Category: Rants

I’m starting to think that the cake and cookie decorating industry is just one big scam to get us to buy horribly over-priced products just to make treats look good.

It’s the only explanation I can come up with why a 5 kg bag of sugar only costs $3, but a tiny little 63 g bottle of coloured sugar costs almost $2. That’s like more than 50x the price of regular sugar! I mean really, how hard can it be to turn plain old sugar red or green? It’s a scam, a total scam I tell you!

Adding to the patent insanity, apparently now programming language operators are fair game for patenting. Seems a patent has been applied for the IsNOt operator in BASIC.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

A system, method and computer-readable medium support the use of a single operator that allows a comparison of two variables to determine if the two variables point to different locations in memory, that is, the reverse of the existing “Is” operator in a BASIC programming language or a derivative of BASIC or BASIC-like programming language. In one embodiment of the invention, the memory locations represent objects. The new operator enables a user to determine if the left operand (e.g., a reference type) “is not” the same instance as the reference type listed as the right operand. The use of a single operand for this concept may increase the readability of the programming language.

Found at Slashdot.

There’s a radio station here that’s already started up with the Christmas music already.

What’s up with that? Last year I didn’t hear my first Christmas tune until Nov 20th. This year it’s barely a week into November and already they’re starting up with the Christmas songs.

Gaaahh!

Anyone who’s been to an airport recently will notice that the major airlines have installed those self check-in terminals. The idea is that you swipe your credit card so they know who you are and it spits out your boarding pass. Sometimes it doesn’t work, so you have to enter another piece of information, like your ticket number. Sometimes that still doesn’t work so you enter some other piece of information like the flight number. And if that doesn’t uniquely identify you to the system, you’re stuck standing in line waiting for a ticket agent to issue you a boarding pass.

So, airlines, if you’re going to do this, you need to make sure it’s much more robust and that it works for everyone. There’s not much point in implementing the check-in terminals if it’s going to result in long lines of hundreds of people who end up having to see the one or two ticket agents you only have on duty because you’ve reduced staffing (because the check-in terminals are supposed to be “more efficient”).

So this was my day yesterday after the AAPM Summer School ended.

13:45: Arrived @ airport. Self check-in didn’t work. Need to stand in long line.
14:10: Stuck in check-in line from hell. Only 2 ticket counter people. Good rant material for Blog. Waiting 40 min for ticket clerk to help one person.
14:35: Hour later. Finally checked in. Off to gate.
14:52: Flight to Charlotte delayed 1 hr due to weather. Will miss connecting flight to Charleston. Need to find out details on next flight.
15:12: Waiting in another line to see about getting rebooked.
15:26: Flight to Charlotte now scheduled to arrive @ 7PM in Charlotte .
15:42: Charlotte flight scheduled to leave @ 17:30. Later 19:55 flight to Charleston should be doable.
15:52: Should have taken my keyboard out of my bag before checking it.
16:02: Found one of those PalmOne airport stores.
16:19: Found book called How To Be A Canadian. Had to buy it.
17:36: On the plane at last!
19:03: Landed in Charlotte.
19:14: Flight to Charleston delayed too. Argh. C Concourse very moldy smelling. Keep getting busy signals trying to call Y.
20:09: On the plane at last.
20:15: Eek. Lots of babies on this flight. Hope they’re all sleepy. With my luck today, they’re all awake, cranky and screaming.
20:36: Still on the plane. Still on the ground.
20:40: Still on the plane. In the air now.
21:22: Finished the book. Mildly amusing and easy read.
21:35: Landed in Charleston.
22:30: Just when I thought I was home free. No luggage. Crap.
23:00: Arrive at home finally.

It was supposed to have been a flight that left Pittsburgh at 4PM and got me back to Charleston at 7. That flight out to Pittsburgh was probably a sign of what I could have expected on the way back home.