Gus is home!

Gus is finally home from the animal hospital. He seems to be very happy to be home. He made a pass of the house, sniffing everything to re-acquaint himself, and then he placed a claim to Gerald's coat laying on the floor near the bed. He's been there since last night, only making forays to eat, drink, and request ear scratching or a warm lap for a few minutes.

We've got about 6 different kinds of liquid medicine to give him 2-3 times a day. He doesn't like that, but he tolerates it.

Phoebe is very upset that he's home. She had been happy as a clam while he was gone, but now she is hissing and growling whenever she sees him.

Fortunes

Apologies in advance for this somewhat emo post...

It's easy to get distracted with all the problems you are facing. Our kitty Gus is in the hospital for surgery this morning, and his long-term prognosis is not good. He probably has kidney failure and will need fluid therapy for the rest of his life, which will likely be shortened (he's 7 years old).

As a mental health exercise, and to publicly thank everyone around us keeping us sane, I wanted to put together this quick list of what we're fortunate for.

• We lucked out and were not in St. Croix for the hurricane.
  
• Our home in St. Croix came through Hurricane Omar relatively unscathed.
  
• Our good friends Larry and Blaine have gone to extraordinary lengths in managing repairs and cleanup of our house after the hurricane.
  
• Our move to Las Vegas has gone pretty much without any major problems.
  
• The veterinarians in Las Vegas have more modern equipment than in St. Croix and are more equipped and experienced at handling Gus's illness. (not to say anything bad about St. Croix vets; they are great! It is only due to the size of the population.)
  
• My sister Heather is an emergency veterinary technician and has been enormously generous with her time and consultation about Gus's condition.
  
• All of our friends, families, and coworkers have been understanding and supportive.
  

Anyway, thanks to everyone. I'll keep you posted on how Gus does today.

DISH Network vs. Cox Cable

In case anyone is wondering, DISH Network's DVR interface is far and away better than Cox Cable's. When we signed up for Cox, I tried to find some information on the web about which DVR was better, and I couldn't find any.

I've only been using the Cox DVR for a few days, but here are the deficiencies compared to Dish Networks's DVR:

1. Recorded episodes are displayed in a small confusing list, all jumbled together. Dish's DVR uses the full screen and sorts them nicely by show name.

2. Cox's remote doesn't have a skip forward/back button like Dish has. So to skip commercials, you have to use the fast forward button and hope to time it just right. It's a pain in the ass and takes longer.

3. I haven't found a good way to get episode information about a particular episode on Cox. With DISH, you can get the episode ID, brief description, and many movies have star ratings. Lots more info to figure out what you want to watch.

4. DISH has a special type of recording (I think it's called a season pass or something like that) where you just enter the name of the show/movie, and it records anything matching that name on any channel. I can't find anything like this on Cox.

5. The quality of the high definition channels doesn't seem to be as good. I think Cox has the compression turned way up.

It looks like we have a couple of options. We can either switch to DISH Networks or we can give Tivo a try. It looks like the latest TiVo boxes support SD and HD recording on two channels at once if you use a CableCard decoder from your cable company. I'll have to check with Cox to see if they offer that.

My new favorite airline

I've blogged about airlines before, so I'll let you know about my new favorite airline. Too bad they don't fly to St. Croix.

Virgin America is awesome. I flew them from Las Vegas to San Francisco (direct flight) on Sunday.

They announced an air traffic controller delay due to fog in San Fran. Rather than just let us sit and stew in our own grumpiness, they then immediately announced a bowling game! If you beat your bowling partner, you got a free drink coupon. So they set up a plastic bowling game on the carpet and invited everyone to join in the fun. It was noisy and fun and there was much merriment.

Once that was over, they then kept us entertained with other games, like finding things on Google or seeing who had the oldest penny in their pocket.

While this may seem silly, it's really ingenious from a psychological perspective. It instantly converts the grumpiness of a hundred passengers into bemusement. And if you're in line for the bowling game, you secretly hope that the delay will be extended just a few minutes so you can have a chance to bowl.

But they don't stop there. Once on board, rather than the usual boring announcement from the pilots about who they are and where we're headed, they pulled two kids (age 5-ish) from the passengers and gave them the mic. So you hear this 5-year-old over the PA "My name is Captain Mike... and we will be flying to San Francisco... where the weather is overcast. We will be flying at 30,000 feet." It was hilarious and everyone gave the kids a big round of applause.

Even the safety announcement is fun. They've got a really silly animated cartoon to go along with the safety speech, and they even poke fun at what they're required to say. "For the 0.001% of you who have never used a seatbelt before, here's what to do." And they continue on in an exasperated tone.

The inside of the airplane is lit with colorful red and purple lights, making you feel like you're in a nightclub. And the seats are a very comfortable leather material with modern white plastic backs.

But the best part of all is the in-flight entertainment system that they call Red. It's a Linux-based touchscreen device that has access to TV, movies, etc. Food and drink orders are hooked up to this system so that when I ordered my gin and tonic, a prompt popped up on my screen asking me to swipe my credit card. The system has several free X Windows games (xmahjongg, etc.), an inter-seat chat program, etc. You can watch about 10 channels of satellite TV from their onboard DISH Networks receiver for free. Or you can pay to watch a movie (I think it was $5 to $10). Even better, you can pay somewhere from $0.99 to $2.99 to watch the latest episodes of your favorite sitcoms. I watched two Simpsons episodes for $1.98.

I'm actually looking forward to my flight back to Las Vegas this afternoon. It takes a lot to make me feel like I want to be on a plane, so they've done a great job.

Say It in Crucian

I stopped by Savant last night for dinner to say good-bye to a good friend of mine who works there. (I'm leaving for 3 months.)

Along with the usual great food, drink, and energy, I met an extraordinary couple. Mitch is a bass player who works at the Good Hope school teaching music. We had a great discussion about digital music. And Robin works at UVI teaching English.

I was really impressed by Robin's latest project - a book called "Say it in Crucian". She asked her kids to contribute to help define the Crucian language and explain how it's used. She is working on an accompanying website Crucian Dictiontionary, which doesn't yet have any content.

I find her book fascinating because St. Croix is one of the only places I've seen in the US today where you can watch as a local culture gets assimilated into the culture of its parent country. And no one seems to be documenting it! I find it a bit sad that this local culture is changing so quickly, losing many of its customs and flavor. But it is being replaced by its own unique mixture of US and Caribbean culture.

St. Croix is unique in that its culture has remained distinct due to the distance from the US, difficulty getting here, and delayed access to TV and Internet. That has changed dramatically in the past 20 years with the building of a new airport, increased interest in Caribbean tourism by Americans, better Internet and TV infrastructure, etc. You would think that anthropologists would be all over St. Croix, but I have seen few of them. If you're an anthropologist working on St. Croix, I'd love to hear from you!

Look for "Say it in Crucian" on Amazon in the next few months. Even better, support our local St. Croix businesses and buy a copy here!

Speaking their language

I got laughed at on my bike ride this morning by some people walking on the road.

I came around a corner on the North Shore Rd. I saw the couple taking a morning walk. I prepared to wave and say Good Morning, but I then noticed a dog wandering in the bush to my left. If you're a biker, you know that stray animals get all of your attention.

80% of the dogs I encounter will simply look up at you and then go back to sniffing their ass. But the other 20% will do something unexpected, so you have to keep an eye on them.

This dog looked at me quizzically and then opened his mouth, barking, and took off after me. Prepared, I do what I always do in this situation: I moved to the middle of the road away from him, looked straight in his eyes, and barked as loud as I could.

I can't claim to know what goes through the dog's mind when he sees a human dressed in ridiculously-colored spandex atop a funny-looking contraption made of metal, carbon fiber, and rubber. But I do know that when that human barks at said dog, it will typically stop dead in its tracks, probably confused to no end.

And that's what happened.

When I looked back up, I was just coming upon the couple walking, and they were looking at me laughing. I guess you don't see that everyday. I smiled back.

PS And if you're one of those who have been following my training, yes, I finally made it up The Beast without stopping today!

Enjoy your meal

Maybe it's me, but my microwave disturbs me.

We bought a new one around Christmas time last year. It's got all the regular bells and whistles. But the feature that I found most intriguing was this: after it finishes running, it scrolls across the screen: "ENJOY YOUR MEAL".

There's something about that message that makes me do a double-take. Why is this inanimate object suddenly taking an interest in my meal? Up until this point, it was all just numbers and beeps, a no nonsense machine, just the way I like it. But suddenly, now it sounds like it wants a pat on the back for a job well-done. "Good job microwave; I will think of your hard work and wattage output as I enjoy my meal."

There's something about this hunk of metal trying to impersonate a human that bothers me. For one thing, once you see it display this cheerful message, you realize it must be kind of depressed all the other times when it's simply saying "POWER LVL?" or "REHEAT?". The only time it appears to have a bit of joy in its life is when its timer hits 0:00.

And anyway, how does it know I'm preparing a meal rather than heating up some coffee or zapping a CD, for instance? I almost feel bad putting a snack item or beverage in the microwave now. I'm bound to confuse it. What if it thinks it's a meal and cooks it improperly? Or what if it finally realizes it's not cooking a meal and does something drastic? Like rotate the glass tray the wrong way. Or turn off the light so I can't see what's cooking.

Maybe I'll start opening the door at 0:01. If I'm lucky, I'll start to get a different message after a while. Maybe I'll even get to see it get angry.

But I don't think I could do that. It would be like stamping on a talking bee or uninstalling Microsoft Bob. And that would just be unforgivable.

The Nature of Setting Goals

From my ruminations while bike riding this morning... What is and what isn’t a goal? And how do you best motivate yourself to accomplish a goal?

Maybe this is all too obvious, but I figured it was worth writing up anyway. Hope some of you get some benefit from it.

What I realized when thinking about this is that most people set the wrong kinds of goals for themselves. For instance, a very common goal is, “I want to lose 20 lbs.” or “I want to make $X.” or even, “I want to save $X for retirement.”

These are all terrible goals. While the results are worthy of accomplishing, the goals themselves are without substance. They don’t say what you really want to accomplish, and they focus on the aspects that are painful or unenjoyable: actually losing the 20 lbs or working hard to make the money.

Even if you do accomplish them, there is no incentive for you to maintain that goal. I think this is why so many people on diets gain their weight back. For instance, without a plan for what you will do when you lose the weight, you might as well just put it back on because it’s not giving you any benefit or pleasure. And once you make that $X, without a plan for what to do with it, you’ll probably just spend it on something frivolous.

Instead, consider why you want to accomplish this goal. What is it that you can’t accomplish right now that you want to be able to do? It must be something that is enjoyable to you in some way or gets you excited or makes you feel good to think about it.

Let me give an example. (I feel funny holding myself up as a shining example to make my point. In reality, it was a little less clear-cut, but in retrospect it all fits together pretty well. Perhaps you have better examples you can share by posting a comment.) When I was over 280 lbs, I started to feel left-out from all the physical activities my friends were doing: mountain biking, skiing, etc. Even just walking to the cafeteria, I couldn’t keep up with anyone. But one of the activities that really excited me was skydiving. I had always enjoyed roller coasters and other high-altitude activities (partly because I’m deathly afraid of heights), and skydiving seemed like the ultimate thrill. The problem: The maximum weight they allowed was 250 lbs for a tandem skydive.

I set out to lose the weight. The goal in my mind was not to lose 30 lbs; it was to get to a weight level where I could go skydiving and feel more comfortable doing physical activities with friends. The goal of going skydiving is really what motivated me, not the pseudo-goal of losing 30 lbs. Whenever I thought about going skydiving, I got excited, and it gave purpose to my diet changes; I was doing these not-so-enjoyable diet things for a reason that would ultimately let me do something that would make me happy. I wasn’t doing it just to see the numbers on a scale change.

Although this was a good start, it’s still not exactly the kind of goal I’m talking about. Let’s call the skydiving goal a “milestone goal.” Unless I were to take up skydiving regularly, this is probably something I’m only going to do once, maybe twice. It’s enjoyable and gives you something to focus on, but once you accomplish it, you end up spinning your wheels. You’ve accomplished your goal; now what?

In my case, I suffered from exactly this problem. My partner Gerald surprised me with a skydiving ticket that fall, just after I’d past 250 lbs. I enjoyed the skydive immensely. But now what? I had failed to set a goal past this point, and although I lost another 30 lbs, I plateaued at 220 lbs for about a year and even started gaining some weight back, without a clear goal ahead of me.

The key is to set many “milestone goals” and one or more “ongoing goal.”

After getting frustrated not being able to lose any more weight, I started to consider what I was really after. I remembered from my childhood how much I loved to ride my bike; it gives a tremendous feeling of freedom, and the high from the exercise was beyond comparison. Plus a good friend from high school had recently lost a huge amount of weight by cycling, and she looked great. So I decided that was what I was going to do, too.

I realized I needed an ongoing goal, so I set one. I vowed to start riding my bike to work 2-3 times per week. In addition, I set lots of milestone goals, of which I’ll describe a few. The first goal was to be able to keep up with my family on a bike ride trip to Block Island (a small island off the coast of Rhode Island) we had planned next month. The second was to work up to being able to ride my bike to work once on a weekend, after which I could start riding to work regularly. The last was to get fit enough that I could keep up with other cyclists on the road; then I would reward myself with a road bike, an expensive proposition I really couldn’t afford at the time.

This strategy works! (Do I sound like an infomercial yet?) It gives you something enjoyable to focus on other than the painful changes you have to make to achieve your goal. And, it gives you a reason to maintain your goal once you reach it.

I was able to accomplish my goals and as a consequence, went down to 155 lbs and maintained that weight for several years, while continuing to bike to work. Notice that I said the weight loss was a consequence of my goals; it wasn’t really my primary goal. However, now that I no longer have a job to commute to (I work at home for NormSoft), I’m struggling to find a new ongoing goal to keep me fit. Hence the ruminations on my ride this morning.

For a good book that will get you thinking more in this vein, I recommend “The 4-Hour Workweek” by Timothy Ferriss.

I’d love to hear from you about goals you’ve accomplished by thinking in this way. Feel free to add comments to this post.

Riddims

Did you know that the Virgin Islands (and St. Croix in particular) is THE place for up-and-coming Reggae?

I have met several people on the plane while returning to St. Croix who were on their way to our island to enjoy the world-class reggae musicians. While we were in Hawaii, several of the locals there were excited to hear we were from St. Croix because they enjoy so much of the reggae music that comes out of the Virgin Islands.

I don't know a lot about Reggae but I definitely enjoy it. Yesterday I visited our local music store, Riddims in Christiansted. I picked up two CDs: Mahogany Road by Abja and Back to Africa by Harry Mo. Both of them are quite good!

A lot of these artists are not available on Amazon MP3 or iTunes, but you can buy the CDs from http://www.viroots.com/. They also have a podcast there where you can listen to a selection of artists before deciding on a CD.

I hope you will browse the selection and enjoy some of our great local music!

Delta adding flights to St. Croix this winter

Just received this from the USVI Department of Tourism:

Service from Atlanta (Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport) will be offered four times per week, as of December 20.

Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Thursday service

St. Croix Customs Officials Harassing Tourists

I am very upset about this. One of our guests from the mainland (a US citizen) visited us this week and just left on an American Eagle flight today.

When going through Customs to leave St. Croix, the customs officer told her that he could not admit her without a passport because he couldn't prove that she was a US Citizen.

The Virgin Islands Department of Tourism has been very clear about this, as has the US Federal Government. "U.S. Citizens traveling to and returning directly from a U.S. territory are not considered to have left the U.S. territory and do not need to present a passport." There are signs up all over the place that state you do not need a passport to travel to the US Virgin Islands, and I've heard and seen it advertised widely.

After some back and forth, they finally allowed her through.

This is the second guest of ours that this has happened to, so this is not a one-time occurrence. Why are these Customs officers making tourists to our islands uncomfortable by harassing them? This is just unbelievable.

Mobile Me

It's not just me. Even Steve Jobs doesn't think MobileMe was ready for prime time.

Dumping glue into the pool

We ran out of water!

Gerald was filling the pool, and the pump lost prime. After trying to re-prime it a few times, we realized that the cistern was empty. Doh!

We switched to our 2nd small cistern, which will last us a month or so without rain for the 2 of us. Too bad we have some guests coming next week, doubling or tripling our water usage. We may have to order some water, which is delivered in a large truck that holds 3,000 gallons or more. Average price is $0.01 to $0.03 per gallon, depending on the quality, last I checked.

So with a 75,000 gallon cistern, how did we run out of water? The problem is the pool. It's got lots of small leaks. We were unable to locate the leaks by dropping food coloring in the pool, but we were losing close to 2" of water per day.

We talked to the former owners of the house, and it turns out our house is located directly over a fault line for the neighborhood. We get lots of minor tremors in the Caribbean all the time, and they eventually lead to cracks in the pool, walls, and anything concrete. (In fact, one day last year, I walked into the guesthouse to find that a dozen tiles had popped up, making a small tent shape! Our best guess is that there was a little tremor that put pressure on the tiles, and they popped.)

So the only real solution is to regularly use this stuff that I think is called Leak Stop or something like that. It's basically a bottle of viscous glue that you dump into the pool. You take out all the filters and run the pump to circulate it, and it gradually gets into the cracks and solidifies. Obviously you can't use the pool for a few days while this is going on!

So we did that 2 days ago, and so far so good. The pool is losing a lot less water than before, so hopefully our water woes will be solved. We still lose a little bit, and hopefully that's mostly due to evaporation. We're at the top of the hill so the wind will evaporate more water than you'd think, especially if the water is warm, which it usually is due to our solar pool heater.

Keep your fingers crossed; let's see if it holds!

Damn volcanoes

We woke up this morning to find everything outside covered in a thin layer of gritty dust. It turns out Montserrat had a partial collapse that caused dust to spew into the atmosphere and make its way to the Virgin Islands.

This pesky volcano has troubled us before. When we first flew down to St. Croix 3 years ago in June, Montserrat had errupted, and American Eagle cancelled all flights to St. Croix from San Juan because the ash in the jet stream was dangerous to their planes. Of course they didn't compensate us for the night's stay in San Juan (which ended up costing $400 due to all the hotels being full for a large motorcycle conference) because it was an act of God. Fair enough, I suppose; bad luck on our part.

Other Ways to Get to St. Croix

Since I've sworn off American for now, I've been doing some research on how to get off the rock (aka St. Croix). I figured this info may be useful to people trying to get to St. Croix, too, so here it is... Note: All the prices are estimates based on August 2008; I'm sure they will change quite a bit through the year.

LIAT Airlines: This is a Caribbean-only airline. They fly to pretty much all of the islands. From St. Croix, you can get to St. Maarten directly (see my note about AirFrance below for getting to/from Europe!). Here is a great map of LIAT's destinations. I've heard that they are never on time, so book extra time if possible. 20% of their flights are late, and 9% of them are excessively late, according to www.flightstats.com. About $90-$110 each way from St. Croix to St. Maarten. Delay statistics from STX to SXM

Delta: Delta flies to St. Croix direct from Atlanta every Saturday. If you are coming and/or going from/to a major city on a Saturday, chances are you can connect through Atlanta and get to St. Croix with just one hop. Prices run about $521 round-trip from Atlanta to St. Croix.

Cape Air: You can get tickets from St. Croix to San Juan ($120-$170 one way) or St. Thomas ($85-$100 one way). It's a tiny Cessna plane, and I've heard people call it "Cape Fear", but they're professional and I've heard lots of good things about them as well. From San Juan or St. Thomas, you can catch flights on a whole bunch of other airlines. The obvious ones (United, US Airways, Continental, etc.) are available through Expedia and other travel websites. But there are a few good airlines that aren't covered by most of the travel websites, so I've listed them below.

Seaborne Airlines: This sea plane has lots of flights between St. Croix and St. Thomas or Puerto Rico. They are not at the airport, so you will need to take a taxi if you are connecting to another airline. In St. Croix, they leave from Christiansted. Between St. Croix and St. Thomas, fares run $70-$115 one-way. St. Croix to San Juan: $115 to $170 one-way.

Jet Blue: From San Juan, you can fly to lots of other cities on Jet Blue. Check around for specials; sometimes you will see fares as low as $100 each way from San Juan to Boston or other major cities.

Spirit Airlines: From San Juan or St. Thomas, Spirit flies to Ft. Lauderdale. From there, you can take Spirit to lots of other US, Central, and South American destinations. You can also hop on one of the many discount airlines that fly to Ft. Lauderdale. Flights are reasonable, but they tack on dozens of nickel and dime fees, $10 for aisle or window seats, checked baggage fees, etc. However, they often have a "Big Front Seat" available for a reasonable premium. It's a first-class size seat, but at much cheaper prices than you'd pay for first class on other airlines (there is no additional service; just extra room). San Juan to Ft. Lauderdale usually runs around $125 one-way for regular seats or $140 for the big seats.

AirTran: From San Juan, you can get direct flights to Orlando, Atlanta, and Baltimore, and from there you can get to many other places. With web specials, you can get to Orlando for as cheap as $90 one-way. Normal flights seem to be about $100-$260 depending on how much advance notice you give.

Getting to/from Europe: From some of the other Caribbean Islands, you can get flights directly to European cities for decent prices. For example, you can get from Paris to St. Maarten on AirFrance for around 1,000 Euro. Sometimes this is cheaper than going through Miami or Boston. Just be careful if connecting on LIAT because I've heard their flights are never on time. Also, to book the other direction (from St. Croix to France), you have to book on their French website: www.airfrance.fr. Hope you speak a little French. I haven't actually completed a ticket, so I'm not sure if you need a French address to buy a ticket there or not.

I haven't looked in much detail for other European flights, but I believe there are some other direct flights to Spain and/or England from the Caribbean.

Hope this info is helpful to someone!

Bonkalicious

The best thing about bonking (or even just strenuous prolonged exercise) is the condition that I am going to call "bonkalicious". I did a Google search, and it seems I am the first to coin this term for this particular meaning...

If you don't know what bonking is, follow the link to Wikipedia. It's not what you may think, you people with dirty minds!

When you have bonked or have been cycling for at least several hours, your taste buds miraculously modify themselves. Suddenly, even the most mundane foods taste like gourmet meals. (And other foods that are normally tasty start to taste like something you would line a litter box with.)

Let me give an example. I did a 300k (185 mile) randonneuring ride 3 years ago with my friend Jeff. At the 100 mile mark, they had a nice little lunch stop. I made myself a ham and salami sandwich with mayonnaise. Just a piece of Wonder bread, generic salami, baked ham, american cheese, and Hellman's. I swear it was the best sandwich I've ever eaten.

At the last rest stop of the ride, they had some summer sausage - you know, that questionable meat stick that doesn't require refrigeration. I couldn't stop eating it. I swear there was some kind of drug in it. It was bonkalicious.

I'm sure all other cyclists are aware of this effect, but I thought I would put a name to it.

I experienced this phenomenon today to some extent. I had a flat tire half-way through my 35 mile ride. I have been eating a light breakfast before my rides to try to lose weight, and then timing my rides so that I don't run out of steam but burn into some of my reserves. (This is how I lost 60 lbs in 6 months several years ago.) Unfortunately, the flat tire threw me off, and the 15-20 minutes in the hot sun to fix it dried me out. I ended up bonking about 3 miles from home. I had to stop and walk up the last little hill to our house because I felt I might faint. Ooops, dumb mistake. I should have brought some food.

But, the benefit of this mistake was that any leftovers I had in the fridge were bonkalicious. I couldn't get enough 3-day old food for my lunch!

Won't ever be using American Airlines again

I'm sure many people won't think this is interesting news, what with the implosion of airline profits lately. But it just goes to prove that the airlines don't have a clue, and their negative profits are due to their own failures. Rather than creating reasons NOT to fly them (e.g. baggage surcharges, rude flight attendants, poor customer support), they should be creating reasons that I should fly with them, ESPECIALLY reasons that don't really cost them anything.

From St. Croix, it's pretty hard to get a flight on any airline other than American, but it is possible to fly on Delta, Cape Air, and sometimes Continental. So I have been booking all of my flights on AA for the past three years while I've lived here. I travel on average once a month, so understandably, I've accumulated quite a lot of frequent flyer miles and been giving Platinum status. We also often fly employees here for meetings, and they all use American for their travel to St. Croix and some trips elsewhere. So you think American would love me by now. Not so.

My last three legs of flights through American have all been canceled, each one requiring an overnight stay, wasting nearly 72 hours of my time. That, alone, is maybe forgivable as bad luck until you realize that all 3 flights that were canceled were canceled due to mechanical problems. Completely their fault. (On one of them, an airline mechanic for a different airline was seated next to me. When he heard what the problem was, he told me it was a non-issue and that it was well within tolerances and pilots just liked to complain about it all the time. They canceled the flight anyway.) American "compensated" me by giving me 3,000 miles for the first canceled flight, nothing for the 2nd, and 5,000 for the 3rd. That's a total value of $200 dollars, valuing my 72 lost hours at $2.78/hr. Gee, thanks.

Understandably, my next flight is booked through a different airline.

But here's where it gets worse. I called American to give them a chance to win back my business. I have to imagine that customers usually don't do this after being screwed 3 times in a row. After being transfered 3 times by sympathetic CSRs, I finally spoke with John Lindsy in the "Executive Office". I explained my situation (3 canceled flights in a row, travel 10-12 times per year, 10 employees that fly occasionally), and I made a simple request. I'm already well into Platinum status with American; give me a complimentary upgrade to Executive Platinum, just for the remainder of the plan year (8 months). It has a few extra benefits that don't really cost AA anything; priority boarding and upgrades (space available - so those seats would be empty anyway), etc. and I would give American another shot.

His response was quite simple: "No," he said. "If I give you Executive Platinum status, I'd have to give it to everyone." "No", I responded, "only to Platinum members who have gotten canceled three times in a row and use your airline exclusively." "Well, there are many people in that situation, so I can't grant you that request." "Wow, I'm very disappointed. What are you willing to offer me to convince me to try American again?" "We've already given you 8,000 miles. That's all that we can compensate you." "You can take back those 8,000 miles if you want to offer me something else; frankly they don't even come close to making me want to try American again." "You can donate those miles to charity if you don't want them."

Wow, just wow... I thought American's frequent flyer program was good, but it's all just a game. They are not interested in retaining their regular customers, even with simple and cheap requests.

Apple's MobileMe not ready for prime time

I signed up for MobileMe today, and it just plain doesn't work.

After futzing with it for nearly an hour, it finally synced my data from my Mac to me.com. Before that, me.com just showed a blank calendar and contacts.

But then, trying to open the calendar or contacts was excruciating. It sat there for minutes and still hadn't drawn all the appointments. And while it's doing this, there's no indication that it's busy, and you can't click on anything. Totally useless. And this is with Safari, Apple's own browser.

Immediately canceled my account. Maybe I'll try MobileMe 2.0, but I'll stick with Plaxo for now for calendar and contact sync... Apple's trying to do too much.

Answering Customer Support

There was a discussion on a mailing list I'm subscribed to where developers were complaining that they couldn't tell if a customer contacting them about their iPhone app is a paying customer or not. This was seen as such a bad thing that developers were discussing ways of creating unique IDs for each customer that would be required to submit a support request. Here is my response.

Shameless plug: Check out our new iPhone/iPod Touch app: Mecrets password manager with the really cool Touch Lock interface!

Maybe I'm being slow, but under what condition would it ever make sense NOT to reply to a support email about your product? From what I can tell, there are a few different reasons someone could email you:

1. They haven't bought your product but are interested, so they ask a question. If you give them an answer, they are more likely to buy your product, so you are increasing your revenue. In addition, you learn about what people are confused about, so you can improve your description and other marketing materials to minimize pre-sales questions and maximize buyers.

2. They have already bought it and have a problem/question. If you answer them, they are more likely to be happy with the product, tell their friends about it, buy upgrades, etc. Not to mention less likely to request a refund.

3. They are not serious but have some time to kill and want to annoy you. In my experience, this is an extremely rare case, and you can easily pick out these customers because they are rude or make ridiculous feature requests.

So why would you want to force your customers to go through the pain of typing in some multi-digit code just to ask a question?

If you want to reduce support, make your product better. It's pretty obvious, but I'll give an example: we had several releases of Pocket Tunes where we focused on all the support issues that kept coming up. After those releases went out, support volume went down dramatically.

Or you can just commit yourself to being a bargain basement developer with no support, which is a fine strategy because you can sell to people who want cheap software that kind of works.

But then again, I'm happy if everyone else gives terrible support to customers because that's another differentiator for us. :)

Gnarly, dude

Apparently I'm "gnarly". That's what the guy in the convertible said.

I rented a bike in Maui a few days ago. I asked the bike shop employee whether I should attempt to ride up Haleakala. He said that if I could do the West Maui loop, I could do Haleakala no problem.

So today I attempted the west Maui loop. (Here is the hard part of the loop.) I failed to complete it on a technicality...

After a few modest climbs approaching the north shore of west Maui, I ran into some cyclists taking some photos, so I stopped to take my own photos and chat. They warned me about "The Wall", which is a hill coming up that's around a 15% gradient. But they assured me that it was the hardest hill; once you get past that, it's not bad.

I willed myself to prepare for the climb, and when I saw it coming around the bend, I pulled out every stop. I felt strong, but I could only make it up halfway and I walked the rest. At the top of the hill, an older gentleman at the side of the road held up his thumb for a ride. I told him to hop on.

The north shore of Maui is desolate and beautiful. Picture a narrow one-lane road winding through the mountainous coast, going from sea level to 1,000+ ft and back. In many places, the edge of the road drops off at an extreme angle with no guard rails. There are dozens of signs reading "falling rock", and they aren't kidding. In a few places, the road was completely blocked with dirt and rock. The views of Molokai and Haleakala were beyond description; it's something you can only experience by being there. Though I took many pictures, they come nowhere near the experience.

It was right about when I was sipping my last drop of energy drink (and realizing that I had 15 miles to go to the next big town) that I passed a sign for the "smoothie bus 1 mile". Unfortunately the smoothie bus was closed, as was the next little shop with a sign for shave ice. Luckily Lorraine Shave Ice in Kahakuloa had a "We're Open" sign. I pulled in and enjoyed a wonderful mango shave ice, sampled some toasted coconut, and chatted with some other cyclists stopped here. The shop owner (Lorraine?) was nice enough to have a gallon of ice-cold water sitting out for cyclists!

Amazingly, the man who had been hitch hiking showed up a few minutes later! He calls himself "King of the Road" and spends his days hitch hiking around the island and meeting new people. What a life!

It was after I'd started up the hill past town that the convertible passed me. The road was barely wide enough for a car, and the right side was covered in gravel that had fallen from the hill above me. To the right was a cliff going straight up, and to the left was another cliff going straight down, giving a lovely view of the little village I'd just stopped in. There were hardly any cars on the north shore, probably because the rental agency prohibits you from taking their cars here! But the one that passed me had a young guy and woman in it. I rode in the gravel to let him by and as he did, he shook his head and said, "You're gnarly, man!" I just laughed and continued cycling.

Little did I know that this hill went unrelenting up from 0 to 1,000 ft. I was nearly toast by the time I hit the top. I called Gerald and told him I'd be a few hours late and mentioned that it looked like a nice downhill coming up. That was an understatement. It was a screaming downhill section curving down the mountain that reminded me of the descents I enjoyed in France. With few cars on the road and not too much sand or gravel, I had a blast screaming around corners and enjoying the wind and views.

The rest of the trip was nondescript. I stopped in town for a donut. Back on the highway, I enjoyed a strong tailwind and slight downhill for 5 miles! I hardly had to pedal, which made it all the harder when the road finally flattened out.

For the technicality... I was 5 miles from the hotel, and the breakdown lane was closed for construction. Not wanting to risk joining the 45mph traffic in the one and only lane, I called Gerald and had him pick me up.

As far as I'm concerned, I made it. Haleakala or bust later this week!