Path to Enlightened Insanity

I have an enormous amount of respect for JetBlue. To borrow from their boilerplate, I think they’re an innovator in bringing back humanity to air travel. So, I was a bit annoyed when I read She’s seething on a JetBlue plane: Oh baby, she’ll hate to go again. so I wrote the Columnist an email:

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Hello,
I’m not a regular reader of your column, but instead I got to your JetBlue article because of my interest in airlines.

I’m a bit disturbed that your article seems like a unfair pot shot against JetBlue.

I noted a couple of factual inaccuracies:

1. The flight you were on was originally planned to be flown by a JetBlue E190, a 100-seat semi-express jet, not an A320 jet as you state. (The E190 falls in between mainline and express jets, and at the moment there isn’t quite consensus in the airline community which category it best fits into.)
2. Its an unsupported conjecture that the E145 that you were flying on had any less capability to circle than the E190 that the flight plan was created for.

I find it a bit disturbing as well that you cast a negative light on decisions that were made specifically to ensure safety. Including:

1. The decision to divert to Warwick, RI. Planes are fueled with enough fuel to get to their destination, circle for a specific period of time, then fly to their alternate destination. Any more fuel would raise costs for the flying public, and at times it may be impossible to load additional fuel onto a jet. Would you have liked the story to have read that a crashed because it ran out of fuel while circling Logan?
2. The decision not to fuel the plane while there were lightning strikes at the airport. As I understand it this is to prevent the plane from acting as a lightening rod while its hooked up to the fueling truck and igniting both the plane and the truck into a fireball. Again, would you have liked the story to have read that while diverted at Warwick, RI a Jetblue Flight operated by ExpressJet was struck by lightening and everyone on board burned to death in a fireball?
3. The decision not to disembark passengers in Warwick, RI. Given that JetBlue didn’t have facilities in Warwick it would have taken a reasonable amount of time to come to an agreement to use another airline’s facilities. This is time spent that must be traded off against efforts to get the flight to the intended destination.
4. The pilots decision to follow the FAA’s instructions. This is really a matter of safety, to the point that the FAA will revoke a pilot’s licence for violating a flight controller’s instructions. The pilot is at the mercy of the FAA controller, a controller who is again making decisions about the routing of many flights to ensure safe travel.

You were delayed around three hours and forty-five minutes beyond the planned arrival time at Logan. That isn’t great, but given the trade offs that must be made its pretty good.

You’re also probably wondering by this point why I care so much? No, I don’t work for JetBlue. I’ve never even worked for an airline. I have done some of my Pilot’s licence training.

The real reason I’m writing is that I’ve worked in logistics and I understand that its really easy to say “just do this” but its a whole lot harder to make it happen. Its unreasonable for anyone to expect everything to happen as planned 100% of the time. Problems do happen, but denigrating an airline in your column disrespects the efforts of those who ensure both your safety, and your travel needs.

Respectfully,
Cliff Barnard

My friend Eric called me up a week or two ago and told me that he was going to be on the West Coast and wanted to drive up and visit.

So I met him three-thirteenths of the way in Portland.

I forgot how much I miss our conversations. We quickly fell back into the same patterns: goofy conversation combined with intellectual and business discussions.

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I’ve been questioning the wisdom of the Seattle Adventure. Everything just seems so fucking hard to make any progress. If anything this will teach me persistence and patience.

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I’ve honestly debated doing some groveling and finding my way back to 250 East Fifth Street, in Cincinnati.

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I’m half tempted to call up my Starbucks DM and just talk about my career prospects…

I just wandered through Potlatch State Park. Its a nice little one. Its got a “beach” that has a nice creek that also has a stream that lets out right through it… so you’re walking and then then theres this nice little stream under your feet.

Oh and grass is still a human supported weed.

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Also there is this crazy woman power walking around the little loop for parking in this hideous gold coat.. I think she supports the grass.

Mooo!

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I need to take better care of myself. I’ve sort of been getting pushed around a bit lately and I need to take some me time. (Thats up tomorrow. ;-)

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I’m a little frustrated with work, it seems people are too much about just doing enough to get by, and not about getting it right.

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I wrote an interesting entry over on Lets Throw Money Into the Market (Intelligently) on Patiently Wrapping the Portfolio Up, yeah its a bit of procrastination, but I’ve finally written the entry about three months after I sold my stocks off..

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I’ve also been thinking about how to present my move out here in interviews. And well I’ve been thinking about interviewing in general. I need to work at it and refine my verbal descriptions of my experiences in advance instead of trying to do synthesize at the moment. I’ve done a fair deal of moderately complex work that needs to be explained carefully.

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Baa!

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Taking a nap in the middle of the day is wierd. (Yes mom, I’ll call you soon, I was napping when you called… ;-)

So I got the following email via my webform a couple days ago:

Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2007 22:13:30 -0500 (EST)
To: **** Removed my address ****
From: Doug Michael <dmichael@yahoo.com>
Subject: Wikipedia edit

Below is the result of your feedback form.  It was submitted by
Doug Michael: dmichael@yahoo.com on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 22:13:30
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content: Dear Cliff,

It is perfectly accepted to edit Wikipedia articles, but your edits should not be used as a forum 
to express homosexual opinions about other men. If you are wondering why people do not 
like nor accept homosexuals (gay is too soft a word, my friend. Gay implies happy.
You are not happy, you are genetically damaged. It's not your fault, of course, you were born 
this way). However, please keep your opinions to yourself, since you are just a poor woman 
trapped inside of a man's body. Your edits are no longer welcome. 

Yours truly, 

Doug

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HTTP_USER_AGENT: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)
REMOTE_ADDR: 12.119.119.186

I put up an advocacy request on wikipedia. I’ve sent off abuse letters to both at&t (they’re the ones who provided the IP address) and to Yahoo.

Of course this coward didn’t use a real email address. Seriously these fucking jokers should get some balls and fly a plane into a building or something. Either put some convictions behind your beliefs or shut the fuck up.

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Why air this here? Shit stinks more when its given the light of day.

So, I received a handwritten response to my heater note:

CLIFF –

WE CAN TALK WHEN WE’RE BOTH HOME, BUT THIS WHAT I HAVE TO SAY:

AS I’M SURE YOU’VE GATHERED, IT WAS ME TURNING OFF THE HEATER. 1: I DON’T WANT THE HOUSE TO BURN DOWN. 2: THERE’S NO REASON IT SHOULD BE ON IF YOU’RE NOT HOME TO BENEFIT FROM IT. OTHERWISE, YOU’RE DRIVING THE ELECTRIC BILL UP & CREATING A FIRE DANGER. YOU’RE RIGHT, I SHOULD’VE TALKED YOU ABOUT IT, BUT I NEVER THOUGHT ABOUT IT UNTIL IT HAPPENED AGAIN. THIS IS THE ONLY REASON & TIMES I HAVE ENTERED YOUR ROOM W/OUT PERMISSION. I DO NOT WANT TO COME HOME TO FIND OUT I NO LONGER HAVE A HOME. DURING THE WINTER PORTABLE HEATERS CAUSE MOST FIRES HERE.

LIKE I SAID, WE CAN TALK ABOUT THIS, BUT PLEASE DON’T LEAVE IT ON WHILE YOU’RE NOT HOME ANY MORE.

THANK YOU,

[BARRON]

So, yes it was hand written in all caps! (okay to be fair, there were a few lower case letters written at the same size as the capitals.) Also, I had to resist the urge to correct grammar when I was transcribing this just now. I had read this a while ago and put it out of my sight to make sure I wasn’t over reacting.

But I’ve come to the conclusion it is generally better not to talk to her. After I wrote the Barron blog entry, I thought about taking Cindy’s advice to heart and working it out. But, I thought some more about it, and really realized that I don’t really value our relationship, and I think she is not someone I want to be around in general, so why put more effort into it? I mean she hasn’t even mastered the common written use of the verb to be. I’m not looking for full blown conjugation skills, just your average knowledge..

So my response, which is again taped to the heater:

To [Barron]:

1. You still shouldn’t be in my room.
2. I pay my share of the electric bill.
3. I am responsible for my cats, they benefit from the heat.
4. The thermostat is set to 60 degrees when I am not home, this isn’t excessive.
5. I have blocked the heating vent in my room because there is too much dust in the system and it annoys my allergies, thus I don’t get the benefit of the central heating system in my room.
6. This is a ceramic space heater, it doesn’t get hot enough to start a fire. I was at one point worried that it was a fire hazard, but I am now satisfied that is it not a fire hazard.
7. I will not have you dictating what I can and cannot do within my room. You do not own this house; you do not have that right.

Oh, and anyways I’ve been apartment/roommate hunting for about a month now..

I worked at a really busy Starbucks in an office building three times this week.

I’m not ever sure I thought I’d say this but I miss working in an office.

Don’t get me wrong – there are utterly boring moments in offices, but after making your 500th double tall non-fat latte you kinda long for a more complex problem to solve.

I actually ended up writing a three page proposal for a snazzy idea that is classic Nick: take a bunch of pieces and put them together in a new and novel way.

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When I was in middle school I developed a novel method to run a mailing list to send 10,000+ people David Letterman’s Top Ten list. Mind you this was before you could get a free mailing list over at Yahoo! Groups.

I just put together a $15/year mail forwarding account with a $10/month shell account (Mind you that $10/month was for my internet connectivity, plus my shell account.), some shell script, procmail, small C programs and I had myself a cheap mailing list. Somehow I did this without getting sued by worldwide pants or CBS for copyright infringement, or pissing off my ISP.

It wasn’t exactly brilliant or high tech, I just took a bunch of pieces and put them together.

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I want to go out to dinner with someone and have a conversation

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This is incredibly delayed but what the fuck is it with gay men?

I had someone who I met online several months ago. We had really fun online conversations that lasted for a good number of hours.

So we went on an in person date, which went alright. We didn’t quite click, but it was good.

So then he’s not online for a long week then when he does come back online he tells me it isn’t right and he doesn’t want to date. Fine, I figure we’ll have some good online conversations still, right?

Nope. Its a complete 180 holding a conversation with him was like pulling teeth, if he was around.

I just don’t get why you’d break of something so completely.

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I’m going to a cuddle party next week, should be interesting

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This is the period of things where I need to tough it out. I have 2.5 months left in class, and then I will graduate. This is 7.75 years after I started college. This ends up being a total of 21.75 years of school.

I’m kinda crazy to be thinking of getting my MBA at this point.

I want to/need to put that energy into something real.

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Honestly modern academics is the biggest waste of words. I’d like to know the number of words each year that get read exactly once, reduced into a number or letter in a grade book only then to be reduced into a grade on a transcript to be yet again reduced into a symbolic expensive piece of paper that says, yes I demonstrated that I have a capacity to do something, but it was just all to demonstrate that I have the capacity to do something.

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I’ve met so many people who have gotten their bachelors who have no idea how to actually do something

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Put it this way you can be an expert at masturbating, and know nothing about sex.

Education for the most part is learning how to masturbate, with some examples of how to have sex.

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I’ll end here: I’m tired of just jerking off, I want to get to the real thing.

I’ve talked with a bunch of people since I wrote the last post. (Although I just got around to typing it up and posting it.)

I need to make sure that I’m not too close to my problems.

My assistant store manager basically told me I’ven’t spent enough time looking for places and I need to give it a bit more time..

Patience and persistence, with a little bit of perspective.

Do you ever realize that you like none of the choices that you have?

I’ve been seriously debating sending off my consistent, persistent, and slightly insane companions for the past four years to live with their aunt and uncle, cousins, and other assorted aunts and uncles.

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This Sucks.

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I’ve been apartment hunting and the places that I find in my price range are either very nice and clean and won’t accept cats, or they’re a mess and do accept cats.

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Either choice I make I lose.

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1. Move into a nice place, and send off the cats. Then lose the joy of their companionship
2. Move into a palce thats a mess, and deal with the stress of living in a mess.

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I hate that these are the options I have.

So I have a space heater for my room because it gets really fucking cold in this house. Also I’ve got my vent blocked because there is dust in the system that drives my allergies haywire, so I’d rather not muck with that. Barron likes to keep the heat really low, and given the size of the house I can’t blame her.

But I leave the space heater on at 60 degrees all the time. (Its a ceramic heater so there is a very reduced danger of fire. I’m really comfortable that no part of the thing gets hot enough to set anything else on fire.)

So, I’ve been coming home and I’ve noted that its been off. I don’t remember turning it off but there is the slim, slim possibility that I’m turning it off while I’m sleeping. (I can forget things that I do in the groggy initial stages of waking up.)

But honestly I think Barron’s turning it off… Thats my guess, but I also don’t want to falsely accuse her given that our relationship is so poor. So I taped this note to the heater:

To whoever keeps turning this thing off:

1. You shouldn’t be in my room, I don’t go in yours, so I’d appreciate the same respect.
2. If you have a problem with it you should talk to me or leave me a note. You shouldn’t go behind my back.
3. Please don’t turn it off again. Talk to me first. Or if you want you could just pretend you didn’t see this note and leave it on this time and into the future.. Your choice.

So yeah, is a bit passive, but it has the intended effect. It can’t falsely accuse anyone, and it is communication.