I finally get my projector ceiling mount - after a month waiting for it to ship. I should be able to fill the screen instead of projecting on a subset of it. Won't that be nice. | | Saturday, June 10th, 2006 | | 8:16 am |
see you in the E U
hmm, less than 4 hours til I hop on a bus to the airport. winnipeg -> montreal -> munich -> florence. First time crossing an ocean, won't know anyone on the planes. Exciting. | | Sunday, May 14th, 2006 | | 10:44 am |
Nothing lasts forever
To anyone out there using a USB memory stick as a portable hard drive, please remember that they have a limited number of write cycles, and when they hit that limit they break. You will most likely lose all your data in an instant - there will be no warning that this is going to happen. So back up your data somewhere else, I've seen two of these die in the last 2 weeks, and neither of the users had any kind of backups. One was near completely recoverable, the second was less lucky. I've seen tests of these things in magazines where they've been run through the washing machine, run over by cars, and subjected to all sorts of physical trauma, but I haven't seen any tests of how quickly you can destroy them with regular use. I'd assume this applies to any flash based portable audio player too. The last thing you want is microsoft office doing autosaves to a flash device - copy data on and off, never use it in place. | | Wednesday, April 26th, 2006 | | 7:53 pm |
Shit is also brown.
Today at 9:27 in the morning, UPS tried to deliver a package to my apartment. As I am employed (This is likely the reason I can afford the contents of said package), I was not here at the time. The InfoNotice(tm) they left on my mailbox said that they will attempt delivery again tomorrow, either before 10:30, or between 10:30 and 2. Since I still intend to be employed tomorrow, this once again proves suboptimal. I figured I'd call their 1-800 number and see about arranging a pick-up. Their depot is only open between 9:00 and 5:30, Monday to Friday. When asked how I'm supposed to receive a package if I have a job, I was met with silence. I spent some time explaining that all of their potential delivery times were unacceptable, but I don't think I've instigated a policy change. | | Wednesday, March 29th, 2006 | | 7:54 pm |
What floor, sir?
Invariably, when I order a pizza, the immigrant pizza technician will become confused by the fact that my address has two distinct numbers in it. Yet when I call for a taxi, they always ask if it's a house, and when I tell them it's not, they ask what apartment number I live in. It's not like they're going to drive the fucking car up the elevator now, is it? What possible use could a taxi dispatcher have for my unit number, especially in light of the fact that someone who actually has to deliver something to that unit has no desire for the information. I do not understand. I'm not sure I understand why the taxi dispatcher wants to know where I'm going, either. Obviously I'd let the driver know at some point. In this case, as usual, it is the *airport. Off to update software, teach smarter people than I how to use it, and hopefully conduct a successful "run" of the big money-shot experiment my last 2 years have been dedicated to enabling. And today, the day before I leave, the full compliment of drivers for my speaker project arrived. I had to carry the awkward 60 pound cardboard bag (postal employees are animals) for quite some distance, so I'm going to have a hard time even lifting It to piss tomorrow. Jacking off in a rented room is creepy and weird, so perhaps this disincentive comes at a good time. The three new 8" drivers came with beautiful rubber magnet covers (I'm not sure if they're purely aesthetic, for open baffle designs, or if they're sound diffusing). Somewhat annoying since I now have 1 driver without the cover, and 3 with. There are now 2 more shipments of speaker related products left - one of "whispermat" sound damping material, which apparently only comes from one source, and one of a few miscellaneous goods from partsexpress. Purely by accident, I discovered that partsexpress carries 15" subwoofers that if dropped into my existing subwoofer box, will turn it into a true Weapon of Bass Destruction (that's to be pronounced as the name of the popular fish, for added dork points). As an added bonus, they're bloody affordable. Sold. Wait for it... So I hear the new MacBook Pro emits a constant squealing noise. There's the quality you expect from a first generation Apple product. Enough. Time to go pack. * Thank the non-existent God of the Christians that Canadian citizens don't have to go through the US-Visit procedure at the border. Producing semen and stool samples on demand at the front of the line at the gate must be so humiliating. | | Saturday, February 25th, 2006 | | 9:58 am |
| | Thursday, February 16th, 2006 | | 7:13 pm |
NCIX part two.
I'm sure you're all wondering whatever happened with NCIX. Well, I still don't have my money back, but here's the reply I got... Our apologies if the suggestion was not to your taste. Our representatives look for a board that is in the same price range as the one selected, and with as much of the same features. We do not take into account customer reviews regarding the product. If the suggestion does not suit you, we are happy to change it to another selection of your choice, or cancel the order. As per your request, the motherboard will be cancelled and a refund cheque processed for you. This may take 10-15 business days. We thank you for your recommendation regarding our service representative's responses. We apologize for any offence and will pass the suggestion on to that department. Thank you for your understanding in this matter. ======================== Laurel Morrison ncix.com/Netlink Computer Inc 120-4611 Viking Way Richmond, BC V6V 2K9 Toll free: 1-877-624-9777 ext. 6000 ------------- And here's what I just sent them: Ok, it's Feb 16th, and all I've received is some weird email that says something to the effect of "transfer Blance To CREDIT NOTE 1713793". Yes, it says Blance. Further, you kept 91 cents shipping insurance despite the fact that the product you actually shipped was worth under $100, which, as I recall, means it's insured for free. This lack of attention to detail is merely laughable. The really annoying part, which I feel somewhat silly having to point out, is that this is not useful to me. I can't take this email to the grocery store and buy things with it. Which I could do if, for instance, it was money. Even though your "Ordering Frequently Asked Questions" page states a cancelled order will be credited in 2-3 business days, I have waited 15 as suggested in your previous message. Money has not appeared in my bank account. I note that the same FAQ also states that a customer will be periodically notified if they've ordered a back-ordered product, and that you will make every effort to alert customers of potential delays. This FAQ should likely be updated to reflect current business practices - and the answer to "Is it safe to shop on-line at NCIX.com?" should probably be replaced with "No". In an ill-conceived sentence fragment in your previous message, you stated "Our representatives look for a board that is in the same price range as the one selected, and with as much of the same features". Once we look past the daftness of defending an employee's mistake in front of an angry customer, we're left with the fact that anyone even remotely competent would realize that the recommended board would never be purchased in place of the originally ordered one. One board takes two processors and has 64-bit pci slots. The other does not. This is easily recognized by looking at pictures of the products. Perhaps if I draw some on construction paper with crayons for you, you can forward them to the appropriate department. There was, at the time of this recommendation, an open box tyan tiger mpx motherboard listed on your site. Why your representative didn't offer this is a puzzle that will haunt me forever. If at any point in this exchange you feel like conducting yourselves in a professional manner, I would be very grateful. Or just stop saying dumb shit, and give me back my fucking money. Current Mood: Malcontent | | Wednesday, January 25th, 2006 | | 8:36 pm |
NCIX.com gets a gasface
December 29th. I decide it's time to upgrade my raid server to something with 64-bit slots and 2 processors. A Tyan Tiger 760MPX socket A motherboard at NCIX.com for $286 appears to be just the thing. It has 2 64-bit slots, a seperate 32-bit pci bus, and takes 2 athlon MPs. DVD-R on sale at the same time for the ridiculously low price of $30 for 100. 2 spindles, one motherboard. add to cart. blam. done. Early January. Two athlon 2600MP CPUs purchased elsewhere. $525 for the pair. Time passes. DVD-Rs arrive. NCIX.com order tracking page shows no pending orders. More time passes. 2600MP chips arrive. Yum. I notice that NCIX.com's page no longer lists the Tyan Tiger 760MPX at all. January 19th, no sign of motherboard, no word from NCIX. I initiate contact. - Dated Jan 19, 2006 at 08:17 PM composed by you Order tracking page claims I have no orders pending, but it would seem to me that this order is certainly pending, as I don't yet have the motherboard. Is this just a curious quirk in the order tracking system? Any estimate on when I'll see the motherboard? - I wait. Today when I got home from work, I read their reply: - Dated Jan 25, 2006 at 01:28 PM reply from Ncix Support Hi, Tyan Tiger 760MPX Dual Socket A DDR ATX AGP 6PCI ATA100 Phoenix Bios Motherboard($286.04) SKU 8325 in Your order is Phased out or Discontinued In this case, You can check out (www.ncix.com) and see if you can find a similar item to swap it with. or you can cancel the back order item with us. Anyway We have Soyo SY-K7V DRAGON+ KT266A SocketA ATX AGP 5PCI DDR ATA100 RAID Sound Motherboard (SYK7VDRAGON+) In Stock $235.98 Thanks for choosing NCIX, and have a great day! :) - This is obviously the kind of message one does not respond to right away. First one looks up the suggested replacement. It's an old kt266a board. Single processor, no 64-bit slots. There are brand new boards superior in every way that cost under $100. Assertion - the sender is either severely retarded, or making a really terrible joke. Assumption - ncix.com does not hire retarded people for customer service work. Assessment of current situation: $525 has been spent on chips that have no home. NCIX could easily have informed me that they weren't going to send me a motherboard well in advance of chip purchase date. Instead they waited for me to complain before providing this information. Also, my ticket is being handled by an asshole. Solution? Open a new ticket with a different department. The Priority Service department sounds like the right venue. - Subject: Humour in poor taste I placed an order on December 29th for a tyan tiger 760MPX motherboard. Two weeks later I purchased two Athlon MP processors for $525. On January 19th I inquired as to when my motherboard would arrive. On January 25th(!) I received a reply suggesting a soyo sy-k7v as a replacement. Your product page for this item is full of posts laughing at the inflated price. The motherboard is uniprocessor, and has no 64-bit slots. I can only assume that this was suggested in jest. I am not laughing. I'd also recommend not ending a message with a smiley and a "have a great day" when it's in response to an order nearly a month old when the customer has received absolutely no notification that you have no intention to fill the order. If I'd been informed in a timely fashion of your inability to fill this order, I wouldn't have $525 worth of processors sitting on a shelf right now. Cancel the back order and refund my money. Have a great day. :) - I am still angry. Current Mood: disgruntled | | Tuesday, January 24th, 2006 | | 9:59 pm |
Music to my ears
This is interesting. The long standing problem with the earphone output on my amplifier has a solution. Since the (incredible) level of hiss it spews forth is volume invariant (until I get to "+0dB", at which point it scales with volume), it was suggested that I get a "resistance cable". Apparently they make such things for certain earbuds. The earbuds in question have a 73 ohm resistance cable. I didn't figure that was enough, so I grabbed some resistors and jacks from the local whatever-company-bought-radio-shack and made my own. At 1.5kohms there is no background noise at all. I can now hear detail that was previously buried in static. Obviously, this wastes a lot of the earphone's potential volume level, but I think I can still manage long term hearing damage. Oh, and Apple still sucks. 3 of the machines at work don't wake from sleep, and have to have their power cycled. I've determined that my machine has this problem because OSX doesn't like my second display - an old SGI monitor. It also doesn't like my Razer mouse. Either one of these products alone will cause the fickle little cheese grater to sleep forever. Not sure what's wrong with the other two, as they're very stock. Saw someone refer to Apple as "perfectionist" the other day, and honestly meant it. Very funny. Current Mood: Metal as Fuck | | Thursday, January 19th, 2006 | | 9:41 pm |
World's most expensive voltmeter
1 PowerMac G5 2.5ghz tower, 8 gigs of Apple Ram (with 21" LCD, -1 dead pixel) 1 Athlon XP2800+ PC 1 National Instruments PCI-DIO-96 1 Measurement Computing PCI-DAS-6036 Associated terminal boxes and networking hardware 3000+ lines of source code I think we're looking at over $10000 worth of hardware here, and today I used it for the purpose of determining whether two points were at the same voltage level. I connected my test points to the screw terminal box via alligator clips. From there, my data acquisition software collected 20,000 voltage readings over the span of a second (the hardware also acquired 20,000 contemporaneous samples per channel across 64 digital inputs, but those weren't of much use in this application, nor were the other 9 channels of analog data...). All samples are timestamped and fed across the network to the PowerMac, where I piped the results to a file and fed them to gnuplot to determine that yes, the 5v power supply on my desk was safe to connect to the digital card. Current Mood: accomplished | | Saturday, January 7th, 2006 | | 3:40 pm |
A sticky situation
The visco-elastic damping polymer (audio alloy "green glue")I ordered for my speaker project finally arrived. I'm absolutely stunned at how ineffectually these retards packaged the product. There really wasn't any point in buying shipping insurance, because it obviously doesn't meet UPS's shipping guidelines. They threw 12 caulking tubes in a very tight box. Threw that box in another box. Drew a big arrow on one side, and sent it on its way. Absolutely no packing materials of any type were otherwise employed. No little air bags. No ghost poop. No paper. Obviously it was dropped several times arrow-side-down, because the caulking nozzles have managed to chew significant holes in the inside box, and at least half of them are bent. One of the nozzles was punched in hard enough for the tube to leak. Some of the tube bottoms are damaged too, but they're all stuck in a large pool of glue in the bottom of the box, and since the stuff is essentially impossible to clean, I don't feel like pulling them all out of the box to figure out which ones are damaged. I can probably use 11 of these tubes, but it's going to be significantly more annoying than anticipated, since they're all covered in gunk. Add the UPS bonus fees of about $50 to the total (Never cross a border with UPS. EVER.) and I'm not a very happy chap. I hope these fumes aren't toxic. It smells kind of like a box of crayons. I don't know where to store this shit. The whmis sheets say to avoid prolonged inhalation of vapour. ----------- An update... I emailed the company and complained, and they're handling this in an incredibly professional manner. And yes, I received an almost instant reply on a Saturday. ----------- New glue has arrived. Apparently all their new stock comes in hard plastic tubes, instead of the flimsier cardboard ones they used to use. These things appear pretty much indestructible, and would've arrived undamaged even if packed as the previous shipment was. This time it better padded than Lindsey Lohan's bra. Speaker construction begins this weekend. | | Friday, January 6th, 2006 | | 8:09 pm |
I adore the girls who world would be without of they?
I think I just got the old A/S/L from an italian male on irc. Memorable quotes of the evening include: "be I do not succeed to speak with other Italian we make drawing-room six male or female" "of that be six? that is of that it leave of world six?" (I later came to the realization that six was supposed to be "sex". I don't think I want to know what the rest of those sentences mean.) Also of great interest: "I do not force the girls and I live the girls wrong translation" | | Tuesday, November 29th, 2005 | | 9:06 pm |
The comics
I've come to refer to Apple's monthly security updates as "the comics" - because they are funny. This month, no less than two "privilege escalation" bugs, and no less than 3 "arbitrary code execution" bugs in and around Safari. Looking at the CVE numbers, it would appear that at least one pairing has existed since August. Either your mac has guest administrators, or nobody cares about mac users (even Apple, as evidenced by the frequency of these updates) Also, it looks like I'll be acquiring lumber this weekend and beginning to actually build my speakers. This is what they're supposed to look like. (please ignore the terrible texturing) http://tinypic.com/i1mpp1.jpghttp://tinypic.com/i1mpzb.jpgNot sure if I'm going to build the top cabinet or not. I didn't bother rendering the drivers for the lower cab, and yes all the drivers have nipples - they're called phase plugs. To give an idea of the size, the bottom cab is about a meter tall. Just the thing for a small apartment. | | Tuesday, November 8th, 2005 | | 7:45 pm |
A new enemy
Worst dinner ever. Asked a friend if he wanted to go grab some fastfood... He said he had a very tentative engagement later, but would rather cancel. A few minutes later, plans were altered, and off we went to get some burgers. I learned shortly thereafter that the tentative engagement had not been canceled, rather I was going to be present while my friend "interviewed" someone for a job. A friend of his had recommended this guy for a fairly high up technical position, and he was going to determine if he should even pass the resume up the food chain. I figured this would pretty much be a formality, and came along for the ride. We ordered food, sat down, and the informal interview process began. My friend started with some "simple" questions about mail delivery, to which the interviewee replied that the last time he'd asked a question like that was at a job interview years ago. I flippantly stated "I bet you didn't get that one either.", and we all chuckled. In retrospect, I was probably correct. We then moved on to a description of the job, which I interjected would "involve a lot of sweeping." My friend moved into some fairly detailed shell scripting and text processing scenarios, which the applicant made an attempt at, but failed at significantly. A question was asked on how to implement "cat" in perl (it's a 2 liner). Applicant, who claimed to have some perl kung-fu on his resume, could not perform the task. I know a little about the place that's hiring, and they have a lot of other tools at their disposal, so I figured I'd make the question a little easier... "Well, is there a language you CAN do that in?". I felt pretty bad when he said no. The applicant bragged about having a few linux machines, so my friend asked him a few questions in that direction... questions that finally led him to ask "what exactly do you do with the linux boxes, sit in the GUI all day?", which was about when I realized my friend was starting to lose patience. At one point, the applicant made some small but notable error, which I pointed out and off handedly made some crack about attention to detail... This prompted my friend to go into a 5 minute long rant about the size of some of their corporate customers, and that even the tiniest mistakes can result in huge problems. After 30-45 minutes, I realized my friend wasn't going to let up on the scripting and protocol questions (really, by this time he was kicking a very dead horse). I figured a quick learner could pick up a lot of these things on the job, so I asked him what his educational background was... mostly self taught, university drop out. It was about this time that I realized anything I said would simply make this process take longer, and decided to stare off into space for the duration. At some point, I sniffled, and it was misconstrued as laughter by the applicant.
Poor guy didn't even finish his dinner.
Current Mood: guilty | | Sunday, October 30th, 2005 | | 6:25 pm |
Travel
Northwest Airlines gets a gasface. Round trip to Cedar Rapids... total of 4 planes. Flight 1: 7:30 Boarded on time, proceeded to de-icing "ramp" (which is a level surface, but whatever). At this point, I thought I had a reasonable chance of making it out of the country unhindered. The border gestapo wilted before the cleverly crafted letter my boss wrote describing my actions in the USA, the xray technicians failed to find the explosives in my running shoes, nor the child pornography in my luggage, and I was feeling downright chipper. It was when I saw the fellow on the de-icing truck take his gloves off and get out of the cherry picker that I realized something was truly amiss. This was when the pilot informed us that the plane we were on had some sort of malfunction in the log book that was to prevent us from de-icing. They were trying to get in touch with their dispatcher to find out what it was. They had loaded us onto a plane that was flagged as in need of repairs. So, we turned around, and drove (as distinguished from flying by the fact that the plane's wheels remained in contact with the ground at all times) back to the gate. Usually when a plane arrives at the gate, the passengers *deplane. Not so for this flight. We were informed that if we were allowed to deplane, we'd have to go through Canadian customs, and then back through US customs in order to board another plane. That would turn this short delay into a much longer one, and cause us to miss the 12 o'clock bank of flights. Sadness. Eventually, they managed to seal some sort of air conditioning valve that was stuck open. Ironically, after this procedure was finished, the sun was up and the plane no longer needed de-icing. In total, it was a little over 3 hours before we landed in Minneapolis. Time in the air? 45 minutes. Flight 2: 10:30 Obviously flight 1 boned that pretty savagely. Next available flight was around 1:30. This one was delayed for about 20 minutes at the gate because we had somewhat of a traffic jam behind us, preventing us from "pushing back" to the taxiway. Today, the homebound leg of the trip... Flight 3: 9:10 At 8:10, the display the said the flight was going to Minneapolis rolled over to the 10:00 flight to detroit. Daylight savings time is just a fad anyway. This was all well and good until about quarter to 9 when the departing flight monitors also cleared the flight from their screens, and no Northwest agents could be found at any of the gates in the airport. At around 9 o'clock someone showed up and let us all on the plane, and we proceeded to do "first flight of the day engine tests". We got away only 15 minutes late, allowing us to show up easily on time for Flight 4: 11:30 Oversold. 3 happy volunteers will have to catch the 1:45 flight, or we'll start drawing straws. Eventually Northwest found 3 people to give up their seats, and the rest of us boarded the plane. 20 minutes later we were told that they would now have to open the cargo doors and remove all the luggage to find the suitcase of someone who didn't make it. This took another 20 minutes or so, because sorting luggage is NP hard. Finally we "pushed back" from the gate, and taxied on over to the ... no wait, to NEAR the runway, put the brakes on, and throttled the engines up full blast. After 5 minutes of this, the pilot explained that we'd been overfueled, and they had to burn some off, and we'd be on our way in another 5 minutes or so. And indeed we were. And 45 minutes later, we landed. And my sordid tale concludes. I'd like to point out that while those seat cushions may make good flotation devices, they do not make good seat cushions. * I'm really not sure why "plane" gets to have a "de" prefix, while car, boat, train, and bus do not. Current Mood: deplaned | | Thursday, October 20th, 2005 | | 8:40 am |
S1Ws need music too
A flava flav clock mp3 jukebox. BLAM. The world needs this - you could have 500 gigs swinging from your neck, and look stylish too. My speaker building project seems to be back on the rails after some dark times. The drivers weren't "breaking in" at all, the reason they appeared to be doing so was because the process warmed them up. Once they return to room temperature they performed exactly as they did out of the box. Apparently, Seas likes to measure their speakers at a higher voltage than either of the test methodologies I tried, because they feel that actually moving the cones is better representative of how they're going to be used. Silly Norwegians. |
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