Yesterday, we apparently lost our pocketknife, a Victorinox Swiss Army to which we are very attached. It must’ve slipped out of our pocket(s) during the day; we didn’t notice until we got to the hotel, and were discouraged to discover that it wasn’t in the rental car. Oh well.

This morning, it turned out not to be in our desk area, either — but on a lark, we checked the floor of the conference room where we had our only meeting yesterday. It wasn’t on the floor; instead, it was on the file cabinet behind where we were sitting, together with a quarter that had apparently also escaped the clearly-too-shallow pocket of the khakis we had on yesterday.

Cool.

Hit me baby one more time…

Even MORE shit to hate about Outlook

Why is it that Outlook lacks a “check spelling as you type” option like pretty much every other decent editor?

Dept. of Stress, A/R Division

As we approach 30d from our first invoice, we’ve had to pay the AX bill the first week of this fun-fill ride is on. Ouch. On the upside, we’re watching the A/R balance grow pretty dramatically every week. On the downside, it’s just an A/R balance, which as we understand it is not actually usable as legal tender.

Why we’re trying not to worry about this

Our contact at the contracting outfit assures us we’ll be paid on time.

Horrible things said to us in the dead of night by hotel employees

“Welcome back! You got some mail…”

Good things about this week so far

We’ve taken our last 5:30 Sunday flight. We have only 3 more Continental flights to go.

In which we notice that “plenty” doesn’t mean “well used”

The Client has a seriously Outlook-Exchange-Meeting-based culture, but we’ve already noticed a profound lack of actual written communication skills in the emails here. We send a clear email, with high ‘scan value,’ requesting specific information — and get back replies that, while prompt, are filled with essentially nonsequitor information orthagonal at best to the question clearly posed. We reply, restating the question. The phenomenon repeats, forever, until we actually go corner the person and ask the same question in person. We’d view this as very frustrating if we weren’t paid by the hour.

These trees sure are cool.

In which we balance our choices, and declare a loser.

• Houston to Baltimore is served by both major Houston airlines, Continental and Southwest.
• We have, in years past, preferred Continental for longer flights due to the possibility, however remote, of an upgrade to First.
• Said possibility kind of made up for the fact that Continental flies out of the bigger, more pain-in-the-ass, farther-away airport (IAH) instead of the smaller, more convenient airport (Hobby).
• Such upgrades aren’t on offer with LUV, since there’s no such thing as First. (Confidential to SWA employees: Shut the hell up with that “It’s all First!” bullshit; it’ll all be First when you make the seats 50% wider, have them recline farther, serve hot food, and stop charging for the drinks.)
• However, LUV’s seats are old-style coach seats that are actually fairly comfy, not the flimsy-ass underpadded nonsense that now populates Continental’s aircraft. (We thought this was confined to their regional jets, but we appear to have been wrong.)
• Furthermore, LUV has been on time to BWI every time so far, something Continental hasn’t managed even once.
• To make matters worse for the home team, Continental’s flight is scheduled later on Sundays than LUV’s: 5:30 – 9:55 vs. 4:55 – 8:50. The result has been arrival a net HOUR earlier into BWI, which matters a lot when you’re driving 75 miles after landing and need to be at work at 0700 Monday morning.
• Finally, we note that the elusive upgrades are, well, elusive. The 737 as configured by Continental has only 8 First Class seats, and even at our current rate of mileage accumulation, we won’t be a a shoe-in for an upgrade for a long, long time. That means many, many trips in their crappy coach seats before we have any real shot at a nice seat, and skipping a greater overall average comfort plus the more attractive scheduling available from Southwest.
• Oh, and drinks are cheaper on Southwest.

Continental, you’re fired. We’ve got two tickets left on your airline (3/25 – 3/30 and 4/1 – 4/13), but after that it’s SWA all the way on this gig. Bite me.

Once more into the breach…

How you know you’ve been there for a while

You add the hotel to your list of Amazon addresses. (Confindential to Mrs Heathen: It’s work-related.)

In which time AND money are saved

Last week, the only way we actually made it to the airport was by (a) extending the car rental a week and (b) parking in hourly parking from Friday to Sunday, to the tune of sixty bucks. However, the car rental itself didn’t cost any more, as Sunday thru Friday turns out to trigger the weekly rate. By extending a week, my bill just doubled and the weekend came along for free, which got us thinking… so now we’ve extended the car through 20 April. This produces a significant cash savings for the client (on the order of 20% vs. week to week rentals) AND a significant time savings for us, since all car rental at BWI is a 15 to 20 minute bus ride from the terminal. Score! Monthly rates FTW!

In which words don’t mean what we think they should mean

Owing to our persistent patronage, we’re in a ‘suite’ at the Holiday Inn this week. However, the usual meaning of that word has been subverted; here, ‘suite’ appears to mean “slightly larger room with a minifridge and a microwave where the closet used to be, and a wardrobe instead of a closet” instead of “actual small suite with distinct kitchen/dining and sleeping areas,” as the word has meant in other extended-stay type hotels. We don’t care all that much, but we’re not sure it’s worth the extra five bucks a night. More on this later.

Another drawback to the pseudosuite

As it’s not on the first floor, entry from the side doors no longer produces a shorter route to the room.

And again

Floors 2 and 3 are limited to wireless Internet; the first floor has a wired ethernet option that has in weeks past drastically outperformed the wireless option.

So is there an actual advantage to the suite?

Well, we’ve got beer in the fridge, and it’s closer to the laundry room. So there’s that.

How this turns out to suck later

Said beer was rendered unusable due to some goatfucker setting the minifridge to maximum cold, which turned it into a miniFREEZER. Dammit. Good thing there’s a bar next door.

Things we need to procure

A decent fucking alarm clock. All the ones at the hotel suck ass; none of them have been able to pick up the local NPR station, e.g.

One nice thing about “regular” status

Yanka at the Outback will give you real silverware to go with your to-go, since they know you’ll bring it back.

What we watched while eating with Yanka’s flatware

51 minutes of The Conversation, a brilliant film we’ve had out from Netflix for more than a year. This is a particularly troubling number, since it’s less than the film’s length (113 minutes), but well past the halfway point. And, of course, we only stopped then because that’s when the DVD crapped out. Grrrr.

You know you love it. In addition to the Geeky Lefty Triumvirate of The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Harper’s, sometimes we read crap:

In which normally unacceptable books become desireable

We’ve been sucked into another series mostly on account of the bad-but-kinda-ok TV adaptation. Bonus: noticing how much backstory they’re leaving out on the television. Honestly, Butcher’s not a bad writer, and the books are pretty well plotted. They’ll do as an adjunct to our traditional travel potboilers, of which we’re sadly running short.

What’s on deck

A test run at a no-doubt turgid fantasy series that we’re told is coming to HBO. We haven’t been able to work up the nerve to dive in yet.

And also

Scalzi, about whom everyone says fine things. We’ll let you know.

And last week?

Dreaming in Code, which is so true it hurts. Mitch Kapor has been able to fund Chandler pretty well, which insulates it from the sorts of constraints that usually form software projects. As a direct consequence, they’ve been building for years without actually creating much at all in terms of usable software. In the interim, some have come to embrace those constraints to great effect. It’s by no means clear that Chandler will ever see the light of day, and even less clear that it’ll be useful when it does, but the basic idea sure is neat.

Upcoming in the same vein

Earned Value Project Management, as prep for moving back into software project management. We hope it’ll provide the optimistic counterpoint to Rosenberg’s work.

Why we don’t just watch the goddamned TV like a normal American

There’s no Tivo in hotels. Dammit. We can’t abide the commercials.

We received a communique from HeathenFrau Brun in re: a particularly fine quote from a cable documentary:

Anytime you’re attacked by someone who’s last name is Skullsplitter, you have reason to worry.

Not much to argue with there, is there? While it’s not immediately applicable, we’re going to keep it around for use later. Hopefully in a strictly metaphorical sense.

Here’s a screenshot from our Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards account page. A key piece of data is that “16” is a magic number; after 16 flight credits (most commonly in the form of 8 round trips), you get a free ticket. It’s easily the simplest and lowest-bullshit affinity program we can think of:

Now, what’s broken there is the “Credits earned” line, which clearly shows 16. That’s technically true; the rolling window they show there does in fact include 16 credits. However, that’s misleading and weird, since what they’re NOT showing is that we broke the 16 barrier in January and were issued an award ticket that, if we recall correctly, Mrs Heathen used to visit the L’ilest Heathen Niece. Their figure of “16” includes both spent and unspent credits, and is therefore about as useful as tits on a bull (or, more concretely, a check register showing only deposits).

Thinking there was a problem, we actually called SWA for clarification, which means this little interface flub has cost them money. Once you know what they’re doing, it’s easy to infer the actual credit balance using the second figure, but it’s not obvious. Math (arithmetic, really) isn’t vexing to nonstupid humans, but the data presentation is — especially considering SWA’s usual level of quality.

(Yes, we stole the title.)

Here we go again:

In which we discover our travel pattern is, to put it mildly, in excess of what Holiday Inn expects

We’ll qualify for the top tier of their affinity program in about a month.

What good this will do, long term edition

We’ll not sure, but we’re racking up the points like there’s no tomorrow.

What good this will do, short term edition

Get us a suite at the client’s ubercheap room rate.

Sadly, neither will guarantee a baby-free flight

Our weekly flights can work almost equally well on Southwest or Continental. We’re sort of at a loss on which to go with. On the one hand, Continental will eventually put us in First Class, which is a nontrivial difference. On the other hand, SWA flies out of Hobby, has a more comfortable non-upgraded seat, and provides greater control over actual seat choice (A-group checkin is all you need, vs. buying far in advance at Continental). The deciding factor may end up being the flight times; SWA’s is slightly earlier, which makes a nontrivial difference in Sunday night exhaustion.

How you can tell Southwest is cooler than other airlines

The March issue of Spirit has Tom Fucking Waits on the cover.

Dept. of Sanity-saving devices

The Sprint broadband modem (EVDO) product works like gangbusters, and makes our life *much* nicer on the road. Highly recommended.

Of course, once we get there, we’re halfway to the client site

Why oh why is the BWI rental car location so fucking far away? It’s like a 20 minute bus ride from the terminal. It’s nuts.

How to make this not matter

Just keep the damn car over the weekend. As it turns out, renting Sunday to Friday is a whole week. Keeping the car until the following Friday — which saves half an hour, given that airport parking is actually AT the airport — is financially the same as turning the car in on Friday and renting another one on Sunday night. Score.

Things that sound neat, but really suck

“Wintery Mix.” It’s what happens when snow, sleet, and rain happen more or less at the same time. It’s just about as miserable as it sounds, and it’s absolutely no fun to drive in.