I’m spending entirely too much time shuttling between Atlanta and Chicago for business.  I’m booked on the same flights for each trip, and the patterns have become way to obvious to ignore:

The baggage fees are destroying flying for the customer – on top of all the other overhead that you need to deal with in the course of flying (travel to the airport – 1 hour, TSA crap – unknown, endless waits, flights cancelled at the last minute, fellow passengers wider than their seats, etc).

On my Tuesday flights up to Chicago, I’m on a regional jet.  For a regional jet, it’s a big one, but baggage space in the cabin is at a premium.  The result is that almost everyone who isn’t a Medallion member (for Delta) ends up having to check their roll aboard bag at the side of the airplane.  This means a lot of hassle and bitching as business travelers pull their laptops and valuables out of the luggage, while trying to get onto the plane. 

Two weeks ago about 20 people had to BACK OUT OF THE PLANE during boarding in order to start rolling luggage out of the cabin so it could be checked.  This does not make the traveler happy, and it really irritates that cabin staff, who has to deal with angry and frustrated customers as well as nag people about not putting coats in the overhead bins.

Okay, so that’s on a regional jet, you might figure that it’s different on a larger one.  Well, it’s pretty much just as bad on the flight back from Chicago which is on an MD-80 – a typical 5 across medium range jet.  The exact same problems occur.

Here’s the reality check – before these baggage fees were applied, a lot more people checked their bags, meaning that in the cabin you at least had a decent chance to find a place for your bag.  Now, because of the (originally $15 / $20) $25 to $35 fee, people try to carry on things that they never would have dreamed of before.  To top if off, the bags that are “checked” at the side of the aircraft – no fee!  So the airlines have incentivized people to try to carry on as much as they can in order to save some money.

Be sure to remember that these fees were added to offset the cost of fuel going up – but they never went away as the cost fell.  And the reality is, the cost of fuel is built into the airfare.  It was and is just another money grab.  Under our economic model they’re welcome to it, but as soon as I can fly Southwest, I’m there.

When you pile this on top of the lack of ‘free’ food, and the assumption that you only want a glass of soda rather than a can, they have squeezed the most out of the flying public.  I cannot imagine what charge they will think of next.  Deb suggested charging people by weight…

I should note that when I flew Air France from Atlanta to Paris, the service was great, the food was great, the in-seat entertainment system was great, and there was plenty of room in the Airbus for luggage.  The flight back from Paris on Delta, well, there was plenty of storage space…

Happy travels!

Recently at KFC, I asked for a packet of honey with which to drown my biscuit.

While enjoying my dinner, I saw that there was a list of ingredients on the packet of honey.  “That’s odd” I thought.  When I look on the honey bear container in my pantry, there is no ingredient list, just as there is no ingredient list on my container of sugar – it’s pretty obvious that honey is honey and sugar is sugar.

Unless you’re KFC.  Their honey consists of:

High Fructose Corn Syrup
Sugar
Corn Syrup
Honey
Caramel Color

Really?  We have to get all these corn syrups and such into simple honey?

Not that I agree the United States is an empire (we’re not getting a lot of tribute from the nations under our umbrella), but this article is a pretty clear warning of what the future holds for our nation.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/224694

This is from one of our servers, this one is located in Texas, doing a download of a file from Microsoft’s site.  On my 20mbit FiOS connection to our office in Tampa I’ve seen up to 2MB/Sec downloads.  The one pictured below topped out at over 7MB/Sec.

I want *that* connection in my office!

I’ve upgraded several systems to Windows 7, and so far my favorite feature has to be using the keyboard to move and dock windows around very easily.  The keystrokes you need to know:

<windows key> + <left arrow> = dock window to left half of the current monitor
<windows key> + <right arrow> = dock window to right half of the current monitor
<windows key> + <up arrow) = maximize the window
<windows key> + <down arrow> = restore window or minimize it depending on its state

For multi monitor rigs:

<windows key> + <shift> + <left arrow> = move window in its current shape and location to the monitor to the left (it will wrap around)
<windows key> + <shift> + <right arrow> = move window in its current shape and location to the monitor on the right (it will wrap around)

If you want to maximize the height of the selected window, while not changing its width, try:
<windows key> + <shift> + <up arrow>
and naturally <windows key> + <shift> + <down arrow> will shrink the window back down to its previous height, or minimize it.

I know using the keyboard for anything but typing emails and web pages is passé, but give these shortcuts a shot!  You might like ‘em!

I’ve been experiencing random crashes with Virtual PC 2007 with Service Pack 1, and finally I got fed up with them and decided to see if I could find a solution to the problem.

It turns out that there is a hotfix that solves not only that problem, but increases the maximum screen resolution of the virtual machine, so if you have a high resolution monitor and use Alt-Enter to go full screen, it will actually fill up the screen.  Woohoo!  There are a bunch of other fixes in there as well, so read the description in the link below.

Download the hotfix at: http://support.microsoft.com/Default.aspx?id=958162

Happy patching!

Wow, two scams in one night.

On Deb’s most recent cell phone bill, there were two charges for SMS based services, neither of which she signed up for:

Mobile Messenger
SendMe, Inc.

If you search for these two companies, you will find a ton of fraud alerts about them.  How is it that they keep getting away with this?  Obviously they are making money, despite the states that sue them and get settlements from them.

Perhaps the governments should make it a point not to settle, but to put these thieves out of business and put the owners in jail?

We are pretty positive that these services got Deb’s phone number from Facebook, so be careful out there!  Of course, to verify your account, you must provide your cell phone # to Facebook, maybe we should all go remove it from our Facebook accounts – something I’m going to go do right now…

I just received a letter from NAITPA sending me my membership card, and thanking me for my support.  I have a membership number, a receipt number and a due date on this nice letter.  They also include a handy payment stub for my $231.00 annual payment along with my membership card.

What’s interesting is that until now, I’d never heard of them.  The mailing sure looks like a statement, and it doesn’t include any marketing materials to help educate me about their site / organization, so I guess I’m supposed to assume that I just pay them and “continue” my membership.

This has all the appearances of a scam.  If you look on the back, there is a disclaimer:

“By accepting this offer, you agree not to hold NAITPA liable for any part thereof.  Note: THIS IS NOT A BILL.  This is solicitation. You are under no obligation to pay the amounts stated unless you accept this offer. The information in this letter contains confidential and/or legally privileged information from the notification processing department of the NAITPA…”

So there we have it.  These people are up there with those that send you invoices for copier supplies, even though you don’t have a copier.  Also, in the disclaimer, they state that you agree not to hold NAITPA liable for any part thereof – I think this means that they are saying that you have no recourse if they don’t provide any of the services they claim to offer. 

On the payment stub, it has another disclaimer that “my membership is NOT transferable and NOT refundable", but on the disclaimer side they say that “you may request a refund within 30 days”.  Yup, sure you can.  Doesn’t mean they have to give it to you.

Finally, while there web site says “After another successful year…”, checking on the Internet shows that their domain was registered on February 11, 2009.

For all I know, NAITPA might be a legitimate organization, but it has many signs of being fake.

Heh, at the end of writing this post, I used Bing (Google found nothing other than their web site) to search them, and found this other post: http://empoprise-bi.blogspot.com/2009/08/naitpa-professional-association.html

If you want a real organization, check out the Association for Computing Machinery.

Recently I took a business trip to Chicago to visit several clients.  While there, I had to rent a car from Hertz, rather than the usual Enterprise Rent-a-car that I prefer.

Here are the reasons I won’t be renting from Hertz again:

1) Much more expensive than Enterprise.  It was between $20 and $40 per day more expensive with Hertz.

2) “Top up” fuel is crazy expensive.  If you don’t bring the car back full (or don’t pay for the suckers game of buying the tank of gas and returning empty), the charge to fill up the car (or even just top it up) was nearly $8 per gallon!  I didn’t pay it (brought the car back full as per usual), but it was really an offensive number.

3) And the item that breaks the camel’s back: If you happen to get a violation in the car, of any kind, they will charge you an extra $30!  So I got a parking ticket (not unusual in Chicago) and pay it within a day or two of receiving it.  More than a month later I get a bill from Hertz saying that since there was a violation, I’m being charged an extra $30.  For comparison, I’ve gotten parking tickets before while renting from Enterprise and never received any additional billing.  And no, I’m not a serial violator, but when you’re with a client, you don’t necessarily want to race out to move the car.

So there you are.  Hertz is now on my boycott list.  Hope they enjoy the time there with their Days Inn companion.  As an update, I’ve spent dozens of nights in hotels since the Days Inn fiasco, and I have yet to stay at another one.

I just stumbled across this page.  Take a few minutes and read through them.  Good stuff.  Hopefully the right to bear arms won’t be too restricted over the next few months.

After all, gun control means putting three bullets through the same hole at 100 yards.