I sent copies of my Air Canada complaint to the CEO/President, Chairman, and Senior VP of Customer Relations (with suitable wrapper text to explain why they were getting this). Yesterday I got email from an assistant for Mr. Rovinescu, the CEO/President. She hasn't given me permission to publish the letter, so I will summarize:

She is disheartened to hear of my experience. Given my description, she can understand how frustrating that was. She regrets that their call center let me down and is sorry for the poor impression their discourteous employees left me with. As a gesture of goodwill, she would like to offer me 40% off the base fare for my next Air Canada trip, provided I complete it within a bit less than a year. They do not cover consequential expenses, but nonetheless require my original receipts for same for auditing purposes.

That does not help at all, and since it's not a voucher for a fixed amount I don't think I could sell it usefully. (I haven't read the fine print and don't know if it's even transferable.) This is the reply I sent:

Thank you for your reply. Unfortunately, I'm an infrequent traveler; I've only flown three times in the last decade and would not be able to use a discount in the next year. (Even if I could, I'm sure you can understand my reluctance to book my next trip with your airline.) A discount on future travel also doesn't help me with expenses incurred now. Is there anything better you can do to remedy this terrible episode?

(Belately I see that there is one error in that. I now realize I've flown four times, not three. This does not change the substance.)

VISA is prepared to dispute the charge if I can't settle the problem with the airline, but of course we would both like to try the direct approach first. I'm not yet sure of the process should VISA get involved; do we go to some sort of arbitration or what? Air Canada already has my money, but I guess VISA can take it back.

My (rebooked) flight landed in Pittsburgh around 7:45AM and I was reunited with Baldur by 9. (Reunion with Dani will have to wait, since he'd already left for work by the time I got home.) I haven't read all my email, to say nothing of LJ and G+, and I doubt I'll even try to catch up. If there's something you think I should see, you know how to find me.

The Newark airport is a well-oiled machine, especially compared to Toronto Peterson where they're still rubbing sticks together to try to figure out how to make fire. I was at my connecting gate 35 minutes after stepping off the first plane -- including passport control, baggage claim, customs, baggage recheck, train to another terminal, and TSA. Granted it was 4AM, but I got a very favorable impression. I would fly through there again, were I to fly where that's relevant. (The airline was United. I don't know how much credit goes to the airline and how much to the airport, but that combination was smooth, at least.)

I'm supposed to be 2+ hours into a flight right now. But apparently I'm not allowed to have nice things, and Air Canada needed to go for a clean sweep. Ten (!) hour delay this time! The mind boggles.

BTW, even though they had my email address and (local) phone number, there was no contact. I knew I couldn't print a boarding pass at the hotel and Internet there was kind of expensive anyway, so I didn't see it before I left. (Though I don't know if it was even posted; someone behind me in line said he had checked a couple hours earlier.)

They wanted to put me on a combination that would get me home around noon tomorrow. I asked if they could do any better and explained the urgency. After more than three hours of standing in lines I have a flight through Newark that gets me there around 8AM. And, learning from history, I confirmed that if that connection fails, there's another flight an hour later. They claimed to be unable to put me on the El Al flight leaving at 4PM for bureaucratic reasons, grumble.

This may surprise some given the comments in another thread, but most of the agents I've dealt with here have been polite. (One seemed to have no respect for the queue, though; she kept pushing me aside because I was going to be here all day anyway, but I didn't want to be in her Internet-deprived office all day! Sheesh.)

I came to the airport hoping to get an upgrade as partial compensation for the difficulties they caused on my trip here. Instead I'm begging for a flight home a mere 10-12 hours late and, of course, I'll get whatever seat nobody else wanted (middle, I assume) and I have to assume I won't be able to eat the meal and plan accordingly. I will be contacting Air Canada's customer service when I get home, and frankly, I want a full refund. This is freaking ridiculous.

I'm done with Air Canada after this. I might also be done with Israel; we'll see when I calm down more. It is too frustrating to try to get there and back from Pittsburgh. At the very least I am done with solo major travel.

More from that parlor game: Comment to this post and I will pick seven things I would like you to talk about. They might make sense or be totally random. Then post that list, with your commentary, to your journal. Other people can get lists from you, and the meme merrily perpetuates itself.

unique_name_123 gave me: computer, spirituality, laurel, rules, games, travel, artichoke.

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I've owed these answers for, um, a while. Sorry about that!

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I'm afraid I've had to redact two of your questions from this public post. :-) You are welcome to ask two others, though I will answer the others privately.

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Ok, sounds like we have the beginnings of a plan. magid and I will be leaving FPU probably around 10:30-11AM; I don't remember what travel time is, but we can head to some place in Brookline. I think goldsquare and Robin, 530nm330hz, and mabfan (and gnomi?) are available for lunch; anyone else? I have phone numbers for all of you, so how about if I call when we think we're an hour away? If you have food constraints other than kosher, please speak up -- otherwise magid and I will pick something.

Edit Fri 9AM: It sounds like Ta'am China will best be able to accommodate a group of our size. I like TC so that's fine with me; please speak up if that won't work for you.

If anyone who will be at lunch can print a boarding pass for me on Sunday morning, could you let me know? (We're trying to arrange access to a printer here, as I'm certainly not the only one with this desire; this request is a backup.)

In other news, mbarr has graciously provided a workaround for my ssh problem. Thanks! (Intermediary on a non-standard port.) Thanks to everyone who offered advice.

I have rather a lot that I want to write about from this week, but insufficient time so far. This will probably mean a burst of posts from me next week.

My flight to Boston was uneventful (which is just what I want in a flight). Right before boarding I heard someone say "Monica? you're going to Boston?" -- it was someone returning home from Pennsic. I said something like "sorry, I didn't recognize you in regular clothes", and then someone sitting across from us (whose name I didn't learn) waved. Heh.

magid kindly picked me up at the airport (yikes, Logan makes the Pittsburgh airport look like Hicksville -- glad I didn't have to navigate out of there), and after lunch at Ta'am China and a missed connection with someone else, we headed up to the NHC summer institute. Programming relevant to me started at 4 with a newcomers' orientation, which was more of a meet-and-greet than what I expected. This was followed by an opening session for everyone during which it became very, very clear that most of these people know each other (or at least know the movers and shakers). I felt very much the outsider; I'm glad I had magid, tigerbright, and family to lean on a little. There are 370 people here, their biggest in a while.

There were two options for the evening program, offered by the institute's two artist guests of honor. (Ok, they call it "artist in residence", I think, but SF-con terminology has taken root.) They're different enough that scheduling them opposite each other didn't seem wrong to me. magid and I were both feeling undecided when we were recruited to set up chairs for one of them and decided to stay. It was a one-man play, about which I might write more later.

I've mentioned before that my synagogue maintains a freezer of donated, cooked food to have on hand for houses of mourning, families where someone's sick, and similar acute cases of need. I think this is a great idea; if you're cooking anyway you can cook a little more to donate and help someone out. Yesterday I got email from the person who monitors this saying they're low on meat and pareve dishes, so tonight I'm roasting an oven-full of chicken to take over (less one meal's worth for ourselves this week), and tomorrow night I will make some vegetarian soup. I love being able to help in this way.

Speaking of soups, recently Dani and I were at a restaurant where I had a really fabulous butternut-squash soup. This one was dairy (I detected cream), and I couldn't identify all the spices. Web-surfing has led me to some promising recipes; I'm open to specific suggestions. I have now procured one butternut squash with which to experiment.

I'm about 40% of the way through the second book of His Dark Materials. I am pretty sure I know what the deal was with Grummon (the explorer Asriel went off in search of). So either I'm right or the author is being clever and has something up his sleeve. It feels pretty darn obvious, so I'm not ruling out the latter. (No, please don't tell me; I'll know on my own soon.)

The local SCA choir is singing at an event this weekend. I think we sounded really good at Monday's practice; I'm looking forward to the performance. We'll also be doing one piece jointly with our instrumental group, which is nifty. We haven't done that in years.

Jericho returns for a short second season (half-season?) next week. I really liked this show, so I'm glad to see it unharmed by the writers' strike. Whether it is harmed by its network is yet to be seen. (They cancelled it and then responded to a fan campaign.)

Assorted links (most sources lost, sorry):

Baby dos and don'ts. That the site is not in English really doesn't matter.

Surfing cat. It's not entirely clear to me that this is the cat's idea.

Joel on Software recommends Tripit for keeping track of the assorted confirmation numbers involved in travelling. Sounds useful especially for us infrequent travellers who don't have the routine down already.

Bruce Schneier on security versus privacy. Too many people think it's a zero-sum game; it's not.

Bookmarking (haven't finished reading yet): Rands in Repose on preparing presentations. It's odd: in most contexts public speaking is, ahem, not my strong suit. Really not my strong suit, even in fields I know very well. I get nervous and fumbly-mouthed. The exception? While I'm not as skilled at the mechanics yet as I'd like to be, giving sermons or divrei torah does not make me nervous.

I pass this on too late for voters in half the primaries in the country, but even so, there's a general election coming, so: jducoeur nails what's really important in choosing a candidate. (PA doesn't vote until late April. It's possible we won't actually be irrelevant this time, but we'll see how today turns out.)

George Bush v Mohammed ibn Tugluq by David Director Friedman, on whom the law binds.