Strawberry Chicken Girl

Let’s go back a few years and talk about strawberry chicken girl who I met on eHarmony. We started chatting in March 2009, and agreed to first meet at a Mercer baseball game sometime in late March. She flaked out and gave a list of things she was stressing about, but at least she let me know rather than just not showing up. Her immaturity was showing. Although I was only 3 years older at the time, I was far more mature. She was 21 and clearly an emotional wreck. Next time we did Outback Steakhouse and a movie on a Thursday and she showed up on time, freaking out about something. I paid for dinner and she paid for the movie, through which she texted almost nonstop. After the movie she complained that I didn’t say thanks for paying for the movie. She didn’t say thanks for buying dinner so we were kind of even, but not really because dinner was probably like $5 more but not important. We went to church and lunch together the following Sunday – nothing eventful.

I asked her out for the following weekend and she said only if I get her a strawberry chicken pie. Kind of a strange request but we’ve established this girl was kind of crazy. So what do I do? Invite her over and bake a pie with strawberries and chicken. Duh. As I recall, it wasn’t very tasty to me but she was really impressed. I never figured out if she seriously wanted that or was just kidding around or testing me to see if I’d actually do follow her request, but she got what she asked for.

After that date, which I thought went pretty darn well, she changed her facebook status to in a relationship… not with me. I should have dropped her at that point, but instead I asked her about it and she wrote back “I just need space and time away from you. You have hurt me over the past few days. I forgive you for upsetting me. however I just need space.” I gave her space and a couple days later, she seemed more sane and apologized: “I’m sorry how things have gone down, I had a huge test I was studying for. I sent some hurtful messages because I was emotional and stressed at that time. I know that you are a sweet guy who has feelings and I just ruined them for you. I hope you will accept my apology.”

I, of course, quickly forgave and moved to try to figure out when we would go out again. I’m often too quick to forgive someone for hurting me emotionally and often keep people in my life longer than I should. We went out one more time – to Starbucks where I helped her study for a linear algebra final.

The next week strawberry chicken girl had some guy call me and tell me to quit talking to her because I was supposedly so mean to her. She didn’t delete or block me from facebook, but I let this marinate for a couple of days before calling her up to try to figure out what the heck was going on. Was she seeing two guys and this other one stole my number because he wanted me gone or was she really sending him to end things with me or was she just a crazy person who doesn’t know what to do at all?

She responds via facebook message: “…I am sorry if I have done anything to you. I just want the best for you and to be completely honest I have no idea about you. I am a lost human and don’t know what I want with life. Saturday was fun and I’m glad I got to meet you… I am not going to be coming back to Macon next year and I just need to be closer to home in VA so I will only be in GA another week.”

For a lost girl who only saw me 4 times, that was a pretty nice way for her to end things. About two months later, strawberry chicken girl and I chatted on facebook a few times, and it was okay until we got into a discussion about politics. My very liberal and socialist views came out, and she would have none of it – deleted me from fb in an instant. Not so sane after all.

Revival of the Voyager Blog

I used to say that most of what I know about dating comes from How I Met Your Mother. But I’ve lived a little more over the last few years and gotten out there with more experiences of my own. I can’t say many if any have a good ending but they’ve been interesting and confirmed my belief that I know very little about dating.

It’s time to revive this blog. It’ll be now be more of my thoughts on dating and male-female relationships, both platonic and romantic, and I’ll try to anonymize most of the names so as not to call out specific people but rather hopefully entertain and share frustration and joy with you all.

I’m getting close to 30, still single, and still hate the whole dating process. But apparently it is a necessary part of living for anyone who wants to eventually get married and have a family. I still think the best way to find your mate is to not date at all but seek out good close friendships and work on developing close friendships, and have that gradually morph into romance over several months/years. It worked really well twice – for my two longest-lasting relationships. There’s an xkcd comic about that I often think about and relate to. http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/friends.png

Anyway, I have a lot of female friends I talk to on a regular basis who are quite clearly just good friends to me (I don’t maintain these relationships with the idea that they’ll become dependent and eventually fall in love with me but because they’re simply good companions), so you’d think I’d know better than most guys how girls think. That doesn’t seem to be the case. When I go out with a woman on something date-like I am often confused at the end of it.

Taxes and Fees on Airfares

A week ago, on January 24, 2011, a new law went into effect that requires airlines and travel companies to include certain taxes and mandatory fees in the listed air fare price. This is one way the airlines can no longer nickel and dime us – or at least they'll be up front about it. For years, airlines have added little fees here and there including fees for checked bags, priority boarding, exit row or bulk head seats, and in-flight meals, things that a decade or two ago you would assume are included in your air fare.

 

Budget airlines such as Spirit, Jet Blue, and Southwest, used to advertise flights for ridiculously low prices. When you go to book the flight, you soon realize that the actual cost doubled because of taxes and airport fees. In the end, they are often a tiny bit cheaper than mainstream airlines like Delta and American but can't provide the he discounts that they want you to think they can provide. If you see a flight advertised as $120, it had better be $120, not $120 plus federal tax, plus facility charges, plus security fees, plus gasoline surcharges.

 

In theory, advertising just the base fare price is in line with the rest of the way the American economy works – in almost everything else, we see prices before tax is added. The difference is that airline taxes are a lot more than sales tax and can even vary a lot depending on your destination. In practice, having to click through a couple of pages to see the real price is annoying. Most travelers want to see the final price, including all mandatory fees and taxes, from the beginning.

 

The new law only requires companies to include mandatory charges in the advertised fares. You can still see the breakdown of the charges and the vast majority of people see this as less misleading. Consumers don't care how you get to the grand total or how the total is divided up between the airline, airports, and government; they just care about what the total is. I'm all for simplifying things and having one all-inclusive price is a step in the right direction. Nonetheless, Spirit Airlines has a giant notice on their website stating: "Warning! New government regulations require us to HIDE taxes in your fares. This is not consumer-friendly or in your best interest. It's wrong and you shouldn't stand for it." Remind me to never fly Spirit Airlines.

 

Here is the breakdown of a Spirit Airlines flight from Atlanta to NYC-Laguardia for President's Day weekend.

Price                      186.28

Fuel                       77.82

Facility fee          18.00

Usage fee           33.98

Segment fee      15.20

Security fee        10.00

Unintended consequences of DOT regulations  4.00

Total                      345.28

 

Previously that would have shown up as $93 (for a one-way fare) but now they have to list it as $173.

Compare this to an equivalent ATL-LGA flight in Delta.

Base fare             258.00

Facility fee          9.00

Segment fee      7.60

Security fee        5.00

Total                      279.60

 

Okay, it's not exactly a fare comparison because Spirit doesn't fly directly from Atlanta to New York but Delta does. Nonetheless, you can see how the way Delta previously advertised this flight as $129 (for a one-way flight) is much less misleading than the way Spirit advertised it. What the heck is a usage fee and unintended consequences of DOT regulations? And shouldn't fuel be included in the base fare?

Then/Than

I had not realized that people had trouble distinguishing between 'then' and 'than'. In the last week, I recall at least 3 times that I have seen someone write then when they mean than. The most surprising was actually on one of my favorite blogs, Kissing Disasters: "I liked the guy more then he liked me." Grrr. I get it that in speech sometimes we say than with an e sound probably because it just flows better but this is stuff we learn in 2^nd grade, right? Please use proper grammar. I will judge you and think less of you if you don't.

That is all.

I'm officially a Mercer grad student

Well, I'm officially registered for my first graduate level course. It's a special topics EE course on robotics at Mercer. I didn't do so well in the robotics course I took at Georgia Tech, but at that point it was an extra class and I had major senioritis. This one ought to be easier and my motivation level should be higher than it was in spring 2007 – having to repay the $2500 tuition/fees if I don't make an A or B sounds like a good motivator.

 

I've been putting off this whole grad school thing for awhile despite people telling me for years that I should. This year, the Air Force upped the tuition assistance from 75% of tuition (and 0% of the additional fees) to now paying 100% of tuition and fees. That and the likelihood of getting to play in one more junior bridge event put me over the edge to fight through the paperwork and get registered. The world university bridge championships, open to people in college between people 18 and 28 years old is in Reims, France in July 2012. This is the competition that I went to in Poland in 2008. Reims is half way between Metz and Paris, an area I once knew well, and it has been too long since I spent some quality time in France.

 

The course is just 3 hours per week on Wednesdays and finishes early enough that I still would just barely be able to play bridge Wednesday nights in Macon. That's a game I rarely attend anyway so more likely is that I'll go to a bar after class most days. At the very least, taking courses at Mercer might open up more good places I can meet people – work, bars, tennis courts, and bridge tournaments have not exactly been the greatest of places to meet women. But maybe not – I will still be in engineering classes and only 3 people have registered for this course so far. And if I do wind up finishing with this master's degree in Engineering Management (at the rate of 1 course per semester it might take a few years), it might qualify me for other management positions if and when I decide to change careers.

Shopping and Ordering Online

A month or so ago, I was at a hotel with a friend and we wanted to order a pizza at about midnight. We had noticed a pizza place across the street – not even across the street but just across the parking lot – but ordering from them would require going outside, and it was a cold and rainy night. Neither of us wanted to go outside. Furthermore, neither of us wanted to call to place an order. Online ordering is so much easier and this restaurant didn't have a nice easy website to let you place an order. Therefore we took our business to Papa John's, which was a few miles away, and paid the delivery fee. It's not that we cared about the quality from one place over the other – they're pretty much equivalent.

 

 Yes, I choose where I spend my money based on the website. If a company has no website, they will get none of my business. If a company has online ordering while a competitor does not, the one with online ordering (or online bill pay) will almost always get my business. I have yet to find a doctor that lets you schedule appointments online, but if there is one, I will transfer there because calling is such a nuisance. I'd prefer the flexibility of using an app on my phone, hardly even functions as a phone anymore.

 

What reminded me of this was the post on the Dilbert blog today about the hassles of online shopping. On one hand, I wholeheartedly agree with him – the promo codes and various discounts and popup ads and websites that weren't designed by someone as smart as me, and various browser features that try to remember your information but don't do it well are getting to take too much time and be too complicated even for me. On the other hand, I generally have time and patience to deal with computer stuff and all the hoopla does make things cheaper if you know what you're doing (and I do).

 

online > in store > telephone

Asbury Computer Rankings heading into Championship weekend

For the season, my computer is 76.9% at picking the winner (in games involving a top 25 team) while the official spread is at 80.1%. However, my computer beats the spread 53.2% of the time. Over the years, my computer has consistently beat the spread - 51.1% in 2009 and 52.9% in 2010 - so if you want to bet on games, my picks look like a good bet.

My computer is predicting a close SEC championship game, LSU over UGA 28-24. Oregon over UCLA by 15,Wisconsin over Michigan State 31-24, and Virginia Tech over Clemson 33-20.