Lego + Star Wars = Christmas Perfection

For the 3rd year running i’ve gotten Star Wars Legos sets as Christmas presents from my awesome girlfriend.   This year I got two of my favorities (tough competition with the Sandcrawler) the Tantive IV and Slave I.  Han Solo frozen in carbonite is one of the best minifigs I’ve got and I now have 3 sets of R2-D2 and C-3PO.

The Tantive IV was the larger set, but the Slave I is top notch in terms of details and actionable components (e.g., firing missiles, dropable depth charges, etc.), plus the Boba Fett character is key with jetpack + cape.

I am a (Fantasy) Champion…

Tonight, with the poor performance by David Akers and the great defensive effort by Quintin Mikel I finally brought home the Super Tecmo Bowl, John P. Jenkins Memorial Fantasy Football Championship Trophy.  It was the third year of my primary FFB keeper league and I finished the regular season 2nd overall (10-4) and brought home the Championship this week by beating team “9 in the box.”

My 3 year regular season record is now 28-14 (best in the league) and I’m the only team to make the playoffs every year, however this year is the only one that really matters because I went all the way… So i’d like to offer special thanks to the following NFL players who made it all possible…

First, to my Final Roster Stars that carried me through the playoffs, in my personal ranked order of gratitude (greatest to great)

• Dwayne Bowe (you won it for me this week with your 6/153/1 effort, and your 15TD season helped me make the playoffs over some other powerhouse teams)
• Adrian Peterson (My 3 year keeper… you are amazing… even though I benched you both playoff weeks.  I would not have made it to the big dance without you.  You have been statistically the best keeper in our league to date.)
• Vincent Jackson (you sucked in the championship but your 5/112/3 effort in the first round of the playoffs was simply amazing considering I carried you for 5 weeks just to start you that game)
• Jason Witten (Great late season effort, especially the back to back TD efforts in the playoffs)
• Jon Kitna (Way to step it up even though you got injured in the championship you came into the game to throw one final TD pass to Witten to secure me the victory before taking a seat for the 2nd half.)
• David Beuhler (Amazing finish… I knew you had a great leg and you proved it late in the season with 4 40-49 yard FGs and 3 50+’ers)
• Charles Johnson (Unsung hero award for you, 18 solo tackles, 7 sacks, and a fumble recover over the last 4 weeks of the season)
• Greg Jennings (Great season… pro-bowl season)
• Miles Austin (it was a roller-coaster ride, but you paid off when I needed you)
• Larry Fitzgerald (Mr mediocre consistency… I don’t blame you for the QBs you were forced to work with)

To the other players who I added and dropped or traded throughout the season, thanks for your contributions…

• Drew Brees, Santana Moss, Mark Clayton, Tim Hightower, Michael Crabtree, and Mike Sims-Walker (you guys helped me to create the power WR core that won me the league by providing ample trade bait)
• Jahvid Best (I had high hopes for you, but you maintained consistently mediocre numbers up until I dropped you.  I will draft you next year early on if I can.)
• Louis Murphy (You were a great bye week filler.)
• Jonathan Stewart (Nice finish)
• Osi Umenyiora (Great effort, you met my expectations)

And finally, more of a thank you for not screwing me over, but thank you nonetheless…

• Neil Rackers (I started you and you did not cost me any season deciding games with a missed 30 yard field goal.)

Also, Kurt Warner, you were missed this season.  Fitzgerald was not the same without you and the rookie QB class could not fill the void you left behind.

JetBlue Fail

The plan was perfect.   Fly out to the Phoenix, AZ post-Christmas to escape the New England weather for a week.  For New Year’s Eve I’d be driving up to Las Vegas to stay at the Hilton and enjoy quality gambling, free drinks, and amazing sights for a couple nights.  Then fly back in early January, refreshed, tan, and rich off my craps’ winnings.  Everything was set, and then… the storm hit.

The storm hit on Sunday so I figured I’d be fine flying out on a Tuesday, but to my despair when I went to check-in for my flight I received the wonderful message, shown below, which read “The status of your flight has changed, please see a JetBlue crewmember at our airport Full-Service counter.”  Clearly this was JetBlue’s first failure as I was not at the airport checking in on my laptop.

I had to go and check the status of my flight to find out that the ‘status change’ of my flight is that it was cancelled.  Then I had to go back to the homepage to find a contact link to uncover the 800 number to give them a call to try and fix things.  This was clearly a pain in the neck, especially after the already aggravating discover that my flight perfect plan was being disrupted.  This failure could be easily remedied by simply providing a more effective and actionable error message such as:

So my next step was clearly to give JetBlue a call to try and (i) see what’s going on, and (ii) reschedule my flight.  This experience was also a poor one.  I called 1800JETBLUE and here is the EXACT transcript from my first ~10 calls (that’s right, I suffered through this 10 times).

JetBlue Automated System (JBAS): “Thank you for calling JetBlue airways, para Espagnol porfafor marke el numero neueve. We are currently experiencing extremely high call volumes with very long hold times.  If you wish to proceed with this call, please choose from the following options: for flight status press 1, for reservations press 2, for getaways packages press 3.  Press pound to repeat these options.”

Me: [enter 1]

JBAS: “Due to extremely high call volumes all agents are currently busy.  Please stay on the line while we try your call again.”

(Hold music for roughly 7 seconds)

JBAS: “All agents are still busy, please stay on the line while we try to extend your call again.”

(Hold music for roughly 7 seconds)

JBAS: “Thank you for calling JetBlue Airways, we are currently experiencing extremely high call volumes with very long hold times.  If you need to book a flight or check your real-time flight status, please visit our website at JetBlue.com. If you need to speak to a JetBlue representative please try back at a later time.  We are doing the best we can to manage our call volumes at this time.  This call will end now, but we look forward to helping you as soon as we can.”

[call disconnected]

As I said, this process was repeated like 8 times (and then another 5 times to get the transcript perfected).  So my next step was to try and change my flight manually.  I went through the necessary clicks to get to the flight search page and got the results shown below.

Basically, “Whoops, we didn’t find any flights that matched your search” was JetBlue’s way of telling me that Monday 12/27 through Friday 12/31 all flights had been oversold / cancelled.  Leaving me with the sole option of flying out on Saturday, January 1st, just to fly back on Sunday, January 2nd.  Brilliant!  or not given that it’s roughly a 6 hour flight and the Las Vegas drive is 5 hours, and the hotel was booked for Thursday night and Friday night.

So my plan is in a tattered state at this point.  My wonderful girlfriend is in Arizona waiting for me (she flew out before Christmas to be with her family and it is her I was going to visit and travel to Vegas with) and I have no flight scheduled to get me out there.  I will work on getting a hold of JetBlue, and will return to this once I have more information.

[update]

So I was clever enough to utilize the flight status phone hotline and then press zero to access the non-advertised access an operator option.  While I was forced to listen to songs like “Answer in the Sky” by Elton John for 44 minutes and 21 seconds this option at least put me in a queue to talk with a live agent.  After the extended hold time I got a live agent on the phone and 15 minutes later both my flight to and from Phoenix were cancelled and fully refunded (well done on that part at least JetBlue).  My well laid plan fell apart and now my girlfriend is flying home on December 31st so we can at least be together on New Year’s Eve, but  with our hotel room in Vegas left empty and alone.

Final Score

New England Weather – 1, Travel Plans – 0