Charter carrier Champion Air announced today that it is going call it quits, according to the Dallas Morning News. Champion will be grounding its fleet of 14 Boeing 727 aircraft.

That’s right, I said Boeing 727 aircraft. According to Wikipedia, the first 727 flew in 1963 and the 727 family continued to be made until 1984. Assuming that Champion had some of the newest 727s made, they’d still be 25 to 30 years old. Again, flying older, inefficient aircraft in times when oil prices are so high doesn’t bode well for airlines.

If I were Northwest Airlines with their fleet of ancient DC-9 aircraft, I’d be scared. I’d be very scared.

I got my Comcast box replaced but now I don’t have TiVo service. The Comcast guy is due on Saturday to call his dispatch center so they can “flip” my DVR. I tried getting Comcast support to do this, but they can’t do it. Instead, a technician has to come to my house, even though he doesn’t actually do anything while he’s here. I really don’t understand these people. In my world of IT support, you try to avoid sending people on location if you can do something remotely.

I came home to find that Reggie had pooped on the floor. I’m not really all that surprised. He didn’t want to stay outside this morning in the rain, and neither did I. This is totally my fault here.

After reheating some of last night’s chili, I went out on a few errands. My first stop was Borders where I picked up the new John Grisham book, The Appeal. I need something to read on the train, and it’s pretty easy for me to get sucked into just about anything Grisham writes.

After that, I went to the mall and picked up a gift card to Legal Sea Foods so my mom can have her lobster dinner while she’s here. The last time my mom was here, she really wanted lobster for dinner and didn’t get it, so this time I’m going to make sure she gets it.  There is another seafood place that Liz suggested, but I don’t know where it is yet, and getting to LSF is really easy.

While in the mall, I picked up some shampoo, moisturizer, and an iPod cable. The iPod cable was the actual reason for the trip to the maill.  And then I got my nails did. This was the first time since my trip to Portland last May that I’ve had a manicure and I desperately needed one. My hands look so much better now.

Now I have some laundry to fold and then call it a night.

I’m not a fan of horror movies, but I’m super stoked about this one.

(trailer)

Sometimes you have to love hating the MBTA. Today is one of those days.

Since I have to get to the Comcast Service Center, I told my boss that I was going to try to catch the 2:20 train and then work from home the rest of the afternoon. I left the office about 1:50, giving me 30 minutes to get to North Station.

Of course, the Silver Line was delayed, and after waiting for ten minutes, two buses showed up at once. Of course, I then walked into the New England Medical Center station as the Orange Line train was pulling out.

By the time I got to North Station, I missed my train by two minutes, forcing me to wait another 50 minutes for the next Newburyport train.

Aloha Airlines will soon be a footnote in aviation history. They’ve been blaming “illegal” competive practices by Go!, a unit of Mesa Air. Aloha claims that Go! was selling seats below cost.

I call bullshit.

According to their own site, they were operating the following aircraft:

11 Boeing 737-200 Passenger Advanced
3 Boeing 737-200C
4 Boeing 737-200QC
8 Boeing 737-700

That’s 18 737-200 series aircraft. It’s no wonder they weren’t making money. According to the Wikipedia article, the 737-200 entered service in 1965 and the last one was delivered in 1988, 20 years ago. Perhaps Go! was pricing seats below Aloha’s costs, and with a fleet of ancient, inefficient aircraft, that’s not exactly hard to do. I was honestly surprised to find out that any US carrier was still operating those old things. Don’t get me wrong, they’re solid, safe, reliable aircraft. They’re also really old, fuel INefficient, and very costly to operate.

I think Delta was the last mainland carrier to retire their 737-200s from service, and that was sometime shortly after 9/11. Every other airline has replaced the 737-200 with newer versions of the 737. Aloha would have done well with the Boeing 717, too.

Sure, Mesa may have been flooding the market with cheap seats. Southwest made a name for itself doing this. Other carriers responded by bringing their costs down and replacing older aircraft with newer, more efficient aircraft. But I think this proves one thing: You can’t make money hopping around the islands on a 40 year old gas guzzling aircraft when your competition is doing the same thing with brand new regional jets.

I’m very fortunate to have some very smart friends. One such friend is a grad student at a prestigious university in the Boston area. No, the other one. He’s ridiculously smart.

Unfortunately, life seemed to throw him a curve ball, and he’s having a rough time with it. He really drew the short stick on this one. I encouraged him to come up for dinner tonight, just so he could get out a bit. I was making chili, something I’d never done before. More importantly, I just wanted him to have someone to talk to. We ate chili (which was okay) and cornbread muffins (from the store) and then I baked off some cookie dough I had in the freezer. The kid needed a good home-cooked meal, a beer, and someone to listen.

Reggie loved him, and that’s always a good sign. After dinner, we watched Star Wars (episode IV) and poked fun at a few things that are now classic, and then I dropped him off at the commuter rail station.

Now it’s time for bed.

Aloha Airlines is calling it quits. (link)

A while back I mentioned my woes with Comcast. It gets better.

I’m convinced that the lifespan of a Comcast DVR with TiVo is about seven days. Yes, seven days. Last Sunday, Easter, the Comcast guy came to “flip” my new DVR to the TiVo service. Exactly seven days later, it’s a brick.

If the service has been that bad, why is Comcast still selling it? When I go back to the Comcast service center AGAIN tomorrow, I’m going to ask them to remove the TiVo service from my account. This is intolerable.

Every once in a while, you have to unplug from the virtual world, and that’s what I did yesterday.

I knew I wanted to make a trip to Ikea to get a second loveseat for the living room before my parents came to visit. Mid-week, I had reserved a pickup truck from U-Haul to make the run. I had asked my friend, the porn star, if he could come with me. Being the 22 year old grad student, he just didn’t have the time, and that’s okay. Paul said he’d be willing to come along. Beth had other stuff to do, so it was just going to be Paul and I.

On Friday, Beth asked if I’d mind if she came along, too. What could be more fun than a trip to Ikea with two of your closest friends? I suggested they bring the boys, so they could stay with Reggie. That turned out to be a really good idea.

We made the run to Ikea and picked up some good stuff. I had set myself a budget of about $700 for the day, including the truck. I think we all got some pretty cool stuff. I picked up the second loveseat to match the first and the slipcovers, including a spare. These things get dirty pretty quickly, and they can just go into the laundry. Having a spare will be great. I also picked up a glass curio cabinet for all of my model airplanes.

After we got back from Ikea, I started making dinner while Beth and Paul assembled the curio. With Beth’s food issues, we have to be careful, but I didn’t poison her. I roasted some veggies and a chicken. It was good to see her enjoy a meal that somebody else cooked. Of course we had to put down a few cocktails, too.

Through all of this, I never picked up my laptop until about 11:00 this morning. It was good to be unplugged for a while.

Next week at this time, I’ll be all drugged up and have my mommy and daddy here to take care of it.

Seriously, though, I’m really excited about my parents coming to visit. While I wish it could have them here for better circumstances, it’s still exciting for them to see my new place.  My sister and her boyfriend/“friend”/fiance have a really nice house. And I’m excited for my parents to see this place because it’s SO much nicer than my place in East Boston.

My mom loves Reggie, so it’ll be great for her to spend a weekend playing with him here. My dad will be the one who takes him outside, I bet.

Still, I’m just excited to have them coming here and staying at my place.