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But wait, there's more.

There's just no polite way to say "Buy me things", is there?

Join codebastards, I dare you. Remember, codebastards are us.

I'm baded and jitter. So are these people. (And why not follow the previous, next, or random links?)

Need a band name?

Doug vs. Japanese Snack Foods: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

rant is where the heart is

diaryland: sirilyan.diaryland.com: entry for 2001-10-05 (13:14:00)
In which our plucky young hero got baited, then switched.

Don't believe the hype, kids.

From all available evidence, at this very moment the airlines are swimming in money, bathing in it, diving into it while wearing an old-style full body bathing suit and top hat just like Scrooge McDuck.

Exhibit one is Northwest Airlines, which is my preferred airline. They are currently running a promotion where free travel is yours for 5,000 fewer frequent flyer miles than normal. This would mean that I could go visit some good friends in California next month, but apparently they only intend to extend that particular generosity to American residents and/or people with credit cards with American billing addresses.

The only conclusion I can draw is that Northwest is so financially secure, what with their planes running at 30% of capacity and many of their flights cancelled, that they don't need my customer satisfaction or my future air travel dollars. Good for them! I am sure that because of this fiscal health they will chivalrously withdraw from the airline bailout being proposed by George W. Bush.

Exhibit two: Air Canada. For those who are new to sarcasm, I am not very fond of Northwest right now nor am I pleased with them. I fly Northwest mostly as a rebuke to the Canadian air travel monopoly, which alternates wildly between being a clever, rapacious shark out to destroy anything that gets in the way of its total domination of Canadian airspace and a good-natured, fumbling, deformed giant whose thrashing about in complete idiotic incompetence would be funny if it didn't flatten whole villages every time its moron brain tried to process information. Oh no, I am not fond of Air Canada. Not one bit. The fact that they killed the good Canadian airline (called, cleverly, "Canadian Airlines") is beside the point. And by "beside" I mean "precisely".

I do, because of my previous association with Canadian, have a frequent flyer number with Air Canada. I'd love to know what that number is, and how many miles I currently have banked away. (Air Canada offers free trips at 25,000 miles, instead of Northwest's 20,000. But because of the location of AC hubs versus NW hubs, it turns out to be about the same number of flights between free trips.) To that end, I have been trying to call the Air Canada customer service line for the past several minutes.

That line has been busy.

I don't mean that my call is important to them and will be answered in the order it was received, so please stay on the line.

I mean, I get a busy signal when I call. Every single time.

Well, all I can determine is that Air Canada, too, is rolling in the moolah. Certainly no airline that had lost millions of dollars in the wake of September 11 would neglect such a basic customer service function! Why, that would be tantamount to cutting their own throat! Unhappy customers, after all, will go elsewhere for their air travel needs.

There have been those who theorize that the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington will be what it takes to finally get people taking the train instead. But I disagree. At the moment, the number one reason to take the train is the airlines.

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