So I Lied

I will indeed travel again, this time to Hawaii for John's wedding in October. For the most part this transaction went relatively smoothly, except for one minor incident where the agent on the phone informed me that "Websites are different than phones," but I'd rather not get into that.

I may never travel again

You've read of my many woes when it comes to purchasing tickets, Whether it be for travel, concerts, baseball games, etc. Here's another one for you.

I got an email the other day from Larry, telling me that he was going to be in Vegas with his girlfriend this Sunday and Monday. He says I should come down and hang out with them, seeing as how it's not too often he's on the West Coast. Very Tempting. I do love Vegas, and I can afford to take a day off.

I head over to travelocity.com and check on flights. $333 is the cheapest I see. I'd maybe do that, but it's a bit expensive, so I wait and check again the next day. Yesterday I noticed I can do a hotel + flight combo for what seems to be a reasonable price. Figuring the airfare at $300, I could get two nights at NYNY for $65/night. Seems reasonable. So I checked with Larry, they had reservations at the Flamingo, but could cancel them without getting charged so long as they did it by midnight tonight. Sounds like a plan.

I get back on travelocity to book it. Everything still comes up at the same prices like I expected, so I go ahead and book it. Then, after I'm done forking over the loot, I come to the confirmation page, which informs be that I have been [over]charged $702. Where oh where did that extra ~300 come from I wonder? So, begrudgingly, I get on the phone with them. That is, I call them and navigate their phone maze for sometime, eventually managing to actually get myself on hold. Here's roughly the conversation I had:

Me: You overcharged me by almost $300
Them: Are you sure?
Me: Yes
Them: Can you hold? This may take 3-5 minutes
<< elevator music >>
Them: Maybe the fare went up while you were booking it?
Me: Doubtful, I searched again just now and it comes up with the same [lower] price.
Them: That's just the hotel price, you need to add them together
Me: It says explicitly "Flight + Hotel"
Them: Well, sometimes the price can change while you're booking it
Me: So once I enter my credit card, you are free to charge me any arbitrary price?
Them: Can you hold? This may take 3-5 minutes
<< more elevator music. I start typing this blog entry >>
Them: You were charged the correct price
Me: Let me talk to a supervisor

Them: OK I'll have to put you on hold, this will take 3-5 minutes
<< elevator music >>
Supervisor: HI! [i will pretend to have no idea what's going on]
Me: (repeat entire story)
Supervisor: Let me try to reproduce what you saw on the website. <...> Ok I'm seeing $xxx does that sound right?
Me: Yes, that what it should have been.
Supervisor: Let me look into this, please hold
<< la de da >>
Supervisor: OK We're going to refund you the difference, it looks like there is in fact a problem with our site. I'll give you a call back to confirm when we get this taken care of.
Me: How about I call you back?
Supervisor: Here's my name and our direct customer service #. Thanks for catching that!
Me: Yeah no problem

I'll post again if/when they call me back.

Meeting "The Man"

Yesterday the group I've been working with reached our first milestone for the project, so we went out to lunch at this place called Dixie's BBQ. I had never been before but I've heard lots about it. It's run by this old black guy who walks around with sauce pot and a spoon. The pot contains this ridiculously hot sauce that he makes, which he calls "The Man." He walks around asking everyone if they've met the man, and how many spoonfuls they'd like on their sandwich. Actually, he just asked me "Three or Four?" "One," I replied. He put approximately 1/8 of a teaspoon on my roll. I took a little bit of that and spread it on some of the pulled pork and took a bite. It was hot but not too bad, so I had a little more. My big mistake was taking what was left on the roll, spreading it out, then taking a bite of pork+roll. It was about 5 seconds later than my throat starting tingling. I quickly ate the rest of my cornbread and drank the rest of my root beer to cool off the inside of my mouth.
Overall I give Dixie's 3.5 out of 5 stars. The food was really good and it's a fun place, but it's slightly overpriced and there were lots of bees (most of the tables are outside).

Food

Tomorrow is the one year anniversary of my start date at Microsoft. You would think that I'd have some interesting things to reflect on or talk about. Perhaps I do, but not right now. Right now what's on my mind is that I've gotten very bored with cooking for myself. Last summer/fall, I used to prepare legitimate meals for myself, complete with side dishes, salad, etc. Recently I've been frequently dining on frozen burritos from Trader Joe's, or just making some pasta. I can think of a couple possible reason's for this. I haven't been watching FoodTV much, and that used to get me excited about cooking. I've been busier at work and getting home later the last few months, leaving less time for cooking. Also, a while ago I invited someone over and cooked dinner for them, and it didn't go all that well, so maybe there's some negative reinforcement there. Quasi-related: Cooking for oneself isn't all that much fun/rewarding.

Too Close

I went too see Bourne Supremacy last night with Rob, Scott, and Jason. We got there about 5-10 minutes before the movie started and the theater was already so full that we had to sit in the front row. That was bad for several reasons. First, it's just bad to be so close for any movie because the screen is so huge you can't see the whole thing at once. Second, this movie had a ton of close ups and not many wideshots (which is what you'd prefer when you're sitting that close). Finally they used had a lot of shaky-camera shots (e.g. shaky shot of a crowd of protesters, shot of someone running, car chase scene, etc.). Probably the worst movie ever to sit in the front row for.
Another problem was I didn't see the first movie so I was missing a little bit of what was going on. I felt like the movie was really short. It was actually close to 2 hours. I guess I thought it was short because I expected them to fill in more details about some of the subplots, which they never did.
This sounds mostly negative, but the movie did have some good aspects to it, most noteably the car chase scene at the end. Overall I give this movie 2 headless chickens (out of 5).

Safari

This Saturday was Puzzle Safari at Microsoft. If you think that sounds really nerdy, you're right. If you're wondering what it is, here's how it works. You get a team of 4 people together. You are given a packet with a bunch of puzzles in it, and a logbook that lists all the puzzles. The solution to each puzzle is a location somewhere on Microsoft Campus (e.g. "Building 16 Lobby" or "Front Door One" or "17/3002"). Once you solve a puzzle, you need to take your log book to the location, find the stamp that is hidden there and stamp it in your logbook next to the name of the puzzle that brought you there. There are 2 rounds that last 3 hours each, and you get about 35-40 puzzles each round.

Last time I did Puzzle Safari was 2 years ago when I was an intern (I got here too late last summer). That year we came in 10th place (there are about 50 teams in the competition). Our roster was changed slightly, it was still me, Rob and Adele, but Jason stepped in to take Bronwyn's place. This time we came in 6th! And we were only 2 points behind 5th and 7 points behind 4th (each stamp is worth ten points, so one more stamp and we would have been 4th). Everyone did really well, we solved tons of puzzles, ran around like madmen, and had lots of fun.

Did I mention it was 95 degrees and I was running around for over 2 hours? Yeah, I almost died. I was extremely dehydrated, muscles I didn't know I had were cramping up, etc. etc. But I eventually recovered.
The End.

Halo

Did I mention I've been playing a beta version of Halo 2 for about a week now? If you liked Halo, Halo 2 is incredible (and i've only seen a little bit of it so far). Cool new weapons & things you can do, and of course its on Xbox Live.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm glad you have better things to do with your time than I do. Have a nice day.

Code

I Finally picked up The Da Vinci Code from the library last night and started reading it. So far so good. I recognized the numbers that the murder victim wrote down as being [quasi-spoiler, if you're a nerd but haven't read the book yet] some of these, but I'm not sure why that's important yet.
I am a little thrown off by the whole idea if this being a fictional novel with lots of facts mixed in, because it's not always clear what exactly I'm supposed to believe. Opus Dei seems to be real though.

Roommate

Now RobX has a blog too!  Exciting, but try to control yourself.

I think every time someone new starts a blog, we are taking one step closer to living in an ideal society where you just read about people on the internet instead of actually talking to them.

I'm kidding. 

Things i don't remember

A few months ago i bought tickets to see the red sox when they came to seattle to play the mariners.  Last week I looked at the calendar and realized the game was coming up very soon.  The Red Sox schedule I have on my office wall lists July 19 as being a day came, and July 20th and being a night game.  So I assumed I had bought tickets for the game on the 20th, since otherwise I'd miss half a day of work. 
This past weekend I was so busy helping out with the Microsoft Intern Game that I completely forgot about the game. 
Then yesterday I was sitting in work and someone sent me a message asking if I was going to see the red sox.  Oh yeah! I have tickets! I almost forgot!
[a little backstory: the tickets never arrived in the mail, so i talked to ticketmaster, and they said they'd have them at will call].
So I called the Mariners ticket office to a)make sure they had my tickets and b)see which day they were for.  Yes they had my tickets.  They were for July 19th.  I was not happy, as I was pretty sure yesterday's game was a day game.  But alas I was mistaken and it was in fact a 7:05 start.  So I called Jason to see if he wanted to go, since I had two tickets.  He had to work till 7, which was fine cause by then the traffic has died down heading into Seattle.
It turned out to be a pretty good game for the first 8 innings.  Until Seattle tied it up in the 9th.  The bullpen really blew it for Arroyo, who pitched really well, with 12 strikeouts, 3 hits and 1 run in 7 innings. He left with a 4-1 lead.
Then in the 11th, some guy I never heard of hit a walk-off grand slam.
Ugh.
The highlight was around the 8th inning when a crowd of Red Sox fans a few sections over started a "Yankees Suck" chant.  The lowlight was the drunk guy in the next row taking his shirt of and dancing around.

I am an architect

No, that wasn't my best George Costanza impression, it was the results of my taking the Meyers-Briggs test for Jung's personality types .

Although some of you might argue that I have no personality, I seem to be an INTP. The N and T are strong (about 60 and 80 percent), not surprisingly, but I'm borderline E.
More about the architect personality type here .

But of course, don't think you can pigeonhole me :)

New Car

I got my new car this weekend. I haven't taken any picture, but it looks an awful lot like this:


The only difference in mine has a roof rack (which will eventually have an attachment to hold my snowboard!). Oh, the other difference is mine is parked in the garage, not in a canyon.

Good TV

We're getting the carpets cleaned in our apartment today, so i was up late last night, picking up my laundry, putting chairs on tables, and generally making the carpets more accessible.
At midnight on VH1, they played I Love The 90's, (1991). What a great show. Very exciting. I don't really remember what they were talking about, because I was pretty tired, but it was funny.
Before that, I saw The Assistant, which is a reality show with Andy Dick where people try out to be his personal assistant. It is to reality shows what Scary Movie was to horror movies (though i never saw scary movie so maybe i'm wrong). For example he gave the contestants a book about his life and then quizzed them on it later on a fake "Who wants to be a millionaire" type set, with the music & lights and everything.

Pizza and Politics

I took This quiz that Erin mentioned. It asks you a bunch of questions about political issues, then tells you which candidates/parties you align with.
The results: I was a 40% match with Dems, 40% match with the GOP, and, surprise surprise, a 40% match with the Green Party. I did match slightly higher with Kerry than Bush. I forget the exact percentages, but it was less than 10% difference. So I guess I should split up my vote evenly among the candidates. That would be roughly equivalent to (gasp!) not voting.
Who should I vote for and why? (50 words or less).

So sorry about the "pizza" red herring. Some of you might get that reference. Most will not.

Shore Run pictures

Pictures from the road race i did last week are online now.

Important Decisions

What
color car should I get?

I decided on the CR-V and got my financing approved at the bank this morning so I am almost ready to take the plunge.