27 November PM

Book shopping: I bought Gwen Ifill’s book The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama and have managed a couple of chapters. So far it is very interesting.

Out of control shopping Brotherpeacemaker works next to a Best Buy; he noted that someone camped out overnight to be first in line when the store opened. He noticed that the back of the line took 3 minutes to get into the store:

So I had to ask myself, would I ever give up about twenty hours of my life in order to gain a three minute advantage on shopping at a Best Buy?

In the other part of the post he noted this on coming into work when the office was all but empty:

At the job, we had the choice of working on the day after Thanksgiving or not. If we didn’t take the holiday we could bank that time off as vacation. Thinking that hardly anyone would make the choice to come into the office on our national day of giving thanks, it was one of the simplest decisions I’ve ever made to come into the office when everyone else was gone. Having the building virtually to myself is a holiday all in itself.

But in order to make sure I spent some time with the family, I made the choice to forego the gym and a workout and go to the office far before the crack of dawn.

I relate to the “get into the office when no one else is there” part, but well, I did swim the past two mornings.

Holiday Travel: Nate Silver analyzes everything. In this post, he points out that current airline travel (when adjusted for inflation) is cheaper than ever before, provided one travels between “hub” type airports. He also gives tips for this day and age.

What I can say: travel these days is cheaper, but far less pleasant. And, the airlines will do NOTHING to keep you from being screwed over.

Once, American Airlines let me board a flight from Austin to Dallas which was to connect to Peoria, even though the Dallas to Peoria leg had been canceled prior to my boarding at Dallas. Result: I ended up with having to stay overnight in Dallas (at my own expense, of course) and those a-holes wanted me to spend two nights.

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