Flying Etiquette

I do a lot of traveling for my job. As such, I’ve noticed a lot of behavior of other travelers that I have come to despise or find annoying. I’ve been contemplating writing this blog post for quite a while, but I am a generally easy going person and I don’t want to ruffle any feathers. My annoyances have finally gotten to the point where I feel that I either need to vent or let other people know what I find annoying in the hopes that they think, “Oh, yeah, I bet that is annoying to other people” in the hopes that they cease this behavior.

Most of the complaints below are just things that I think should be common courtesy in everyday life, but that many other travelers ignore when in the airport for some reason. I don’t particularly understand that. People who are normally pleasant to everyone seem to think that just because they’re in an airport that they suddenly have permission to be a dick. Like my idol, Wil Wheaton, says, “Don’t be a dick”.

Let’s start this off with some annoyances that derive from people waiting at the gate before they even get on the plane. Prepare for /rant.

• Know where your liquids are packed. It’s been a rule long enough that you shouldn’t be surprised anymore when the TSA asks you to pull out your liquids in a Ziploc bag and put them on the x-ray conveyor belt. You slow everybody up because you didn’t think to keep all your liquids in a single place and have to practically repack while in the security line.
• Same goes with your laptop. Two weeks ago I was behind a guy that had packed his laptop at the bottom of his rollerbag and had to take out most of the contents to get at it. Plan ahead, people.
• Don’t argue with the TSA guys. Not only are they then going to choose you for a “random” screening, but you’re not going to change their minds. They don’t care if you have to walk through the metal detector barefoot or have to throw away a half full bottle of water. You need to follow the rules just like everyone else. Once again, you should have planned ahead better.
• Don’t take up more than one seat when the gate area is getting full. On Sunday, the gate area was very full because there were three gates all boarding within twenty minutes of each other, so there were a lot of people milling about. I noticed one particular person who was laying across three seats. Seriously? I gave up my seat to an elderly gentleman and sat on the floor, but you get three seats for yourself? Wow, dude.
• Don’t crowd the boarding area before it’s your turn to board. Nowadays, most of the airlines have a zone boarding scheme or go row by row. If you’re in Zone 4 or in the back of the plane, don’t stand around the boarding area. You’re just in everyone’s way and you’re slowing down the already slow paced boarding process. Also, don’t try to board in earlier zones. Sure, you might slip through, but chances are the gate person isn’t going to let you pass and will send you back to wait some more.
• Don’t be rude to anyone working in the airport or on the airplane. These people are responsible for maintaining a safe and comfortable way for the rest of us to travel. Most of them have tough jobs that I personally wouldn’t want to do. Plus, if you’re rude to them, you’re just being a jerk. Knock it off.
• When boarding the plane, don’t try to fit huge ass bags into the overhead area. Also, don’t put it in there sideways. You’re taking up room that another person might have been able to use. If it’s too big, check it. Or, better yet, pack your stuff in a smaller bag to begin with so that you can fit it in the overhead bin.
• Related to that is: Don’t put two bags in the overhead area. I don’t care how much foot room you want. When you put two bags up there, you’re taking up space that someone else could have used. If you’re bringing enough stuff to fit into two small rollerbags, you should probably have just put it all in one larger one and checked it.
• Stand up whenever someone is entering or exiting your row. Even in the exit row. I don’t want to stick my ass in your face anymore than you want it there. Quit being lazy and have some consideration for others.
• Don’t tattle on someone on the phone or listening to headphones after they close the door. This isn’t Soviet Russia, no matter how controlling the flight attendants are. The flight attendants will tell that person off, and if they don’t it’s not your job to do so anyways. Plus, I personally feel that it’s 100% bull that I have to turn my iPod off during takeoff and landing. Is the meager radiation that my iPod puts out going to crash the airplane? No, the person next to me wouldn’t even be able to detect it with the right instrumentation, much less get through all the stuff between me and the cockpit.
• Don’t watch raunchy or scary movies on a laptop or any player that others might see. Chances are there are children on your flight and they might see.
• Same applies to websites that you might visit. Go to the public library for that stuff.
• This one isn’t so much an annoyance as it should be common sense: don’t talk about your confidential business practices/information on an airplane. 1. You never know who is listening; 2. You probably shouldn’t be sharing that information with random strangers anyways when it’s supposed to be confidential. I doubt your boss/shareholders/etc. would like to hear that you were sharing that information.
• Never recline your chair. Everybody hates that. I really wish that none of the chairs ever reclined. I originally wrote this as the person in front of me reclined their chair back as far as it will go. I could literally rest my head on their head without being that uncomfortable. Amendment: when you recline your chair back so far you can see up my nose, don’t turn around and complain that my knees are sticking into your back. Quit being a jerk. I’m six feet tall, my knees touched your chair before you leaned the damn thing back. It isn’t exactly comfortable for me either.
• If you’re in the aisle seat, stand up when the plane gets to the gate. That way at least one of the other people in your row can stand too. I’m mildly claustrophobic and always pretty eager to get off the plane and I hate when the aisle person waits to the last moment to stand up.
• Don’t wait for the last moment to get your stuff together when everyone is getting off the plane. You’re holding everyone up. See the point above this for more information.

I try to follow all of these suggestions whenever I’m traveling (which is twice a week at this point). You’d be amazed at the behavior that I’ve seen that I haven’t even posted here since I’ve only seen it once or twice, or extreme examples of any of the above points. /Endrant

On a lighter note, most people do follow a lot of these suggestions. It’s just the jerks who stand out to me, I think. If you have seen some behavior that appalls you, or you have some additions to my suggestions, please feel free to leave a comment.

And, now it’s time for my favorite song of the moment: Beefy – I’m No Superman

Fitness Update

It’s been…wow…almost four weeks now since I posted about my fitness plan. I figured that it was about time for an update post.

It’s been going good, so far. I’ve gained a level and my wife is pretty close to doing so as well. What this means is that we get to choose some skills to rank up and then we’ll get more bonus points on those activities that apply to those skills.

The main point of this exercise, for me, was just that, exercise. I will admit that it hasn’t had that great of an impact on the amount of exercise that I get, however, I do want to say that I don’t feel like the system is a waste of my energy. I have noted a vast improvement in the other activities that I’ve targeted for improvement. For example, I am much more willing to clean the cat litter at home when I am there on the weekends. Also, I now have more inspiration to shave my face on the weekends, which was a big pet peeve of my wife’s.

So, the program is working pretty well for us. We’re about a tenth of the way to our goal, which may seem daunting, but you have to realize that it takes time for people to alter their habits. Especially for those of us, like me, who normally resist such change.

Stay tuned as I plan to put out a full blog entry on Sunday night during my flight back to LA. It will be a good one.

Favorite song of the moment: Emergency Pizza Party – Kiss Kaboom

Role Playing Your Way to Fitness

In my last post I talked about an idea that I had to motivate myself to improve my physical fitness. Since this was an opportunity to improve in other ways too, I set out to develop a simple roleplaying style system that would allow me to track my progress and improvement in several areas. I used my knowledge of D&D and since I’ve heavily modified the rules of the game in the past it was quite easy to design a spreadsheet that did everything that I wanted it too using the basic rules of the game. Since I wasn’t quite sure the extent of the activities that I would want to track, I made the spreadsheet in such a way that it was quite easy to add a new activity type to track.

Developing the spreadsheet only took a couple of hours. I started with a basic D&D character sheet on the first page. It has the basic character information: name, race, class level, xp, traits (i.e. Strength, Wisdom, etc.) and abilities. I thought of adding feats and merits and flaws, but I thought that keeping it simple was the way to go.

The next step was to define some of the rules of the system. Some of these rules come straight out of D&D. The six basic traits are the same as the D&D ones with the bonuses that come from them calculated the same as well. Abilities are a set of skills that will garner bonus XP for activities. Each one has a trait that goes with it (i.e. the Aerobic ability goes with the Constitution trait) that gives a bonus (or detriment if your trait is low enough). Rather than using abilities to determine whether or not an action was successful, they instead award bonus XP when you complete an activity. This way, you can increase the amount of XP you gain for certain activities as a way to motivate yourself to gain levels faster.

The next thing that I did was to start making a list of activities. Each activity has an ability that goes with it (i.e. Jogging goes with the Aerobic ability) and a rate at which it awards XP (i.e. Jogging gives 5 points per 10 minutes). Once I had a decent list of activities and a pretty complete list of abilities, I went on to define the races and classes. I knew that your chosen race would adjust your trait scores (similar to D&D), but I didn’t quite know what a class would do for you. In D&D, your class effects your combat ability, the amount of abilities you get and a number of irrelevant items. I wanted the system to be fair, so I didn’t want a rogue to get more abilities than a barbarian (like in traditional D&D) because then a rogue would get XP so much faster. I looked back at what Ken Denmead (see my last post) did in his system, and thought that I could use a similar idea. He gave each class two bonus skills tags (I won’t explain tags, I didn’t employ that idea), so I thought that I could give each class two bonus abilities instead. This would help differentiate each class and would help someone specialize their character in two abilities to gain more XP in those two areas.

Right about now I was feeling pretty good about the completeness of the system. I entered the day’s activities as a way of testing the system and after a few minor adjustments I called my work complete. I tracked the next couple of days until I got home from my business trip. I showed the system to my wife and she was on board. We discussed the goal (level 10) and the Major Prize ™ and settled on something we could both agree upon. We also made a couple of minor changes to the system and added a bunch of activities that she thought of that I hadn’t. The game was afoot!

We weighed in and started tracking our activities, I started over in order to be fair (I had amassed some XP in my testing days). It hasn’t been too long, but she is leading by about 10%. I’m not too worried about the deficit. I think that I can bridge the gap and the game has just begun anyways. I would like to mention that my mother-in-law and my wife have also begun a separate challenge between the two of them. They aren’t using the same D&D style system, but their system is points based as well. I’m not privy to all of the details of their challenge, but I know that their activity list is different and I’m sure that the point values are too.
I plan to post an update in perhaps a month to let you all know how the system is working out. If you are interested in having the spreadsheet, please leave a comment with your email (or contact me privately if you know me personally) and I’ll send it out to you.

I’ll post some screenshots in the space below, so keep reading if you’d like to see them.

Favorite song of the moment: Supercommuter – Itty Bitty Pigeons

None of these screenshots show the inner workings of the spreadsheet, if you want these details contact me and I will send you the sheet. It works pretty much on formulas and lookups without the use of macros.

This is the generic info for a character. The race and class boxes are drop downs for easy entry. The XP boxes will also automatically fill themselves out based on your activities and level.




These are the character's traits. All you have to do is enter the score you have and the bonuses will be automatically calculated. The zero at the bottom is the number of traits you have left to distribute among the six options. Instead of rolling, I chose to allow manual distribution starting with each score at a 10 (then modifying for race) and giving 18 points for distribution. Also, at every third level you get an additional point (i.e. the zero will change to a one automatically at level three).



This is the list of abilities for a character. You start with six abilities to apply in the ranks column and you will get six at each level. The number in the bottom row will update when a level is made showing how many ranks are left to assign.









This is a sample of entering activities in the sheet. The activity boxes are all drop downs allowing for easy data entry. The types then are automatically filled out based on the activity and the points will be automatically calculated when a volume is entered for the activity. The bonus is also automatic as is the total. One issue is that if you add ranks to a skill, the total will automatically adjust, hence the banked points column. You must hand enter this and it will update the XP on the character sheet.

Geeky Fitness

So, lately (who starts a blog like that?) I’ve been feeling less and less good about the shape of my body. Not just my physical shape, but also how fit I am. I get winded too easily and I don’t feel as energetic as I think I should. Sure, I could blame my sleep apnea on my constant tiredness, but I don’t feel like it is all to blame. You see, for my job, I sit in a chair eight to ten hours a day. That’s a lot of sitting. When I go home, I play with my kids and eat dinner, then help put them to bed. After that, I might sit on my butt again for another hour or two before bed. That’s when I’m home. Since I’ve been travelling regularly to California, when I get off work I go to the hotel and sit for the rest of the evening. If you add it all up, I’m sitting for over 14 hours a day while I’m not at home. Not acceptable.

I’ve decided to do something about it. Since I’m a problem solver at heart, I went about coming to a solution in a methodical manner.

First step, identify the problem. Easy enough, I’m not in shape and I want to be.
Second step, identify a goal. Also easy, get in shape. Okay then. Now comes the hard part.

Third step, identify a solution that will attain the goal. I know from my history that I don’t like going to the gym or exercising on my own. Even the Wii Fit has failed to keep my interest, though it worked longer than the other two items. You see, the problem is that I don’t feel motivated to do these things. Sure, I want to change, but change is hard and I’m quite lazy. Just the desire to change isn’t motivation enough to do so. I needed something new that would motivate me to accomplish my goals.

I also happened to be reading the book, “Geek Dad”. In it are many geeky projects and activities for parents just like me, geeky. Starting on page 79 is an idea on how to get your kids to do their chores, do better in school, etc. The idea is to create a character sheet for each child and they gain XP by completing pre-defined tasks and objectives. The outlines in the book are very good and are loosely based on D&D. For those of you who know me well, you know that I’ve extensively modified the D&D rules for my own use in the past and the idea that the author, Ken Denmead (editor of the blog by the same name as the book), describes to motivate your kids greatly intrigued me. I finally had a rough idea of what my solution would be.
I began brainstorming ways to use Ken’s idea and my own experience to devise a system that would motivate me to get healthy. I quickly decided to broaden my scope from just physical fitness to other areas that I wished to improve in (more details in a later post). I ran the idea by my wife and she was tentatively on board to make it a competition. I suggested that the first person to level 10 (since we’ll be characters that can level up) would win and get a Major Prize ™.

I began work on the system. I was so excited that I did the whole thing in one sitting this week. It only took me about two hours to get the spreadsheet up and running. It’s a simple version of the character sheets that I used to create in Excel for D&D. Stay tuned for more details on the spreadsheet in my next blog entry.
I’ve done one full day so far, so I’m not sure how fast I’ll make it to level 10. I’ll keep you all posted as to my progress.

Favorite song of the moment: MC Chris – MC Chris is Dead

I keep wanting to type MC Christ… :D

Back in Business

Hello people on the intarwebs. I know that I haven’t posted since September (and in that post promised more posts to come), but who cares? It’s not like anyone reads this anyways… no, don’t hit the back button…I do want you to read my blog.

Anyways, I would like to state my intention to write at least ten entries before the year is out (that’s two a month for those keeping track). I have the next three or four entry ideas in my head and even have the first one written already (I’m not going to share it today, I’d like to re-read it first).

I think that I’ve set myself an attainable goal and with all of the travelling I’ve been doing lately, I think that I’ll actually have the time to put the jumble of words in my head into a somewhat cohesive string for your perusal.

That’s it for now, stay tuned for my upcoming post. It should be a good one.

Frink out.

Favorite Websites

I haven't posted in quite a while. My wife and I have welcomed our son into the world and now that it's been over two months since he's come, I feel ready to renew my interest in continuing this blog. I'd like to apologize for my absence and I hope that it doesn't detract from any enjoyment anyone has had from reading my blog.
As my first back to blogging post, I thought that I'd give a quick rundown of some of my favorite websites that I regularly visit.

Geek Dad Blog - A Wired blog that I found that talks a lot about being a geek and being a parent (they have a lot of female contributors, regardless of the name). A lot of the posts I find really interesting and many are direct corollaries with my own life as a geekparent.

Hipster Please - Hipsterplease is a website I found after I subscribed to the GeekDad podcast. Every other GeekDad podcast episode is dedicated to geeky music. This website is the blog for one of the contributors of the GeekDad hiptrax podcast episodes. It shares a lot about music and most of it is geeky music.

Lego365 - I recently ran into this photo blog and I find that it's full of awesomeness. I looked at every photo in one single sitting because I couldn't wait to see all of them. I just wish that the writer of this blog would continue his work past 365 days.

Facebook - Yes, I like Facebook. I enjoy keeping in contact with friends from all over the world and follow their lives by glancing at what they are willing to share on their facebook pages. While it's true that many people can be truly annoying with constant updates, unending comments on everything, etc.; I still find it a rewarding and fun website.

Kongregate - This is a site dedicated to hosting flash games. It's also a major time sink for me at times. Many games have acheivements attached to them and each user can collect these badges and earn points to gain levels. While levels don't do anything for you, it's really a competitive thing for me. I like going into one of the chat rooms (you can chat while playing) and being the highest level user in the room (I'm level 40 currently, almost 41).

Woot - Kids Woot - Shirt Woot - Woot is really awesome if you're looking for a good deal on random stuff. They sell a new item every day until the end of the day, or it sells out. You do have to watch out though because some of the items are labelled "Refurbished". I haven't bought any of those, but I almost did when I saw a Quad-core computer for $399.

Dr. Horrible - This is the most awesome musical that has or ever will be made. You can watch it for free on hulu, but I paid for it on iTunes because I wanted to support the idea of independent online studios like what Joss Whedon was trying to do when he came up with this.

Penny Arcade - If you haven't heard of Penny Arcade, then I feel sorry for you. Just kidding. It's a web comic that's been going for over a decade and is full of win. Read some of them and you'll be hooked. In my humble opinion, it's the best web comic I've ever read.

So, those are the sites that I like. Feel free to leave a comment listing some of your favorite websites.
Favorite song of the moment - RickRoll + Mario by I Fight Dragons. Awesome live song with some chiptunes thrown in.

Cane Sugar Mt. Dew - Keep or Throwback?

I've recently purchased a 12-pack of the "Throwback" Mountain Dew. I had heard of a bottling company in North Carolina that was the only one in the country that produced cane sugar Mountain Dew and I had always been curious about trying it and this gave me a chance.

I'll be honest, my first impression was, meh. It's a little smoother, but didn't taste as good. I've had a couple more and I now find it to be not that different from the Mountain Dew that I know and love.

After having a few of them, I find the "Throwback" Mt. Dew not so throwbackable and if Pepsi decided to throwback the current incarnation of the drink and keep the cane sugar version I wouldn't shed a tear.