Air Travel today – another industry in need of better scheduling

I write today from the comfort of an exit row seat on a Northwest Airlines flight to Minneapolis. This is one of the first flights I have taken in quite a while where which wasn’t over 80% capacity. This allowed me to move to the exit row affording me the room between myself and the seat in front of me to use my laptop, as well as putting some space in between me and the screaming baby that was in the row behind my assigned seat. Boy did I feel bad for that mom flying alone trying to comfort her child, obviously acutely aware of the disruption her child’s crying was making. Been there. Overfull flights, cramped seating, crying children. These are pretty standard air travel complaints, hardly worth making.

This is my 5th flight in two weeks, the third of which was delayed. Annoying as that is, it is also not a new complaint. What is interesting is that today’s flight was delayed by 20 minutes, just as last Sunday’s flight was delayed by an hour, due to “mandatory crew rest period.” I am sure this is not a new regulation. I am sure that other flights have been delayed for the same reason. I am also positive that this is a good reason to keep a plane on the ground. FAA mandatory Pilot rest is every bit as important as DOT mandatory Truck Driver rest. There are probably a few other things for which mandated rest would not be a bad idea. But I digress.

What sticks in my craw is that this is a delay that is completely avoidable through more careful scheduling. Someone in the NWA crew scheduling department needs to 1) take a class in Critical Path Management, and 2) build in slightly larger cushions to allow for schedule pinches caused by the inevitable weather delays. I know that money is tight in the airline industry today, for many reasons. However, Northwest will lose customers if it can’t more reliably schedule its flights and crews. I for one will avoid further Northwest flights, assuming I have a reasonable option on another carrier. At present I have three more flights booked before Valentines Day with Northwest. We’ll see if they can redeem themselves at all, and whether this delay will cause either me or my checked luggage to miss the connecting flight out of Minneapolis.

Clever donor ploy or privatizing of the pubic airways?

I am a long-time free-loading listener to WDUQ, the local NPR station. Actually a number of years ago, Mrs Bob and I were members. However, a few years back as we were moving to a new house, money got very tight around our household, and we cut back on a bunch of our charitable giving (along with other more frivolous things like movies, eating out, etc).

WDUQ is in its pledge drive mode again (groan). I know they have to do this to stay afloat. But I can’t stand listening to it, whether I am a member or not. For a long time now, I have listened to Morning Edition on the web, to avoid listening to the pledge drive. If Morning Edition is not available, which it sometimes is not, I listen to WFCR in Amherst MA, WAMC in Albany NY, or KUNI in Cedar Fall IA, all on the web.

We aren’t “flush” now. However, money isn’t as tight as it was. I am thinking that I will probably renew our membership in this valuable non-profit resource. I feel a liberal need to be a charitable donor to this and other worthy causes. It’s got me thinking however:

WDUQ does some of its regular programming stuff, even during the pledge drive: Local News, weather and traffic, and occasional cutaways to morning edition. In these days of secure websites that can be logged into, I see the potential for a value added member benefit. They could play their own content in real time when they would normally play it within the NPR programming. They could cutaway to those things from the pledge drive as they do now, just on the NPR schedule. This way they could offer their members an internet stream that is their regular programming with no pledge drive annoyance. They could pick a donation level that might encourage people to up their donation to access this benefit. I’d do it.

So, is this a good benefit to encourage donations to a non-profit that needs the cash? Or is this the first step towards privatizing part of public radio for the people who can afford it? I’m conflicted.

My challenge for the Comcast installer

We have a DVR (Digital Video Recorder) cable box. Actually this is our second. We used to have one when we had dish network in our old house too. It's been a few years since we have watched regular TV with commercials. Anyway over the past week, the cable box/DVR has been on the fritz, "resetting" itself. This has had an added annoying effect. See the cable box has a convenience outlet on the back of it, into which you can plug other things. When I followed the extension cord plugged into that outlet, I discovered that it was my wireless router, and network hub that were plugged into that outlet. This means that every time the cable box “reset,” my computer network wired and wireless would also power cycle. Uggg.

After a rather annoying half hour with a Comcast technician talking me through some troubleshooting (most of which I had already done), she finally agreed that I needed a service call, which we scheduled for last Saturday. Owing to some brain fart, at the exact time the technician was scheduled to come I was off taking my child to dance class. This left Mrs. Bob alone at home to deal with the tech. Now Mrs. Bob is not tech-dumb. In fact she’s pretty smart. However, our AV installation is a little geekier in setup than she can follow. Apparently she’s no the only one.

So, I got a call when the tech was nearly done. They were having trouble with the remote control of all things. Seemed the tech concurred that we needed a new box, which he had apparently already installed. I was surprised to hear that he didn’t need phone help from me earlier (note geek warning above). This is where I was happily surprised to hear about the inventiveness of the tech. Apparently he was a little surprised by the installation as well. So much so, that he took a picture of the back of my cable box with his cell phone, so that he would be sure to hook things back up correctly.

If you ask me there was nothing really unusual about what was plugged into the back of the cable box. However I am glad he bothered to take the picture. Box correctly replaced. Woo hoo! So, would you have wanted a picture? Or is it the receiver below the cable box which is really scary?
Who’s the Geek now?