The Wandering Suitcase

Posted on October 25, 2007 by Linda

Mistakes happen. That may be the one rule of human civilization. I can accept that. I’ve made my share. I sympathize when they happen. Unfortunately, at AirTran mistakes seem to be the business model.

Last Friday I tried to fly to Seattle for a weekend trip. I say “tried” because the flight leaving BWI was so delayed that it became impossible to make the connecting flight. I decided that leaving for a weekend trip to Seattle on Saturday didn’t make any sense so asked for a refund and my checked bag. I got the refund.

Even though I asked for my bag before the plane I was to have boarded even arrived, it never came back. Eventually they had me fill out a lost bag claim and told me they would call me. On Monday I called them. They thought my bag was still in Seattle. and would call me back when that along with it’s return booking was confirmed. That call came at 11:35PM Tuesday night. Who calls a residence at 11:35PM? Although I appreciated knowing that my bag had been found, it wasn’t so urgent that I needed to be woken up.

Finally, about 2PM my bag arrived here at work. That is almost six days to the hour since I left work to go to BWI last Friday. At least a quick check looks like it has all the stuff in it. I’ll verify that in detail tongiht, but nothing is obviously gone.

I still can’t figure out how a company can be so incompetent. Granted, the weather in Boston caused the initial flight delay and that wasn’t AirTran’s fault but everything from that point on was. I sure won’t be going out of my way to fly that airline again. More the other way around.

How to Not Get to Seattle

Posted on October 19, 2007 by Linda

As I write this I am supposed to be on an airplane headed northwest to Seattle. Instead, I am at home contemplating just how easily plans can be disrupted.

My flight was supposed to leave BWI at 6:40pm. I left work at 245pm. Even with awful traffic, I would still get there in plenty of time. Of course, traffic was just that: awful. A trip that should have taken 45 minutes, and certainly no more than an hour took nearly two hours equating to an average speed of about 20 miles an hour. Still, I was paranoid about traffic and got to the airport about 4:30. It was about 5pm by the time I parked and took the shuttle bus over to the terminal.

I check my bag and get my boarding pass, get my dose of being made to feel like a criminal going through security and then I’m on to the gate. At this point, I learned my flight is 50 minutes late. No problem because Kaitlyn was running even later than I was and that would give her a bit more time to make it. She did eventually arrive at the gate just as they were finally getting the 2:30pm flight out only about four hours late or so.

Of course then they announce that our plane coming from Boston was late leaving and isn’t even going to arrive until 7:50pm and is scheduled to leave at 8:15pm. It has now become impossible to make the connecting flight to Seattle. Since I was going for th weekend, it didn’t seem worthwhile to lose 14 hours until I would get there so I got a refund and asked for my luggage back. Kaitlyn was going for a week and has to be there so she’s scheduled to go out tomorrow evening.

We are told it will be 30-40 minutes until our luggage is ready to pick up so we stop off and have a drink and gab. We go to pick up our luggage and hers is there but mine isn’t. Half an hour of waiting and it becomes clear that my luggage got on the plane even though I didn’t. I hope my bag enjoys Seattle. I’m wondering just how long it will take AirTran to get it back to me.

To make it worse, it rained like mad on the drive back home with visibility dropping to barely drivable levels at some points.

So much for flying out of BWI to save a few dollars compared to flying out of Dulles. Actually, I guess I did save a few dollars since I didn’t get to fly at all. But I did get the joy of sitting in traffic for nearly two hours, wading through airport security, filling out lost baggage forms, and driving back through a deluge. How much more fun can any one evening hold?

Indigo Girls at Wolf Trap

Posted on August 27, 2007 by Linda

I was fortunate enough to attend the Indigo Girls concert at Wolf Trap last night. It was a fantastic show!

The group Girlyman opened the show. I’d heard of them and had even heard a song or two, but this was the first chance I’d had to really listen and what I heard I really liked. Having two women and one man, they can really change their sound just by changing lead singers. I’m going to have to listen to more of their music.

It seems like the Indigo Girls have been around forever and their music never gets old and they seem to really love performing and making music together. Whether it was an old song or a new song they were there for every note. When you had several thousand fans, half of which know every word to every song, you get a lot of great energy that it was great to be a part of.

Metro Madness

Posted on August 6, 2007 by Linda

Since my new job is in Rosslyn, I’ve been taking the bus from the Reston South Park & Ride lot to the West Falls Church metro station and then riding the metro in from there to Rosslyn. From there it is only about two blocks to the office. Normally it takes about an hour each way but on Thursday evening it over two hours. Half of that time was spent in the Rosslyn metro station wandering from the upper to the lower platform and back because the metro staff kept giving us conflicting directions.

A train had mechanical problems between Foggy Bottom and Rosslyn and this sent a good chunk of the metro system into near paralysis. It’s a shame because normally the metro has been very efficient and I’ve rarely had to wait for a train more than a few minutes during peak times. But, with only one track in each direction, any problem becomes a systemic problem because there’s no way to route around it without impacting the rest of the system. Had they built the metro with three tracks instead of two problems like this would be much less annoying but they’re obviously not going to retrofit the system.

At least when the company moves to Tysons Corner I’ll be back to a 20 minute each way commute. I’ll miss the reading time, but I won’t miss the crowded trains and the occasional meltdown of the system.

Seven Years Minus One Day

Posted on June 19, 2007 by Linda

My last day at webMethods was last Friday. It turns out it was one work day short of my seven year anniversary. That makes it my longest stint in any job surpassing my tenure at Visix by just about a year.

For the next two weeks I’ll be blissfully unemployed though, if today is a good example, no less busy. I’ve stopped in at Panera to enjoy some tea and a scone during the brief bit of down time I have. And thanks to their wireless network, I’m also able to write this little note.

It was a bit strange today dropping off my secure id token and picking up a wireless keyboard I forgot to take on Friday. Instead of just walking in I had to wait in the lobby. Somehow that little change in status, even though it was entirely voluntary and instigated by me left me feeling a little awkward while I was there. I don’t think I’ve ever had reason to return to the premises of a former job prior to this so I wasn’t entirely prepared for how strange it would feel.

Still, it was past time for a change. I’m looking forward to the next two weeks off and also looking forward to some new challenges at the new job at Agent Logic. While I won’t be a webMethodologist or a webMethodist as we jokingly referred to ourselves, perhaps I’ll be an agent logician. Or perhaps not.