I learned some fun things this week, thanks to getting stuck in Omaha overnight when missing a connection due to a delay. And because it was a layover where I was switching from Delta to US Airways, neither took responsibility and I had to pay for a hotel and one-way ticket the rest of the way home. Trust me, both will be getting a warm, loving letter with attached receipts very soon.
Here are some ways to avoid what happened to me:
Don’t fly Delta. They will treat you like crap, especially if you have to talk on the phone with someone. The girl I spent most of my time talking to would either stop speaking or blame US Airways.
Don’t book flights that cross airlines unless they are directly affiliated. Making a connection from United Express to United Airlines is fine, cause it’s all run by one company. Making a connection from Delta to US Airways or United Express to Northwest… your risk of getting screwed just tripled.
Don’t trust the guy saying to “deal with it at your next connection” when you think you’ll miss your flight. When I saw a delay would cause me to miss my connection, I asked Delta if there was another route I could take. The guy denied me entry to the rebooking line with that reasoning.
Don’t pick flights with lots of odd layovers, even if it saves you $200. Omaha is not an airport with options.
Plan ahead. I am partially to blame for trying to buy a ticket just a couple weeks before my trip.
If you can’t plan ahead, avoid Kayak. They put me on the odd flight path through Omaha and across multiple airlines. This makes it very easy for airlines to pass the blame when something goes wrong.
Fly Southwest. Yes, that means from now on I’m driving to LAX to fly around the country, unless it’s an extremely simple flight, which doesn’t happen often when you fly out of San Luis Obispo.
I do feel like I am partially to blame, but at the same time, I booked this through an online travel planning site. My money should be a guarantee that I will get home, no matter what. If there is no guarantee, the warnings need to be very clear and the ticket price should reflect that.
If my writing skills produce something semi-entertaining when writing letters to Delta, et al, I will post said letters here.
So who else is stoked that Ze Frank is doing videos again? Hopefully not just me. The Show may have been a spark (along with Colbert and Stewart, go figure) to me being more concerned about politics and critical thinking. I used to think it was boring. Go figure.
Anyway. Ze’s sold out and makes his videos for TIME now, but who cares? He’s still doing his thing and I love it.
Happy Friday to you all. If you get a chance, watch the live version of “Via Chicago” on Wilco’s Ashes of American Flags DVD. If not, this version will suffice. If it doesn’t bring you close to tears, something might be wrong with you.
It’s very late right now and my evening ended very unexpectedly. So what you all should do is go here and listen to Terry Mattingly bash CCM to death. It’s a highly enjoyable experience.
Also, his discussion about U2 may have lessened my annoyance with Bono’s stage antics. Well done.
Posts for the next few days will be sporadic and highly autobiographical, most likely consisting of highlights and lists of bands I’m seeing at Coachella this weekend. Apologies.
For those curious, here’s the lineup, with stuff I don’t care about filtered out.
There are plenty of places in the world where a kid dying is pretty common, but we can’t deal with it because a dead child is the greatest failure of a culture that believes it’s reversed the order of nature.
Another one to file in the “westernized culture has way too many problems” category. I’ve got major writer’s block right now so I’ll just leave it at that.
In other news, I think I could be considered a quote collector. Every time I find a quote I like, I write it out, save and categorize it with Evernote. Not kidding.
I’ve come to the realization that I’m committing some of the top ten blogging mistakes with My Top 5, so I’ve decided to work on righting a few of my blogosphere transgressions. Not all of them at once, of course, but I am working on a couple.
Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service I’m looking into web hosting to start my own site. I’m not quite sure how I’m going to do all of this yet, but I’m working on it.
Irregular Publishing Frequency This is the big one. After much consideration I’ve decided that, since the main purpose of this site is to expand musical taste, the best way to do that is not to just ponder the philosophy of music, but to expose what good music I discover. That said, My Top 5 will soon be home to the Find Of The Day. I’m still working out the details, but the basic idea is that I will find an album every day that I like and write a quick mini-review of it. That’s really the only rule so far. A find for every day may seem a bit ambitious, but just in considering the idea I came up with 75 albums to start with.
For some reason I just got really excited I opened up Rhapsody just now, and saw that my “Greatest Rock Guitar Solos” playlist is currently the top-rated user playlist, the top Rock/Pop Genre Mix and the top Theme Mix. That means I’m even beating out all the playlists by all the Rhapsody Music Guide Editors that actually work for them.
The only bummer is that it’s not my own personal list. I just took it from DigitalDreamDoor.com’s list. But it does give people the opportunity to see my other playlists, so maybe I should start submitting more of those.
Hmmm… I wonder if they have any openings for Music Guide Editor positions.
If you happen to find yourself a copy of Sufjan Stevens’ new Illinois album (released July 5) with Superman on the cover, you might want to consider buying it. This whole situation has “collector’s item” written all over it.
Two down, 48 to go, Sufjan. Honestly, I can’t wait to see what you do with California, even if I have to wait 20 more years to hear it. Am I the only one getting the feeling that this is going to be a Brian Wilson-esque project that will reach critical acclaim when it is finally finished? The only difference being, of course, that Wilson was putting out one album and Stevens is putting out… well… 50. And if he keeps it up with 22-track albums like Illinois, he’s going to have quite a time trying to remember all those songs when he plays all-request shows at the age of 63.
