Yeah, I’m still milking that Episode III “worst line” joke. Deal. 😉 In my job as a corporate travel deranger, I often have to listen to airline hold music and “infotainment.” In years past (and in another lifetime and job entirely) I used to have to call international and domestic airlines a LOT more often, and I got to be something of a connoisseur of the stuff you have to listen to while waiting to talk to someone at an airline. I was reminded of this yesterday on my first day back at the office after vacation. Why? Because Southwest…
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Anybody reading this who’s not a spammer knows I’m not what you call a “consistent,” or “focused,” or even a particularly “interesting” blogger. I have my same few dead ponies I enthusiastically beat around and around the blogular racetrack. Yaaaargh. My husband David is not alone in being pretty bored with endless “Amazing Race” gushfests; now that TAR7 has run its “halfway round the world and back again” course I won’t have quite so much easy found blogfodder to post. Hmmm. Hmmmity hummity hmmm. That’s a lot of thumb-twiddling on the horizon unless I get cracking, eh?
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Talking on the phone just now with some guy who was booking a trip to Las Vegas. He was on the hunt for a cheap sleep, so we checked different choices. I noted that the account’s “preferred” hotels in Vegas were a mixed bag, including a chain whose nam is frequently translated from Spanish to English as “next to Denny’s.” We discussed the availability and rate at this property, and he mumbled along while I waited for the computer to catch up with real-time rates: “I’ve heard that hotel is a little…” I jumped in to cut him off. “This…
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New York-Lagos, which would not have garnered my wager as a likely candidate for such a premiere, is considered a highly lucrative market. “Our Lagos service will be highly attractive to Nigerian and American transatlantic travelers,” said Continental CEO Larry Kellner in a statement. “Particularly executives in energy-related industries.” The route was previously covered by the long-embattled Nigeria Airways, which finally closed its doors in 2003. Nigeria, by the way, was ranked the world’s third most corrupt nation by a watchdog organization called Transparency International. The group says 40 percent of the country’s petroleum income is stolen or squandered by…
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I just took this picture of my husband David drinking a companionable glass of wine a short time after I finally arrived home. There was lots of snow, and thus a lot of slow, careful traffic. It was one of “those” days at work, also. So the wine was very welcome. And hey presto! I’m in a much better mood now. David’s mom is learning the joys of websurfing. I thought she might like to see her son in almost real time.
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David and I had a discussion very much like this just the other day. This surprises me — not at all, reading the requirements. They want a combination half-time researcher, half-time developer, half-time sysadmin, half-time web designer, half-time project manager, half-time librarian, and half-time information architect. That’s just a few too many halves; of course they didn’t find anybody! That’s the kind of job somebody grows into, if it can be done at all by a single person (and I’m not sanguine, not sanguine at all). The kind of person they want — if she exists, she isn’t unemployed, I…
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Here you have a travel agent’s lunch if ever I saw one: an Asian plate lunch with a vaguely Asian green-tea beverage, and a funny travel book written by a flight attendant/humorist. The book’s called Plane Insanity, by Elliott Hester. Guess I have to add it to my Bookqueue now, since I’m officially reading it on my lunch hour. It was kicking around the office and was about to be thrown out in the general purge before the visit of the new VP of our section. Everyone was a little nervous. Was he going to be a harsh taskmaster? A…
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I was sitting up reading last night when all of a sudden a storm hit – there was no warning other than a lot of wind earlier in the day – and it rained and thundered for about an hour or so. When there’s a storm the wind will beat on the whole house like a drum. I figured today would be a big rainy mess, but it’s actually very warm and balmy. The sun is out and everything is fresh and clean, although the wind is still blowing strongly from the South. If the wind swings around to the…
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It’s the time of year when sales reps for various travel vendors bring treats and meals in, and the time of year when some people start to trot out their holiday decorations, and the time of year when people are selling crap for fundraisers. For example, right now we have one of the most annoying types of salespeople evarrrr in our break room. In order to pump up enthusiasm for his hotels’ breakfast-pizza-and-sales peptalk, he bellows “welcome to the break room! yeah!” and claps his hands enthusiastically EVERY TIME SOMEONE WALKS IN. Also, they’ve got a boom box playing bad…
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Regarding yesterday’s plane crash in Missouri: when this kind of thing happens, the airline inhibits the internal flight information that we can look up in the reservations system. There’s just no sane way to to update flifo with “Plane crashed” and not seem really crude and heartless. Normal flifo for that flight for today shows that it’s been cancelled, but with no explanation: 2AA5966/20OCT« AA5966/20OCT CORPORATE AIRLINES STL 642P B14 IRK 734P 1FX CANCEL STL -IRK - *1001 Flifo for yesterday’s fatal crash simply comes back 2AA5966/19OCT« FLIFO DISPLAY AND UPDATES INHIBITED.