Powered by Twitter Tools
I want to do this. I WANT TO DO THIS. Let’s do this, you mokes.
This is your official invitation to Songs of Good Cheer, the holiday singalong that my colleague Eric Zorn and I are hosting for the 13th straight year.
Sorry for mentioning Christmas in October, but there are a lot of hyper-organized holiday lovers out there who make plans long before the last leaf falls. So here’s everything you need to know to join us. We hope you will.
Who: A band of first-rate musicians from the Old Town School of Folk Music whose instruments include banjo, mandolin, bass, clarinet, fiddle, accordion, ukulele and washboard. Eric plays guitar. I play piano. You sing.
via An early warning – we'll be singing – chicagotribune.com
Yeah, I fixed it on Blogula but now I need to fix it again on the church blog and my Second Life blog.
So there!
One of the coolest things about WordPress 3.2 is its “distraction-free writing†mode. I’ve been eagerly awaiting using this feature on my own sites for months. Unfortunately, WordPress 3.2 also shipped with a font change for the HTML editor to a monospace font, which isn’t so distraction free when you’re trying to write.
via Fixing WordPress 3.2′s HTML editor font
UPDATE: And now I’m doing it again, because I didn’t do it right the first time. Shaming how I had to Google myself to figure it out.
Nice color, not a good fit over the hips, weirdly tight inner cuff
Love me some Pete Seeger
My fellow Steelhead denizen now runs the Salon!
I just realized the plugin I had called Postalicious was no longer working; either my Feedburner feed of my del.icio.us links died, or the new www.delicious.com changes screwed up the feed at their end. Figured it out, fixed it, will see about creating some “stacks.” Followed one for Hyperbole and a Half, so let’s have caaaaake.
Powered by Twitter Tools
As a corporate travel agent who books business people into and out of Washington, I find this disturbing on a couple of levels.
For one thing, some airlines (Southwest) will debit a travel agency the cost of a full fare ticket if they let a reservation go unticketed by the time the flight departs. Other carriers merely mark ticketed reservations that are not used (“no-showed”) as valueless for future use or exchange.
On the other hand, I have access to some elevated customer service desks on certain carriers (including Delta), for which I have occasionally been really, really thankful.
Delta does not mark tickets “used” if the reservation is no-showed, or I’d find this double-booking practice more infuriating. However, I don’t doubt that the other major airlines (United and American) have given VIP access lines to Congressional staffers and maybe lobbyists.
United, for one has something called Global Access that is apparently a VIP service desk that’s a paid membership; until recently we did NOT have access to the line unless the passenger had a note in his/her profile that she was a GA member.
We’re relieved to now have access to the travel agent level of United Global Access, because our primary client added it to their negotiated agreement. Previously we were forced to “rely” on United’s lowest level of customer service agents (one step up from domestic “res”), who were… not helpful, not terribly knowledgeable, and not empowered to do much more than add pre reserved seats. Also, they were based in Manila or Mumbai, thus probably outsourced.
Not only this, but in the coming merger with Continental it sounds like their EXCELLENT customer service folks will be retained and the outsourced people will NOT. I am okay with this, because up to now when I’ve had a Problem PNR (passenger name record) with United, I’ve just groaned with dismay.
Meanwhile, the next time I can’t get a traveler on the late non-stop from Dulles to [redacted], I’ll waitlist them, assuming there will probably be a couple of Congressional or lobbyist no-shows.
Some perks reach beyond the Beltway. Most major airlines have phones lines dedicated to customers on Capitol Hill, aides and lobbyists told Roll Call. To accommodate their unpredictable travel schedules, Members are allowed to reserve seats on multiple flights but pay only for the one they board.
A spokesman for Delta confirmed the airline has a Congressional call desk and allows Members to double-book flights. United Continental Holdings Inc., US Airways and American Airlines, all of which are rumored to have similar practices, did not return Roll Call’s request for comment.
“We get on every single flight,†said one Capitol Hill aide familiar with process. “Every offices uses it. … The scheduler uses it for Members and chiefs of staff who fly.â€The perks have long raised the ire of consumer advocates.
“They are treated completely differently from the time they book their ticket until the time they land at the airport,†said Kate Hanni, director of Flyers Rights, an airline passenger advocacy organization.
Yes! It’s right here! I have had nothing interesting to say for weeks or months on end!
Meanwhile, congratulations to Annie Mole for keeping her Going Underground London Tube Blog fresh and interesting for almost nine years.
We’ve been back from our most recent vacation (to Colorado again) for a couple of weeks, yet today is the first time I’ve been able to tear myself away from playing Bejeweled Blitz and the TV long enough to upload some of the pictures… which may or may not get uploaded to Flickr.
I’ve got some photos from the recent “Pet Blessing” at St Nick’s that need to be uploaded too. And a meeting today with some other folks on the “outreach” team. I’m feeling very, very creatively blocked at the moment, so maybe I need the kick in the butt. Meantime, the St Nicholas page on Facebook continues to chug along….
The news lately: I’m pretty sad about Steve Jobs’ passing, even though I’m not the stereotypical “Mac freak” like, ahem, a couple of my friends (one of whom used to attend MacWorld every year). And I’m looking forward to getting a new iPhone 4S once we find a local store that has them in stock (no, I can’t be arsed to sit in line or wait for orders to be fulfilled from the web).
I’m pretty heartened by all the Occupy (insert placename here) stuff, and hope that it continues to be creative, funny, and decidedly leaderless. It’s the populist uprising the Tea Party’s corporate sponsors WISH they had, because the demographics are much younger, hipper, and better educated.
I will be voting for Obama, as disappointed by his lack of progress (heh) on progressive issues as I am. Why? Because I refuse to vote for crazy people who’ve done nothing but block Obama on everything.
And nobody does crazy like the Christianist Corporatist Ultra-Conservative Right Wing of the Republican Party. I can’t believe that a former pizza chain owner who’s never been elected to anything is at the top of the list of Republican candidates, nor can I believe that Mitt Romney is likely to be the nominee after all the pixie dust settles just because he’s the “most normal.” What??? Yes, he’s the most normal out of this field of nutjobs.
And as a kid who grew up non-Mormon in Utah, being bullied and told I would go to hell as a child of 8, I am struggling to overcome my instinctive dislike and distrust of the faith, especially when politics and “the charch” are linked. Although I respect Harry Reid, who is a Mormon convert with principles, I really don’t like Mitt Romney, who has the political instincts of a windsock. Romney reminds me of the two-faced kids who used to “be nice” to me when no one else was around, but would help bullies gang up on me when groupthink demanded that the different one be singled out for punishment.
I’ve been reading, reading, reading stuff in the news, and getting mostly rather depressed about politics in this country. Do the crazy people on the right really, REALLY believe what they’re saying? If so, they’re not just crazy, they’re batshit insane.
For some time now, I’ve been unable to blog easily from my iPhone because the “Press This” plug in stopped working well – I suspected it was because of all the extra crap Google Reader adds with the “$UTM” tracking codes to the URL. I’d also noticed that the “Press This Reloaded” plugin worked okay, except that the link it added was only “complete” (including the title of the page linked, the a href HTML tags) if I happened to select some text to quote.
It turns out that’s the way Scribu, the plugin developer wrote it. He was assuming everyone would let WordPress add the HTML automatically if the URL was on a line of its own, but only reluctantly added the “via (HTML tag link)” code that the original Press This added when people requested it at his support site.
Well, I went in and looked at the actual plugin, and realized that all I needed to do was tweak it so that even if there was no selected text to be quoted, I could have it add a “Link:” preface and the nicely formatted link and page title. It’s under the self::$content section; I just copied the line that adds the link with a “via ” preface and added it to the “else” statement. Decided to change the preface to “Link: ” because a link with no text selection or explanation made more sense than one prefaced by “Via .”
I’ll have to update this on my other blogs, eventually, and on the iPhone and iPad. But it’s working for me and that’s all I ask.
Love the “press this reloaded” plugin, it’s beautiful and was a long time needed! I’ve noticed though that the “via” link is missing from the bottom of the reposted materials. Having to put that in manually is icky.
via WordPress › Support » [Plugin: Press This Reloaded] Press this reloaded no “via” link.
I just don’t understand why Air India didn’t just charter a bus for these people – their flight into London Heathrow was diverted to Gatwick, a little over an hour away. There are regular express buses (called coaches in the UK) between the two airports and there’s even regular scheduled bus services that are really cheap (the fare is about 25GBP).
Instead, they were forced to sit on the plane for up to 9 hours while Air India waited for a rested crew to show up to fly the plane from Gatwick to Heathrow. If they’d been put on a bus, they’d have been at Heathrow about 7 hours earlier, including customs.
Police were called to keep calm among passengers on a plane at Gatwick, who were kept on board for an entire day after their plane was diverted from Heathrow airport because of fog.
The Air India flight from Mumbai was originally due to land at Heathrow at 7.30am, but was diverted to Gatwick because of dense early morning fog.
The passengers were then forced to sit on the plane on the Gatwick runway for nine hours – just an hour’s drive by coach from Heathrow – watching brilliant sunshine and clear blue skies out the windows.
A BBC World Service reporter on board, Rahul Joglekar, said the mood became heated as the crew failed to keep the passengers, who included small children and a heavily pregnant woman, informed about what was happening, and when if ever they would set foot on English soil. “We continue to be stranded here without any information from the crew,” he told the BBC .
via Police called to calm diverted passengers stranded on plane | World news | The Guardian.
