Great NYTimes travel article about dealing with delayed or canceled flights.

How to Fight Back When Your Flight is Canceled

I've been fortunate to have flexible days when traveling from NYC --> CAE, but Carla has gotten trapped or significantly delayed several times--this is one of the reason we don't fly together

I've never had the chance to be bumped, but according to the Department of Transportation you are entitled to $400 if you are bumped and placed on a flight within the next two hours and $800 if you are bumped and placed on a flight rerouted outside of that two hour window. This would be a clever game to play if you know you have some flex time. Make sure you are the last to check-in and then wait and see if you get bumped. . . though you might have to convince people not to take the lesser amount that is offered to volunteers.

The article also says should print you're "contract of carriage" and take it to the airport with you, or you could just bookmark my blog.

We tend to fly US Airways, and here is their contract of carriage, which says the $400 dollar maximum compensations:

This compensation is in addition to the value of the passenger’s ticket which he or she can use for alternate transportation or have refunded if not used.

Here are some  major US airline's(some of these are pdfs)

Jetblue's Contract of Carriage

Southwest Airlines Contract of Carriage

Delta's Contract of Carriage

United Airlines Contract of Carriage

Continental Airlines Contract of Carriage

American Airlines Contract of Carriage

For those of my dozen or so consistent readers who only read this through RSS feeds, I've updated the layout of my blog. It's a lot cleaner and easier to read--I hope.

Here is what my blog use to look like on one of my favorite burger experiment posts:

I don't really know why I though the dots were charming. They use to be a lot brighter, but I dimmed them in photoshop last year.

Here is the same post in the new layout/aesthetic:

As you can see I went with a nice gray back ground and simple header. I used this color over at my website  www.christopherjaynes.com and on my twitter background to promote unity between the pages. Still deciding on a font, but the standart Helvetica will do for now. I also changed the title of the blog to look organized and planned in lieu of a header title.

Any feed back would be great.

I've been working a lot with python lately, experiment, learning, and having to install a lot of libraries and such. I love how every time I open a freshly downloaded package all I have to do is navigate to the correct directory and simply type:

python setup.py install

It's the same command in any package. It's almost as easy as easy_install

(Yes, that is No Doubt playing on pandora one in the background)

TED is awesome, and this is one of the hundreds of available videos on Ted.org. Neil Pasricha was in a terrible position in his life. He really hit the bottom of the trough, but he dug his way out slowly. Really heartfelt talk.

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality.

 To change something, build a new model

 that makes the old model obsolete."

- R. Buckminster Fuller

While reading the Sunday Times today I came across several articles that were disparaging Law Schools. I wouldn't have taken note, I'm not lawyer nor do I plan to become one, but I spent my weekend in the company of an actual lawyer, a first year law student, and a law school applicant during several events. While I won't be forwarding these links to them, I found them good reads and also indicative of the conversation we should be having about higher education in general.

Is Law School a Losing Game?

Too many Law School Graduates and not enough jobs. That's about it. Aspiring lawyers take out too much loan money, and then can't get a job in law (they get jobs, which is how schools can say 90% of graduates are employed within 9 months) inorder to pay it back. What these out of work Law Graduate should do is open their own Law Schools and charge people an arm and a leg to attend--sounds like the only real way to make money

I Want My Money Back (On Everything)

This one is crazy, and in fact uses the same anecdote as above. Apparently, a Boston College Law Student wrote the dean saying he will gladly not complete his final semester in exchange for getting a full refund. This sounds reasonable, until you actually think about it. You can't return a college education like you would at Walmart. You might not get the actual degree, but you (the student) can't return the knowledge you gained or the contacts you made.

Starbucks will be celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. To celebrate, while looking to the future, they are introducing a new logo . It's cleaner and even though it doesn't spell out "Starbucks Coffee" anymore it's more iconic--like Audi.

The Starbucks Siren is a fitting mascot for the coffee lovers in this country, not saying that Starbucks has the best coffee, but it serves it's function seducing us into a sweet sweet caffeine addiction. Hopefully, with this new branding they return to their roots as being a specialty coffee shop, and try to offer more coffee options that don't require a Barista to simply push a button. CEO, Howard Schultz, talks about how simply having the siren as the cup's logo allows Starbucks to break free of just coffee. Maybe tea will get some more love? Starbucks beer?

I actually like the new Starbucks logo. The designers aren't breaking any new ground, in fact it's a simple exercise that design company A2591 has demonstrated on a lot of major brands, here are some examples. Not sure it A2591 was involved with the Starbucks redesign, but their examples are very similar to the image above.

 My favorite minimalist redesign is the Nutella jar.

At work yesterday a few of us were talking about interview questions. One guy, who actually just got hired away, said he was recently asked was, "Tell me how you would find a needle in a haystack."

A couple of answers:

"Burn the 'mother down and sift through the ashes"

"Sell the hay in small batches, like a lottery, and offer a reward for the person who finds it."

"Could we out source it?"

And my favorite:

"Wait, are you saying this company can't afford another needle?"

@r2patterson got a DSLR for Christmas so we went on a little trip to the State House to take some pictures. I think the last time I was on the State House grounds was in Elementary school, but where else is a budding photographer to go in Columbia, SC?

Here's what I got: