kirktastic

So yesterday was a long travel day. I left the hotel in Acapulco at about 10am for an 1130 flight to Mexico City. Once in Mexico City I was stuck there for several hours which wouldn’t have sucked so much if my MacBook Pro wanted to communicate on the Internets. So I got to sit there and sweat and not do anything for several hours.

The good news was I was upgraded to Business Class for the trip to Dallas and got on a slightly earlier flight. The bad news is of all the flights on the display board at the airport, mine was the one with “demorado” next to it. You don’t need to know Spanish to know that can’t be good. We did take off somewhat on time though and the trip to Dallas was passed by reading the Rolling Stone with Christian Aguilera on the cover and consuming as many free beers as possible.

The downside of getting an earlier flight to Dallas meant a longer layover in Dallas. The beer was starting to take effect when I had to re-enter security at DFW. For some reason I’m always “randomly selected” for the puffer machine at DFW. Every time I fly through that airport and they put me in the puffer. I passed that test but then had to have my luggage checked again [that was a bag check in Acapulco (2x), Mexico City (2x), and Dallas (1x)]. I accidentally said, “no, ma’am” to the guy from the TSA when he asked me about liquids in my bag. Oops.

The Mac still didn’t want to see the internets and refused to even accept it had an AirPort card in it. Flights leave from Dallas to Austin about every 40 minutes or so, so I spent the next few hours trying to get on standby. The 8:40pm flight I got on the list, #12. I didn’t think I had a chance so I went to the next flight’s gate which was in another terminal to try that. They wouldn’t let me do it yet so I went back. While I was on the SkyTrain, the flight I was on standby for was delayed as was the one I had tried to get on and it looked like my original flight that left at 10:30pm would be the earliest I could leave. The reason for the delay was lightning. In fact, they shut the SkyTrain down after I got off of it.

About an hour of boredom passes and I find the gate person starts rattling off names. I got on the flight. But instead of the comfy seat in the exit row on the later flight, I was in 32E. To those unfamiliar the MD-80, that is the last row, middle seat. We sat on the ground for another forever and I ended up getting to Austin at about 10:00pm. The 35 minute flight was bumpy, I was stuck between two guys. I was in the loudest part of the plane. It just sucked ass. They didn’t serve water or anything on the plane. It was worse than greyhound. Contrast that to the awesome service and legroom on Mexicana. The Mexicana plane was newer, cleaner, wider seats and aisles. And food + snack on a flight that was just 10 miles farther than the Dallas - Austin route. The next time I fly to Mexico, I’m going to San Antonio [about 60 miles south of the Austin airport] and fly Mexicana direct. I’m a whore for American Airlines miles but fuck them. AA uses ’security measures’ as a reason for completely ending any form of customer service. The flight and ground crew on Mexicana at least seem like they appreciate my business. AA staff seems annoyed that customers continue to fly with them. The only time I get good service on AA is when I’m flying on a $8,000 business class ticket.

So this morning I tried to re-install Tiger from scratch on my MacBook Pro and it didn’t fix the networking problem. So I went to the Apple Store to talk to a “genius” at about 11am and was told to fuck off unless I wanted to pay $100 for a procare membership. I was offended I would have to pay money to fix my defective computer I spent nearly $3000 on just a few months ago. So I got an appointment for 3 hours later. When I came back, the genius confirmed my computer was fucked up and the only thing to do is to send it in for repair. It will be gone 7-10 business days. She said it usually is faster. I’ve had good luck getting my PowerBook repaired [<3 days] so I hope for the best.

I’m glad I didn’t sell my PowerBook yet since I’m using it now. Then again, Apple announced a Dell-styled battery recall today on their older iBook and PowerBook batteries. Apple’s support site is being slammed so I can’t tell if the battery I bought last fall is impacted. Fuck, it is hard to be a FanBoy when all this happens.