Well, the iPhone 3G release is just days away now, yet for some reason, the hype doesn’t seem as awe-inspiring as last year’s did. Which is quite surprising, given that right after I watched Steve Jobs’ keynote last month, my thought on the new iPhone and the 50% price reduction was, “At last, Apple finally got the iPhone right.” And that’s a big statement coming from me, as someone fully certified as being immune to Uncle Steve’s Reality Distortion Field. But yet, in the past month, many revelations have come out to smash Apple’s party, and most of them from the cell carriers, the gatekeepers needed to allow the iPhone to function.

In the post I made yesterday on MacFocus Magazine I ranted about cell phone carriers and how they hinder the iPhone, which has been more than clear in the past month. Even ignoring how other cell carriers are screwing would-be iPhone customers (I’m looking at you, Rogers), the iPhone 3G comes with plenty more strings attached. I could start with the basic craziness of charging an extra $10/month for the 3G service for the iPhone, which not only eliminates the iPhone’s $200 price drop, it actually makes the total cost of the iPhone more expensive. I could then go to the unexplained reason for the iPhone no longer being activated in iTunes. Not only does it take one of my favorite attributes of the old iPhone and throw it out the signature-free window, but it’s going to make the already ridiculously-crowded Apple Stores much worse and cause people the hassle of having to go through all the usual cell phone heck. (Plus, not having an online option is going to mess it up for the people who don’t live near an Apple or AT&T Store; are people going to have to make iPhone pilgrimages now?)

Oh, and it’s nice that AT&T will finally offer an contract-free option (note how AT&T didn’t say “unlocked” anywhere) for the iPhone, but putting it at a $400 surcharge, plus tax, is ridiculous! It would be smarter to buy the iPhone for $200 or $300 (instead of $600 or $700), sign the contract, pay for one month of service, then cancel and pay the $175 early termination fee on the contract. By my math, that would save you over $150 over the contract-free option. And why exactly can’t the iPhone be activated with GoPhone pay-as-you-go yet?

That’s why I’m still not interested in an iPhone. The phone itself is nice, and finally is something I would desire except for it having to go through AT&T under a two-year contract at a substantial monthly fee. No thanks, I’m not that desperate to go mobile.

The alternative would be the iPod touch, which thanks to its imminent App Store upgrade will finally become the best non-cell phone PDA out there. (Palm originally beat it in my opinion by having open access to applications that actually did things, but now the iPod touch has that too, and with far better quality.) The only main differences now between the iPhone 3G and the iPod touch are the phone part, the lack of GPS (though the iPod touch still has the somewhat-less-accurate Skyhook function, but even the original iPhone didn’t have that), and–oh yeah, the ability to be online without access to a wifi hotspot.

See, that’s my one remaining issue here. Yes, the iPhone has the ability to be online wherever there is a good cell connection, while the iPod touch is restricted to just wifi networks. At that point, wouldn’t it just be smarter to rely on my laptop instead, since it also can only connect to the internet at wifi hotspots? Besides that, at present, the iPod touch (which clearly has less functionality) is $100 more than the iPhone. Granted, the iPod touch doesn’t have to be hindered by a service plan, but it does make one wonder if Apple isn’t planning to up the specs on the iPod touch this fall.

I have never been interested in an iPod because I’ve always said that I’m satisfied with listening to iTunes on my computer, and don’t really need my music elsewhere in most cases (except maybe a 12 hour flight, which I don’t do very often). I’m not strongly interested in an iPod touch, because it pretty much has the same, if not less, functionality of my MacBook, albeit in a smaller form factor and a different interface. I might be interested in the iPhone, since it does have a few tricks that my computer doesn’t, except for it being connected to AT&T and therefore being far more expensive than I could ever hope to afford in my current position thanks to that darned service plan crap.

What exactly is the place of these pocket-sized devices in my life? They may be more attractive to me than they were a few years ago, but Steve Jobs is going to have to full just a few more tricks out of his hat before I’m in the mood for one of these iDevices.

Tags: activation, AT&T, carriers, devices, dilemma, iPhone, iPod touch, laptop, rant, rate plans, services

It’s April, and for California public schools, that means STAR Testing time. This thing called “Standardized Testing And Reporting” means nothing more than two weeks of craziness as different grades are given tests in different subjects requiring a bunch of confusing schedule changes even though there’s still six weeks of classes left in the year. Crazy? You bet. Welcome to California.

Tomorrow (4/8) will be the California Language Arts Standards Test, which mostly boils down to reading stuff and answering questions about it, and then correcting badly written “student drafts.” Wednesday (4/9) will be the California Mathematics Standards Test, which is a bunch of math problems written by people who obviously AREN’T mathematicians or people having ANYTHING to do with math because of the idiotic way that at least 10-25% of their questions are written. (As someone who excels in math, when I say that the questions are worded stupidly, I know what I’m talking about.) Thursday will be the California Social Studies Standards Test (aka U.S. History), which probably is the most topical of all the tests on the plate. And then, finally, next Tuesday (4/16) will be the final STAR test: the California Science Standards Test, which is again mostly a drill & grill of science subjects. Woop dee do. And then, I get a super-late start on Wednesday (4/17) because that’s a Sophomores-only test.

The crazy thing about these tests is twofold. First of all, they really don’t say much about me, but about my school. As in, if there aren’t enough kids proficient in these tests (or even if not enough kids are there for these tests), the school gets burned on this magic number called the API. But worse, by the year 2014, if 100% of all students in the school aren’t proficient, then the school gets marked for Program Improvement (PI), a very scary thing which eventually spells doom for the future of public schools. And can you realistically expect that 100% of all students will be proficient? No. Ladies and gentlemen, say hello to the #1 flaw of No Child Left Behind.

The second problem is that as an assessment of my personal academic performance, these tests STINK! Math is my best subject, I got a 710 on the Math section of the SAT, and yet on the STAR tests, Math has been my lowest score for the past four years. Why? I can tell you why–all those math questions are worded so darned strangely that a good portion of them are near impossible to figure out what they’re trying to get across! I swear, there is something VERY WRONG with those tests.

Luckily, next Tuesday, I will be able to celebrate. As an eleventh grader. this is the LAST YEAR I HAVE TO TAKE THE STAR TESTS!!! After taking these tests yearly for the last ten years, I will be done with these wastes of partially-recycled paper forever! And yes, I am excited about that, and not just so that I’ll be able to get even with those rub-their-nose-in-your-face seniors who get to sleep in for five days while the rest of us are stuck with the tests.

So, here we go with a few strange days at school…

Tags: California, education, rant, schedules, School, standards, STAR, tests

EDITOR’S NOTE (What editor?): The purpose of this post is purely to vent. Nothing written in this post should (at this point) be considered as indicative of any future changes or announcements, but is purely for the purpose of me to vent about some stuff that has been on my mind.

I’m sure that if you’re one of the meager few whom have followed PreviewCast, you have noticed that its path has gotten considerably bumpy thus far. And I’ve got to say, I have spent many, many hours over the past weeks and months debating about PreviewCast, its purpose, and its place in life and on the internet.

Now granted, I do have to say this for PreviewCast: when we restarted it in July 2006, we really were moving into uncharted territory and had no idea how it would continue. In short: it was summer, and we were bored, and we wanted to start doing it again. We knew that in 2005, the show had fallen apart after 5 episodes when school started and life started, and so we sort of dealt with somewhat of a tension in terms of whether we would still make it when school started, and whether we would make it past the five episode barrier.

It was to our delightful surprise that this “second generation” of PreviewCast actually started to become successful and built a personality for itself. We consistently produced about thirteen episodes (twelve regular plus one special edition) from mid-July to the end of October, during which we also had one guest (Micheal Cottingham from phpBB who was on episode #006 during the AboutUs.org debacle). Then, we ended up missing about three weeks in November, partially due to the busy part of a school semester, but we re-emerged during Thanksgiving to record two great episodes (and then to completely reinvigorate a broken-apart website by rebuilding it)–including interviews with Leah Culver, and later in December, Adam Christianson. We had a lot of moments to look back on during our 2006 Best-Of episode, #018. Shortly after this, I got started on my second podcast, phpBB Weekly.

We went right on through the end of January, although some tensions did emerge as we started to tackle the question of “randomness” versus “decency.” Nevertheless, looking back, the early part of 2007 reflects some of my favorite PreviewCast memories. We had another hiatus in February due to the couple of weeks that I was sick in bed, but then we sprung back together in March when we had an interview with TalkShoe CEO Dave Nelsen, a special episode seminar at my school, and then a much-beloved April Fools Day parody of Diggnation (complete with the Stewarts Orange & Cream!!!).

We had a few episodes in April, but didn’t get anything done in May (again, busy with school, end of semester, etc.). However, we got going again around Memorial Day weekend, and had a nice set of episodes in June, including episode #035, which featured my favorite back-and-forth argument with Larry: a 30+ minute argument over Safari for Windows. Then, we had two episodes from the day of the iPhone launch–a day which I’ll never forget–in which Robert and I talked about the launch outside our Apple Store on a park bench and I then interviewed the folks in line. Looking back, I was really proud of my interviewing the folks in line, which gave me practice for some episodes some time later. July continued with our one-or-two year celebration, a Matt Mullenweg interview, plus an excellent experience covering WordCamp and interviewing people there. And then, we reached the peak of this running streak with our forty-second episode on August 7th when we covered the iMac/iLife/iWork special event one-hour after the keynote ended.

And that’s when it plateaued. School started. People got busy. I spent many weekends online trying to record an episode, but with no one becoming available. Sometimes, I didn’t really have time to record. We did manage to pump out three episodes in late September–one of which was an amazing interview with Lorelle VanFossen and my most favorite interview ever, but after that, we went back down into the ditches. Our feed was entirely silent for two and a half months. Although he was the co-host, Larry had only been on PreviewCast twice since April. Not that I blamed him–I understand more than anyone that as teenagers, we have a lot happening in our lives, and have significant time constraints to deal with. Nevertheless, it was somewhat irritating to me, and Larry and I exchanged numerous IMs and e-mails over the possibility of ending PreviewCast. But, we never really had the will to do so.

Now, it’s interesting how this plays out–the feelings that I had and still have over ending PreviewCast somewhat reflects the feelings that I had in mid-2006 regarding my commitments with the phpBB MOD Team. I haven’t talked very much about the details on why I left the MOD Team in August 2006, partly because they were somewhat embarrassing circumstances. But it’s important to remember that at that time, I was in a very interesting situation. I had only become familiar with phpBB in June 2004, written my first very basic MOD in October 2004, doing a slightly more substantial MOD in February 2005, and then in November I grabbed an opportunity to apply to the MOD team, and I was accepted. However, I was only 14 years old, a freshman in high school, and with only a small amount of self-taught PHP experience, I was probably the least experienced person on the team and I was certainly the youngest person ever on the team. Plus, I had a very committed life–I look back on my freshman year as such a difficult year for me partially because I really overcommitted myself that year. By the time 2006 came around, I wasn’t being very productive towards the teams, I was having conflicts with other team members, and I was starting not to enjoy it very much. But at the same time, i was very reluctant to quit because there were some ways in which I liked being on the teams, and I certainly enjoyed having the status of being a MOD Team member. Nevertheless, things continued to deteriorate, up until the point where, two days before my sophomore year started in August 2006, I was asked to step down.

Quite frankly, I was only heartbroken about that for about a day. School started, I had recently gotten going with PreviewCast, and quite frankly, sophomore year was so crazy that I probably managed to survive because I wasn’t committed to the teams anymore. I ended up starting phpBB Weekly five months later, and I feel that I make a much better contribution to the phpBB community through that venture.

But I have a very similar feeling with PreviewCast too, and I think Larry does as well. We know that PreviewCast is not doing well. We’re all getting very busy, and as such, general interest and commitment in keeping PreviewCast going has been declining. Larry has not been able to make it to our usual 4:30 PM Eastern recording time on Sunday afternoon since last June (he was on once in late-December for a Boxing Day episode, when we recorded really early in the morning to adjust to his schedule). Even I have had to skip out a number of weeks because of things going on in my life, plus a number of our regular PreviewCasters have had life move on. Plus, we’re all growing older, and a number of things are coming over the horizon. Larry and Skoker are graduating in June (and congrats to them, by the way), and they’ll likely be moving on in life. I have ever-growing commitments in my life, plus my time to start college-searching has begun.

But yet, we really don’t want to let go of PreviewCast for whatever reason, and I really think that it’s because we have never done it for the subscribers, we have never done it for ad revenue, we have never done it for any self-serving reason whatsoever other than the fact that we have enjoyed doing it. PreviewCast has more or less been fun for us. In fact, sometimes when I tell friends or teachers about the things that I do, they often ask me what I do for fun–well, blogging and podcasting is what I do for fun. That is my hobby. And that’s why we have both been so hesitant to end PreviewCast or to disassociate with PreviewCast: we love doing it.

We have tried to restart the show back during Winter Break in December, and we’ve recorded a few shows, including a special Macworld 2008 set of interviews (#049), and an excellent fiftieth episode that we did in January. And then, once again, we have gone dormant. Part of that can be blamed on my recent Sojourn trip which has usurped a significant amount of free time, but then again, I have tried for these past few weeks to assemble PreviewCast episodes, and again have been met by a silent, already-committed internet.

I’m really trying to decide where to go and what to do. I really don’t feel like I can continue to work like this: trying to ask a bunch of people to try to come together for an episode, set aside my own time to prepare and be here to record an episode, and then see no results. At the same time, PreviewCast is a part of two networks that will only let the show stay around if we are somewhat reliable at actually producing content, which has not been happening. I really feel tempted to want to throw in the towel and say that PreviewCast is over due to a lack of commitment. But at the same time, I still want to be able to have some sort of a podcast where I can be able to offer my comments and opinions on tech stuff in a way that I can’t do it on a blog–but I want to be able to do it with someone and be able to do it regularly.

So, at this point I’m frustrated because of where PreviewCast has been going and yet continuing my continuous desire to have some sort of a teen-based tech podcast, regardless of whether or not it’s modeled after PreviewCast. I hope to be able to figure something out soon.

Tags: comments, discussion, episodes, friends, frustrations, guests, history, MOD Team, MODs, opinions, Personal, phpBB, phpBB Weekly, Podcasts, PreviewCast, rant, tech, venting

If there’s anyone that could write the answer to that joke, it would be my very own San Mateo County.

I live within California’s Twelfth Congressional District (out of the fifty-three that California has–I know, it’s huge!), which covers most of San Mateo County and a small part of southern San Francisco. Our district has been represented for the last 27 years by Democrat Tom Lantos, who recently passed away due to cancer on February 11th. He was the only Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress. While I haven’t necessarily been a fan of some of his policies, he’s definitely been very respected in our community to pull off as many elections as he has.

But now he’s passed away, and everyone’s now trying to figure out what’s going to happen next.

He had announced in early January that he would not be seeking reelection due to his cancer, and so a number of other locals have been stepping up to run for the 2009-2011 term, including our local former state senator Jackie Speier, as well as some others who are running. The primary election for the 2009-2011 term is supposed to take place on June 3rd, and the general election on November 4th.

Now, I’ve already ranted on here about the craziness of having three elections (February 5th, June 3rd, and November 4th) in a calendar year, all because California wanted to move their primaries up and then half of the country decided to follow suit. But now, courtesy of Lantos’ death, we’ve got a fourth election up our sleeve.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (yes, as a Californian, I have to know how to spell that correctly) has essentially ordered our county to hold a special primary election on April 8 that will have us vote on who will be Lantos’ replacement up until the end of the term on January 3, 2009. In other words, “Who wants to wear the dead guy’s shoes for six or seven months?” So, yes, if you’re counting, this means a fourth election in a seven-month time span: November 6 (2007), February 5, April 8, and June 3. Can you imagine how hard that must be on poll workers and on voters? Not to mention how expensive elections are to put on? And this April 8 election is just for one race to see who gets to be Congressman for a few months.

For this reason, our county wanted to make the April 8 special election an all-mail election, which would have cut the estimated $1 million cost down to about $650,000–noting, by the way, that 40% of our county is already vote-by-mail and special elections usually have a less than 30% turnout rate. Oh, and all of this at a time when California is facing a $16 billion budget deficit. Pretty much all that’s involved in the April 8th election is that three people have filed to run in the special election: Jackie Speier (Democrat), Mike Moloney (Republican), and Greg Conlon (Republican). If one of them gets a majority of the vote (more than 50%), they automatically win. If none of them gets a majority, then the leading Democrat (Jackie Speier) and the leading Republican are contested in the “special general election” on June 3rd. This obviously gets confusing because June 3rd is also the “normal” primary for the 2009-2011 term, which have the same people running, so it would be weird to have the special general election and the not-special open primary for the same congressional seat at the same time.

But essentially, the April 8th ballot is just for one Congressional district for one race with three names on it, and our county wanted to do it by mail. Just a single sheet of paper with three languages on it (our county is required by state to print all election materials in English, Spanish, and Chinese, based our our results from the 2000 census) to be sent back in and processed. Unfortunately, the needed legislation died in committee, and so our county is going to have to setup polling places, hire and train poll workers, and try to get our county to actually come out to those polls to vote, just for a little special election.

All I can say is it sure is a big waste of money at a time when California’s economy appears to be going to hell in a handbasket.

Update: I based my post on information from our County’s elections blog. They just posted an update to fix some inaccuracies on their part.

Tags: Congress, district, elections, House of Representatives, rant, San Mateo County, seat, term, Tom Lantos

But not a rant on all quitters and losers. No, I’m talking about a rant on quitters and losers among the 2008 presidential candidates. I know that although I’m a person who has strong political opinions, I don’t usually talk politics very much on this blog. But I’m just fed up with what we’ve been seeing in the past four weeks–that’s right, it’s ONLY been four weeks since the ridiculously early Iowa Caucuses–that I want to get this out of my system.

Let’s go back to the very beginning of this year: January 1st. Not that long ago. The Democrats had eight people running for president (in alphabetical order): Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson. But then, three days later (January 4th), after the Iowa Caucus, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd dropped out of the race. Bill Richardson dropped out on January 9th, after the New Hampshire Primary. I mean, only two primaries go by and already a third of the Democrats drop out? New Hampshire and Iowa combined only represent about 1.3% of the population of the United States–”cold white people” as Jon Stewart describes them.
But since then, Dennis Kucinich (last Friday) and now John Edwards (today) have both dropped out, leaving us with essentially three Democrats left, none of whom I particularly like very much.

The Republicans, too, have already seen some of them calling it quits (though most of them have had the backbone to keep going), such as Duncan Hunter on January 19th, Fred Thompson on January 22nd, and Rudy Giuliani today.

What’s dumb is why these people drop out so quickly. I mean, folks, Super Tuesday is February 5th, which is still about a week away, which decides 52% of the Democratic delegates and 41% of the Republican delegates. Things can change up VERY quickly with such wide margins. Not to mention that California, the state with the most delegates, is holding its election that day as well, but I’ve yet to see any of these candidates do any kind of meaningful campaign in California yet.

I mean, it just seems to go against all reasonable logic. Why would you put so much work during the year 2007 running for president (particularly given how ridiculously early all of the debates started happening), and then quit as soon as a small sliver of the country votes for someone else? What is the point? Doesn’t that really just alienate the choices that the rest of the country has available to them? Democracy can only really work when citizens have a true choice on the ballot; when these others drop out so early, it cuts this choice out of the equations. On the Democratic side, there were some Democrats that I liked, but because the early votes went to the so-called “front runners”, these other guys dropped out. Now all the Dems have left are Clinton, Gravel, and Obama, none of whom I like very darn much.

Back in the old days, before all this big media, it was not the primaries and the caucuses that determined the president; they did nothing more than determine which delegates were going to the party convention. The convention decided who the nominee would be, not the primaries. Now, we’re getting to the point where the nominee is decided even before all of the primaries are over, meaning that the last few states are down to having virtually no choices to make whatsoever, and practically making the whole point of “delegates” useless. This is where the whole thing about states wanting to move up their primaries so they can “be more important” then being rebuffed by the already-first-in-line states, and that’s why we ended up with half of the country having its primaries on February 5th, and Iowa and New Hampshire holding their primaries in the dead of winter in the beginning of January. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the beginning of the next batch of primaries being held in November or December of 2011. I would probably advocate for having a fixed date that all of the state primaries are held on–the general response to that is the claim that it’s not possible for candidates to campaign everywhere at once. However, my response would be that first of all, candidates for the November general election already have to campaign everywhere at once; second of all, things like planes and the internet and the like make it much easier to be in multiple places at once; third of all, twenty-four states are holding primaries or caucuses on February 5th, so we’re already halfway to having a single day for primaries already!

All I can say is, I think that it’s a very dumb system. In thirty-three days, from the January 3rd Iowa Caucus to the February 5th Super Tuesday, only a third of the Democratic runners are left in the running and just over half of the Republican runners are left in the running. It’s ridiculous and a very sad example of our very sad system. I don’t care if you’re a Democrat, Republican, or one of those third-parties that the media completely denies the existence of; it just feels like this whole 2008 election is a big joke.

Tags: 2008, article, caucus, Democrats, election, losers, nominees, president, primary, quitters, rant, Republicans, runners

Well, I’m finally back from Long Beach, and not a day too soon. As you’ll recall, at the beginning of the week I posted an itinerary on my blog for my trip to Long Beach for the October State PTA Board of Managers Meeting. Although some productive decisions were made, a vast number of factors combined together to make it the worst trip I have ever taken.

First of all, I’m sure that if you’ve been hearing the national news, you’ve heard about those fires down in Southern California? Those ones which has caused over $1 billion in damage, and which they suspect someone deliberately lit and they’re offering a $70,000 reward for information on? Well, I never saw the fires, but oh boy, did I see the smoke. When I landed on Wednesday afternoon in LAX, the blood-red sun was setting. On the Super Shuttle ride from LAX to Long Beach, the driver had the radio on and I learned everything that I needed to know (and then some) about the fires. But the smoke was everywhere.

And I was to become a victim of it. You’ll recall that I had been fighting a fight with my allergies? At the beginning of the week, I had practically conquered them to the point of an almost non-existent nuisance. But Thursday morning…BAM! My nose was clogging up worse than any kitchen sink you might imagine. During my two meetings on Thursday, I kept having to continuously blow my nose, making myself sound disgusting and building a big mess of tissues. I spent $10 of my own money on some Sudafed in the gift shop, but that didn’t help too much. Apparently, even though the whole hotel was air conditioned, that didn’t eliminate everything in the smoke, and that stuff was irritating me pretty badly.

Yesterday (Friday), I’m not sure if the smoke was clearer (the sunset Friday evening was yellow-orange instead of red), but my nose wasn’t quite as active as it had been on Thursday, but the congestion had moved into my throat, forcing me to buy Robitussin to deal with that. Of course, I got off to a bad start on Friday when I pulled something in my left leg in the morning when I was trying to turn off the alarm clock. It wasn’t broken or sprained, because (eventually) I could still walk on it, but it really hurt when I did it and still hurts a little bit as I’m typing this. However, I got through Friday, which included me reading an inspiration for the board meeting (which everyone loved), and by Noon, the meeting was over, I packed up my room and checked out. A group of us from State PTA got on a Super Shuttle to head back to LAX, and I got off at Terminal 6 for Virgin America.

When I got to the counter, my flight was listed as being on time, with a 4 PM departure scheduled. Great, so I checked in my bags, went through security, and then got myself some lunch at one of the restaurants. Then I got to my gate at about 3:00, and see a one-hour delay listed, the new scheduled departure is 5:00 PM. By the time 4 PM rolls around, another half hour has been added to the delay, making the new scheduled departure 5:30 PM. Apparently the word is that the plane hadn’t left San Francisco yet–it had had a flat tire. Later on, this story was revised to include engine trouble, so I’m not sure what the story was, but by the time 4:30 rolled around, the lady at the counter announced that the flight had been cancelled, and then the chaos started! Almost everyone got up and swarmed around the counter, and the lady at the counter kept trying to tell people to sit back down until she could figure out what to do, etc. I stayed sitting down, playing Solitaire on my computer, thinking that I would just wait and see what happened while many of the others tried to get themselves onto other flights.

The Virgin America folks tried to call other airlines to see if they could move us onto other flights heading into San Francisco, but apparently the other flights were completely full, including Virgin America’s next flight into San Francisco (which left at 6:45). By the time 6 PM rolled around, they announced that they would be getting another Virgin America plane to fly in, and it would be leaving for San Francisco between 10-10:30 PM. They told us to get into two lines, where we could either agree to be on the 10:30 PM plane, get a meal voucher, and we would get a $100 credit for future Virgin America flights, or else others could cancel and get on any Virgin America flight the next day, plus the $100 credit. Not having any other option, I consented to take the 10:30 flight and got my meal voucher. I laughed when I saw that my voucher was good for a whopping $10. You know this is an airport, right? PTA gives me $10 per diem for breakfast, and $25 for dinner. For dinner, I was able to get a hot dog combo dinner, which consisted of a hot dog, a small thing of fries, and a drink, and even then, that cost $12.

So I waited, and waited, and waited. I had not brought that much stuff with me to entertain myself–the few worksheets I had pulled from my school backpack to do on the plane were finished, I had lost 22 games in a row of computer Solitaire (I think I have a conspiracy theory against computer Solitaire), and I had walked within the halls of the gates so much I was completely bored of them. By 10 PM, I consented to watching the people who are supposed to help guide the plane into the gate play an improvised game of soccer, which they continued doing for half an hour, and I continued watching them for that long too.

The plane had been scheduled to depart at 10:30 PM, instead it pulled into the gate at 10:40 PM, and we watched as the disgruntled folks from San Francisco who had been messed up by the plane walked out into the terminal, and then waited for the plane to be cleaned, catered, refueled, etc. We finally boarded at 11 PM, and took off shortly afterwards, a full seven hours after the scheduled departure time. I spent a full nine hours in the LAX terminal yesterday, which meant that this trip beat out the previous long delay that I had suffered back in 2004 in Minneapolis (that plane had only left five hours late and kept my father and I at the terminal for seven and a half hours). We landed at SFO this morning at 12:30 AM, and I got home and to bed around 1:20 AM this morning.

I slept in, which is why I missed phpBB Weekly #036 this morning, and am not going to the peace march in San Francisco that I had been hoping to go to. I have not, as of yet, installed Leopard, but I’ll probably get started on that soon. And I am very glad that I wasn’t relying on making it to the Leopard launch event tomorrow. All in all, I am just very glad to be back home and away from all of the chaos that Long Beach caused this week.

Tags: fires, horrible, LAX, Long Beach, nasal, Personal, rant, sinus, smoke, trip, Virgin America