I'm brain dead, partly from being interviewed out and partly because travel to NY yesterday afternoon proved really problematic -- my flight was cancelled, and I didn't get in until after midnight, on a different airline, on a delayed flight flying via Milwaukee (and at that, I did better than most of the other people on the flight, who had to stay overnight in Minneapolis).
I also decided that the thing you most don't want to hear from a check-in person is what the lady at Midwest Airlines said to me when I showed her the Northwest slip saying they'd put me on MidWest, after I'd made a mad taxi ride from one airport to another. She looked down at it and said "You have got to be kidding!" The flight they'd put me on was oversold and had standby passengers.
But they got me on it somehow, and all was well. I just wish I wasn't so tired.
Regarding raccoons getting through catflaps: a few years back someone set up a computer with image-recognition software to stop their cat bringing in small animals (and incidentally test their image-recognition software). It also stopped a skunk getting in; it should work on raccoons too:
http://www.quantumpicture.com/Flo_Control/flo_control.htm
I don't think it would do any good, seeing that it's all based around the same magnetic cat-door that our raccoons have already figured out how to jimmy. It's very clever, though.
...
And over here -- http://www.chud.com/index.php?type=news&id=11038 -- is a little of the Beowulf score.
Labels: junkets, masonic raccoon pictures, why I sometimes would rather jump off a small cliff then get on another plane