Chris Moss Online

Today I received an e-mail from American Airlines, advising me of all the “new” ways I can check in for my upcoming flight. It’s a marketing thing, and of course a tool to educate their customers about the do-it-yourself (DIY) options for checking in so they can have fewer employees at airports (ticket agents, gate agents and the like). I’m all in favor of this, and all the ways they told me I could check in are not really new. Since I travel a bit, I’m already aware of the self-service check-in kiosks in the airport, or that I can print my boarding pass at home up to 24 hrs before I leave for the airport.
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So James had some free time and gave this site a much needed freshening. It’s now running on Word Press instead of Drupal. The pic at the top is very “me” but I’ll see if I can put one of my own pictures there. Perhaps a picture from the upcoming Key West trip will be taken especially for that purpose. (UPDATE: This has been done!)

The thing I’m happiest about is that the random Flickr photos can be brought in, which I tried to do (without help) unsuccessfully on the Drupal site. I like having those on the front page, it adds a warm, familiar feeling. I also like the colors better.

Off to breakfast and some shopping!

Warning – this is a real rant.

Friday sucked. I really don’t mind traveling, it’s the delays I hate. And lately, it seems like there is always a delay. In my case, none of my flights really went off without a hitch. My originally scheduled flight on Thursday morning from DFW to O’Hare was cancelled and I was accomodated on a flight to Detroit. That flight wasn’t full, so I guess that was a nice benefit to AA. My meeting finished up much earlier than I expected on Thursday, so I tried to get back to Dallas on Thursday night. That would have been good for me, the company and our client – because it would have saved them money (my billable travel time). But, I was unable to find a return flight. I considered just driving that rental car to Chicago or even to Dallas, but I figured I had better not given the lack of sleep I was operating on at the time (see previous entry about my bout of insomnia). What I really needed was a good night’s sleep.
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Sometimes I have to travel for work. Generally, I don’t mind short trips. It’s nice to see different parts of the country and I kind of like travelling anyway. So I generally don’t mind. I had to take a trip this week that was really poorly timed. The opportunity cost of the things that weren’t getting done while I would be away was my primary objection to the trip, although it also cost a lot (in my view) and took too long.
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It has been a very bizarre week for me. It’s over now, so YAY! \o/

Work has been quite rough, as opposed to just really busy as it has been for the past 3 months or so. Without going into detail (and I’m not really bitching here, just telling it matter-of-factly) I am completely covered up at work. Lots of conversations with the boss and others about how to make it better, bringing in more help, etc so we’ll see where that goes. I’ve been putting in 50 – 60 hours per week for many, many weeks now and it just seems to keep escalating.
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