Bit o stuff

Went gallery-hopping with Jordan Saturday. Saw some interesting stuff, like paintings with nails in them, several paintings of people underwater, sculptures of heads, blurry paintings based on photo collages, digitially-altered photos of taxidermy in nature, foggy New York scenes, comics about going vegan as performance art, rooms with words painted on the walls, photorealistic paintings of cloth wrapping unknown objects.

But the definite star of the show was Fields of Fire, video pieces depicting highly abstracted oil drilling and a 10 minute movie of flowing oil and blood that was amazingly intense. One weird thing is that I couldn't find out much about how the artist (who actually was hanging out at the gallery!) did what she did. The best clue was on this Corcoran page, which explains, "She achieves unusual effects of motion and color by re-photographing her images repeatedly, by transferring them from video to film and back again, and by using digital manipulation." (Also in the how'd-they-do-that category, a good article in Wired about rotoscoping for Scanner Darkly.)

Patois brunch was tasty, although they ran out of french toast, and the mimosas were pleasantly free-flowing until they ran out of champagne (!).

Catherine and I got caught up in the Project Runway marathon. It was actually very entrancing. I'm rooting for Santino, even if he is an ass. This, plus an article about collectives in the Times, plus the gallery-hopping, left me thinking about the production of art. I wonder how much real-world fashion is actually the result of a single creative effort, as opposed to soliciting input from coworkers, bosses, focus groups and such, as with movies, software, and books. It's interesting that industries like fashion seem to do okay despite the absence of a filter/promotion engine like a publishing company. It's not like the winners of Runway have a hope of being something-equivalent-to-an-artist-being-signed-by-a-label. But maybe I just don't know enough about the fashion industry.

Meanwhile, the Times podcasts are a dangerously blood-pressure-raising way of passing the time on the way to work. So much stupidity from the Bush administration, but nothing ever comes of the columnists' whining. Maybe they should lock Bush in a room with a stack of them and not him leave till he recognize how incompetent he is. And then there's David Brooks, insisting that the only things worth knowing happened in Plato (yay infringing copy, columns want to be free!). Is he really this dumb? Also, he suggests that people take statistics. If only he had. Is there really nobody smarter than him to take up that space in the Times? Even Dowd is more interesting.

Conviction is taping around the corner at 10 (that's life living near the courts). Sounds like a fun outing to me.

Silliness

It turns out the manual activation of the backlight not working with the new Ipod firmware is a known issue. Thanks Apple! That was an upgrade well worth a half hour install and a restart. Uh, not.

In other silliness news, I noticed that Mark Pilgrim's Butler script blocks Google ads. I wonder how often the ad to buy his book on Google has made him money. Come on, Mark, don't you think your script would be sufficiently useful without that?

I fall down less

The Google ski trip rundown from Dens is better than I could ever manage, especially because I was too lazy to tote my camera around. The parties raged, and the Mike's Way green run at Stratton let me feel all grown up, coming down from the top of the mountain while only occasionally losing my skis.

Better Business Bureau came through!

While still admitting no fault, at least Orbitz responded when I complained via the BBB.

Dear Mr. Dave:

Better Business Bureau has forwarded your recent complaint to us for review and direct follow up with you. Thank you for your recent comments regarding your experience with Orbitz. On behalf of my colleagues at Orbitz, I sincerely apologize for the dissatisfaction you've expressed, and I appreciate the opportunity to respond.

We know that understanding the expectations of our premium customers is the key to maintaining their loyalty and support. We can understand when we don't that you may doubt our desire and ability to provide you with the quality of service you expect and deserve. Please be assured we are listening and that your comments have not gone unheard.

Although we fully sympathize with your situation, however, at the same time we do not want to come across as being insensitive to your concerns. After a thorough investigation about this matter, our record indicates that your hotel reservation was successfully transmitted to the hotel on January 12, 2006 at 17:29 GMT. Nevertheless, please understand that Hotels just like the airlines do overbook and on occasion will exceed overbooking ratios. This process is solely controlled by the individual hotels and or their representative companies. On occasion we find these hotels are unsuccessful in closing their inventory allowing customers the ability to still book rooms. Although we understand this does not excuse your experience, Orbitz fully holds the hotel responsible. By sharing your concerns we hope the property will take action in better managing their inventory in the future. We thank you for bringing this to our attention.

Furthermore, in the interest of goodwill, Orbitz has made a one time exception and would like to offer you a $200 rebate on your next Orbitz.com booking. This compensation is not intended to place a value on your experience. It is meant to emphasize our commitment to you as a customer and to encourage you to continue using Orbitz for your travel needs....

Note that they have no record of acknowledgement by the hotel. Good thing Orbitz doesn't write networking protocols for a living. Anyway, the lessons here are: Orbitz may be cheap, but you have to double-check their work, and if somebody tries to dick you around, let the BBB know.

Favorite band of the moment

What Made Milwaukee Famous (via Panda's Hideout 24). Weirdly, not for sale on Amazon, but available on ITunes. If JHymn would get updated, my LAN friends could listen in. :-(

Orbitz, how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways.

The, uh, nice people at Orbitz wrote back:

When booking with any online service you are acting as your own travel agent. It always a good idea, as well as your responsibility to verify all travel information before going. ... In this situation the hotel states the reservation did not go through even though Orbitz shows the electronic transfer of the reservation as successful. The hotels are responsible for managing their inventories and unfortunately this hotel did not.

Since Orbitz is not prepared to recover the cost of the screw-up from the hotel, what am I paying Orbitz for? A few guesses.

1. For a terrible web site. One that forgets who am I even though I check "remember me." One that times out sessions after a few minutes. One that is slow. One that doesn't understand simultaneous sessions. One that can't learn when my default airport has changed. One where the price changes every time I try to buy something. In a fraction of the time, Yahoo has already made them look lime amateurs.
   
2. For obnoxious customer service. Customer service that tells regular customers that they have to pay $50 change fees. Customer service that tells me I should double-check everything they do because they might screw up and leave me without a hotel at my destination. Customer service that tells me I should double-check everything even though the confirmation tells me not to contact the hotel directly. Customer service that thinks it's okay when they land me in Miami with no hotel and can only find me a dreary room at the same price but minus the excellent location, 4 stars, and ktichen of the original (possibly explaining why it was free at the last minute). Customer service that discourages me from speaking to a manager and tells me I should not expect compensation. Customer service that says I must continue my discussion by email and then cuts off the email thread and says I must continue by phone.
   
3. For incurring additional risk. When I book a hotel directly, I can usually cancel without penalty. When I book airfare directly, I usually have 24 hours to cancel. When I book with Orbitz, I'm screwed. With an Orbitz travel package, I pay $50 to cancel the hotel and the airfare is nonrefundable.
   

At the end of the day, I am forced to use Orbitz because they have their special deal with the airlines that lets me search all of their cheapest airfares. Luckily, you can usually save $5 by booking straight with the airline and even get a few miles in the process. Next time, I'm going to start with Travelocity's supposedly pleasant customer service and work my way down.

Any tips on getting some finanically-meaningful apology out of Orbitz? Anybody have any luck with the Better Business Bureau or something?

SoBe

Catherine and I are back from South Beach, which was really fun, except for the part where Orbitz somehow didn't book our hotel and then tried to buy us off with a $50 travel voucher (we'll see how that all shakes out) and my bum foot, which made running a bit tough. We sat on the beach and read and played in the waves and ate Cuban food.

The art deco hotels are awesome. What is it about art deco that is so captivating?

NetFlix brought Harold and Kumar to our mailbox. Very entertaining.

more pics »