Cox Crow

I may be the only who cares, but I’d like Google, or Yahoo!, or anybody, to do something nifty with the mailing list message headers.

Back from a wonderful trip in Florida, where we slid between hurricanes into fabulous weather, lost two pieces of luggage, and have nothing but nice things to say about Disney Cruise Lines and JetBlue.

But Larry and I weren’t able to meet. 🙁 Maybe next time. It’ll only be two years.

We finally made the leap from analog to digital photography, and have started our period of adjustment. We bought an Olympus D-580. I haven’t found anything to complain about, yet, but give me time. The shutter is sluggish in low-light situations; I understand this is a problem with all digital cameras.

When I transferred the pictures to our iMac, with iPhoto, I chose to “delete images from camera after transferring.” Half were transferred successfully, and all were deleted successfully. This was not good. It appears that the cause of failure was a full disk. Looks like iPhoto needs to catch a disk full error.

Anyway, Rick Ochoa reminded me that there are photo recovery utilities, so I quickly bought and used PhotoRescue. There are lots of choices out there, but this seems to work well enough.

Transparent backend systems integration is critical to brand management.

I called JetBlue to find that Sunday’s and Monday’s flights to Orlando were cancelled, and rescheduled for Tuesday. Then I called Disney Cruise Line‘s Cruise Command Center to rearrange our trip. They were helpful, within limits, and patient with my displeasure. Because, you see, while they were quite forgiving about fees related to changes, they had a problem: they could not reschedule the four nights at the resort. Nor could they refund any monies from our losing Sunday and Monday. Because one company, Disney Cruise Line, buys packages from another, Walt Disney World, and has no leeway to alter the terms of the package. It was just not possible for them to move the four days from before the cruise to after the cruise.

The could, however, cancel the land package, and give us a partial refund. Meanwhile, I would have to book those nights separately, with Walt Disney World.

The customer sees both companies as the same company, and expects them to act like it. Being able to act like it is a system integration problem, but it appears that contractual arrangements between these companies got in the way.

Good night,
sleep tight,
don’t let the bedbugs bite,
cuz they bite me every night

The introduction of the new iMac almost eliminates CRTs from Apple’s inventory. I should think before I speak. I forgot about the iLamp.

I tend to prefer red over white wines, but I’m drinking the Glenora 2003 Seyval Blanc Finger Lakes. It’s well done, somewhat sweet, but tolerable.

While 2.1 million people have been ordered to evacuate Florida, we’re planning to fly in. Makes a lot of sense, right? Anyway, I spent a fair amount of time shuffling our schedule around today. No change fees were charged, but Disney Cruise Lines didn’t want to move the first day of our package to after the cruise, so we’re waiting for JetBlue to cancel Sunday’s flight. Sunday’s flights were cheaper than the one we originally booked, so we’re spending a tidy sum less.

Last night when I tucked in the Big Sister, she asked,

Dad, are we still going on our trip?

Yes. There’s a big storm that will be there then, so we could be leaving later. But we’re still going.

OK. Could you tell Mom, ’cause she’s worried.

CNN:

Florida Keys, September 1935, Death toll: 423

The “Great Labor Day” storm was the most intense category 5 hurricane to make landfall in the United States. Its winds were strong enough to derail a train sent to rescue World War I veterans who had been working on a government building project in the Keys.

Rick Klau pointed out Disney’s Magical Gatherings software. I hadn’t thought to use it, since I’m just planning for my immediate family’s trip into the eye of the storm.

I’m a bit more critical than Rick is. Tinkerbell’s lantern glowed as I noted my favorites, but there’s no easy way to see what the new information is. By “easy” I mean something I spot immediately. There are a number of areas for improvement which rely on data integration in Disney’s backend: cruise and resort reservations, dinner reservations, operating schedules, and so forth. I’m asked to login to the site, when I’ve already identified myself to the application. The chat function uses AIM’s port assignment, tcp/5190, though I would have expected them to use Jabber.

One item that I’d like given the current situation is notification of weather events with helpful links to Disney emergency planning. “We see that you’ll be arriving on September 4th. Did you know there’s a hurricane? Disney World rarely closes, but we will gladly change your reservation if you’d like.”

I spent many a summer day drooling over the candy counter in the H & H Cash Store, run by the Herrold family. It sits on the corner of Main and Spruce Streets, across from the courthouse. They stocked the best cheeses; large blocks of Colby or Monterey Jack, from which Jack or Gaye would cut a pound, or just a hunk so we could see if we liked it. Jack died just before we visited Highland in July.

The Highland Telephone Cooperative found a new building, and the former offices have become The Stone Hearth. They put on a good spread. I had the rainbow trout.

Looking southeast out of town on U.S. 250, you can see what I think is the residence of the owners of the Montvallee Motel, and the new post office.

One of the newest structures in Monterey is the Family Dollar. Approved earlier this year with little objection, the building shot up — and then some realized that it might not mesh with the neighborhood. But this unsavory trend started with the Monterey branch of the Blue Grass Valley Bank, between the Family Dollar and the post office. The post office built up to the sidewalk, with parking on the side. The bank didn’t.

More photographs of Monterey are in the Virginia Film Office‘s catalog. We lived here.

I keep renting sad movies. We watched half of In America, and are about half-way through Blue Car. These are not happy films.

You have to watch the convention on C-SPAN, not PBS, in order to skip the commentary. Otherwise you’ll miss the funny parts like “Live, from New York….” and the medley of Broadway show tunes. Oh, and the obscene elephant schnozz.

I ask, poor planning on our part?

We spent Saturday at Lake Compounce, in Bristol, Connecticut. The tots enjoyed the water and shows. Overall the oldest continuously operated amusement park was a blast.

Lake Compounce has two items of note. The first is a kick-ass wooden roller coaster, the Boulder Dash, which is built on the slopes of Mt. Compounce. The ride is fantastic.

Second, the trolley stop is still there, featuring a trolley car on loan from the Shore Line Trolley Museum.

Some of the best food inside Disney’s alternate reality is at Boma, in the Animal Kingdom Lodge. But I also like Marrakesh, the Prime Time Cafe. And, to be frank, the food is my favorite part of Epcot. Are there any places you like?

Denise is not the only one who can talk about baby gear.

I have an aversion to lifting large, bulky objects, especially in tandem with other large, bulky objects, so when it comes time to decide whether or not the stroller should fly with us to Florida, I tend to favor leaving it in the parking lot for some lucky finder. But stroller rentals in the Magic Kingdom are a trifle inconvenient as well.

What to do then? Buy a double umbrella stroller and strap it to the bags? Or two umbrella strollers and a stroller connector? Or just let them walk?

I think the latter option would probably be the most painful.

On the Engines of Our Ingenuity this morning, John Leinhard talked about 10,000 patents lost when the Patent Office burned.

By 1836, it housed ten thousand patents and seven thousand patent models. That’s when the government authorized a new Patent Office. Just then, as if on cue, a fire destroyed the old building, and all the patents in it. Only after that, did we begin numbering patents. Patent Number 1 was issued to John Ruggles for a new railroad wheel, meant to gain better traction.

One of the lost patents was granted in 1826 to Samuel Morey for an internal combustion engine. Makes you wonder what might have been if it weren’t for the fire.

There are lots of citations on Google.

In what could have been a tragically ironic twist of fate, Deena performed the Heimlich maneuver on the Little Sister this afternoon. The girls were out looking for houses with Nana. While they were stopped on the curb waiting for a realtor, Deena happened to look in the back and see Olivia gasping for air: She was choking on a miniature pretzel.

She tore her out of the car seat, performed the Heimlich, and all was well and good.

The Big Sister was busy with something else and didn’t notice; we were lucky.