The Thousand Dollar Bus Ride

Useless Airways has lived up to its nickname today. I flew to the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton “International” airport today for a morning of work at a client in Exeter. Since Exeter is in the middle of Nowhere, PA, I thought it would save time if I could fly here rather than fly Southwest into Philadelphia and then driving here.

Big mistake. Getting to Wilkes Barre was easy enough this morning but the problem is getting home. I got done with my work about 15 minutes too late to catch an earlier, 3:20 PM flight to Philly and then RDU. As I killed some time at the truly beautiful, brand new Wilkes Barre airport terminal, an announcement was made that the incoming plane was grounded in State College, PA due to maintenance issues. We’d be bused from there to Philadelphia.

Thus, the thousand dollar bus ride. I paid almost $1000 so that U.S. Airways could put me on a bus to Philadelphia.

Now I’m in Philly I learn my flight has been delayed an hour due to the plane departing late from Toronto. Miraculously, the gate sign lists my flight as being “On Time.” U.S. Airways simply changed the time it was departing to an hour later than it should have left. Sneaky bastards.

This will teach me not to fly Southwest. This would never happen with them.

RTP 2.0 Tonight In Derm

Everyone I know is reminding me of RTP 2.0 occuring at Tyler’s Taproom in Durham tonight from 7-9 PM. I’ve got nothing better to do so I’ll go hobnob with the local geeks and vulture capitalists.

Hey, its free food and drinks, right? How can ya go wrong?

Aw Yeah

Don’t you love it when your plan comes together and the results exceed all your expectations? I sure do.

More Doctors Dump UnitedHealthCare

The bad news keeps getting worse for UnitedHealthCare insurance subscribers. Last week Kelly’s OBGYN, Kamm, McKenzie, Harden, Smith, Bass. Marston, and Saacks, PLLC, dropped UnitedHealthCare as an insurance partner. The practice does all of its deliveries at WakeMed, and since UHC dropped WakeMed from its coverage it left Kamm, McKenzie with little choice but to drop UHC. A coworker reported his wife’s OBGYN has done the same.

Today we received notice from UHC that Wake Radiology, another practice closely aligned with WakeMed, is no longer honoring UHC insurance. Wake Radiology is where I got my latest CT scan performed – just last month, actually. Count it all up and its clear that my UnitedHealthCare insurance has made itself worthless to me.

I’m beginning to think that UHC’s idea of a well-run hospital is Walter Reed. In an effort to “control health care expenses,” perhaps UHC could trim the eye-popping golden parachutes it provides its departing executives through backdated stock options before shaking down fine hospitals like WakeMed.

Bastards.

Ubuntu: Linux For Humans

Being that I had a laptop around that needed an OS, I figured I’d try out Ubuntu, the Debian-based Linux distribution, on a regular basis.

Boy do I love it! It seems to be speedier than the Fedora systems that I’m used to using. Ubuntu’s UI is Gnome-based and has been designed with simplicity in mind. There’s a KDE-based version of Ubuntu, too, if you’re a KDE person.

I’m also quite pleased with Ubuntu’s use of the apt package manager. I only started tolerating Red Hat RPMs with the use of yum, but yum has its own quirks and can be described as a hack to a hack.

My main beef with Debian was the difficulty of installing it. Ubuntu seems to polish that up considerably – it even runs on a live CD. Not only that, but you can install the complete OS from that one CD. Amazing.

If you’ve been meaning to check out Linux, you can’t go wrong by downloading Ubuntu. You might never go back!

Raleigh Police Bike Patrols

I came back from running errands at lunch to see two Raleigh Police officers patrolling the neighborhood on bikes.

“I’m glad to see y’all out!” I told them and waved as they passed by. They seemed pretty happy to be out, too.

The office for most cops is their car. Cops on bikes have the great outdoors! The odds a thief could win a footchase with a cop on the biking beat would be pretty low, too, I imagine.

One of the things I noticed last year in Holland and Australia is how accessible police in those countries seem to be. They’re visible. They walk the sidewalks. They’re interacting with the citizenry. American cops spend too much time in their cars. Cars may get them around faster but they get quantity at the expense of quality.

Having police cruising their beats on bicycles builds stronger community ties and that makes everyone safer.

Spring Has Sprung!

I’m so delighted that spring has arrived! I missed the greenery around here. Trees are what makes North Carolina so beautiful. I don’t think we can have enough of ’em.

I spent some time this winter replanting some trees and bushes. The azaleas that came from my grandmother’s yard by way of a long van ride were split up and moved from the backyard to the southern side of the house. They are now in the process of blooming, which really warms my heart. I’ll always think of Grandma when I see them.

I also obtained some hydrangeas from her yard which now are also at home on our southern side. In spite of looking a little shocked at being moved they are now greening up nicely.

We moved the apple tree from the front to the back to make room for our new redbud tree. I was worried that I didn’t get enough of the root ball to keep the apple tree alive but just like the others it is bursting out with leaves (and blossoms! Future apples, woot!) now. The apple tree should be more at home in the back as its now fenced in from its natural predators: hungry deer. Did I mention that the deer are really getting on my bad side?

The most fantastic result of spring is our crepe myrtle trees! They went in in early fall and soon looked overwhelmed. All winter long I thought for sure we had killed them. I ran to get Kelly when I saw the first leaves on them. All three have established themselves!

The crepe myrtles went in to replace the cherry trees we had near the street. We made the mistake of planting the cherry trees in midsummer two years ago, which doomed the already-stressed plants. What the move didn’t kill, the hordes of Japanese beetles finished off. The crepe myrtles should have a much easier time and provide some real character to our front yard.

Other projects on the list include adding more shade to the backyard. We still need some screening trees along our fence to hide the townhouses behind us. Also, adding an autumn blaze maple to our backyard should provide us with some reliable summertime shade and a breathtaking display of golden leaves in the fall.

We’re in the midst of shopping for a sunroom to replace our tiny deck, too. The stormwater creek in our neighbor’s yard is perpetually filled with water – making it Mosquito Breeding Ground Central. An unprotected deck holds no promise of keeping us safe from bites, so some sort of screened-in something is needed. If we can decide what to get there it will make the job of landscaping around it much easier.

Spanish Fort Pictures

I’ve got a few pictures of the lovely Mrs. Vincentine Williams and my old Spanish Fort homes. You can find most of them here, and a few from the day before here.

The green house in the pictures belonged to our next-door neighbors on Cavalry Charge, the Helmses. I don’t know if they still live there or not, as I didn’t have time to bother the people now living in our Cavalry Charge home.

Mooresville Students Charged With Cyberstalking

This is ridiculous. Two Mooresville teens have been charged with cyberstalking by the Mooresville Police Department for creating fake MySpace pages for their assistant principals. Tyler Yannone and Lauren Strazzabosco, both 16, were arrested for “portraying one of the administrators as a pedophile” and for “using racist words,” in the words of the Mooresville police.

Can you believe this? Everyone should’ve recognize this as a harmless prank and let it go. Two charge the two for an obvious parody is a violation of the First Amendment.

I understand the intention of the cyberstalking law but it is written so vaguely that it can’t help but trample free speech. Read the law (with emphasis by me):

§ 14?196.3. Cyberstalking.

(a) The following definitions apply in this section:

(1) Electronic communication. – Any transfer of signs, signals, writing, images, sounds, data, or intelligence of any nature, transmitted in whole or in part by a wire, radio, computer, electromagnetic, photoelectric, or photo?optical system.

(2) Electronic mail. – The transmission of information or communication by the use of the Internet, a computer, a facsimile machine, a pager, a cellular telephone, a video recorder, or other electronic means sent to a person identified by a unique address or address number and received by that person.

(b) It is unlawful for a person to:

(1) Use in electronic mail or electronic communication any words or language threatening to inflict bodily harm to any person or to that person’s child, sibling, spouse, or dependent, or physical injury to the property of any person, or for the purpose of extorting money or other things of value from any person.

(2) Electronically mail or electronically communicate to another repeatedly, whether or not conversation ensues, for the purpose of abusing, annoying, threatening, terrifying, harassing, or embarrassing any person.

(3) Electronically mail or electronically communicate to another and to knowingly make any false statement concerning death, injury, illness, disfigurement, indecent conduct, or criminal conduct of the person electronically mailed or of any member of the person’s family or household with the intent to abuse, annoy, threaten, terrify, harass, or embarrass.

(4) Knowingly permit an electronic communication device under the person’s control to be used for any purpose prohibited by this section.

(c) Any offense under this section committed by the use of electronic mail or electronic communication may be deemed to have been committed where the electronic mail or electronic communication was originally sent, originally received in this State, or first viewed by any person in this State.

(d) Any person violating the provisions of this section shall be guilty of a Class 2 misdemeanor.

(e) This section does not apply to any peaceable, nonviolent, or nonthreatening activity intended to express political views or to provide lawful information to others. This section shall not be construed to impair any constitutionally protected activity, including speech, protest, or assembly. (2000?125, s. 1; 2000?140, s. 91.)

Section 3 above makes it a crime to make a “statement concerning” death, injury, etc. It doesn’t say that the statement must imply death, injury, etc. I haven’t read the arrest warrant nor the fake pages, but I have yet to hear anyone claim these kids threatened these administrators in any way. From what I can tell, all they did was the Internet equivalent of putting “kick me” signs on these principals’ backs.

Fortunately for the kids, the last paragraph of the law – the part about “peacable, nonviolent, nonthreatening” activity – explicitly keeps this speech safe. Thus, either there is more to this case than the news story coveys, or the cops chose to overlook this part of the law.

The spokeswoman for the Mooresville Graded School District, Boen Nutting, said “its so important that we teach our children to respect adults and respect authority.”

I think its more important to teach our children the rights guaranteed them by our country’s Constitution.

AirTran

This last business trip was the first I’ve taken on AirTran in a long while.

AirTran got me where I wanted to go on time (or close to it) and its people were friendly, too. The impression I got from the company, though, is its populated by a bunch of slackers.

First off, when I wanted to fly out early they bungled my ticket. I was offered a first-place position in the 5-standby line at Atlanta, but I turned it down in preference to taking my original flight. I changed my mind an hour later and returned to find I was somehow already booked on the earlier flight, though for some reason I could no longer be the first-place standby. I got to Atlanta and handed my standby ticket to the mystified gate agent, who told me I wasn’t even on the standby list anymore!

Nevertheless, she easily found me a seat. “Maybe that’s why this flight is oversold, ” she said, shaking her head. “People keep putting passengers on my plane.”

The flight attendent working the Raleigh-Atlanta flight mumbled quite a few words in the safety announcement, leading me to believe she was in a hurry. Later in the flight I watched her spill a drink right down her uniform. At this point I wondered if she hadn’t mumbled the words so much as slurred them.

I asked the customer service agent for the gate for my connecting flight. She sent me to the wrong terminal, though fortunately I had some time to spare.

Getting on the Pensacola flight, I stepped back to the lavatory as the flight loaded. No water was available. They could’ve been servicing the lavatories at the moment. I don’t know.

Flying back from Pensacola to Atlanta, the pilot taxied right up to the gate, killed the engines, and plunged the plane into darkness. The ramp workers forgot to plug the power cord into the plane!

Once we got to Raleigh it took a long, long time to get our baggage. In spite of our arriving before a Continental flight (and their longer walk through the terminal), the Continental flight got its baggage before we did. That seems to be pretty typical of AirTran.

Its the little things like this – the slacker-ish thinngs – that make me wonder where else these guys might be cutting corners. On the bright side, their people are friendly, unlike US Airways (and some other airlines). I also appreciated the XM satellite radio at every seat. Nothing makes it easier being 13th in line for takeoff than rocking out to “Tainted Love.”

Would I fly them again? Yeah, I might, depending on the schedule. AirTran offers the promise of surprise, at least.