United Breaks Guitars

Like most people who fly coach, I've not enjoyed the whole flying experience for a long time. I avoid flying and see it only as a necessary evil. I've had some OK flights and encountered some employees who tried to make the experience very nice, but anymore most airlines are just airborne buses. Flying used to be a lot more enjoyable, but it's just not a pleasant experience. The lines for "security" are often ridiculously long, the flights are crowded, and then the airlines leave no leg room between the seats. Beyond that most of the employees are less than customer-service focused. They act as if the passengers are an inconvenience as opposed to the reason their jobs exist. One thing that baffles me is why the employees of the airlines don't at least try to make the experience better for their customers. I understand that the airlines are screwing them over in many ways, but I would think that the employees still need their jobs; if they didn't they wouldn't be there. But, it seems to me that if they piss off enough customers and drive their employer into bankruptcy, or out of business, that they'll lose their jobs. It seems that it's in their best interest to treat the customers better. Yet, somehow they don't.

Anyone who has traveled by air much has his/her horror story, but rarely can we do much about it. The band who made this video, Sons Of Maxwell, is an exception. They weren't happy that the United ground crew was throwing their guitars on the tarmac, or that when they complained they were basically ignored. After getting no resolve from United the lead singer, Dave Carrol, decided to write three songs about his experience and United, this being the first of them, and so he did. You can read the full story behind the song here.



Beyond the lack of customer service that companies like United display, I don't understand why these companies still don't seem to realize that their bad reputation can be very quickly spread on the internets. One disgruntled person can spread his story to thousands of people overnight, and that does have a direct affect on who does and doesn't frequent a business. That direct affect on the business can eventually affect the jobs of the people who are pissing off the customers in the first place. But then again, how could I expect a group of people like airline employees who treat customers like crap to comprehend higher-level thinking such as that?

Because smelling like ground meat just screams sexuality

There are so many things wrong with this, and so many jokes about "whoppers" and "where's the beef" that just don't even need to be said, but WTF? Who wants to walk around smelling like a piece of ground up meat-like food product?

This is a serious marketing fail if you ask me. What kind of person would buy this? I guess it's not enough these days to smell freshly showered and clean. Apparently one is only really truly seductive when he smells as if he's been standing near the dumpsters of the nearest BK, downwind of the flame broiler exhaust pipe. Just watch out for stray dogs.

Who knew the term "gag gift" was meant to be taken literally!?

Christianists love McCain to death

From Pam's site, there's this disturbing story. Be sure to check out the source story here. What kind of real christian prays for the death of another person? I'm sure the justification is that praying for McCain's death would allow Palin to lead the country into new and prosperous directions. Asking their god for the death of one person would , in their minds, improve the lives of millions of people. But in the end, it's really just using religion for selfish political gain. Truly sick. And very frightening that these people have any power at all in our country.

I desperately hope that Palin is the Republican presidential nominee in 2012. Think of how easy it would be for Obama to get re-elected against that mess.

Snowy morning coffee

Yes, I said coffee, not tea. With Anthony working at Starbucks and bringing home free coffee, I'm not only having a little tea in the morning but also a little coffee. So, I've joined the ranks of the coffee-swilling masses in Seattle. It feels good to belong to a group.

And yes I said snowy. It snowed about 2" here at home overnight. It started around 20:00 and probably snowed off and on all night. It's really pretty, especially since we don't see snow on the ground that often in Seattle. The problem is that for the first couple of hours of snow, the ground was too warm so it melted when it hit. As the temp dropped it of course turned to ice so there's 2" of pretty snow with about 1/4" of ice underneath.

I'm kind of hoping the snow and ice hangs around for a couple of days so I have an excuse to work at home. The sun is breaking through the clouds and I see some melt happening on some of the roofs but not much. It's supposed to not get out of the 20's tomorrow so we'll definitely have more ice. I would really enjoy a work at home day!

Luckily I don't have to go anywhere in the truck today. I think our plans today are all home-based: we still need to finish decorating the x-mas tree; we're trying to organize a load of items to give away before the end of the year; we've got to fix breakfast still; and we need to straighten up the house. Sounds like a busy day, but it should be OK. If we have to go anywhere out of the house, we'll walk.

My big project lately is that I have spent the last several weeks, off and on, ripping all of my CDs to MP3. I figure I've done about 475 discs and a total of about 7167 songs. I know that's not a lot compared to some peoples' collections, but it took a lot of time to go through every CD. It's actually nice to finally have everything digital. Now I'm thinking of ideas to be able to get rid of the CD player in the living room and use a laptop connected wirelessly to my server in order to play the music on the stereo. I think it would be pretty easy, and pretty user friendly. Sadly the sub-woofer on the stereo decided to die the other day, so there's no point in doing anything until I get that replaced. It's always something...

My other big project has been organizing the files on my PC at home. Jayson and I used to share the PC so there was stuff scattered everywhere. I've been organizing it all between the five hard drives I've got and trying to make the folder structure make sense. One of the biggest reasons is that I've got a backup job that copies everything to the large external drive and I want to make sure that it's grabbing everything I want. But, I also got tired of multiple copies of things in three different locations, all with different names. Folders named "New Folder 5" don't do any good when trying to find something! I've gained back at least 40 gigs of space across all the drives, which is pretty good! Now I just need to add more RAM to my PC to help it run better. Like I said, it's always something...

I pretty much have my x-mas shopping done this year. We all three agreed to a strict spending limit this year. None of us really NEEDS anything and money is tight all around. So, we'll each have a nice selection of things to open x-mas day without having gone into debt to do it. We always do fun things in stockings so I've got to pick up a few things for that. We're going to be spending the day at home that day which will be nice.

Well, time to get working here. Plus we still need breakfast and it's almost 10:00. And maybe we'll even go see if we can scrape together a snowball!

Just plain funny

This doesn't require much of an explanation. At least the guy was honest.

The things people throw away

Walking back to my building after lunch today I happened to casually throw a piece of paper into the garbage, only to look down and see this:


Talk about doing a double-take. I remember when Seattle used to be such a nice city. You could walk past trash cans in almost any area and not be accosted by hardcore porn. What is this city coming to...? I was so offended that I had to stop and take a couple of pictures with my mobile phone.

I did like the dichotomy of the Whole Foods container (not recycled I might add!) next to the "Beautiful Slut Mothers" DVD cover.

I no longer recognize marriage

I ran across this piece a couple of weeks ago and am just now getting around to posting it. It's a very interesting idea and it's not so far out there. The only reason same-sex marriage is being debated is because "some people" don't believe in it and don't recognize it and feel that they should deprive others of it. The issue over whether or not it's a right is really just a cover for their desire to force their beliefs on others. Most polls show that "some people" isn't even a majority of the country anymore. What if we all decided that anything that doesn't fit our idea of "right" just doesn't exist? And even further, what if we all decided to outlaw what we didn't believe in?

Our situation in Washington state is different than that in CA with Prop 8; it wasn't voters here who struck down marriage equality. But, our Supreme Court did rule against marriage equality saying that the purpose of marriage is procreation and same-sex couples can't naturally procreate. No reason the same logic that Tom Ackerman uses couldn't be applied to marriages here: "I don't recognize your marriage because you haven't created children. Your marriage is invalid." Would be interesting to see what reactions that got.

This post from Kos nicely sums up what I would like to see put before voters to see if they really would vote like they claim they believe. It's convenient to use the christian bible to keep others from having rights, but would they use the same bible to keep from giving themselves rights? I seriously doubt it. More often than not their faith only goes so far.

The Evolution of Beards (well, sort of)

Via BoingBoing, the "hierarchy of beards". Sadly, it's a rather inaccurate hierarchy since many of the styles are not called in reality what the poster calls them. It's obvious that the poster is only designed to look like it's from the Victorian times as many of the names are made up and many popular styles are missing completely. Still, it's interesting to compare some of the styles and see different iterations of them.

I wear the "Hyneman", apparently named after Jamie Hyneman (popular 19th century TV star), although my moustache isn't as long as in the drawing.

Speaking of beards, the best beard site on the internets is still All About Beards. There's lots of good information, and eye candy, for beard aficionados.

Hello again

I've been actively avoiding posting anything here recently. I just didn't feel like I had anything I wanted to say, or that what I had to say wasn't worth passing along. Life the past month or so has been the status quo, which I suppose isn't a bad thing. Since I returned from my trip to Oregon (late September) it's been pretty much just home and work and back home again. My big excitement at work is that I moved to a new disk with a very large window. I gave up some privacy (okay, really just a semblance of privacy) for light and a view. It's been a good trade-off so far.

There hasn't been any real excitement since my trip to OR. That was just a plain old good trip. I love spending time with my mother; we always have a good time, we think very much alike, and we enjoy the same things. The trip was a great break for me. We would sit at home and talk, go visit small towns, wander through old cemeteries, shop some, and were always on the lookout for food. I miss having her closer so that we can do those things on a regular basis. I know it's kind of late to be saying so, but I'm very grateful for her letting me go down there and for all the nice things she did while I was there.

Back at home, Thanksgiving kicked off the holidays. We were invited to our friends Jim and Doug's...actually it's Doug's house but they shared the hosting chores. There were about 10 people total and it was a nice way to spend the afternoon/evening. Plus, they cooked everything. Well, everything except for the vegetarian alternatives I ended up cooking for Jayson. And now that Thanksgiving is done we're putting up all the Christmas crap...er, I mean decorations. I'm not big on Christmas decorations, and as a whole the holiday has lost most of its meaning for me since I was a kid. The holiday was a big deal for my family when I was growing up. It was always secular in nature, but my parents made sure it was a special time for my sisters and me, and it was a very special time. After growing up and the death of the grandparents it wasn't as special. As I've gotten older, it's become even less so, especially with the fact that the holiday seems to start in August, at least if you go by the displays in the stores. So, I guess I have Christmas burnout. I do enjoy the time spent with friends and family, but I guess I'm not sure why that can't happen any other day of the year. I'm also not sure why we're supposed to buy gifts for people just because it's December 25th. If I see something I think someone will like, I prefer to give them that gift any other day of the year. Oh well...end of rant!

Just in time to bring out the Christmas clutter we had started getting the closets and spaces here at home organized. We're got a lot of clutter to get rid of and the closets have become messy. It's surprisingly rewarding to get rid of things and get spaces cleaned out. We're talking about getting rid of the larger dining chairs that seem to be taking up too much space and putting our antique chairs back in place. And, I want to change the red we have on the walls to a brighter red. So, more projects...

So, you can probably see why I haven't posted much here recently. I don't have much to say!

Yeah, what he said

This article pretty nicely sums up how I felt/feel about the election this week. I'm still pissed off about Prop 8 in California, but I also am really happy about how things went on the national level. I really didn't think this country had it in it to say No to being manipulated by fear, but I'm glad to see that I was wrong.

The U.S. actually woke up

My faith in the intelligence of this country has been slightly restored tonight. Maybe there is an end to this 8-year long national nightmare after all. While Obama isn't perfect, I'm happy right now. This is a big deal.

Back from the cone of silence

I've been incommunicado by choice lately but decided that my self-imposed silence was due to end. I'll start again by posting pictures of my trip to my mother's at the end of September. Yeah, they're a month overdue, but better late than never!

Big night out in Grants Pass

*This was supposed to post last night, but it something happened when I sent the e-mail from my phone.

Forgive the crappy cell phone picture, but it's all I had at the moment. I decided to snap a picture of where we had dinner tonight to prove that there are smewhat sophisticated places in rather humble Grants Pass. We were at Miranda Mae's tonight, a nice restaurant and jazz club. We had a great meal and got to listen to a jazz trio while enjoying our beer. It's nice to know that the whole town isn't all rednecks and old people.



I've been ejoying myself down here so far. We still almost 3 more days...sadly we have 4 days worth of things to do. Tomorrow we're headng down to Ashland to wander the town, have lunch, maybe see a movie. We're debating over going to some festival in Medford tomorrow or Sunday, and there's an Oktoberfest in a tiny little town called Wolf Creek about 20 minutes north. The Oktoberfest is, we're told, small but usually nice. The festival in Medford has local foods and beers but also things like a grape stomping competition and a "heffer futurity" (we're not what that is) that don't sound too interesting. I think we've decidedon the Oktoberfest at this point.



In any event, it's been really good to hang out with mom and just be on vacation for a while. We've not run out things to talk about, and we probably never would in 100 years.

On my way, sorta

So, here I am sitting at SeaTac airport waiting for my flight. I ended up getting here pretty early but that's OK. It gives me a little time to unwind after the work day.

I'm looking forward to the weekend with my mother, but I also have mixed feelings about the trip. Believe it not, I've not traveled anywhere on my own since Jayson and I met 11.5 years ago. It's a different experience but it's OK. I definitely need the trip to help myslef relax and unwind even for just a few days, and I think it will accomplish that. I'm looking forward to the time with Mom and she is also looking forward to it.

I just wish Jayson were more comfortable with the idea. He sees it asme running away from him, when in reality it's me just doing something nice for myself. I don't tend to do lots of things for myself so I cherish the things I do deem Todd-worthy (wow, that sounds arrogant!). I'm usually the one who gives up things for others so to have my mother give up a weekend and get me dow is a really nice gift. I'm hoping that Jayson will see that he can be OK wth time apart and that something for me isn't anything against him.

Now, what to do with the other hour and a quarter to kill before I can get n the plane...

Plank Castle Palin

That would be my name were I Sarah Palin's child, at least according to this web site. Someone has come up with a converter that takes your name and converts it to an all-American name such as Sarah has chosen for her existing children. Sadly, it's probably pretty accurate.

Sunday morning tea

Time does fly when it comes to blogging and I just realized it's been a while since I dropped any words of wisdom on this page. As usual, there has been a lot and not very much going on here. Work has been enjoyably busy; enough to keep me occupied and interested but not enough to make me run screaming from the building at 4:00 when the whistle blows. There are some big projects coming up and those should be interesting. I'm still trying to hire at least one other person for my group but can't get any candidates. You'd think people would go out of their way to work there since it's a good place.

Anthony has been looking for work lately, speaking of which. His contract at his company ended with no notice (that sucked) so he's in the job market again. He's put out a lot of resumes and had some good responses, including at least one job offer so far. So, it seems like he'll be back at work soon.

Jayson's depression has remained part of life as well. After he got back from his sabbatical in Texas he got better, then worse, then better then MUCH worse, then better...well, I think the pattern is clear. It's obvious that the issue is still out there and the illness isn't completely under control. I'm seeing it improve, which is good, but it pops up without a lot of provocation at times, and unexpectedly. I try to do the best I can to help him get better and not add to the problems, but I'm not always successful. At times it feels like my presence adds to the depression, mostly because the ways he and I interact are bad habits from the recent past. We've both been conditioned to respond certain ways - all of it during his depression - and those ways of responding don't work anymore. It can be extremely stressful wondering if what I might say or do next will cause him to go back into a depressed state.

That said, I'm taking my own sabbatical. I'm heading down to my mother's in Grants Pass, OR for about 5 days. Grants Pass is no big deal...driving past on the freeway the only things you can see are the Sprawl-Mart and some grocery stores. But, the downtown section is kinda nice and the setting is pretty. Best of all I'll get to spend some time alone with my mother, something I've not had to opportunity to do at any length in years. We always have a good time together and we never run out of things to talk about. We'll do some stuff outside the house I'm sure, but I'm guessing mostly we will stay at home, drink tea, eat, and chat. Five days should be a decent length for a visit. It should give me some time to unwind and de-stress somewhat and also just have time for me for a change, which is something that's usually sorely lacking.

Well, I think it's time to fix breakfast, or rather go to the market to get food with which to fix breakfast. Happy Sunday y'all.

Google images meme

Via Romach... I didn't feel like being overly productive at work today so I took advantage of him tagging all his readers to do this. You're supposed to:

A) Answer the question below then do a Google Image search with your answer. Choose a picture from the 1st page of results and display it with little explanation.
B) Tag 5 people to do the same once you’ve finished answering every question. I don't normally tag people online so anyone who feels compelled (and hasn't done it yet based on Romach's tagging) should do it.

1. The age you will be on your next birthday : 41

2. A place you want to travel to : Myanmar (Burma)

3. Your favourite place : Venice, Italy

4. Your favourite food : Mashed potatoes

5. Your favourite pet : Basenji

6. Favourite colour combination : Hunter green

7. Favourite piece of clothing : Jock strap

8. Your all time favourite music : Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Seans

9. Favourite TV show : The Simpsons. It's become very common, but I still like it.

10. First name of your significant other : Jayson

and Anthony

11. Which town do you live in : Seattle

12. Your screenname / Nickname : Grrrowler

13. Your fist job : Bus boy

14. Your dream Job : Naval architect

15. One bad habit that you have : I crack my neck

16. Worst fear : Drowning

17. Things I would like to do before I die! : Go skydiving

18. The first thing you would do if you get £1,000,000 : Buy a bigger boat

19. My husband(s): Jayson and Anthony

20. What present would you like for your next birthday? A hairy cowboy would be nice...

Are they trying to tell us something?

It's no surprise that there were plenty of derogatory URLs registered as soon as Palin was chosen by McCain to be his eye candy running mate. What is a surprise is where a URL like sarahpalinsucks.com leads to. Maybe the MacCain campaign is simply making an admission about what we already knew.

Dear Russians: Lighten up already

There surely must be bigger problems in Russia than the undermining of the culture by a cartoon. What is it with these nationalists and religious groups that take themselves SO seriously? Even a cartoon making fun of how serious they take themselves is taken too seriously and they get up in arms over it. In this case the TV station that shows South Park in Russia is being taken to court. What a great use of the court's time and resources. Just lighten the hell up...

Did the Puyallup

It's become something of a tradition that we go the Puyallup Fair (whose slogan is "Do the Puyallup"). Yeah, the name is funny but that's the name of the town it's in. Generally we spend more time looking at the exhibits and the crappy stuff for sale in the various buildings, but this year seemed to be all about the rides. Oh, it was also about crappy deep fried food, but that's the same every year. It's always exciting to see what they will decide to deep-fry next, although this year I didn't notice anything new. In years past we had deep-fried pickles, deep-fried Snickers bars, and deep-fried Twinkies. I was hoping to find deep-fried butter but was sorely disappointed.

Anyway, the rides. Usually we'll do only one or two, but this year we hit pretty much everything we wanted to ride. Jayson likes to go in circles and I like to go up and down and upside down. Anthony doesn't seem too picky. So, he and Anthony got to go in circles while Anthony and I went up and down. OK, that sounds funny, but you get the point. Oddly, Anthony and I were a little light-headed after we rode our final ride, which went both around in circles, then up and down, then around in circles again. Of course, who wouldn't be light-headed after that?

Surprisingly we spent about 6 hours at the fair, thinking we'd only be there about for a couple or three. Was a fun day, but we were beat by the time we got home. Here's a few pics from the day:

Forgive the crappy quality from my cell phone