A Golf Blog

Nick Berg

It’s been a very long time since my first hand exposure to the carnage of war but what I experienced paled in comparison to execution of Nick Berg.

Yeah, I suppose you could argue the recent photos of the abuse of the Iraqi prisoners contributed to this horrible act, but in comparison, the photos are more like a fraternity hazing.

And yes, I’m sure those trusted to guard the prisoners are feeling a good deal of guilt about what happened to Nick Berg, but don’t loose track of the fact that those responsible are no better than animals – and as White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the video “shows the true nature of the enemies of freedom”.

Motorcycle Tour of Chernobyl

A collection of pictures and dialogue - quite amazing.

Airline Fares

Perhaps my lengthy tenure in the travel industry has me a bit jaded but how airlines price their product seems to be spiraling out of control. I subscribe to an online travel agencies fare alert application - they tell me when a fare in a market that I'm interested in goes up or down. I just got their email and guess what? The new price (the market doesn't matter) is $300! The old price was $174. I can't get to their online site fast enought so I can spend the additional $124.

I guess the airlines idea of a good deal and my idea of a good deal are still different. What makes them think that if I didn't spend $174 that I'd be happy to pony up $300. Insanity!

And you know what else? I get these alerts sometimes 4 times a week - in the same market. You would think a kid with a dart board would have better luck.

Low cost carriers, Delta mentions bankruptcy, fuel prices - all good topics for future posts.

Help Desk Frustrations

Large companies really need to exercise care when hiring for customer care and help desk functions. I’ve had less than stellar help on two recent occasions – first from a major manufacturer of printers then most recently from the wireless division of a very large manufacturer of routers.

Four chat sessions, two telephone calls, and a large dose of agitation finally netted me a new install CD for the printer – the tech at the help desk was certain the original could not have been defective. By the way, the printer works great and I know my experience with a defective CD was in all probability an exception.

Yesterday, my wireless access point in the home office went belly up – finally got connected via the wired Ethernet option and was told that I’d have to get back to the vendor that supplied the wireless card – it must be defective. Gracious - we’ve two notebooks that have connected wirelessly for more than 2 years and all the sudden both go south? Funny, the notebook on my desktop here at the office works fine and you know what, it also works fine with the defective wireless card.

A little help on the phone with verifying the configuration would have been helpful but that didn’t happen. So, I’ve saved a copy of the user manual and I’m hoping that will help me get past whatever happened. By the way, when the wireless router works, it works great.

Internet Ingenuity

Sometimes things come along that you just can’t ignore and while you might question motivations, you really have to recognize ingenuity. I don’t recall the circumstances that led me to these most recent discoveries (I suspect it was one of the feeds I subscribe to) but I felt that it would be beneficial to share and you can decide on the value.

There’s a web site called BugMeNot.com – it’s where you go when you’ve accessed a site that requires a user name and password. Rather than using your ‘real’ contact information you simply enter the URL of the site (e.g. http://www.nytimes.com) and BugMeNot.com returns a user ID and password that will work if that site has been ‘registered’. If not, a real person at BugMeNot.com will look at your registration request and if it’s valid (not an objectionable site), they’ll register it. In the past hour, they’ve registered another 8 sites.

If you want to create your own account, you’ll probably need a valid email address – that’s where Mailinator comes in handy. You simply make something up like anything@mailinator.com and they’ll hold email for that address for a short time (think it’s for 3 hours). So, if the site you sign up for sells the contact information, any associated Spam get’s dumped by Mailinator. I suppose Mailinator would come in handy for other things – casual business acquaintance, parties, or anyone you’d expect at least 1 email from.