Pretty pictures

Go treat your eyes to the pictures at Light and high beauty, Brendan's photoblog. Seriously, it's good stuff.

Can't wait!

The trailer for Prince Caspian is out! Coming in May.

In case you forgot...

Chris Sligh is still good. I just wanted to remind you. He's working on a recording project and it looks like he's really exploring the more explicitly Christian music side. I really like the first song on the link's demo, Empty Me. Wow. I could listen to this all day.

Cheap good music!

The Notre Dame Symphony Orchestra is playing this Thursday at 8:00 in DPAC. Tickets are $6 ($3 for students). We're playing The Nutcracker, An Invitation to the Dance (Weber), and Copeland's Rodeo. It's really a fun program. Oh, and the DPAC page for the concert (linked above) has a picture of the horns on it from the Dave Brubeck concert a few weeks ago! You can see me three people in. Heh.

Okay, okay, I'll post the picture. It's at the top of the post.

Happy Help a Grad Student Day!

For entrepreneurship I am working in a team that is developing a business plan to open small health clubs inside airport terminals. We want the clubs to be inside security and open to the public. They would have locker rooms and showers, some cardio-type equipment, and bottled health drinks and prepackaged food. We originally envisioned a full juice bar, but space constraints may make that very difficult, and it’s a completely different kind of business that we aren’t sure we want to tackle in one semester. We’ll sit on that idea for later.

You ask, “How can I help?” I’m SO glad you asked! You can go to our short and simple online survey and take it. Market research is essential to our success, both in having a good business plan, and in convincing our professor that we have a good business plan. So go take it! Tell all your friends to take it! (Just don’t take it more than once. That will skew our results.)

Thank you, and have a good day.

UPDATE: I got reports that there were problems with the survey. It's fixed now. Thanks for the reports. You can go back and take the survey now.

Public Service Announcement

Don't forget--tomorrow is Talk Like a Pirate Day! So... talk like a pirate tomorrow.

Consumer Rant

Since I have a public forum available, I’d like to indulge in the time-honored tradition of the consumer rant after a bad experience with a product or service. If those annoy you, please skip this post.

This particular rant is about air travel. Now, I realize airlines are popular targets of consumer rants, and I usually give them a break because (1) most people who travel by air do so because they have An Agenda and are already stressed out and feisty, (2) airlines are frequently at the mercy of elements beyond their control, such as weather or air traffic control, and (3) when you travel by air you have to expect a certain number of delays and mishaps a certain percentage of the time just as a matter of statistical probability.

However, I think the number of mishaps I’ve had with Northwest is starting to stretch my patience with statistics and make me suspect that Northwest might be a proper target for an accusation of incompetence. So here’s a sum of the last month of Northwest travel for me:

South Bend to Chicago: fine

Chicago to Dallas/Ft. Worth: 1 hour delay

Dallas/Ft. Worth to Chicago: slight delay

Chicago to South Bend: fine

South Bend to Detroit: 2 hour delay

Detroit to Harrisburg: delayed four times, finally cancelled due to lack of pilot, co-pilot, and half a flight crew. The pilot was stranded on the west coast due to storms, so no vouchers were given (Northwest does not take responsibility for “weather-related” mishaps). No more flights went out of Detroit that night. All hotels were full since we were the last flight cancelled. Since I has delayed out of South Bend I had booked an alternative itinerary for the next morning through United Airways. I called the hotline and was told that I “definitely had a confirmed seat” to Harrisburg via Dulles the next morning at 6, so I settled down in a chair to try to sleep for a few hours before setting out for the other terminal at 4:30 the next morning. When I got up to the United ticket counter I was told that the flight was overbooked and my “booking” was standby, along with 15 other people, and frankly, since I was not a United customer I was not a high priority for them. I took the bus back to the Northwest terminal, waited in the line again, and got myself booked on a 10:30 flight to Baltimore. Once I got through security I found a half-full 6:45 flight to Baltimore and the agent let me on. I never got to Harrisburg; Ryan picked me up in Baltimore.

Harrisburg to Detroit: fine

Detroit to South Bend: fine

South Bend to Detroit: slight delay

Detroit to Minneapolis: fine

Minneapolis to Rapid City: 1 hour delay

Rapid City to Minneapolis: cancelled for lack of a crew, next two flights oversold. They put me on the second oversold flight (last one of the day) and then we sat on the runway for an hour and a half while they tried to buy enough people off the flight to make it light enough to fly. We were told this happens all the time. I spent the night in Minneapolis, this time in a hotel on a voucher.

Minneapolis to Detroit: changed planes at the last minute and had to reassign seats before boarding, so we boarded late, then sat on the runway for 2 hours for maintenance problems. Meanwhile, we all missed our connections. My connection left while I was still on the runway in Minneapolis.

Detroit to South Bend: next flight was oversold and I was told I would have to pay to get on the standby list; waited until 7:18 pm for a flight with a confirmed seat.

So where does that leave me? In the last three weeks I have flown 14 separate Northwest flights. Of those, 4 have been significantly delayed, 2 have been in place of cancelled flights. I tried to get on earlier flights 7 separate times only to be told they were overbooked, so I was frequently stuck in an airport for three to six hours waiting for a flight with a seat. So my significant delay rate was 2 in 7; cancellation rate was 1 in 7; and overbooking was 1 in 2 (though that number is statistically sketchy because I was sometimes trying for flights through other cities to try to get at least close to where I was going). Is that normal? Granted, the sample is not large enough to be considered representative, but conversations with other Northwest passengers (and employees) confirm that my experience is not unique or even unusual. What I found especially exacerbating is airline employees’ complete lack of help, particularly in Detroit. If I could manage to find a ticket agent (which was nearly impossible) I was usually told more or less to go away; my cancelled flight was not their problem. When I did manage to get someone to even look at my printed itinerary, I was often told there was no room for me on the plane, I would have to pay to get on a stand-by list, or I should go somewhere else or call a number. Only in Minneapolis was I ever offered any vouchers for meals or lodging. It was clear that once you were bumped from a flight and your schedule was thrown off, they would just get you there whenever they had a convenient empty seat; you were not a priority.

Classic example: when I went to the counter on the 5:30 flight to South Bend to ask if they could put me on the stand-by list, I was told I would have to pay. I objected and said I was there as a result of a delayed flight. The agent frowned and tapped on her computer for a bit and finally said, “Well, your flight from Cincinnati to South Bend left on time.” I tried to patiently explain that that was wonderful for the people lucky enough to be in Cincinnati, but I had never made it there because my flight had been cancelled, oversold, and then delayed in Rapid City and I had to spend the night in Minneapolis. Had she looked more carefully at the itinerary I had handed her, she would have noticed that was why I was in Detroit in the first place. Finally she sighed and told me there were already six people on the stand-by list and there was no way I was getting on the flight either way (at least four of these people got on the list through the other agent while I was talking to her). I hung around to see what would happen, and went back up to the desk when they were finishing up. The man who got on the stand-by list right after I was turned away was the last one on the flight.

I wish I could say that I’ll never fly Northwest again, but frankly, I’ve not heard much better news about other airlines, and right now I can’t really afford to be picky. So like the rest of flying America, I will just sit here in the airport and vent my consumer rants on my blog.

UPDATE: Hat tip to The Bard for this news article. Apparently it's not just me; the statistics really do point to the conclusion that Northwest is terribly mismanaged. According to the article, 12% of Northwest flights were cancelled yesterday, compared to 1.2% on other major airlines. That's not the weather, folks.

UPDATE UPDATE: Hat tip to Lincoln for
these articles from USAToday. Yesterday was the fourth day in a row Northwest has canceled over 10% of its flights.

In Memoriam Elva Ann Whiting

The family is gathering to pay tribute to my grandmother, Elva Ann Whiting. I am enjoying looking at pictures and listening to and sharing stories. Hearing of her hard work, generosity, and sense of humor makes me proud to be part of this great lady's legacy.

Kennedy wobbles to the right this week.

Buzz around the law school is that the Supreme Court has upheld Bush's partial birth abortion ban in a 5-4 decision. Kennedy wrote the opinion. Excellent. More later after I actually read said opinion. Which may end up being after finals. Over and out.

Good music alert

Late-semester culture needed? Mark your calender now for the ND Symphony's Spring concert. It's Friday, April 27, at 8:00. The program features Holst's The Planets, and some other stuff (Really, do you need more than "Jupiter" to make it worth the $3 student ticket?).

He is risen indeed!

Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?

I Corinthians 15:55

Product Alert

I just got Half Past Forever's new album Take a Chance on Something Beautiful this week. I have to say, I like it a lot. Rarely do I warm up to something new so quickly, but I like the easy indyrock style, the obvious musicianship of the band members, Chris's voice, and his heart in the the lyrics. The band disclaims trying to fit into the "Christian music" niche, but all the members are live-out-loud followers of Christ, and the music that comes from their deeply Christian worldview makes no effort to hide that. It may not be your taste, but if it is, give Amazon a visit.

If you haven't heard their style or aren't sure if you might like it, check out their myspace page for samples from the CD.

CD release... finally

Half Past Forever's new CD Take a Chance on Something Beautiful is available for download here, or you can preorder the CD on amazon.com. Oh, and vote for Chris Sligh.

Thank you very much.

Good music for cheap

If you're looking for great music for a ridiculously affordable price in the Notre Dame area, check out the ND Symphony Orchestra's concert at 8:00 this Friday in the DeBartelo PAC. We're playing a cello concerto by Herbert, a piano concerto by Prokofiev, and Beethoven's 5th Symphony. Tickets range from $3-6. Told you it was ridiculously cheap. Be one of the first three to email me and I'll give you one of my comp tickets for free!

Update: Now only two comp tickets left.

Hope for tax students

Check it out! Wiki has a whole WikiBook on Federal Income Tax! I love it! Earlier this semester I pored over my casebook's utterly incomprehensible explanation of Alternative Minimum Tax and got more and more confused. Finally in desperation I looked up Alternative Minimum Tax up on Wikipedia just to see if I could figure out what some of the words meant. Within four sentences, I understood what was going on. *sigh* Wikipedia may be derided as open-source and non-authoritative, but at least some of the authors are real people rather than tax law professors.

Don't forget to vote!

And don't let all the negative campaigning get you down. Everybody does it.

I'm voting for Samwise.

HT: Irish Trojan's Blog

A Worthy Addition

Welcome the new link on the right to BJU prof Dr. Camille Lewis's blog, A Time to Laugh. I've always been shy about adding it because I never actually had Dr. Lewis as a teacher and I felt it would be a bit presumptious to claim a friendship when I can't recall that we have actually met. But I feel like I've had her classes by proxy since I have several friends I respect still raving about how awsome they are (and she is), so that has to count for something. Plus, now we're facebook friends, so we must be tight! Besides, A Time to Laugh is a fabulous blog that always makes me smile, or think, or cry, or all of the above, and I want to share it with you if you haven't already discovered it.

Public Service Announcement

The student production of The Tempest is running this weekend. All the student productions I've seen here are excellent, and even if this one isn't, all you stand to lose is $5 and two hours of your life (and they could probably use your $5 anyway to improve the program). Besides, Jeff Eyerman of the 2L class is playing Prospero, so how can it be less than great? I'm going Saturday, so email me if you would like to meet up for it.

More culture for your listening pleasure

Mark your calenders for the next ND Symphony Orchstra concert on Oct. 27 in DPAC at 8:00. The DPAC website lists Tchaikovsky, Liszt, and Smetana on the program, but I (as a humble horn player) have not noticed any Tchaikovsky or Liszt in my folder. Perhaps they meant Brahms. Lovely program either way.

Shakespeare, convicts, and redemption

I just saw this film tonight at Browning and I highly recommend it. Like, very highly. Like, click the Buy This Film button and have people over and watch it. I mean it. I'll ask you about it later.