Andrew's Sprocket

It really is easy to rant about the airline industry.

Damn the airlines, again. If the security hassle isn’t enough then try guessing when your flight will take off. Or, in my case, if your flight is delayed you better have your eyes glued to the monitor waiting for a status change.

Before the delayed flight debacle let me tackle the security one. Some may say that I am a survivalist or maybe just a forgetfulist. Forgetting is human nature. So I left a $50 pocket knife in my bag and that set off the flags. My flight was due to depart in minutes. I had 2 options, give up the knife or check it somehow, I didn’t check any bags but if I did they would be on their way to the airplane. Given the time I only had one option. Yea I lost it, a knife I had through 10 years of boy scout camps and numerous fish guttings. Goodbye.

I asked if I could pick it up on my way back but the TSA personnel said they could not keep it and if they did they would have a stock pile. So comes back to my point that forgetting is human. This sounds like a good opportunity for a hurting industry. Why not offer a reclamation service say for $5/item. Issue a ticket stub and attach that to the item and the person can claim their item on the way back or leave an address and have it mailed. Some airports do have this mailing service but you have to go back out of security points and use a kiosk to mail the item. And then there is a size requirement. The airline industry is obviously hurting, other than Virgin, because they offer a unique service. Food and WiFi.

So the other arcane thing that happened on my trip was during my transfer. I was set to transfer at Minneapolis. I arrived and checked the monitors for my transfer flight, since it was not on my boarding pass, why? probably another arcane arrangement between airports. Anyway, the monitor said that my flight had been delayed until 1:30pm. It said new departure time, 1:30pm. This is NWA by the way, oh and they are now Delta. Just to confuse you so when you drive up to the airport departures don’t look for NWA. Anyway, another issue. Well, Great I thought, I have time for lunch. I had lunch and left for the gate just after 1. Looking at the monitors on the way this flight was not there anymore. Yup it left before the posted departure time. yea, WTF? after tracking down someone to explain this to me they informed me that “yea they do that, you have to keep watching the monitor” Well their was no monitor or clock for that matter in the lunch spot, Rock Bottom Brewery. The airline did have my mobile number, they could have sent me a txt msg.

Airlines are becoming the most heartless self absorbed uncaring industry in this country. I hate flying and this will be my last flight. It shouldn’t be this way, traveling 30,000 feet in the air should be a fun experience. Not a butter cookies and water, cramped seats sickening experience.

anyway, I probably will never fly again. Ground transport I’m sure will have other issues but none so dehumanizing. I mean you don’t have to strip down, remove shoes, belts and be frisked on trains…yet.

So this was probably my own fault because I had Mac Updates set to automatically download. This wasn’t a problem before I was counting megabytes. This is now the case using Verizon’s monthly broadband access, which comes with a 5GB cap and $0.25/MB over that. I have been doing a lot of development lately and this update, automatically downloaded, pushed me over the cap, which wasn’t difficult at 442MB for the 10.5.7 update. Maybe they could disable this auto update if your on an EVDO connection.

As for the update it can be found here. But looking through the KB it didn’t seem there were many worthy fixes, certainly not $110 worth.

The bigger problem is with this cap that Verizon and Sprint are now putting on their EVDO broadband access. At first it was all you can eat, kind of like text messages when they first came out. Then they started charging per message and then bundle monthly subscriptions. See this slashdot article on the subject and how the 160 byte service transmission was easily turned into a cash cow. Anyway, yea caps suck. But wait you can pay to raise your cap. 5GB is $60/month but as a Verizon rep told me I could go up to 10GB for only $200. Now that just didn’t make a hell of a lot a sense to me. I mean I am from the south but I know when my beans are cooked and when to pull them off the fire. I told her I would consider $120 for 10GB, although that is ridiculous since it wasn’t long ago that they offered unlimited service. I guess I could just get another card, which means another account and another bill and another number. Well that is cheaper than 5GB at $0.25/MB which is $1280. Where is the FCC on this? This should be criminal. Changing plans quietly, vauge language around “unlimited”. Unlimited to anyone means one thing but not to these companies who think they can call it unlimited and put restrictions on them. AT&T charges by the Kb at $0.00048 per Kb. Pricing it this way may look cheap but it actually is just to confuse the user who should know that it is actually $0.50/MB, twice Verizon. Here is another frustrated users response.

Guess I will be a coffee shop coder until my usage gets reset. Mmmmm, iced latte, with soy milk and four shots….or an iced soy quad latte.

Oh, a few side notes on getting into your VZAccess Manager with more options.

option-D
Pass: diagvzw
Also Pass: 000000 seems to be a default.

Ok, here it is. I’m not entirely sure where the recipe came from, I got it from a good friend I call The Chef, but get lathered up cause here it comes. If nothing else but to keep the media away.

Oils to Avoid Plague

This blend was created from research about a group of 15th century thieves and grave robbers who rubbed oils on themselves to avoid contracting the plague while they robbed the bodies of the dead and dying. When apprehended these thieves disclosed the formula of herbs, spices and oils they used to protect themselves in exchange for more lenient punishment.

This blend of therapeutic-grade essential oils was tested at Weber State University for its potent antimicrobial properties. Thieves oil was found to have a 99.96% percent kill rate against airborne bacteria. The oils are highly antiviral, antiseptic,antibacterial,anti-infectious and help to protect the body against such illnesses as flu, colds, sinusitis,bronchitis,pneumonia, sore throats, cuts etc.

Apply few drops to bottom of feet or stomach and rub into skin

Here is the receipt for the mixture place into a small brown bottle and add the amounts of herbs listed below

* Clove oil (syzgium aromaticum) 200 drops or 1/2 ounce.
* Lemon oil (Citrus limon) 175 drops
* Cinnamon Bark oil (Cinnamoomum verum) 100 drops
* Eucalyptus oil ( Eucalyptus radiata) 75 drops
* Rosemary oil (Rosimarinus officinalis ) 50 drops

You can also use in small spray bottle and mist the air in home and car, I also place mixture in a pan of water and place on wood stove during the fall, winter and spring.

H5N1 Google Map

This is a useful packet grabber using tcpdump.
You don’t get as many details as wireshark or ethereal but running this on a remote server is easier.

First find out what network interface you want to capture.

$ ifconfig

Then start capturing and write to a file with -w

$ tcpdump -i eth0 -w eth0-dump.log

You can then read the file with the -r switch

$ tcpdump -r eth0-dump.log

Do you have issues using Facebook? Here are some of mine that make it suck.

Design
There is too much white space and scattered functions.

Policy
You can only be in one regional network at a time. Since I seem to be moving every 6 months this is a problem because I want to be in more than one regional network.

Hairy URLs
This is probably due to the fact that facebook is a username less system. Everyone always gives their full name and you end up with an ID instead much like any economic slave system.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/profile.php?id=506880860&v=info&viewas=506880860

Yes, that string soup is my profile page.

Ads
Non-relevant ads always suck.

Twitter Copy
Copied twitter’s “What are you doing?” status question with “What’s on your mind?”.

Errors