Defenestrating Thoughts from the Bivouac

Crissy and I are finally back in Seattle from our great wedding weekend and honeymoon on Kauai. We wanted to thank everyone again for their kind thoughts, help, and support.

I know that everyone is anxiously waiting for pictures, video, and other things from the weddings. I’ll start getting those online as Crissy and I go back to work (boo!), and try to bring order to an apartment that is completely flooded with presents (thanks!), luggage, and general mess.

I wanted to blog regularly during the wedding week to give a nice play-by-play to everyone that couldn’t make it. But since things got so hectic, I didn’t have a chance. As I get the other content posted, I’ll try to post some of the more amusing anecdotes with summaries of the days.

Crissy brought some fake hair so she could have a nice long braid for the wedding. As a result, I learned that if you’re not expecting it, fake hair can freak you out. Crissy braided the hair and left it on a chair. I kept walking by and getting really startled by it. Since hair is usually attached to someone’s head, it doesn’t process cleanly when it’s lying unattached on a chair.

Also, we were out eating lunch and Crissy was showing it to her friend April and we got a lot of weird looks from the other tables.

I know it sounds weird, but if it happened to you, you’d know what I’m talking about. :-)

I got a nice, shiny blue RAV4 for as my rental car. I was a bit skeptical at first, but it’s really grown on me. There are, though, a few quirks that give me an uneasy feeling. They are the sort of things that make you think, “Did anyone at Toyota actually use this before they started selling them?”

The first thing is the trunk. On a compact SUV, I would have expected the trunk to flip up to open, like on a hatchback car or larger SUV. Instead it’s on a side hinge and opens 90 degrees to the right. This means if you have a grocery cart, you need to stop it on the left of the car and then open the truck.

That’s not so bad though. The worst I found so far is the auxiliary input for the car stereo. The auxiliary input is great because it will let to you input your iPod into your car system and speakers, without any quality loss. All you need is a $2 wire, instead of the usual FM transmitter accessory (which lowers the audio quality). The aux input is located inside the center console on the right hand side of the driver.

This seemed logical; I could plug in an iPod and then run the wire out and set the player in one of the cup holders. Then it would be easy to get to if I wanted to change the song. The only problem is that there is no way to run a wire out and close the center console. I would have expected a small hole or something for this. Also, there’s a cigarette lighter type power outlet in there. It would be great to run a wire out to charge my phone. But again, same problem. The center console lifts up to open, so if it’s open there’s no arm rest. And there is no way to keep it open; it will swing back down randomly

Also, the dash layout could use some work. Knobs that I use more often should be closer. Why’s the “Wheel Lock” button more accessible then the volume? And the cruise control sticks out down and to the right from the steering wheel. My right knee keeps hitting it and adjusting the speed I’m trying to go.

Otherwise, I’m getting to like sitting higher up on the road when compared to a sedan. The car is a good size and heft; I think it could keep it’s own in a collision. There’s a lots of room in the trunk too (it passes the hockey bag test!). Normally car size wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but Crissy and I realized that whatever car I brought would be used to bring home babies in a few years. And, since my first choice for protecting my future family on a road, the M1 Abrams tank, gets 4 gallons/mile, perhaps a compact SUV is the right balance for me.

Plus, I ain’t driving no minivan. :-)

During the day at the airport, not many of us had a good idea of what exactly was happening. However, by talking to lots of people and general observation, I was able to deduce that some people who hated our freedom were planning to blow up planes over the Atlantic by mixing Opti-free Express Saline Solution, Coppertone SPF 15 Waterproof Fragrance Free Sunscreen, X-Factor Gatorade (Berry flavored), and mint flavored Walgreens brand lip balm.

Then, they would delay detonate this Jack Bauer style using a U2 edition iPod that was playing Shakira’s new song, “Hips don’t lie” (in Spanish).

It’s exceedingly complicated and confusing to me. But it’s no wonder they got caught. I mean, everyone knows that X-Factor Gatorade makes you vomit. No one in their right mind would drink that stuff.

In fact, I keep some in the cupboard in case we have company I don’t like.

Anyway, when the NSA monitored those dudes buying X-Factor Gatorade, they were all over them; like bees on those athletes on TV that sweat Gatorade.

I also talked to a number of people who are convinced the best way to keep airplanes safe would be to ban all electronics from the flight. No laptops, no cell phones, no watches, no keychain USB storage devices.

I think this makes sense. When people are coming after our freedom, it’s smart to hide our freedom safely where no one can find it and use it. That way they can’t find it either.

The BBC has an even better idea: “Any liquids discovered must be removed from the passenger.” After all, once you freeze dry all the passengers, no one will be trying to do anything!

(I’m apparently in a weird Dave Barry state of mind from my ordeal.)

If you are really bored (and you must be if you are reading this), I posted some pictures of the airport lines on the photo site.

Short Version: I’m still in Seattle, back at my apartment. I have a ticket for a flight Friday night; hopefully I’ll have better luck then.

Long Version:
Picking up on where we left off… The next flight to St. Louis was booked fairly solidly and there were about 50 of us trying to standby on. A number of people opted to give up their seat for a flight the next day in first class and a $300 voucher. A family of five gave up their seats. The father was pretty excited, because he would save $1500 on their next vacation and barely give anything up. Basically, instead of sleeping in St. Louis, his family slept in Seattle.

I was number 25 and I was anxiously waiting. My new friend, Matt (29 in line), and I were trying to guess if we’d make it. We worked some numbers and realized that it depended on the plane size. As luck would have it a large American Airlines plane was taxiing to us! We’d make it!

But wait, the plane turned away and went to the next gate over (stupid DFW flight). And traveling in its wake was… a tiny little plane. Doh! Now we knew that it would be extremely close.

Boarding proceeded and they started calling standbys. By now, my group of friends was having a good time and we’d cheer our friends that got called up. Finally number 20 got called. I was super excited, because 21 through 24 was a family. If there were 3 or fewer  (or 5+) seats free, I would be called up.

Plus, number 19 still hadn’t showed up, so I could possibly get that seat too.

But, alas, it was not to be. This time I got a little smarter. As soon as the gate closed, I called AA reservations while standing in the line and got myself a seat on a direct flight tomorrow night.

Jason came and picked me up at the airport. Tomorrow, I try again. Wish me luck.

I picked a bad day to try to fly to Missouri. Due to the heightened security, the airport was chaos. The line to get through the security was about 1 mile long and took 4 hours to get through. It snaked all over the place and ultimately got pushed back into the parking garage.

Ultimately, I missed my much delayed flight by 10 minutes. I could have made it, but I made a bad guess that cost me about 25 minutes. At one point in the queue, we had to split into two seemingly equal lines. However, it turned out that one line went to 2 screening stations and the other went to only one. So the other line was twice as fast.

That strategic blunder brings me to my current predicament. I’m anxiously waiting to see if I can standby onto the next flight to St. Louis. Apparently I’m 25 on the list; normally there’s no chance I’d get on. But since everyone is getting backed up in security, other flights have been letting around 40 to 50 standbys on.

If I can catch the flight and it’s roughly on time, it will have only set me back by about 6 hours. Overall that’s not too bad, but the 2 hours drive to Columbia will happen around midnight, instead of early evening.

The line getting to security wasn’t that bad considering how bad it could have been. I stood by some very friendly people. One woman I spoke to was convinced that by the end of our adventure we’d begun such good friends in our hours together, that not only would she be coming to the wedding, but she’d be the Matron of Honor.

Crissy, of course, would ask, “Vijay, who’s that person?” My response, “Don’t worry; she and I go way back.”

I also stood by a friendly executive from Iowa and we talked shop for a good while. His company does a lot of image processing and storage (medical, security, and defense). They are having scaling problems and while ideally he could build a custom NAS, we both agreed that it’s a risky investment. We talked about some potential open source and Windows solutions.

Unfortunately, my talks with my new friends got cut short as they got a break and discovered a previously unknown “First Class line”.

It was shortly after this that I picked the wrong branch of the line and my new neighbors were friendly, but extremely angry. Time started to move a bit slower at that point. :-)

I eventually made it through security. The actually security screening was barely any different than the usual. They just glanced in my bags. The whole “heightened” part of the screening took an additional 10 seconds.

In the line, we couldn’t see any flight status monitors and the telephone/web status was very old. So I asked a TSA worker if the flights were generally running very late to let people get through security. Her response, “I have no idea. I just work at the airport.”

Well, I guess that’s good enough for government work.

Anyway, I got my shoes and everything re-assembled and rushed over to where my plane should have been. At the gate, there was no plane and another line. Fortunately though, at the end of the line was my old friend the executive that filled me in on the details. Basically, we just missed the plane and this new line was so we could get booked on another flight.

This new line was SOOO slow. Each person being helped was taking about 15 minutes, because most people were connecting through St. Louis and they needed to get both legs scheduled in a way correctly so that they would not stuck at another airport.

By now, people started getting really mad and there were lots of arguments that were close to becoming fights over things like people cutting in line or the airline representative needing to close a station for various reasons.

I was amused by this change, because at this point I felt fortunate to be able to stay upright. We’d all been standing for at least 6 hours and I hadn’t even had breakfast yet. I knew I should be angry, but I was too tired and hungry.

One man said, “I’d really like to get my hands on those guys that caused all this.” Someone else responded, “Jesus wants us to forgive our fellow man.” The first guy’s response was, “Well, I don’t believe in Jesus, so I just want to kill them.” Unfortunately, the conversation stopped there. I would have liked to see what comparative morality insights could be generated in such a situation.

I finally got to see the American Airlines representative and despite her going into the 12th hour of her shift, she was very friendly and got me on the standby list.

So I went and got breakfast and lunch (mmm.. Qdoba) and now I’m anxiously awaiting the next flight to start boarding so that I can see if I get to leave Seattle today.

In 8 days, I’ll be at my wedding.

Over the next 8 days, I’ll be running around getting all the little details taken care of. I hope you’ll forgive me if I’m not posting a lot, because I’m going to be a little busy. :-)

I’ll try to get the wedding pictures up on the photo site within a few days of the event.

A recent study has made a big splash in the news with eye-catching headlines like: Raunchy Lyrics Prompt Teens to Have Sex. In what should be a simple example of correlation does not mean causation, we have a media sensation that rocking local newscasts and newspapers. I’m sure Oprah will chime in soon.

In the above linked article, compare the headline and then read the article’s first sentence: “Teens whose iPods are full of music with raunchy, sexual lyrics start having sex sooner than those who prefer other songs, a study found.” The headline implies causation and the leading sentence implies correlation.

After all, it’s seems like common sense that teens that have sex tend to listen to music with sexual lyrics.

If the journalist actually read the study, they would see the following in the conclusion, “Our results suggest that the relationship between exposure and behavior may be causal in nature … however, our correlational data do not allow us to make causal inferences with certainty.”

My guess is that the headline implying causation sells more papers or gets more viewers. It’s another reminder that media companies exist to make money; not necessary to deliver the full truth. Which is a shame; the research study has lots of interesting info in it.

Those folks at News Corp sure are smart. In addition to using MySpace as a marketing tool, they announced today a partnership that will make them hoards of money. Google will provide all the text, display, and search advertising and pay News Corp $900 million from the AdSense revenue. To put this in perspective, remember News Corp bought MySpace for only $580 million.

All the search boxes on MySpace will go to Google, instead of using Yahoo. But this doesn’t seem to be that big; according to Peter Chernin (President and COO of News Corp), most people leaving MySpace pages go to Google anyway.  

Chenin also added some well deserved boasting: “Whoever said it remains to be seen whether we can monetize [MySpace], hopefully it’s a little clearer this week.”

I continue to find actors in new and completely different roles very distracting in movies. In Superman Returns (a movie with already plenty of distracting problems), Kal Penn of (Harold and Kumar fame) was a evil henchman. Whenever he was on the screen I was expecting him to do something stupid or make a dirty joke. But, all he did in the movie was hide and later get crushed by a hexagonal pillar. And why wasn’t was Harold with him? Aren’t they supposed to be in Amsterdam?