CT Christmas Trip

This past Christmas my wife and I decided to head up to CT. I'm not going to chronicle everything because it wasn't all that exciting. What was exciting was trying to actually get TO Connecticut. We flew out on Dec 19th and it just so happens that there was a huge winter storm front going through the NY area. I had signed up for email alerts to make sure we don't go to the airport too early in case our flight was delayed. Since the plane going to NY was coming from NY, it was delayed because the FAA decided to slow down traffic in the NY Metro area.

We were originally slated to leave at around 6PM which would have gotten us to NY at around 10PM or 11PM. The snow storm decided to push our departure time all the way back to 1:20AM which is totally crazy. Most airlines would have canceled but not JetBlue!

We decided to go to the airport a little early just in case and waited around for a bit for our flight to come in from NY so we could leave. There was one other flight that was going to Syracuse and they kept on getting pushed back as well. There were these "Valley" girls that kept on pestering the gate agent because what he was saying wasn't what the call center people were saying. They brought out a manager that decided it would be best to give people some stuff to eat which I thought was a nice touch since it really doesn't cost them much.

Now here's the interesting part. The flight crew coming from NY Metro was slated to fly the Syracuse plane which had been sitting at the gate since 7PM, but since JetBlue isn't as big as Delta they don't just have stand by flight crews in the area that can fly the plane so they have to wait for crews to come in from other flights. The flight that we took touched down and the crew filed out and they boarded a new crew for NY Metro. Now the crew from NY Metro that was supposed to go to Syracuse just gathered up their stuff and walked out of the airport. This incited a mini riot because now Syracuse wasn't going to fly at all. I can understand why the Syracuse flight wasn't going out, there are FAA rules that say if a crew has been working 10 hours its time for them to go home for the safety of the passengers because they might be too tired by that point.

JetBlue boarded the NY Metro flight pretty quickly and I think a lot of people canceled their reservations so we practically had the whole plane to ourselves which was nice. The rest of the trip I may blog about but I doubt it, the creative juices aren't flowing that well right now.

TomTom 720 for me!

I am now a proud owner of a TomTom 720 GPS system for my car. I lost my Bluetooth GPS receiver for my Palm Treo a few weeks ago so I've been without GPS for a little bit. I decided that instead of getting another GPS receiver, it might be better just to get the whole unit this time around. I went with TomTom because I know how it works already since I have TomTom 5 software. This particular GPS has TomTom 8 which isn't a huge difference from TomTom 5 but it does have updated maps which is totally awesome.

The only thing that I have a gripe with is the battery life. But I guess its something that I can forgive because it's supposed to be hooked into a charger while using it in a car. I can also get online map updates when I hook it up to my computer which is awesome for corrections and such.

I'll be testing this out over the next few weeks to see how it works. There were a ton of features on my old TomTom 5 that I never used because it might mess up my phone but now I should be alright with the new TomTom 720 since its a totally enclosed unit. Gotta love it!

Thumper's New Trick

My older cat Thumper has a new trick. Actually its an old trick that he forgot about but has recently remembered. About 2-3 years ago Thumper figured out how I was opening doors by twisting the door knob. I have a picture of him trying this because my wife took a picture of him trying. Well the door handles in the townhouse are not knobs and recently he figured out that if he pushes it down and then pushes on the door, it magically opens!

I know he's opening the office door downstairs because I close the door at night and so does my wife and the next morning its open with both of my cats sleeping in there. The office is their favorite room I suspect because I'm always in there when I'm at home and it has a nice window to look out of when I open the blinds. I've had to put tape on the door handles for now to prevent Thumper from trying to open the doors. Cats don't like sticky things on their paws and so far so good. I might need to find another solution if this doesn't work but its the cheapest solution I know of besides buying another scat mat which I use for another door in the house.

I wish I could catch him in the act, it would make a good YouTube video.