Subject to Change

I try to avoid flying through O’Hare International. I’ve not had any bad travel experiences there, but I’ve heard enough stories to know it’s only a matter of time. Today I broke that rule without any serious incident and I noticed something: O’Hare is an airport built for people aren’t going anywhere.

Most airports have the bare minimum in creature comforts. I can actually get reasonably comfortable in a large airport if you’re forced to. There are places to eat, hang out, and find entertainment.

O’Hare takes this idea to the extreme. It’s packed with restaurants and shops. Every Starbucks had a line thirty deep. I started to wonder how many people were there just to hang out. The place is practically a mall.

Some instructional video for this weekend.

I need the blogosphere to be my conscience on another customer service issue.

When you have a child, especially the first, your parenting handbook tells you to get photos every three months. We tried to be faithful to the same studio for all of Cole’s first year photos. This was partly because we signed up for a program and also for consistency.

Our first experience with the studio was good and we were happy to come back at three months. For those photos we had a different photographer and didn’t really enjoy the experience. Each successive visit seemed to bring on new problems. There were long waiting times, impatient photographers, and generally poor service.

On our final appointment to the studio we arrived ten minutes late, which in toddler terms is spectacular for a Saturday morning. The girl at the counter wouldn’t take us, a bit odd considering the wait times were never that short on any of our previous visits and the store was empty. She tried to bump us to a later time that day and we let her know that wasn’t going to work, you know: toddler and all. Kelly asked to speak with a manager and the girl told us she was the manager. So did the last one who took our photos. Everyone’s a manager! But, nobody can make any decisions apparently. There was a lot of yelling and a little bit of cussing. We called customer service and talked with a representative in the store this photo center was attached to. We also left without getting our photos taken and searched the city for another studio that would provide us with digital prints and a copyright release. That’s not as easy to come by as you might think. No studio wants you to own your prints outright.

Fast forward to yesterday and this studio is calling us to come and get Father’s Day prints. They made an offer we could easily refuse and Kelly told them to have a manager call her back with a real deal, explaining our dissatisfaction with the previous visit. The final offer from ”the manager” included a meager discount and no sitting fees. Needless to say, we’re not biting. We don’t want to spend another dime in that store unless they do something to show that they recognize their error.

Then, one of us got a mean idea. We could take advantage of the free sitting and then just disappear. If I didn’t have to drag my kid out to do this it would probably be an easy decision.

You tell me:

Should we waste an hour of this store’s time, to get some sense of justice? Or, should we just let it go, knowing that they’ll probably never get the hint. It’d be great blog fodder if I could manage to video the exchange.

Kelly took me to see the new Indiana Jones movie yesterday. I enjoyed it, but I can see how its going to disappoint die hard fans. My advice: don’t go to this movie expecting it to be the best one of the series. I had a feeling that Indy 4 wasn’t likely to be as good as the third movie. How could they out do “Junior?”

I miss the nazis, but I’m fully behind advancing the timeline of the series. Harrison Ford is OLD! It’s just that the nazis were so much easier to hate. The clumsy KGB agent stereotype just isn’t as strong an anti-hero.  The Russians in this film could’ve been more threatening.

After seeing the first fifteen minutes of Indy 4, I decided to note all the preposterous action scenes. I was going to make up a bunch of scenes from the movie and have you guess which one actually occured. About halfway through the movie I gave up. There’s no way I could invent scenarios more over the top than ones which were actually presented. I didn’t notice any dinosaurs, unicorns, or killer robots. Everything else is in this movie. If the inflatable raft scene in Temple of Doom had you saying “get real,” stay home.

The other Indiana Jones movies dealt heavily with the supernatural. This one leans more toward science fiction and it’s and odd mix. It definately doesn’t feel like an Indy movie. Everything has changed: CGI animals (with personalities), fifties timeline, Indy seems to be some sort of retired national hero, Russians, and FBI. Even Indiana Jones suffers some culture shock. The opening scenes are intended to help us and Indy get used to this brave new world. At the end of the introduction he finds himself in a very awkward position, and you do feel for him. Indy is standing in an empty town, having a serious out of his element moment. I couldn’t help chuckling because it played so perfectly.

All in all, if your expectations are reasonable I think you’ll enjoy the fourth installment of the Indiana Jones saga. There’s good humor and good action.  You could do far worse with your movie dollar. 

Every year something manages to remind me that I share my birthday with the Unabomber.

My brother got Ronald Reagan.

I decided to email my electronic billing service, to tell them that I think there are some features the web site could use. I didn’t have any issues with my account. I actually wanted to tell them that I’ve been a loyal and appreciative customer for years and I just thought of some things that would help me out.

First, I received the automatic reply. Today I saw the official response, which complained that they had no record of the email address I’d used to submit my comment. Could I please resubmit through one of the following procedures?

Sure, and while I’m at it I’ll add an item to my comment list: shut down your tech support center in Bombay. They obviously didn’t bother to absorb the content of my message before cracking open the tech support manual and retyping all of page two verbatim.

I’m watching The Great Debaters and something struck me. This is the “debate” thing liberals always talk about.

You assign someone to speak to the pro and con, whether or not they believe the side they’re on. They research their topic and come to the debate fully armed with facts, figures, and fabrications that support their assigned argument. The two sides battle back and forth for an hour, appealing to intellect and emotion. After the debaters finish tearing each other down the audience goes out for a drink and the “winning” team is awarded a certificate of achievement. A week later they come back and start over, maybe even with the same topic.

Debate is a pointless academic exercise which trains the mind in spewing bullshit without purpose. Actions speak louder than words.

So, I’m a bad parent. Given that I treat my first born like a toy rather than a priceless antique, I don’t think a second child could ever survive me. I’m starting to think that my sense of humor just isn’t compatible with being a first time parent. Take tonight, for example.

I turned on the sprinkler to water the lawn and Cole made a bee line for it. A good parent would have probably chased after him. Even though he was wearing a rain coat it’s still pretty chilly outside.

Cole stopped and turned around to face me, while the sprinkler reached the end of its travel and started to swing back toward us. I tapped Cole’s mother on the shoulder and said, “watch this.”

Shock and awe is the term I might use to describe the look on the boy’s face when the cold water hit him. He laughed and went back for more, of course.