Better than flying reindeer

Last year Canadian airline WestJet made the prestigious Parallax Views Holiday Flash Mobs list, as you may recall. They seemed like a company that knows how to have a good time.

And, of course, breaking up the tension at airports, especially during the stressful holiday travel season is always a good thing. As long as it doesn’t disrupt the actual takeoff and landing schedule.

But I believe they’ve topped themselves.

This year they picked a couple of Toronto-to-Calgary flights to give their passengers just that little bit extra: they had a virtual Santa Claus ask what they wanted for Christmas at Toronto, and by the time they arrived in Calgary, the gifts came out—wrapped—onto the baggage carousel.

The gifts ranged up to and including a big-screen TV.

Take a look:

(I’m betting the guy who asked for socks and underwear wishes he could have a do-over.)

Frankly, it looks to me like the WestJet employees who went shopping and wrapping had at least as good a time as the passengers.

I wonder what they’ll do next year?

It's in the mail again

I had one last package to send for the holidays, and I finally got it all suited up to mail on Friday. I went to the USPS Agnew Station in Santa Clara, figuring I’d try for something different from Sunnyvale.

Only it turns out that the US Postal Service basically trains all its customer-facing employees in techniques of idiocy, disdain and general unhelpfulness.

As with both Sunnyvale stations, there was quite a line; and as with every post office I’ve been to in the past several months (Los Altos, Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara), they only had two windows open.

I had plenty of time to observe the three staffers (as one came up to serve passport applicants, another just closed her window and walked away) display the maximum of disinterest in their job and the public.

When I finally got up to the counter, the woman threw a hissy fit because my return address had only my street, number and zip code. “You have to have the city! And the state!” “The zip code incorporates not only the city and state, but a specific area within the city; that’s the definitive placer.” “You have to have the city and the state.”

(Which, BTW, I did not on any of the packages I’d mailed three days before. Maybe it’s a Santa Clara thing. Or maybe it’s just a “you have to have something wrong with this package” thing.)

Whatever.

But my packages are sent; they are in the hands of the shipping gods.

And next year I’m going UPS. Enough is freaking enough.

Deck the halls and lawns

You know, you just gotta love people here in the Valley they call Silicon; tradition just means…who knows what to them.

I’ve already mentioned how they go whole hog on decorating for Halloween. Turns out they have a somewhat different take on the whole yule thing.

Here’s one:

Because nothing says Christmas like Darth Vader duking it out with Yoda. Especially since they’re on the same lawn as a whole Snoopy contingent.

Then there’s the house that just can’t get beyond Halloween:

But one that quite grabs my attention is the one so full of joy...

That it has no fewer than three nativity scenes out:

Plus Mickey, Minnie and the Peanuts gang behind one of the nativities.

Since I first took those pictures, they’ve added this sign urging us to simplify the holiday. Which I find rather droll.

Shooting story

For my birthday this year, a friend gave me a Canon PowerShot P&S camera. It replaces the POS Nikon I bought a couple of years ago, which went bad shortly after the warranty expired. (That clunker makes me rethink ever getting another Nikon product, and I’ve been shooting with them since I was in high school. In fact, my Nikon rangefinder was what inspired the name of this blog.)

That POS replaced my old Canon PowerShot. And look how they’ve compressed the tech, from 2003 to 2013:

This baby will pretty much do everything except the dinner dishes. But what they’ve also trimmed back is what they send you by way of operating instructions. The little green-rimmed thing is what comes with the camera. It’s divided into English and Spanish versions so you barely get 70pp of info. 

They expect you to use their online user manual—online meaning it doesn’t just come on a CD, but you have to be connected to the Internet to access it. You can’t download it onto your hard drive.

And it’s a PDF file with no way to get through it except by paging through—no hyperlinks, no go-to-index option. Seriously, Canon—WTF?

What I ended up doing was emailing their support people and whining that I can’t read the dag-blamed online manual, so would they please send one to me. They didn’t want to—“We have to print it out. On 8.5” x 11” paper”—but I insisted.

And what arrived was indeed on letter-sized paper. One hundred ninety-five pages worth. That’s how complex this puppy is.

Anyhow, I love my new toy, and I’ve been slowly figuring out the various functions. Playing a lot with low-light shooting, taking pictures of latte art and carrying it around when I take walks. It's even inspired me to pick up the DSLR and try to learn more about its functions.

Color me happy. And digital.

Gratitude Monday: Mechanical perfection

I was reminded last week of how great it is to have a good auto mechanic, where you can take your no-longer-in –production car for maintenance and repairs, know they’ll be done right and that they’re not going to rip you off on the charges.

I’m so grateful for Swedish Auto Factory in Santa Clara—a small shop that I’ve come to know well in the three years I’ve been in the Valley they call Silicon. (A lot better than I would have liked, on account of having to replace the antenna something like six times in the past two years. There was one period a few months ago when I had it replaced three times in four weeks.)

Dan, the owner, always calls me “kiddo”, which would be enough to make me propose marriage, except that I know he already is. And he never ridiculed me for the whole aerial thing, which I really appreciated.

SAF specialized exclusively in Saabs and Volvos for a long time. When Saab went down the GM drain, they added on Subarus to try to make up for the lost business. But apparently that’s not filled the hole, so last week, when I went in for an oil change (and an adjustment to the parking brake, because it…well, it just wasn’t holding at all. And I would have gone in earlier if there’d been anything wrong with the foot brakes, but, you know, you can’t take the key out of the ignition unless it’s in Reverse, so that always holds it…), they had a banner out proclaiming them “European Auto Specialists”.

Although they’re still servicing Subarus.

Dan appreciated my contribution to their bottom line but six aerials in two years apparently does not feed the bulldog.

I hope they find the right mix, because I have no plans to give up a car that doesn’t even have 90K miles on it and runs fine (if you don’t mind having to occasionally thump the back panel to get the antenna to retract), and it’s so hard to find good, honest mechanics who treat their customers as well as they treat their customers’ cars.

So today I’m grateful for SAF, and hope that other drivers in the area come to appreciate them, too.

The truth about cats and dogs

I really got a giggle out of this research undertaken at the University of Tokyo: it seems (after an eight-month study of 20 animals) that cats actually do recognize their, uh, owner’s voices when they call. But they just don’t care.

The astounding thing about this study is that anyone felt the need to conduct it. All you’d have to do is ask a couple of feline-servants, and we’d have told you. For nothing.

Actually, I believe that Gary Larson nailed the whole cats/dogs vocal recognition thing 30 years ago. Tokyo researchers—I give you this for nothing, too.

Farewell to Mandiba

Word has come that Nelson Mandela has died today, aged 95. He had been in frail condition for some time—not only was he in his nineties, but he’d suffered respiratory problems that dated back to his nearly three decades in prison for his anti-apartheid work.

What was neither old nor frail were his strength of character, his absolute integrity and his quiet dignity. You’d think a man as vilified and abused for most of his life by the white power structure would have a legitimate case for invoking the wrath of God when he and the ANC took office. But his presidency of South Africa was marked by his focus on national reconciliation.

It has never ceased to astonish me whenever I’m reminded of his gentle strength and genuine forbearance. Ninety-five years old, marked by a third of his life in prison, and he had the physical and moral uprightness of someone with the hand of God at his back.

South Africa is not without its problems. But I wonder where it would be today were it not for this amazing man who cast light wherever he found darkness?

There is a Yiddish term that is entirely appropriate to apply to Mandela: he was a mensch.

We don’t have many of them in our human history. He added grace to our lives.

It's in the mail

Following on my post about making candy for holiday presents, let me share with you an experience I’m decidedly not grateful for:

Dealing with the US Postal Service to mail nine packages, five to the UK.

I’d collected some flat-rate Priority Mail boxes from the Sunnyvale Fremont post office (where the guy behind the lobby window looked at me like I’d lost my mind when I asked for them), and had my nine boxes and envelopes in carry bags when I went to the Sunnyvale main station.

I even had Max Hastings’s All Hell Let Loose to read while in line. I figured the 450 pages I still had to go would keep me occupied while I waited.

Well, the adventure began when I pitched up at the counter and the woman informed me that I had the wrong boxes to send things to the UK, and also the wrong customs forms (which I’d filled out beforehand).

Now, I’ll be buggered if I can figure out exactly what the difference is between these two—except for a slight variation in size. But what the difference amounted to was about $20 per package. Plus redoing the customs form.

(Also, let me just say that if I ever come across the ass who designed those self-assembly boxes, I’m going to break all his fingers. You’re welcome.)

However—if all I did was wrap over the boxes, everything would be copacetic. Evidently it’s something to do with the pre-printed markings.

Although, as you understand—every damned one of them is official USPS kit, available for pickup without any explanation of appropriate use. And it made me wonder what the hell is the significance of all the boxes they print—and don’t explain to you until you hit the shipping counter.

I got a bit of a giggle out of her warning me that “You won’t get a tracking number” if I didn’t have…something, not sure what it was.

Because the USPS “tracking” system is pointless. I know for a fact—from multiple experiences as both a sender and recipient of packages they “track”—that their letter carriers often just dump parcels that won’t fit into mail boxes in public places like lobbies instead of hauling their lazy asses up to the actual office or residence. Once so dumped, they log them as “delivered”.

And once “delivered”, the USPS refuses all responsibility.

So, yeah—not worried about having your damned tracking number.

Well, so I went home and wrapped up the offending parcels. Then I took them to the Fremont station (again with All Hell Let Loose), where Mary actually gave me an injured look when she realize I had five packages to send to the UK. It was like I’d asked her to prove Fermat’s last theorem.

“It’s going to take time,” she intoned.

Whatever.

But—with Mary at the helm, it did indeed take time. Because she just couldn’t seem to grasp the whole notion of sending things outside the US. (And before you ask, Mary is not a twenty-something; she’s been around the block a few hundred times.)

She laboriously weighed each package (sighing with each), and painstakingly typed with two fingers something into a computer from the customs forms—are they now adding that sort of crap to the big data miasma? Every single one. She chided me for writing “confections”—what’s that? Candy? She scratched out “confections” and wrote in “candy”, apparently convinced that no one in either the USPS or Royal Mail would understand “confections”.

She also demanded, “How many?” How many what? Candy? What the hell does it matter? I made stuff up.

She was so concerned about that stuff she never once asked me whether my packages contained anything dangerous, flammable, alcohol, perfume, etc. I’d have thought that would have been more germane than how many candies were in each box. But I’d probably have to explain “germane” to her, if I brought it up.

The postage charged wasn’t what the woman at the main station had quoted—I’m guessing that you’d not get two workers across the USPS to come up with the same story.

In the 25 minutes or so I watched Mary go through her painful routine I got a bit of a laugh out of the worker at the next place on the counter—I swear, not one of the people who came to her got away without having to redo something. “You have the wrong form!” “Is this right?” “No!” She was the Queen of Denial, and boy, did she relish it.

Anyhow, eventually I paid a ridiculous amount of money and left. Mary was so dispirited she didn’t even ask if I wanted to buy anything else, which is the big USPS thing—they’re much more interested in upselling you than in doing the transaction you came there for.

One thing I’ll say for the Sunnyvale staff (at both locations) is they’re not as crabby as the Cupertino crowd. I swear—those people are the surliest humans outside a Dostoyevsky novella, even when they’re trying to get you to buy other stuff.

What I learned was that the USPS is still the bastion of the quintessential time-serving government worker, still giving the rest of the public sector a bad name for plodding, indifference and obstructionism. I suppose it’s good to know that there are some things that never change.

Feeling like a cabbage head

I belong to a couple of professional organizations, and joined three other women from one of them yesterday to sort food at Second Harvest Food Bank.

I had no idea what “sort food” meant—but in this case it meant packing five heads of cabbage into a carton (to make 16 pounds, roughly). Seems that in the Bay Area, they get produce pretty much all year round, so the hungry people they serve in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties don’t have to depend on canned goods.

Even though both the organization and SHFB were disappointed in our turnout (they were expecting more members to show up), in a little less than two hours we met the goal of packing 150 cartons (and I assembled about 120 of said cartons).

That’s more than a ton of cabbage, and my muscles are telling me about it.

So if you don’t mind, I’m going to slap some more pain patches on my shoulder and do some stretches.

Is it fraud prevention or is it spending analysis?

A while ago an email came into my queue purportedly from American Express, telling me that they’d noticed some unusual activity on my account and I should give them a shout.

Well, you always have to wonder about anything that suddenly pops up and requires action that could involve you giving someone Personally Identifiable Information (PII). So I went home and called the general AmEx customer service from my landline.

And it turns out that there had been two attempted transactions at a Bloomingdale’s somewhere, and AmEx’s algorithm had sent up flares.

The customer service guy transferred me to a woman in their fraud prevention division, who asked me the same security questions the first person had, and then she went to town. The Bloomies attempts (AmEx blocked them) were definitely not mine, and there were a couple of other odd things, which she flagged up. She deactivated my account instantaneously and sent me a new card by overnight.

This happened just as one of the people I follow on Twitter was whining that his (non-AmEx) credit card was suddenly declined at a bar for no apparent reason. He was stomping about metaphorically—I don’t know whether it’s his only card, or he was just chagrinned by the refusal. But it made me think about AmEx’s approach.

On one of my annual trips home to Virginia from the UK, I went to Tyson’s Corner mall, to Nordstrom. Then I went to Tower Records (yes—it was a while ago). By the time I got to the sporting goods store in Reston and was ready to buy new runners, the POS register flashed, “Get picture ID.” In less than a couple of hours, they’d spotted the anomalous behavior (or at least the location), and were ready to step in.

This time they probably rolled within a couple of hours, too. 

In contrast, NatWest, my UK bank, took almost two weeks to notify me (by snail mail to my US address, where they’d been sending my statements for more than two years) that they’d noticed more than £700 in charges to my debit card (all made in the London area), and had I by any chance made them. 

(Keep in mind that in the entire three years I'd resided there, I'd used the card a total of three times.)

Well, no, I hadn’t, and when I finally got one of their reps on the phone, you could just hear her squirming because they had to eat all those charges. (They wanted me to file a UK police report, but when I asked her whether it should be with Thames Valley Police, where NatWest were, or the Met, because I’d lived in London, she kind of petered out. Well, maybe they could waive the police report…)

(She also informed me that it was all but a sure-fire bet that the charges were made by Royal Mail employees—they’re apparently well known for filching credit and debit cards from the post; and a card going to a US address was practically screaming to be stolen. NatWest didn’t have any provision for activating your new card from a secure/known phone number; no, no—that might have cost them a bob or two.)

So I’m continually impressed by American Express’s professionalism and customer service, especially when reminded that not all credit card companies deliver like they do.

On the other hand, I do have a suspicion that they replace my card so quickly because they’re not sure thieves could spend as fast as I do.

Which is why this resonated with me: