Brunch

My cousin's wife, Tina, is in town for a wedding, and we were able to meet up for brunch this morning. It was so good to catch up with her after a year and a half.

Ridiculocity

Dealing with Travelocity over our canceled trip to Buffalo has been such a pain. It's taken three weeks to finally make headway, and in that time we've spoken to at least 10 different company representatives. Their customer service model leaves much to be desired when you have an actual problem that takes time to resolve. We wasted so much of our own time having to bring each new person (in a new country) up to speed on our issue and concerns before making progress. Plus, half of the people were incompetent, just parroting words back to me that they didn't really understand. This conclusion is based on the fact that when I called them out on using business lingo that I was not familiar with, they were unable to explain it to me in a different way that I would understand. They just repeated themselves as if I hadn't heard them. I really think that they need to assign a specific customer service rep to people with a serious issue/complaint. That would really streamline the process on all ends.

But the point is, the combination of a conference call between us, Travelocity, and AirTran and Jason handling the communications on our end (his "I mean business voice" seems to be more impressive than mine) has resulted in our finally receiving a refund (at least we will within the next 30 business days)! Yey!

We reached this conclusion on Thursday night and Travelocity sent us off with the promise of an email confirming resolution of the matter to arrive within 15 minutes. Well, by this afternoon I had still not received said email, so Jason called yet again. After being on the phone for an hour, the *new* person we talked to was able to see the refund approval code in our file, but told us that he couldn't send us confirmation. Then he said that we had to email him first before he could respond to us with the information we requested. After several rounds of "Are you kidding me?" on our part, he said that we would receive an email in 48 hours. At this point we were incredulous and called him out yet again... finally he put in a "special request" and we received a three sentence email in 1.5 hours!

It is absolutely ridiculous that sending an email to a customer should take so long. Today's shenanigans, combined with the following malarkey has made me feel like Travelocity was just being sketchy and dragging its feet in the hope that we would give up before they gave us the refund we deserve. Hence... ridiculocity.

Malarkey # 1
When you get on the line the rep asks for your phone # in case the call is dropped at some point and they need to call you back. At the end of one call where the Travelocity rep had me conference call with them and an AirTran rep, the Travelocity person hung up on me. I think she just ended the conference call incorrectly, but if this was the case I think she should have called me back, apologized, and inquired as to whether all of my questions had been answered. She didn't. Strike # 5.

Malarkey # 2
As I mentioned in my original post on this topic, Travelocity asked us to mail our paper tickets back to them in order to receive our refund. I did this, enclosing a long letter expounding on the details of our travel delays and cancellations, and listing several ways to contact me (mail, phone, email). After they received said letter, did they contact me via any of those methods? No! They call Jason's cell phone and leave a message. Jason's phone is neither the primary number on my Travelocity account, nor the number that we used on the five previous occasions we contacted Travelocity. I believe he called them once on the day we were originally supposed to travel. They seemed to have a sixth sense that he never checks his voice mail. This move just screams that they are going out of their way to avoid me.

I'm hoping that they have saved all their reading comprehension skills for the next letter I send. They'll need it to get through my long list of complaints and suggestions.

I my Mac

Friday was a good laptop day because I finally have my machine just how I want it. Matlab and CVS were the last pieces of the puzzle. Now with Jason having already installed Maple and Microsoft Office for me, I am good to go.

I've been pretty geeky for the past couple of hours checking out code and debugging/prototyping with Matlab. It's a pretty sweet set-up I have now, and it makes working from home a breeze. I would have to say that it is one of the best purchases I've made.

Now it's your turn, Erin! :-)

Happy Spring!

I've always loved spring. Living in the south for so many years now, the sudden blooming of the dogwoods and the fuchsia azaleas has become my symbol for its arrival. The backyard that my living room window looks out on has about seven azalea bushes of varying shades of pink, and it's definitely a nice sight to wake up to each day. Combined with the sounds of various birds and some excited squirrels, it's been a nice morning so far. Wishing you lovely weather wherever you are.

Torreya State Park photos

Here are some pictures of us setting up camp. They don't really do the park justice, but I guess there really is no way to capture the peace and tranquility.

Here are a couple of shots of our long hike. Our little snake friend looked to have had a good meal recently. He was near the trail for quite awhile; we saw him on our way both in and out of camp.

The Mountains of Florida

I have finally found a spot in Florida where I feel at home. For our spring break trip we went to Torreya State Park, which is only an hour west of us and billed as the "Mountains of Florida". For once I wasn't disappointed. Ignoring the truckload of humidity that boiled up this weekend, hiking through this park did make me feel transported to the Appalachian Mountains.

We camped at the Torreya Challenge primitive camp site on Friday night, and hiked ten miles of the Challenge loop Saturday before coming home. Hopefully we can head back some other weekend and hike the other loop that overlooks the Apalachicola River at times. I'll post some pictures soon.

I also finished The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox tonight, and I feel like it is a must-read for those of you out there looking for a good book. I couldn't put it down, and it's one of those novels that you have a hard time forgetting about when you are done. It certainly caused me to add to my ever-expanding list of books that I want to read. Hopefully the recommendations that I found online for books similar to this one are accurate.

Happy Sunday!

Random thought...

Leaving my apartment complex this morning I realized something. I hate leaf blowers.

Yes, hate is the correct word. Their ratio of "noise generated" to "work completed" is way too high... almost infinite in my opinion. Granted, I've never used one and perhaps there is a knack to getting the blower to direct things exactly where you want them, but it seems like these machines just push leaves and whatnot in random directions. I see how you can get rid of whatever item is your problem, but you're really just making it someone else's problem rather than actually cleaning things up.

I could perhaps understand their utility if the person using them was incapable of raking leaves due to health considerations. But 99% of the time I see young, healthy-looking people using them. I consider leaf blowers to be the ideal tool for people who want to look like they are busy doing chores, but don't actually want to do any physical labor. And that's all I have to say about that.

Hey Buffalo... see ya never!

So, I mentioned previously about how were were slightly idiotic for wanting to travel north for spring break. Mother Nature apparently agreed with us. Friday night we drove to Jacksonville, and stayed overnight near the airport. We dropped our car at the park and ride, got to the airport... and found out that our flight to Atlanta was delayed by at least four hours, our flight from Atlanta to Buffalo was already canceled. We ended up getting a new flight from Atlanta into Pittsburgh, and went through security.

Once we made it to our gate and started thinking more clearly about the logistics, we realized that this trip was probably not going to be worth all the trouble it was going to be to make it to PA. Our flight into Pittsburgh was more than likely going to be canceled as well, and we were having issues with our reserved rental car. So in the end we decided it was best to cancel the trip altogether, and try to visit again later in the year.

Canceling our rental car was no trouble, and there wasn't even a cancellation fee thanks to the weather. Plus, during the four hours that we were at the airport I was pleasantly surprised by our good-natured fellow travelers. I have been in many an airport when weather related delays kick in, and sometimes it hasn't been pretty. But yesterday everyone was nice, calm, and helpful. People were even generous in sharing electrical outlets, which are more often than not in short supply.

Having said that, though, now is the time to share my major airport realization... Travelocity is pure evil. I usually only use Travelocity as my Google for travel. It helps me find the best deal, and then I buy directly from the airline that has it. However, this time it seemed that the best deal involved two separate airlines, so I thought it would be best to buy from Travelocity. Boy, was I WRONG! Basically all they were useful for was adding an extra layer of difficulty to the trip-canceling process. This what happened:

We told the Air Tran gate agent that we wanted to cancel our trip, and she told us that we would be able to do that for free and get all our money back. Great! But... whoops, we booked through Travelocity and received paper tickets (yeah, I didn't think anyone did that anymore...) so we can only get our money back in vouchers for an Air Tran flight in the next year. Since we never fly Air Tran I decided to call Travelocity and get my money back from them. Easy, right?

Not so much. After being on hold with Travelocity, they said that they had to call the airline to confirm our flight cancellation. Once they got back to me after another five minutes on hold, they said that we just had to go out to the main ticketing desk and have Air Tran give us a refund. Great. We leave the secured area, and walk out to the ticketing desk only to find that not only can the person there not help us without contacting his supervisor, but his supervisor was the woman we had been dealing with back at our gate! Awesome. Anyway, we finally find out that because we had paper tickets and hadn't used them at all, the airline didn't have any of our money to refund to us. We were stuck dealing with Travelocity, and Travelocity alone.

I got back on the phone with Travelocity (again, this means I was on hold with them), and of course my cell phone starts the "low battery" beep. I mentioned earlier about the ridiculously small number of electrical outlets that airports have in this heavily technological age. Well, let me tell you, I was rushing all over with my charger desperate for an open plug. I finally found one in the middle of a group of stranded travelers who were nice enough to let me sit in their midst and curse Travelocity.

In the interest of keeping this already long story from getting any longer we finally found out that if we mail our paper tickets to the Travelocity Consumer Relations Department we will get a full refund. It's never a good sign when you feel the need to get the name and employee number of the person you're dealing with, but I'm still hoping that it will all work out.

I should also mention that several good things happened yesterday. When we got back to our car, the lady let us leave without paying, plus she gave us two complimentary bottles of water (small victories...). Then we had a good meal at Jacksonville's P. F. Chang's, and I bought a laptop. That's right... I am currently typing this entry on my very own Mac laptop. No more borrowing Jason's (he is incredibly happy about this). I figured that I have been needing a new laptop for awhile now, and since Jacksonville is the closest Apple store to us, it was time.

So all's well that ends well. We spent this morning at a kayaking demo where I got to try a peddle kayak (you propel yourself forward by peddling like you would on a bike and you steer by moving the rudder switch with your left hand). I didn't really like it very much because you can only go forward, but it was a cool thing to try. Then we grilled out at a park by our house. So in spite of yesterday's travel woes, our spring break is off to a fine start. I will miss seeing my friends and family back in PA, but I'm sure going back during the summer will be even better. I may even get the chance to finally cross "Go on the Maid of the Mist" off my "To Do" list then.

Ok... I'm off to the movies. I hope you all had a great weekend, and I'll be sure to keep you updated on the Travelocity saga.

It's been a long week...

Perhaps "a long two weeks" would be a better statement, since I haven't posted in awhile.

I've spent this week pulling together a presentation for tomorrow and working on some code (for those interested in details, stabilized finite elements are back to haunt me). Hopefully this talk goes over well. I am speaking to the Karst aquifer research group on my thesis work. It's a pretty mixed audience (very theoretical mathematicians, very practical geologists, and hydrologists) so it could go either way.

But after it's over... I'm going home! Next week is Spring Break at FSU, so Jason has the whole week off. We decided just last week to be idiots and head north. Our particular level of idiocy can be described based on where we are flying in and out of... Buffalo... NY... yeah. It was our cheapest option at the last minute (go figure), and plus, we will get to see Niagara Falls. I haven't been in almost 10 years, and Jason has never gone there so it will be an adventure. We'll be there for just a day before driving down to my parents house in PA. I'm really excited to see my family after six months away. I've heard that Vincena will be able to read to me, so I'm stoked to be immersed in Dr. Seuss.

We are hoping that our one night in Buffalo will be our first Couchsurfing experience (at least our first time being the surfers rather than the hosts). If you don't know what Couchsurfing is, check it out in my list of favorite links. There seem to be plenty of folks in Buffalo willing to open their homes to travelers, it is just a matter of finding one excited for last minute company.

Well, tomorrow's an early day, so I should get to bed. Goodnight!