SKIES SUDDENLY FRIENDLIER

MINETA SAN JOSE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT -- So I'm headed back to Chicago for the weekend and I get to the airport and they tell me that the weather is bad at O'Hare and our flight will be delayed a few hours. So I sit myself down and order up some wireless Internet... at which point the guy gets back on the PA system and essentialy says "nevermind."

Huh?

Whatever. Unfortunately there are not really any refunds on the Wi-Fi... so I figured I'd get my money's worth at post from the airport. Which, at first, seemed cool. But now that I've spent seven bucks on what turned out to be 25 minutes of Internet... I'm feeling like a bit of a schmuck.

Mitigating the schmuck-factor, however, was my newfound elite status in United's frequent flier program. Regular readers of this blog might wonder why, after all the complaints I've lodged about this airline, I would fly it so often to move up in the frequent flier ranks. I guess that gets us back to "I'm a schmuck" but still -- I got to stand in the fancy red-carpet line at the check-in counter. And the woman at the counter looked at my ticket and said "wait, you shouldn't be in a seat this bad."

No. No I should not. Thanks, United! Now, try not to go out of business.