Best Sakai Conference Ever!

Best Sakai conference so far.

Trains are fun

Took Amtrak from New Haven to New York Penn Station. Then took the Long Island Rail Road from Penn Station to Jamaica Station today. That was pretty fun. I like trains. Then I took the Air Train from Jamaica to JFK. Then I caught a plane back to Phoenix.

On Apologizing without really meaning it

Southwest Airlines' repeated harassment of its passengers about clothing that is not in fact lewd, obscene, or patently offensive suggests that their apologies to the harassed customers may not in fact be sincere. If one apologizes and means it, one does not turn around and commit the same offense immediately.

Southwest can make light of it, but it's not really funny. I wish they would focus on things that matter, like not running airliners off the runway and into motor vehicle traffic so that they crush little boys, and less on things that don't matter, like stupid t-shirts.

A Southwest Boeing 737 landed on a snowy Dec. 8 and rolled off the end of a slippery runway, crashing through two fences and striking vehicles outside the airport on Central Avenue at 55th Street.

Joshua Woods, 6, of Leroy, Ind., a passenger in one of the vehicles, was crushed to death.

(As reported in the Chicago Tribune).

Southwest Airlines and Inappropriate Clothing

Apparently Southwest Airlines felt the need to harass a 23 year old female flier about her clothing, which reasonable people on review did not in fact find "lewd, obscene, or patently offensive", as reported in this column.

This is another example of excessive (and discriminatory) organizational paternalism -- and that's paternalism of the pejorative sense, not in the sense of the wisdom you may have enjoyed from your own parental units.

This relates to the Thumper principle: if you don't have anything kind to say, don't say anything at all. It is not an airline's, or an airline's customer service representative's, place to dispense fashion advice, or to create a problem where none need exist.

You might wonder: what *wasn't* that CSR attending to while he was engaged in harassing this passenger? Not too long ago I was at Phoenix Sky Harbor and had the opportunity to assist someone distressed on the brink of tears because she couldn't *find* the Southwest ticketing area. (As one would expect, it was a Midwest ticket agent who eventually helped her recover her composure and find her way.) Addressing these minor but real issues seems a better use of CSR time.

"We don't feel like our employee was in the wrong," Chris Mainz, a spokesman for Southwest Airlines, told FOXNews.com

Then the error in judgment of a few employees is an error in judgment of an entire organization.

Would you like to fly on an airline that attends to real air travel safety issues, or would you like to fly on an airline that harasses its passengers?

Elephant Bar

Lyndon was in town again this evening on his way back from his San Diego vacation. We met up for dinner, first trying to go to Cyclo which it turns out is closed on Sundays and Mondays, and so instead going to Elephant Bar at the Chandler mall. Dining there with Lyndon is an altogether different experience from dining there with Mike Zackrison. Fun in a different way. It was good to see Lyndon looking well and he's convinced me San Diego is a place I'm going to have to visit again sometime.

National Aquarium Museum

Visited the National Aquarium Museum in Baltimore today. It was tremendous fun and my grandfather even joined in for a bit. Reminded me of visiting the aquarium in Boston.

American Visionary Art Museum

I visited the American Visionary Art Museum today in Baltimore. Some of it didn't seem to me to be art, but much of it did. I especially enjoyed the "Trojan Hippo" piece.

I was supposed to go to Camden Yards to see the Orioles-Red Socks game this evening, but I was exhausted and slept instead while the crowd went to the game.

Michael during layover

My college friend Michael had a longish layover this evening at PHX, so I picked him up at the airport and we went to dinner and hung out on the ASU Tempe Mill Ave scene before I deposited him back just-in-time to the airport. Made me feel old -- I don't quite pass for college age kid anymore, though neglecting to have my ID on me still kept me out of the Big Bang piano bar.

Maybe it's just me, but maybe the signage around getting to the airport could be improved a whole lot.

Airport

This morning I got to deliver a friend to the airport in the wee early hours of the morning, which was a lot more fun than it might sound.