Dear Sir/Madam:

Last Monday, I was on United flight 1146 from Calgary (YYC) to Chicago (ORD). I enjoyed the flight (apart from the cringe-inducing performance by Jimmy Fallon in ‘Taxi’) and commend the crew for managing an arrival substantially ahead of schedule.

I was, however, a bit put off by how the female flight attendant chose to usher us off the plane. Her decision to end the standard “Welcome to Chicago” message with “god bless” made me uncomfortable.

No doubt she meant well, but this sort of religious sentiment really has no place on a major carrier such as United.

I’m sure I need not tell you that the flight was no doubt made up of those from many faiths, as well as those who choose to live their lives based upon proven facts. I know United recognizes this diversity when even this feedback form includes an impressively extensive list of titles, including non-Christian ones such as “Imam”, “Swami”, and “Rabbi”.

Given this range of worldviews, I hope in the future United will leave the religious messages for those who wish to hear them, and instead encourage their cabin crew to focus on what they should be doing best: providing customer service.

Thanks for your time.

Respectfully,

John S. Perkins

A recent conversation I had with the folks at MBNA, the nation’s largest credit card issuer:

She: How may I help you today?
I: I’d like to cancel my MBNA MasterCard.
She: I’m sorry to hear that, sir. Did you have a reason?
I: Yes.
(…pause…)
She: Uh, may I ask what it is?
I: Certainly. In the last 6 election cycles, MBNA and its employees have been the number one campaign donors in the financial sector, always more than 70% to the GOP. Your company gives too much money to Republicans, and I don’t want to be a part of that.
(… l-o-n-g pause …)
I: Hello?
She: Uh, yes I’m still here.
I: There isn’t anything in the script for that, huh?
She: No, no there sure isn’t.
I: Great. Well why don’t you just take care of that cancellation and mail me a confirmation, okay?
She: I’ll do that, sir. Thanks for calling MBNA.

To bypass the menu tree and contact MBNA cancellation directly, dial (800) 336-2974.

Did you know about MS Word’s “markup” feature? It keeps track of your modifications so that you can see how a document changes over time.

That’s great if you’re collaborating with someone, but not so great if you’re sending the document to a client, the media, or other outsider. Utah-based UNIX vendor SCO Inc. learned this lesson when they recently announced a lawsuit against AutoZone Inc., a major user of Linux. It didn’t take long for CNet News.com to learn that the complaint was actually prepared for use against Bank of America. Reporters were able to use Word’s features to show the previous defendant as well as just how much time writers spent on the draft.

Just something to keep in mind next time you’re e-mailing Word documents outside the company.

Yesterday was Brandon’s birthday, and I decided to spend the day with him. I didn’t want to tell him this in advance, because I decided the surprise would only be heightened if he were to first learn of it when I strolled (posing as a student) into the math class he teaches.

Sadly, his class begins at 8, so in order to make the journey northward without incurring my third ticket, I had to rise at an hour normally considered my bedtime: 5am.

Considering I didn’t retire the night previous until roughly 1, nor achieve sleep until about 3, I was not excited when my clock began to chirp. But the prospect of experiencing B’s instructional style got me going. I showered and set off, with the neatly printed/highlighted map I’d prepared the night before.

All went according to schedule, except for one little glitch: when I arrived at WC 0351, I found 40 students with their heads down. When I sidled up to B’s table, I noted he, too, didn’t bother to look up and instead just made as to hand me…a test.

Four classes a week since January, and I happen to show up on one of only 3 test days. Lucky bastard.

Well, I’d hoped to get to bed much earlier (have an early start tomorrow) but this will have to do. But as I leave, consider this: Paris Hilton. Now is that bitch a walking, talking advertisement for the estate tax or what?

BONUS THOUGHT: I’m so moving to Chicago. (Or Minneapolis.) You know, once they get that weather thing sorted out.

Well, no big surprises there. And, okay, I admit it, I loved it when the one guy thanked his “beautiful boyfriend, Dan.” (Was it my imagination, or did the clapping seem to get louder when he said that?)

Did you notice nobody thanked God?

I love the fact that I can cruise up to my podunk Iowa bank and withdraw money from my bank in Australia, and the transaction takes seconds, costs me nothing, and includes a helpful receipt in US dollars.

I have less love for the reality that this is brought to me on the network operated by the same banks that claim it takes 3 days to post an electronic payment to my credit card. Give me a break.

Just returned from a quick trip down to Missouri, where we went to see one of my sister’s former teammates have one of her final games as a senior. (Nicely done, Emily.)

Because we set off at the ungodly hour of 9:30, I didn’t assist with the driving until just before we reached the Missouri border. Barely an hour into my shift, I was pulled over by a Missouri trooper for going 19 over the posted speed limit. The trooper was really quite pleasant as he wrote out the ticket — for the full amount.

Not 7 hours later, I repeated the process, this time for 17 mph over, and with an Iowa trooper. Due to separate systems, the second officer clearly had no idea that another state’s citation rested at my feet. He knocked it down to 10 over, which he helpfully explained was just below the break for a higher fine.

Needless to say, I’m not planning any trips to Illinois, Minnesota, or Nebraska any time soon.

Guess what the following have in common:

• This user profile (in Hebrew) from an Israeli site
• This forum topic (in German) on eBay Deutschland
• This LiveJournal
• This forum topic (or this one)

Give up? They’re all using images hosted by jsp.org. The Israeli site uses David Beckham from Madrid About This Guy, the German page features my “bed” from About Last Night (and therefore deserves extra points as the image wasn’t embedded in the page, only a link), LiveJournal dude is partial to Aguilera’s kissing boys featured in Now I Feel Better, and the forum posters are using the Militant Agnostic bumper sticker (You Don’t Either) and the cropped Abercombie picture (linked from the last sentence of Banner Ads I Don’t Understand, Pt. 7) as a signature and icon, respectively.

These are all just from yesterday’s logs. It seems that I’ve become quite a popular image host, thanks primarily to Google Image Search. The “Beautiful” kissing boys, in particular, are a big draw: with thousands of requests, they’re high up on this site’s most-requested list.

But my favorite would have to be the bed image, on eBay.de. Yes, I captured the boys from the video, color-corrected David, cropped the A&F guy, and even snapped the photo of the bumper sticker, but these personal connections are nothing compared to the fact that these people are discussing my bed.

All the better that I have no idea what they’re saying. Best I can glean from some of the imperfect translation services is that the person who linked the photo asked “What more do you need?” and his fellow posters suggested alternately that 1) a bottle and ashtray were necessary, 2) two pillows seemed extravagant (never!) and 3) someone thought it looked like his own room, which drew rebuttals by others casting aspersions on that poster’s cleaning habits.

It’s all very amusing to me, and it’s something I would never know was happening if these people didn’t choose to link directly to my site — something I could prevent by using scripts to disallow images to be loaded on remote pages and/or by banishing the Googlebot. But hey, why bother? I’ve got plenty of bandwidth, and after all, promoting (kissing) hot guys, agnosticism, and minimalism is just fine with me.

The named plaintiff is a citizen and resident of Knoxville, Tennessee; the plaintiff class would include all American citizens who watched the outrageous conduct which occurred during the Super Bowl halftime show, as is more fully described below.

So it begins, and so it may get much, much worse if one lawyer’s analysis gains currency.

Update [Fri 02:07]: Let her eat (cup)cake.

Live from Sydney, Australia, and wherever else I might end up this year, I’m going to be providing travel updates on my new site, JSPjourneys.com.

A journey of 10,000 miles begins with a single step. (And then a car ride. And then some flights…)

I’ll be back online in a few days, when the dust settles.

Though I first read it several days ago, I still can’t believe it:

The nationwide telephone poll of 1,000 adults found that 19 percent of respondents strongly agreed that the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees. That number was down sharply from the 41 percent found on last year’s survey, conducted nine months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. [emphasis added]
— Survey: Support for First Amendment Up, Associated Press

The fact that last year, fully two in five Americans surveyed strongly agreed the First Amendment goes too far blows my fucking mind. I fervently hope that there is some massive flaw in the survey’s methodology, and that these statistics are not representative of the general public. But oh, how I fear that they may be.

Just for reference, ladies and gentlemen, let’s review the full text of the amendment in question:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

That beautiful opener of the Bill of Rights goes too far? What is wrong with those people?

There’s just over 15 hours until I have my move-out inspection here at the apartment, a fact that’s readily apparent to those who have dropped by for a visit. (Though my friends know I strive for a minimalist approach, current accomodations are that and more — err, less.)

As the absence of furniture and the early departure date (a full 9 days before my lease actually expires) demonstrate, I’m quite ready to hand in the keys and get a move on. Ames has served as a backdrop for some fun times in my life, but really never more than that. As the people who mean much to me have moved on to new opportunities (or just new places), it’s time for me to head out as well — a fact I tacitly acknowledged for most of ’03, as consulting opportunities had me paying rent on a place that I didn’t enter for many weeks at a stretch.

Now for the next opportunity.

Snapped this picture of a Jetta’s bumper sticker.

(Car was in the Minneapolis REI parking lot.)