In some ways I can’t believe my own silliness. Here for nearly two months now, I’ve been thinking I had a return flight at on the day I agreed to on purchase, when in fact its been another all along. They did sent me a confirmation with that wrong date on it, and I was supposed to call them back and have it corrected within 24 hours. But the confirmation didn’t display in thunderbird, and I wondered why they’d sent me a blank email, till I tried forwarding it to our accountant and the text magically appeared. My bad is that I -did- click forward and even copied and pasted that forwarded info to one other person. I didn’t take time to re-read the dates and times in that forwarded email because I assumed they were correct. Silly me!

Delta assumes that they were correct, too, and that there is NO WAY their site could have made such a horrendous mistake… therefore it was me who decided it was OK to leave mid-luncheon, and now I must pay for my foolishness.

I’m usually fairly mellow. Maybe it’s the stress of suddenly realizing I’m supposed to fly out WHILE I’m hosting a luncheon with a group of top designers around the world. Or maybe it’s that it’s the middle of the night. Or… maybe what set me off was the pathetically bad voice recognition program on the other end of the phone saying “If you want to discuss your existing reservation, say, ‘Discuss my existing reservation.’” then “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand you.” Come on, “discuss my existing reservation” when it can’t even make out the difference between yes and no?

Or maybe its that I don’t like being jerked around.

Still, at wits end, and having already gone up the ranks from the automated phone system to some script-reading Indian to the customer service supervisor in Salt Lake, I had little choice but to be swindled. Luckily I wasn’t quite so trusting this time, and went on their site where I discovered I could buy a whole NEW ticket for $400 — not the $687 or so total they were asking for now. I asked her to explain. Her response was something like “Well, yes we do have a cheaper flight that morning but I Thought you wanted the one you purchased the first time.” Awesome customer service there, Delta.

Anyway so I forked out the money and vowed to myself I will always pick ANY airline over Delta. Which meant I’d have to find something to do with the skymiles I’d just earned. But clicking around on their site I’m finding that its quite half-baked! Half of the skymiles spending links don’t even work. And here I’m supposed to believe that this wrong-day reservation could not possibly be due to some bug in their system?

So what do I do with the skymiles I have no desire to use? I’m hoping there’s a way to donate them to the next poor soul Delta decides to torture. Post your Delta horror story here, and how my measly 1300 miles might help.

In the meantime, if you’re looking to buy tickets, my recommendation? Go Jet Blue.

Wrong. Their password reset feature doesn’t work for me. So now they practically want power of attorney to get it back. OK, not really – but over a series of emails, they have asked for ALL my personal identification information, including multiple phone numbers, alternate email addresses, and a copy of my drivers license. Which has my social on it. After all the runaround and all the information I’ve already given them… just to reset a password? I don’t think so, Yahoo! :-/

So, no flickr for me. Given that I haven’t switched my site over to wordpress with its nifty gallery plugin yet (as I’ve got more pressing projects at the moment) I’m just going to upload a few photos right here.

I’ve seen how domineering and cruel some men can be, even in America, even in the nicest towns, justifying their actions and attitude by their gender alone. I can’t imagine what it’d be like to be a woman in a country that honors the female gender less. I’ve personally experienced gender-bias and harassment in the work place, and nearly everywhere else at one time or another. Sadly, I have seen women allow themselves to be treated this way. I have fought against it, I appreciate what has been done to fight it, and I encourage every individual and society as a whole to continue and even strengthen their efforts against this long-standing plague.

I have also noticed the popular thought that “All Men Are Idiots” where men are constantly equated with Homer Simpson — Homer himself has become less a jerk and more an idiot over the past several years to accommodate this trend. You’d be less than observant if you hadn’t noticed that media that portrays males as dolts is generally accepted, where anything that so much as hints at females having different qualities (even former Maya and Miguel theme-song) causes an outrage. I’ve been in situations where a less-qualified woman was given preference over a more-qualified man, just to “make things fair”. And has anyone met a Stay-At-Home-Dad who hasn’t been completely debased by his peers and society as a whole?

Until the vocal leaders of the feminist movement care more about fairness, freedom, quality of life, and a better world than they do about power and revenge, they will continue to spin their tires, burning rubber, causing far too much stink, and weakening their stand in the process. And as much as I abhor the term, this woman must be the reason Feminists have come to be called Feminazis. Check out this article, a commentary by Albert Mohler. I haven’t read the rest of his site. Glancing over it, I can’t say I’d agree with him on very many things; just the fact that he does talk radio jumps out and bites me, as life has conditioned me to associate talk radio with contention and manipulative advertisement. No offense to my friends and family who love it; besides that’s an argument for another day. An article on ABC News confirms a few of her quotes.

“I am saying an educated, competent adult’s place is in the office.” ~Linda Hirshman

Now if she were to read my resume I’m sure she’d say I don’t qualify as ‘educated’ but I should hope she’d admit I am competent, even though I totally disagree with her. I think she would.

If an educated, competent adult’s place is in the office, who is left to raise our children? By the way, if you visited my site and saw this article half-written, here’s why: I’d stepped away from my computer for a moment. My child, and I don’t know which one, but the oldest is four, tried to take over the computer while I was away, but was considerate AND competent enough to save my work first. Granted, he or she did not save it to the drafts folder like I would have, but the article was nonetheless saved. And so for a short time you saw a half-written article posted on my front page before I got this back to drafts.

If my children were being raised by an uneducated, incompetent adult, how would they know to do such a thing? My children are absolutely BRILLIANT. They are as creative as they are analytical. Look at the rising generation and ask yourself how different the world might be if we left child rearing to the most competent and caring individuals, instead of leaving them in day cares with the people Linda wouldn’t consider competent, educated, or office worthy.

“One of the things I’ve done working on my book is to read a lot of the diaries online. And their description of their lives does not sound particularly interesting or fulfilling for a complicated person, for a complicated educated person. It’s physical, but it’s repetitious.” ~Linda Hirshman

Changing diapers is repetitious, yes. In fact, I’m sure any parent would agree, if we could afford to hire someone just to take care of the ‘complicated’ diapers we would. Fortunately there’s so much more to parenting than diapering.