« November 2007 | Main | January 2008 »

I'm really enjoying all these complainy emails I've been writing lately.

Hi,

The movie "The Ultimate Gift" was screened on a flight that I recently took with United. It was one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Now, I know that this isn't a HUGE problem; but the film was just so awful that it actually left me feeling unhappy and exasperated by the end of the flight. And obviously, leaving customers feeling unhappy and exasperated is a bad thing.

I know it's not your fault that the movie was saccharine and meandering and senseless. But for the sake of my fellow travelers -- and for my own sanity, in the event that I can bring myself to fly United again -- I hope I can persuade you to drop "The Ultimate Gift" from your list of in-flight movies.

Aside from that, the flight was great.

Thanks,

Matt

Irritatingly, if I'd been on a different flight, I could have watched Ratatouille or Stardust.

Update! I wrote the same email to American Airlines (with whom I also flew), and they tried to respond. Sadly, the copy-pasted form-email that they sent me doesn't actually address my complaint. It seems as though they don't have a pre-written response for "sorry that movie sucked," so they decided to go with the closest thing, "sorry that movie had a lot of swears."

Thank you for taking the time to share your comments with us regarding the movie shown on your flight from San Francisco to Chicago O'Hare on December 22.

We take the issue of inflight movie content very seriously. We require the movie studios to edit movies to remove inappropriate scenes and language to make them acceptable for general viewing before we will agree to show them. In fact, our edit standards are more stringent than those used by the television networks when they edit movies for television audiences.

Nevertheless, there may be an occasional movie that is objectionable to some customers and I have shared your perspective with our Managing Director of Inflight Products.

Mr. Baume, we hope to have the chance to welcome you aboard again soon. It is a privilege to have you as our customer.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth Guajardo
Customer Relations
American Airlines

Some kid made a lousy animation for his final project, and posted it on YouTube. Now the Thing To Do is to make tribute videos.

Every one of the NY Times' "Writers on Writing" series is worth reading, and none is more worthy than Elmore Leonard's.

A few months ago, I switched from Doteasy to Dreamhost, and I must say, I'm very pleased that I did. I had a little MySQL issue yesterday and not only did they respond quickly, and not only did they apologize very very sweetly, but they also offered the most soothing tech support I've ever received: "you don't need to worry about this anymore," they wrote, and I felt all warm and safe like someone had just given me an oversized teddy bear.

Yay.

Day Two of Javascript Class. Here's what I learned to do.

Unfortunately, it wasn't part of the class. We've spent hours talking about how to do popups, popunders, and iframes, so I've gone off-book and have just been fooling around on my own. SIgh.

I had a disorienting experience this afternoon -- I needed to wash my hands after eating some fries, so I stuck them under a faucet and waited for the water to turn on. All of the faucets at work have proximity sensors and dispense water as soon as you get close enough, but today I'm offsite at a slightly less futuristic building where faucets actually have handles.

I felt like Scotty, sitting down at a computer and purring "hello, computer" to no avail.

Here's what I'm learning in JavaScript class.

Why yes, now that you mention it, I do like that new "Bunnytown" show on the Disney channel.

This video, made by my awesome friend Cindy back in college, features a very special guest star.

I really don't want this blog to turn exclusively into a list of Muni complaints.

I'm sorry to keep submitting complaints about the same problem, but it just isn't going away. I ride the 43 twice every day, and I encounter bunching and long gaps almost every single day. It's clearly not an isolated problem; it's not a coincidence that I always encounter the same problem nearly every day, and it's not an accident that it's continuing to happen.

This morning (Dec 14, 2007), two Marina-bound 43s stopped at Fulton/Masonic within about one minute of each other. The first bus (8315) was crush-loaded, and the driver gave no indication that there was another bus behind him, even though some of the passengers attempting to board were elderly or with small children. The second bus (8309) was much less crowded, with seats available.

As I write this, the Outbound waits at Lombard and Pierce range from 30 minutes to 10 minutes to 20 minutes. The inbound waits at Haight and Clayton are 23 minutes and 25 minutes (indicating 2 bunched buses), followed by gaps of 6 minutes, 12 minutes, and 10 minutes.

What is going on with this route?

Not to mention: I have yet to receive any acknowledgment of my recent complaints, so I have no way of knowing that they've actually been received.

There's an article today in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about how "real" journalism need to be "protected" from "risky" citizen-journalism. In it, the author -- David, Hazinski, the head (for now) of broadcast news at the University of Georgia -- misspells "principles." Twice.

...Citizen reports can be a valuable addition to news and information flow with some protections. ...There are commonly accepted ethical principals -- two source confirmation of controversial information or the balanced reporting of both sides of a story, for example, but adhering to the principals is voluntary...

To this day, I remember how, in third grade, I read a Ramona Quimby book in which she learns that the man who runs the school is the "principal" with a "pal" on the end because he is your pal.

Here's the problem: I really like using iCal to create schedules. It's so easy to use, and so pretty and nice, and so not Outlook.

But.

When you print a calendar -- as I frequently must, to post in classrooms -- all of the all-day events with long titles get chopped into pieces. Instead of scrolling the text onto the next line, it just cuts out the middle. Here's what that looks like:

What do I do about this?

Yet another complaint to Muni. Still no response on any of the others.

Hi,

When I checked NextMuni at 6:30 last night (December 11, 2007), it said a bus was coming in 36 minutes, followed by another in 45 minutes. The gap before the first bus was four times as long as the gap after it! FOUR TIMES! That's a huge variation.

Elsewhere on the 43 route, at Masonic/Haight, NextMuni was reporting estimates of 3, 5, and 6 minutes outbound -- that means three buses were all bunched together. In the inbound direction, predictions were for 7, 15, and 20 minutes. That means that at Haight/Masonic, SIX buses drove by within a 17-minute window. Six! Meanwhile, passengers at Letterman/Presidio were waiting over a half hour for a ride.

When bus 8352 finally did arrive at Letterman/Presidio, on run # 769, the driver was not wearing a uniform -- just a plain denim jacket. So I was unable to get his driver number.

Now that the weather is very cold, long waits such as those cause by bunching can be physically painful for riders. I hope one day Muni will take steps to correct the persistent bunching on the 43 route.

This store Plastica is selling a Mozartkugel, a little round wooden ball with a big old-fashioned key that you turn to produce a few chimes from a music box inside. It's a very charming little design. (Though the choice of song from The Marriage of Figaro is a bit obscure.)

I was a little down last week, feeling like I wasn't doing a very good job of guiding a project of which I really wanted to be in tight control. I wrote a glum-ish email to James about it, and he responded, "one day you will rule the world."

I mention this because some people are under the impression that he is only mean, whereas the truth is that sometimes, infrequently, every now and then, he is actually a little bit nice.

Hey another Muni complaint! That's great!

Despite repeated complaints, drivers on the 43 route are continuing to double-up on their runs. On Saturday, December 8, I observed vehicle 8040 on run 799, with vehicle 8227 on run 763 immediately behind it.

According to Muni's own schedule, these runs are scheduled to be about 20 minutes apart, but the drivers had reduced the gap to zero minutes.

It's clear that my prior complaints about bunching on the 43 line have not yet been successful in drawing attention to the problem. I'll continue to report the issue every time that I observe it, in the hope that Muni can eventually be persuaded by persistent complaints to enforce its own schedule.

There's an article in the Times about fashion photography. The article itself is a lot of blah blah blah, but I do like this photo:

It's been a charming last few days in which I've been very pleased to work at the place where I work. Friday saw the culmination of our Cinematic Titanic planning (I arranged the catering and RSVPs): many of the original folks from MST3K visited work to make fun of "Brain of Blood," which was appropriately awful and funny.

I had one weird interaction during the post-show reception. It involved taints, and left me with more questions than it answered.

About a year ago, we were watching America's Funniest Home Videos, for which Trace Beaulieu writes. And during a clip in which a child fell forward on a bike, the voiceover giggled, "that bike is about to get TAINTED!" I was convinced that it was a taint joke, but James insisted otherwise, saying that I always think EVERYTHING is about taints. Finally, on Friday, I had an opportunity to ask Trace the truth -- and I was vindicated. It WAS a taint joke. "We have one writer who tries to get at least one in per episode," he said.

And then we stood there in a sort of awkward pause, having just used the word "taint" several times. "So, do you know about the whole Conan O'Brien taint thing from Saturday Night Live?" he finally asked. "NO," I exclaimed. But then, J. Elvis Weinstein ran in to exclaim that Lucasfilm had just opened the schwag closet, and was permitting the Cinematic Titanic people to take home as many Star Wars t-shirts as they could carry. And they all rushed off, leaving me and the untold story behind.

This was a hell of a place to end the conversation. Naturally, I assumed that Conan O'Brien accidentally showed his netherbits on live TV, or maybe had a birthmark there in the shape of Lorne Michaels. Google comes to the rescue, though, with a transcript that explains everything. But I kind of wish I hadn't found an explanation, and led the rest of my life thinking there was something outrageous about Conan O'Brien's taint. Maybe I still can.

Anyway, here's a fun video of Conan riffing at Bill Gates when a software demo goes predictably awry.

Ha ha ha! Somebody at Washington Mutual misspelled something! HA HA HA HA HA!!!

Ha.

Why do I bother?

Hello,

Drivers on the 43 route are continuing to bunch up, performing simultaneous, adjacent runs.

On Wednesday, Dec 5, I walked to Presidio and Letterman to wait for a southbound 43 at 6:50. NextMuni informed me that the next buses were coming in 5 minutes and 15 minutes. As everyone at the stop waited for the next ten minutes, the 5 minute estimate remained unchanging, with the 15 minute estimate slowly counting down. Finally, at 7:00, both estimates were at 5 minutes, and then they both started counting down. The buses both arrived at the stop within 2 minutes of each other, and were soon adjacent, with no gap at all between them.

I can't imagine why the driver of 8033 would have paused, mid-route, for 10 minutes so that the driver of 8341 could catch up with him. For me and my fellow passengers, who had been led to believe that we would have a short wait, it meant an extra 10 minutes standing out in the cold on a very chilly night.

I would appreciate it if Muni would take steps to ensure that drivers do not thwart NextMuni estimates with unpredictable stoppages, and that drivers endeavor to maintain gaps of longer than zero minutes between their runs.

Thanks.

Matt

So, I've been trying out this new thing, iwantsandy.com, which is supposed to be like an intelligent robot assistant. A robo-gal. But I'm not too impressed with it so far. On one hand, it's OK about understanding your requests -- "Sandy, remind me to grab my checkbook tonight at 10pm" -- but not so great about follow-through. That reminder about my checkbook arrived 13 hours late, for example. And then when I mailed the help system about it, the emails bounced back as undeliverable. Sigh. Better luck next time, Sandy.

I was doing some Xmas shopping and stumbled across this horrifying artifact. Allegedly, it's an angel, stretching a banner that says "Rejoice." But I dare you to see anything other than a two-tailed mermaid, spreading her lower bits to reveal an obscenely placed "O." Happy holidays!