Posts by Berck

I’ve always regarded Southwest Airlines as being something of a joke when it comes to airlines. This is without ever having actually flown with them. The flight crews look like they’re all going to go golfing rather than operate an airplane, and fighting for your seat just doesn’t seem right.

But they’ve been right up there with Jet Blue in airline ratings lately. Highest on-time percentage, highest customer satisfaction, etc, etc. (I’ll take a moment to point out that my old friends at ASA ranked absolute bottom of the list in 2003 in every category, except number of customer complaints.)

So Dad’s flying to Delaware to see Kelsey in a play up there, and he offered to buy me a plane ticket to go along with him. He was flying from Nashville, through Midway to Philadelphia on Southwest. We decided I’d get a Southwest ticket through Midway as well, and we’d be on the same flight to PHL.

I went to the Southwest website, selected the two $99 fares (which don’t come to a total of $198 as advertised, but rather to a total of $240 once taxes are added) and entered my credit card information. A few seconds later I got a confirmation email which listed me as being Berck Nachzeng. I clearly entered my name incorrectly, and only quickly glanced over the “Is this right?” page. So now I was going to have to call them.

I knew I was in for some unpleasantness because Joanna recently went through a similar ordeal. When her Dad got us plane tickets to go to Virginia, he’d gotten a ticket for “Joanna Nachzen”. This would have been fine, except that Joanna had not (and still has not) legally changed her name. (Maybe she’s waiting to see if it sticks?) Knowing that it would be nearly impossible for her travel without a photo-ID that matched her ticket, she set about trying to change it. Everyone she talked to at Delta insisted that would cost $75. Eventually Robert, who can apparently convince anyone of anything just by being nice, called and convinced them to change it without charging the $75.

So, I clicked on the “Contact Southwest Airlines” button on their webpage and dialed the number for reservations, which indicated it was available 24 hours a day.

The line rang, and then the strangest thing happened: someone answered. In all my dealings with airlines, I’ve never managed to speak to anyone without first going through much wait and hassle. Shocked and stunned, I explained the situation to the guy at the other end.

“Oh boy.. You’re out of luck. I don’t think you’ll be able to fly anywhere!”

Surprised, but knowing that Southwest encourages humor on the part of its employees, I played along.

“Oh, dear…”

“Just kidding, give me your confirmation number and I’ll fix it.”

With less than a 90 second telephone call, the problem was solved, and I got a new confirmation email within the next 90 seconds, displaying my correct name.

So far I’m impressed with Southwest.

I’m amazed at how well the E-bay stuff is doing. Looks like we’ve already cleared $320 and there’s still stuff left to go. I got to thinking that it was a sizeable amount of money, and maybe I should buy a used laptop with it. But after thinking about it, I decided that I really didn’t want another old laptop, as I really need something modern enough to handle the GPS and display maps without being horribly sluggish. $300 won’t buy a nice laptop, and I’d just as soon wait until I could afford one. Besides, we’re not traveling much these days.

But Nathan got me thinking about how if I had a digital camera how nice that would be to take pictures while flying. I never really wanted a digital camera because, to take even halfway decent pictures, they tend to be bulky, annoying, and temperamental. I’d really rather have my 35mm.

But I’ve always wanted a camera that I could take with me and not notice it, yet still took decent pictures. Minox is always an option, but it’s nearly impossible to print Minox film yourself, and the film costs a fortune to buy and print.

Which brings us to the latest Canon Digital Elph. It’s small enough to fit in a pocket without really noticing it, yet still takes fairly decent pictures. Now that there’s a 5 megapixel version out, lots of folks are selling their 4-megapixel S400 Elphs on E-bay. For about $250.

So, it just seemed to me that I could convert old broken stuff into new toys. But Joanna pointed out that we’re still going farther into debt every month, and we don’t in any way need a digital camera. I agreed. I’m really not sure what this is about exhausting her with requests…

Joanna bought some absolutely horrifyingly ugly shoes today. They’re pink.

It’s been a cold, dreary, drizzly day. It’s been a long time since I remember a day feeling like this one. The last one I remember was just after final exams in December of ’98, in Dallas.

I flew on Saturday, to Duncan. I had a rough time navigating, but I managed to stay on course on the way there and back. I got a compliment on my landing back in Norman.

And now it’s Wednesday, and it’s been cloudy and raining ever since Sunday morning. Looks to be better tomorrow, but of course I can’t find anyone to schedule me for a plane. My instructor is supposedly handing me off to someone else because he’s switching over to teaching instruments. But I’ve heard from neither him nor anyone else. I went by the school today, but no one there knew anything. The phone number I had for my instructor doesn’t seem to be working, I might have copied it into the new phone wrong.

Joanna was acting like a kid at Christmas yesterday. I’m not quite sure how anyone can get so excited over an election. I told her at 10:30 that all that mattered was Ohio, and it looked like Kerry had quite lost. She didn’t give up for another half hour. She called everyone, even my mother, who had fallen asleep at the television. She eventually came to bed, but told me excitedly in the morning, that I was, in fact, right. Mom didn’t believe me either. Oh well.

I passed a pickup truck today with nothing but “911” written in shoe polish on the rear window. I wanted to stop and ask, “What does that mean?”

I just hope that I have some civil rights left by the time it’s over with.