A quick Google showed a history of COM Exceptions and EndNote. The most helpful was an old blog post comment suggesting I delete ~/Library/Preferences/com.ThompsonEndnote.plist.

I closed both applications, deleted the file, and voilà, no more problems.

For the record, I don’t like EndNote. I get to use it because that’s what our advisor wants. Before this paper, I’d been using Sente, a Mac-only app that is actually usable and intuitive.

I booked on Priceline.com. I needed to be in Atlanta for a day, so flew in late last night via Frontier Airlines.

On the first leg of the trip (with Frontier partner, United), the flight left 20 minutes late because a computer failure required all baggage to be processed manually. Fortunately, the pilot was able to make up the time (and then some) on the way to Denver.

On the second leg of the trip (Denver to Atlanta, on Frontier), the flight was delayed more than an hour for “weather reasons,” although no other flight into Atlanta, both from the same airline and from any other airline was delayed out of Denver. When questioned, Atlanta locals admitted there was some light rain that morning, but nothing that should have caused delays. After boarding, we sat on the tarmac for another hour waiting to take off while the pilot got clearance from the tower. We got in about two-and-a-half hours late.

Frontier Airlines cancelled my return flight, and didn’t tell me until I arrived at the airport. The agent at the counter said it was due to mechanical reasons. They claimed to have contacted the hotel I was staying at, but I had checked out in the morning—I was staying only the single night, after all. Although I had provided my contact information to Priceline.com, the airline was only given my hotel number. Frontier had no later flights, and they refused to provide a ticket on another airline that was leaving a couple of hours later. I was not offered any compensation for likely hotel charges caused by their inability to properly run an airline.

Checking with Delta (the other carrier who did have a flight running), a one-way ticket would have cost me in excess of $750, due to exorbitant walk-up prices (+ taxes; no love from Delta either). No wonder airlines are never profitable. The marginal cost to get me on that flight would have been negligible, but it seems they would rather do without the extra money than actually provide airline service.

The Frontier Airlines representative gave me the phone number to the airline’s “customer service center.” She neglected to mention they’d closed already. (5:00 pm Mountain. Really?) I had the option of leaving a voicemail to tell them what I think of them, and how I would very much like them to give me money back for not providing the service I paid for. I hung up without leaving a message rather than break into uncontrolled swearing.

I figured maybe Priceline.com might be willing to help out. Nope. After entering my eleven-digit confirmation number and home phone number, the answering agent asked for it all again. (I despise when companies do this—and many companies are guilty. If you require information be keyed in, provide it to the answering agent and stop wasting my time!)

I explained my problem to the agent, who put me on hold for 10 minutes while he “logged the details of my problem into the computer.” Uh-huh. He then came back on the line and told me the hotel fee was non-refundable. WTF? That had nothing to do with my problem. I explained again I was stuck in Atlanta because the airline was clueless, and would like them to find me a way home. More waiting. I finally got a warm hand-off (at least he got that part right) to a guy who told me the entire thing was non-refundable (even when it was the fault of the airline—federal consumer protection laws be damned), and that they would do nothing for me, not even check to see how much a flight on the other airline would cost me (it might be less than the walk-up rate). At no time did the fact that I paid for a service they were unable to provide factor in to his thinking.

The trouble with this story is that it could have easily been prevented or solved by either company.

Priceline.com: (1) Forward my contact phone number to the airline. The say they tried calling me. They could have only gotten my hotel’s phone number from you–go ahead and give them my actual contact information. It would have been easier. I would have have to cut my meetings short by a few hours, but at least then I might have had some options. It would have prevented the entire snafu. (2) Implement a useful automated answer program. The last thing you want to do is make a frustrated customer irate, and that’s all your system seems to do from my end. (3) Take care of your customer. The airline’s cancellation was beyond my control. Bend over backward to get me out of Atlanta, and not only am I your customer for life, you get a heartwarming story told to everyone about how cool you are. A permanent customer, and some free word-of-mouth publicity for a couple hundred dollars. Instead you get this. I hope it costs more.

Fronteir Airlines: (1) Again, would it really have been that difficult to have put me on another airline? This was your fault, after all. The customer desk agent was polite, and surprisingly helpful, although she maintained a somewhat condescending attitude. Again, is the cost of losing a customer and bad publicity worth the little bit extra it would have cost you to put me on a different airline? You already have my money, after all. (1b) As a second, half-baked make-up attempt to win me back, you can refund my money for the second flight (or provide some other consideration for the inconvenience), but I won’t hold out hope. I have no expectation you will respond with any sort of integrity; you are in the airline business, after all. (2) You may want to consider waiting until after all of your domestic flights have left (or, even better, arrived!) before closing your customer service center. Really.

UPDATE: Frontier cancelled another of my flights on the way home (no explanation), keeping me in Denver for several extra hours, and forcing me to (again) reschedule my transportation home from the airport. It was in Denver that I saw the first smiling Frontier employee of the trip too.

In July and August I was able to finish up work with the startup I’d been developing for, helping them see their first profitable quarter. The long hours hunched over a computer quickly transitioned to long hours studying, as I quit work to go back to grad school full-time.

During these past few months, I’ve been wanting to blog about several things, including:

• Draft legislation [pdf] (as yet unnumbered), as discussed by the Joint Education Interim Committee on 14 Nov, which proposes to make the State Board of Education partisan, and increase its elected membership from 15 to 29 (a bad idea)
• Rubber ducking (aka “Talk to the duck”)
• Prototype, script.aculo.us, and Christophe Porteneuve’s excellent book, which I was privileged to review
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, by Patrick M. Lencioni, particularly the part about how effective teams encourage controversy

Life threw another curve-ball last week: we learned our three-year-old son, Tobin, has cancer. The response from family, friends, colleagues, and even strangers has been overwhelming. Despite this new trial, I feel truly blessed.

I’ve avoided delving much into personal matters thus far, but I’m gong to break my own rule, and chronicle Tobin’s treatment in future posts. (Subscribe to the Tobin-specific RSS feed .)

I was driving home from a family reunion over the Christmas holiday when someone ran out in front of my car, waving for me to stop. It was dark. I was on the freeway. I swerved, missed him and pulled over immediately. Someone came running up to my car yelling for a phone. It was then that I saw the car off the side of the road, pointing the wrong direction.

Knowing I would be a bit calmer on the phone than the hysterical person screaming for help, I called for an ambulance as I ran over to the car. A young girl, a high school student, was laying face down in the frozen mud. The car had rolled several times, and she had been ejected out of the rear window.

I provided what little help I could, and assisted with CPR as the paramedics arrived. I left that night not knowing whether she would make it. It was only when I returned home the following day that I discovered she had passed away.

The experience messed me up emotionally for the next several days. I didn’t even know the girl; I only later learned her name from news reports. It’s been several weeks since this happened, and I still brood over it. I don’t know that it’s something I’ll ever be completely over.

A primary seat belt law

The accident occurred in a state with a primary seat belt law. Buckling up would have saved her life. The other (buckled) passengers escaped with only minor injuries.

Nearby states with primary safety belt laws have done studies of safety belt usage, and found a significant increase in compliance under a primary enforcement law combined with extensive public awareness campaigns.

I hope the legislature will pass SB36, which would make Utah a primary seat belt state. Some legislators reportedly want more research to be done on whether it would be effective. Other states have already done the work, why should we repeat it? A primary law successfully increases compliance. It saves lives.

Improve public safety campaigns

I have sometimes been negligent about buckling myself in the rear seat, thinking the back seat is inherently safer. No more. I urge those responsible for public safety campaigns will include information about the importance of buckling rear seat passengers.

I can’t begin to comprehend the pain her family is going through. Even as detached as I was, I can’t help but experience depression, wondering what could have been done differently, and why it had to happen to someone so young. I can’t imagine the horror the driver must still feel.

Please, pass a primary seat belt law.

Being without electricity for a short time isn’t a big deal, but the power company estimates it will take about four days to get our neighborhood back on line. The lines weren’t just knocked down, a row of utility poles snapped in half. These pictures were taken here about a block from my house, which was thankfully undamaged. There is similar damage a couple blocks East of me as well.

Pictures were cropped/thumbnailed/rounded with EasyCrop and EasyFrame for OS X.

I am however, embarassed and disgusted my the ABC announcers who repeatedly insulted not only the match referee, but every person who has ever officiated a soccer match. The post-game vitriol included these choice phrases:

Players win games, coaches lose games, and referees ruin games… There are two kinds of referees: bad ones and worse one.

ABC commentator in post-game show following World Cup 2006, Italy v. U.S.A., 17 June.

This barbed rhetoric is in poor taste, and ABC/ESPN should be ashamed to employ those who spout it unchallenged. Having been stamped with the network’s seal of approal, baseless phrases such as these are repeated in youth soccer and amateur leagues, and serve only to tear down. Youth soccer loses a significant number of young referees each year because coaches and parents inappropriately harrass and belittle them.

One of the in-game comentators (the obligatory former player) complained about the referee every 10 minutes through the entire second half, more than once predicting it would be this referee’s last World Cup match. While this announcer had fair insight into strategy and positioning, I lost all respect his knowledge of the laws of the game.. He referred multiple times to “new rules from FIFA” regarding fouls—there haven’t been any in the past several years, only position papers emphasizing the long-standing rule that fouls designed to injure an opponent must be considered “serious foul play” and deserve a red card. (Two of the three red cards issued are clearly in this category.) He also referred to Mastroeni’s send off as a “make-up call.” It was anything but, and deserving of a red card in any match.

Lest one think I’m off in left field, international news outlets agreed with the official’s major decisions:

Moments later, Mastroeni was off too. His two-footed, reckless lunge on Pirlo was deserving of a red card and left referee Jorge Larrionda with little option.

BBC Sport,“Italy 1-1 USA”
Referenced Sun, 18 Jun 2005 22:54 (MDT)

Pablo Mastroeni lunged into a two-footed tackle on the shin of Andrea Pirlo—so late and so vicious, it was a wonder there was no breaking of bone—and was dismissed.

… Why had this match turned into such an atrocity, given that every team in the tournament was given a clear warning about Fifa’s intentions and given that other countries had all appeared to be putting the good of the game to the fore? Within two minutes of the second half, Pope launched a reckless tackle from behind on Gilardino. What could he expect but another yellow card, the clear diktat before this tournament began?

The Times [London], “The beautiful game turns ugly”
Referenced Sun, 18 Jun 2005 22:51 (MDT)

All of the red cards handed out by Uruguayan referee Jorge Larrionda were justified and he maintained control of the match despite the at times violent play.

Der Spiegel, “USA Ties Italy in a Match Marred by Rough Play”
Referenced Sun, 18 Jun 2005 22:51 (MDT)

Better Blogging

It hasn’t been a priority, but I’m guilty of violating several of Jakob Nielsen’s Top Ten Design Mistakes of Web Logs. Not a good state for a web developer who professes to know a thing or two about Internet usability. I rationalize that since I’m aware of the mistakes, it somehow makes it less egregious.

• Expect to see better author profile, complete with a picture.
• I will post weekly. I was doing well enough until the holiday season started, and I have several excuses as to why this is so. I will do better.
• I will use more pictures in posts. This will be difficult, as I don’t have a good graphics package on my primary computer (a 12″ PowerBook), but it’s something to work toward.
• This site will include a reading list. This is partly to play with Amazon’s web services, partly to add a little more personality to what I feel is an otherwise plain page from a visual design perspective.

Better Writing

My wife keeps asking why I blog. One of several reasons is to become a better writer. Since I’ve started taking the time each week (okay, some weeks) to write something I hope is useful, I’ve seen improvement in my writing. I will continue writing, and I will read books and blogs with the intent of improving my writing.

As I was searching for full-time employment last fall, another long-term writing goal clarified itself: I intend to write at least two books in my lifetime, one fiction, one non-fiction. (Having them published would be a nice plus.) A more short-term step is to be published in a magazine (and be paid for it). I’m not expecting to be published this year; I have no set goal when I want it to happen, but I hope to be a couple of baby-steps closer by this time next year.

Better Programming

I agree with other who suggest many computer science graduates are ill-prepared to design software. As I’ve mentioned before, I enjoyed reading Head First Design Patterns, and am looking forward to The Best Software Writing I, collected by Joel Spolsky from joelonsoftware.com, and a handful of other books on the subject.

I keep toying with the idea of contributing to an open source project. A grandiose vision would be to participate in a large application, like Firefox, but the learning curve to entry is intimidating, and honestly, I’m not sure I can spare the time I would want to devote to a project of that magnitude.

Resolution

Pardon the pun, but I had to give my closing section some sort of title. I’m not really a fan of New Year’s resolutions. When resolutions are made because everyone is doing it, there is little hope for success. The goals listed here are ones I’ve been working toward for a few months now. (As I said, I’m simply hoping to give them additional impetus by posting them publicly.) If I’m not living up to these goals, call me on it.

However, I did come across an article that deserves repeating. If we have ever felt like the U.S. has been providing humanitarian aide to the world, but that no one ever does us any favors, we need to read this:

The State Department says the U.S. has accepted pledges of more than $1 billion in aid from 95 other nations. Even so, there are news reports from several countries that say their offers have not been acknowledged. In Sweden a C-130 transport plane has been ready to lift off with a water purification system, blankets, and mobile network equipment for four days – but has yet to get U.S. approval. Some of the problem, just as it has been with aid offers here in the United States, is clearly a logistical one and the State Department, which is not used to such coordination, has said as much… In the meantime, it would be best if Americans – and that includes our letter writer and the president – show a bit more graciousness over the outpouring of offers.

To India, which has offered $5 million in aid and has a planeload of supplies ready to depart.

To Canada, which is sending three warships and a coast guard ship to to Gulf Coast with emergency assistance and already has Canadian divers working on repairing the damaged harbor at Pascagoula, Mississippi.

To Mexico, which has an army convoy headed overland with supplies and a navy ship on the way. To Thailand, which is donating food.

To Kuwait, which has donated $400 million in oil and $100 million in cash. To the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, both of which have donated $100 million in cash. To Ireland, which donated $5 million to the Red Cross.

To North Korea, $30 million in cash and donations; to Australia, $7.6 million; to China, $5.1 million in cash and relief.

And to Bosnia, which has offered the United States $6,414 cash.

To them all we say, “Thank you. Thank you for your donations and for your thoughts. We will remember this.”

Journal Times Online: A generous world gives U.S. help
Referenced Tue, 09 Sep 2005 11:39 (MDT)