News: Ah, Florida

Click on me!

For those who don't know, I spent my formative teenage years in the state. When someone asks if I would ever move back (after having been absent, except for short visits, for almost a quarter of a century), I have a long list of reasons why the answer is "No." And this isn't even near the top:

News: Stupid and Punishment

• Yup, we're talking Florida here:
  
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• I bet this cat is also from Florida:
  
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• Amazingly, not Florida, but close; Georgia:
  
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• ...And some more classic Southern stupidity:
  
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• But this is from Canada!
  
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• An infographic on the punishment of various crimes in societies throughout history
• People who get computer malware are also more likely to get mugged in "meatspace."

News: Stupid and Stupider

Teh stupid, it burns:

• An idiot-meets-cop story that's actually from some place other than Florida! An Ohio woman walked up to a police officer, asked if there was a curfew, and then asked if there was an open warrant out for her. No and yes! There must be a better way to find out if an arrest warrant exists for you. I wonder if there's an app for that.
• Of course, that doesn't mean the idiot locus has left Florida. This guy got pulled over on a traffic stop. The officer noticed the unmistakable smell of marijuana coming from the car, so he searched the man, and found two baggies of assorted drugs between his buttocks.

  When the bag fell to the ground, Roberts immediately said, according to the report, “The white stuff is not mine, but the weed is.”

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  That just leaves me speechless...
  
• Southern Baptists are not allowed to practice yoga, while "Other Christian leaders have said practicing yoga is incompatible with the teachings of Jesus." You know, I've read the Bible a couple times and I never saw anything along the lines of "Thou shalt not tie thyself into a knot."

FCC (Fuzzy Cat Censorship):

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Whiteboard jungle action:

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  Can I get some extra spell points while you're at it?
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  That guy? The one at the computer? That's totally me. I have said that exact same thing before. Java is a bloat-hog and if you're only going to run your app on one platform ever, WRITE IT IN SOMETHING ELSE.
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  Dude, I need to figure out where they hired their ninjas!

And to end that on a positive note:

News: More Stuff Than You Can Shake a Stick At, Part I

Geeky:

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• The Floating-Point Guide: Because .2 + .2 != .3999999999998
• Apple's App Store may have a Federal anti-trust bull's-eye on it. And I still really, really hate my Mac, so I can't say I'm feeling bad about that.
• US Air Force considering strike on Sony after PlayStation 3 support for alternate operating systems disabled... (Well, I'm sure someone there at least joked about it... a little...)

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Getting from here to there:

• Gainesville, Florida, recently celebrated a record-setting rate of 52% of automobiles yielding to pedestrians! How do we know this? They have a sign that keeps track!
• The author of Carjacked discusses automotive withdrawal.

Just... wow. (And probably not in a good way.)

• A study shows that Republicans are not only less likely to adhere to voluntary energy conservation standards, but when given feedback on their usage, are more likely to increase their consumption! Seriously, WTF?
• I guess one of my favorite things to say, "The most dangerous people are those who think they know more than they really do," is a corollary of the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
• A Canadian woman is suing her (I assume, former) wireless phone company, saying that its combined bills for all accounts at one residence led her husband to find out about her affair. Next thing you know, she'll be suing her (now ex-)husband for marrying an idiot. (You get a post office box for that sort of thing, dumbass!)
• Well, finally, a story about a total nutjob not from Florida: a Wisconsin woman was arrested for shooting people with a blow gun because she "liked to hear people say ouch."

And misc lolcat:

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(I believe my last place of employ had one of these, in addition to the manager of scapegoat herders, and some others with job titles I could never decipher.)

Sunshine State Part 2

I forgot to mention certain little things... Like how I forgot to bring cds to listen to in my rental car. And the only station I can even vaguely tolerate for 3 days/4 nights was the classic rock station... which played the eponymous song "Bad Company" all 3 days while I was in the car. You know what's sad? Singing along to Journey. That's really sad.

Note to self: Don't forget cds. The mp3 player is only helpful on the plane.

My parents' desktop computer is painfully slow. I turned off a bunch of start-up crap, which makes it boot faster, but it gets bogged down and pegs the RAM quickly. When I go there next time, I will have a new 1Gb DIMM to stick in memory slot, thereby increasing the RAM by 150%.

Note to self: Don't forget the RAM. (I ordered more for my sluggish computer while I was at it.)

My mother had set up a hospital bed in the family room for my father. His cat, Bandit, would spend the nights sleeping between my father's legs, after taking a leisurely bath. We had to take my father back to the ER the morning after I got there. My mother spent the night at the hospital with him, but I went back to the house. Bandit was still getting up at the foot of the hospital bed, even though my father wasn't in it. I can't tell who misses the other more.

Note to self: Don't forgot to stop and pet your own kitties, who comfort you when you need it, too.

Some dumbass woman in the row across from me on the flight back from Florida to DFW was arguing with the flight attendant about how she didn't need to turn her iPhone off before take-off because it was in "airplane mode." Bitch, what part of "TURN OFF ALL ELECTRONIC DEVICES FOR TAKE-OFF" did you not understand? I was getting ready to climb over 3 people to smack her upside the head. It would have been so worth it. And how stupid is it to be arguing with the flight attendant anyway? I would have confiscated the damned phone for the duration of the flight.

Note to self: Don't get your ass put on the no-fly terrorized-dumbass-passengers-who-need-their-iPhones-shoved-up-their-asses list. It's a long drive to Florida.

The flight from DFW to Burbank was probably only about half full. I had the window seat in the 3-seat side of the aisle. No one had the other two seats. Finally, I could lie down on my side and actually sleep, something I have trouble doing on my back and halfway upright. All in all, it wasn't a horrible flight experience. The planes were pretty much all on time, give or take 5 minutes. My luggage didn't get lost. I only wanted to smack two other passengers.

Note to self: Flying doesn't always have to suck. Sometimes just the reasons for it do.

Sunshine State My Ass

Actually, my family moved to Florida 26 years ago and our area never got a direct hit.

I flew to Florida for the long weekend. The leg from Burbank to Dallas/Fort Worth was rather uneventful, but once in the terminal at DFW, I noticed two things. First, the Arrivals/Departures software they use apparently runs on Windows. How could I tell?

Well, that's not a very clear picture, but I was trying to be vaguely surreptitious with my mediocre camera phone, but trust me, it was a Windows "Uh, sometink iz brokn" box. Oddly, it only appeared in the Arrivals screen, which kept updating beneath, and it was only on one set of screens I saw. Another set further down the same terminal showed no such error message.

At any rate, after ascertaining that my connecting flight left from a completely different terminal, I decided to use the restroom before getting on the tram. I did a double take after seeing the orange sign in this picture:

I stood there wondering exactly why they would build a women's room that experienced severe weather. I've seen some scary ones, to be sure, but I've never actually seen a bathroom with its own tornadoes. I carefully went in, but seeing no people getting carried on cyclones and thrown against the ceiling, I decided to risk it. But I didn't linger.

During the flight to Florida, I sat next to The Most Important Businessman In The World. The one whose elbows stick over the armrests while he's using his laptop. The one who turns on his cell phones, yes, plural, when we haven't even landed yet because he has to check on some important deal. The one who leaps from his seat as soon as the plane lands, like that's going to get him off the plane any faster when we're in, hello, row 23.

Um, if he was so important, why was he sitting in coach?

Anyway, I hate Florida in the summer. It's like walking around in a swamp, and that's when you're actually above the water level. I've avoided summers there for 17 years. Only something of great import could have changed that, and so it was.

My father is dying.

He has lung cancer, which wasn't diagnosed until it had already spread to the brain, twice. The second tumor caused bleeding in the brain, which makes it very difficult for my father to speak, and also robs him of much physical strength and motor control.

There aren't really any options now, except to make him as comfortable as possible. Which means if he wants chocolate pudding for every meal, that's what my mother is going to give him.

I can't say we've been particularly close, not for a very long time, but he is my father. And no one should have to go this way.

I only heard him say about half a dozen complete sentences while I was there. Usually the best he can manage is "yes" or "no," if that. But after one of his physicians left, I leaned over and asked him why his doctors all looked like they were 12 years old. He told me, "You look like you're twelve years old."

That's my father. Of course, I will probably always be 12 years old, or 5, or 3, or a baby to him. Because he's my father.

Air Journal: June 2 Can we seat the assholes on the wings?

Flying back from Florida, I had... a really bad time. This morning I sent the following through the customer service web site of the airline in question, which shall remain nameless unless I don't get some kind of satisfactory response from them in the next few days.

I am writing to relate to you the worst air travel experience I have had in memory.

First of all, there was only one person working the check-in counter for [Insert airline name here] at [Insert airport name here] when I arrived an hour before my flight. There was some confusion over who was in which line. I had immediately gone to one of the electronic check-in kiosks, but some people hadn't and there was no distinction between lines. The employee at the counter was moving very quickly, but it was still very chaotic.

My biggest problem occurred when I was told I had already checked in a bag. I had selected one bag to check, I had one bag to check, and that was it. Because the employee at the counter was trying to handle the people coming up to check-in, he could not take the time to sort out my problem.

I try to be a patient person. I really do. I know that glitches happen. However, it's very unclear to me how in this day and age, with security issues such as they are, that a bag can get checked under the name of a person who has not even shown up at the airport to check-in. To make matters worse, I had had to fly to [Insert crappy Florida city name here] on a dire family emergency which has been very draining, and I had a head cold, which I wasn't looking forward to flying with. The whole thing was making me feel somewhat light-headed, but there was no place to sit and wait. I just did not have the werewithal at that point to deal with that kind of frustration. I am not embarrassed to say that I just started to cry, something I try to avoid doing in public.

I was there half an hour waiting before the issue was resolved. I know that the employee at the counter was trying to be as helpful as he could given the number of people he was forced to juggle on his own.

I was feeling better by the time I got on the plane. Until a child who was about 4 years old a couple rows behind me had to scream his excitement at every single thing, from the fact that he could fasten his own seatbelt to being able to see other planes outside his window. His parents were making no attempt to try to limit his volume. About 20 minutes into the flight, I asked a flight attendant if she could somehow ask them to try to control their child's volume. I'm not sure she ever got around to that, because she kept having long, flirtatious conversations with the men in the seats across from me one row behind. Men who, when she was not around, were having rather offensive conversations about how "fat chicks" should be forced to fly in the cargo hold.

Meanwhile, the child in question was still shouting on a regular basis, and when he did so, other people around me would turn around to look in annoyance, too. Note that this child was clearly not shouting in distress. He simply had to narrate every single thing that was happening.

I realize there is only so much that can be done to control passengers' behaviors, but as far as I can tell nothing was done to try to quiet the excessively loud child, and the flight attendant was spending so much time with the two men who discredit their sex that she was simply encouraging them.

I had a connecting flight, ####, from Dulles to LAX which went perfectly smoothly, but that does not erase the absolutely unacceptable situation I had checking in and on the first flight.

Sincerely, Karen X

(No, I'm not related to Malcolm.)

I really tried to write a straightforward note, but the whole situation was just so absurdly stupid that I fell into excessively-politely-sarcastic mode.

Standing in the check-in area, I ended up staring at the large window at the end of the building. Fortunately there was no other counters past the one I was at and this was the most... private... direction to face. There was a small bird flying next to the glass, trying to get out. I seem to remember the same thing had happened the last time I was here.

The ticket agent kept trying to reassure me that I wouldn't miss my plane, but I was just too upset to explain all the crap that had built up to this moment, so I would just smile and nod.

The assholes on the plane, well, when they started talking about how fat people should have to ride in cargo, all I could think was that the first thing the airlines should change would be to make assholes ride out on the wing. The more obnoxious of the two said at one point that he had been married and divorced twice. Big surprise. When Miss Flirty Stewardess (I simply don't have enough respect for her to call her a flight attendant) told them she was going on to Albany, after she walked away, the bigger asshole said he really wished he could go on with her. I think he thought he had "a chance." I'm not saying he didn't, because clearly this woman had absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Anyway, by the time we were starting to descend for landing in LAX, I thought my eardrums were going to explode, the pressure from my head cold and the change in altitude were so bad. Blowing my nose not only didn't help them pop, it caused excruciating pain. Of course, since my sinuses were (and are) completely congested, I didn't have much choice if I wanted to breathe through the night. My ears didn't even really "pop" until sometime after I went to bed last night.

P.S. I came home with no fewer than 6 mosquito bites.


ETA: No one ever responded to my complaint. United Airlines, if you webcrawl looking for mentions of your name, this means you.

Air Journal: May 29 Welcome to Florida

Well, I said I wasn't going to do any entries, but I figured planes are sort of public, since it's not like I'm letting strangers in my car, so here goes. And also because I've gotten so used to narrating my travels in my head, it was kind of hard to stop.

I usually try to fly out of Burbank airport because it is closer, but mainly because it is infinitely less painful than LAX. But because I was making reservations with 24 hours notice, the cheapest flight I could get out of Burbank required me to pay $100 more than LAX for the privilege of changing planes twice each way instead of once. Forget it.

My friend Steve was nice enough to drive me to LAX. I didn't want to make him too late for work, so I got there with more than 2 hours notice. I'll omit specific airline names, but apparently the airline whose website I booked on have a partnership with another airline. My flight home would be on the airline I booked with, but the one out there was with the "partner" airline. I thought that meant I should go to the partner airline terminal, and since it wasn't the same terminal as the original airline, I hoped I was right because trying to change terminals from the outside would probably have either resulted in my getting hopelessly lost, getting stuck on a plane to Singapore, or getting run over by a jet. I walked up to the e-ticket check-in computer, but it wasn't taking my reservation code. So I got in line for the "I'm either a moron or I don't have an e-ticket, which also qualifies me for being a moron" line to talk to a person. I guess either there was a computer problem between the two airlines' reservation computers or I had made the reservation so recently that it hadn't gotten transferred, but it worked out.

Part of the reason LAX is stupid is that they make you carry your checked bags to the X-ray machine, even though they don't make you wait.

(My mother keeps talking to me even though I'm clearly busy. She's impeding freedom of the press as far as I am concerned.)

I sat around and waited for awhile. I was kind of spacy, but I think I managed to read.

One of the things that annoys me, and I consider it akin to the "let's crowd around the door of the bus even though someone is trying to get off" problem, is when they get ready to start boarding the plane, and everyone has to get up and crowd around the gate, even though they're probably in zone 9,361 and are clearly not going to board anytime in the near future. Morons.

I ended up sitting in the very last row, but then again, people who make reservations less than 24 hours ahead can't really be choosers. I did actually get a window seat, though, and I like window seats. Some woman came up and I guess her seats with her two children were not contiguous, so she asked if I would move. I'm usually willing to consider it, but I was just kind of a borderline wreck and I wanted to cower in my corner, so I apologized and declined. They did their standard "the plane is fully booked so stop acting like an asshole and just put your oversized carry-on bag overhead or shove it under your seat already" announcement. As it ended up, there was an empty seat and it was the one next to me.

One of the flight attendants kept stopping and telling corny jokes to the kids sitting in front of me. "A man has a carrot in his ear. A policeman walks up and asks him why he has a carrot in his. 'Sorry, officer, I can't hear you because I have a carrot in my ear.'"

The flight was pretty uneventful, until I get up to deplane (and I never stand up until it's clear that I will actually start to move soon. Plus I was in the very last row. I was apparently the only person who realized that they weren't going to move faster than everyone else in front of them. Morons.) Then I realized that my pants were stuck to a piece of used chewing gum on the edge of my seat. I was pretty sure the gum wasn't there when I got up to use the lavatory, so I strongly suspect that the children who were sitting in front of me were the culprits, but whatever.

When I stepped off the plane at the airport in Charlotte, North Caroline, the first thing I smell is fried chicken. Welcome to The South. There's a Bojangles Chicken and Biscuits right next to the gate. It made me a little sick to my already malfunctioning stomach. I walked up and down the terminal and almost everything was deep-fried or otherwise greasy looking. Except the gelato, but I didn't think that would be a good idea. I settled for some weird bagel sandwich.

After I ate that, I went to sit outside the gate to wait. The man sitting next to me has a gym back which says, "The 17th Annual Greater Horseballs Invitational Golf Tournament." I just didn't want to know. Someone else can google it. Some other redneck waiting at the gate had a Lynyrd Skynyrd Freebird t-shirt on. Don't even ask me about the "Freebird Syndrome."

The plane from Charlotte to Florida was only about 2/3 full, so I got another window seat next to an empty seat. It was a really short flight and we got in early. As I stepedp from the plane to the Jetway, I got a blast of hot, humid air. Ugh.

It was around 9:30 and the airport had pretty much shut down for the night. Not for the same reason Burbank's airport does, which is because it's too close to residential areas, but just because no one really wants to go to this Buttfuck Nowhere part of Florida. Part of the floor in the walkway from the central area to the exits was cordoned off with industrial fans blowing on it. The area smelled like someone had spilled a giant barrel of Vicks Menthol Vap-O-Rub. By the time I hit the restroom and got to the baggage claim, our bags were already coming off. Trust me, for this airport that was an anomaly.

I grabbed my bag and stepped out into the warm, humid, 10PM air. I was outside less than 3 minutes when I got bitten by my first mosquito of the visit. (It will not be the last.)

Welcome to Florida.