My younger brother (younger of the two, still older than me) Kevin is getting married next summer back home (aka The Great White North), on the other end of what can be an expensive plane ticket. So about a month ago I thought “I have this Travel Extras credit card, I wonder how many points I have and if I can save some money on the trip”.

So far, so good. I called the redemption number (800-654-1225) to find a recording that gives me everything I needed to know — 24k points to anywhere in the continental US, RT, no blackout dates. 4k points to Alaska, Canada, Hawaii or Puerto Rico.

Wait.

4000? That can’t be right.

So I waited.

I called back yesterday and the recording remained the same. I spoke to a nice woman who was unable to help me, but listened to the message herself to confirm I wasn’t out of my mind. Both of her supervisors were (conveniently) out to lunch, so I was transferred to voicemail and left a message for “Barb”.

I called Kyle and had him record it for me, just in case. Then I called Clark Howards’ action line. The folks there were nice and helpful and indicated the company should honor it but if I had any trouble to call the Federal Trade Commission. Sweet. I went ahead and did that, fully expecting “issues”. The folks there said it should be honored and if it’s not, it’s considered fraud.

I get to f with The Man.

“Barb” called me back and let me know that they would in fact, NOT be honoring this.

Oooh, this will entertain me for hours and hours.

Courtesy of Mental Floss:

“Why Does Hawaii Have Interstate Highways?

While we’d like to believe Hawaii’s Interstate system exists for the sole purpose of annoying George Carlin, the name is actually a misnomer. Not all Interstates physically go from one state to another; the name merely implies that the roads receive federal funding. The three Hawaii Interstates (H1, H2 and H3) became Interstates as part of the Dwight D. Eisenhower System of Interstate and National Defense Highways to protect the US from a Soviet invasion by making it easier to get supplies from one military base to another.”

When a friend told me last year about the Eisenhower Interstate dealie, I was fascinated. He explained that the routes had minimum width and straightaway requirements, as well as standard markings clearly visible from the air so that they could be used as runways if needed. Though I could find no solid evidence of this in the few sites I flipped through, it’s still an interesting point to ponder.

What I did find, however, was this: “One potential civil defense use of the Interstate highway system is for the emergency evacuation of cities in the event of a potential nuclear war. Although this use has never happened, the Interstate highway system has been used to facilitate evacuations in the face of hurricanes and other natural disasters. An option for maximizing throughput is to reverse the flow of traffic on one side so that all lanes become outbound lanes.” (via Wikipedia).

The event Saturday was a huge success. In total we’ve raised just over $3000 to help the arson victims, not to mention the heaps of material goods that have been donated.

Not being able to walk around my kitchen or dining room is a nice problem to have, given that it’s because clothes, blankets and housewares are stacked up and waiting for new homes.

Thanks to those of you who came out to support me, you really made a difference.

It strikes me that there was a time we didn’t know what to do “at the beep”. A time when your family would come home to find messages on the answering machine with your grandparents saying things like “Hello? Hello? Howie? Hello?” (rustling…click).

Those days are gone. It’s been a quick jump from a jumbo machine with an actual tape to office, home and cellular voicemails that will find any means necessary of alerting you that you have a potentially life changing message waiting.

Exploring the history of voice messaging, I was amazed to find that the first machine was actually invented by a Mr. Willy M&uumlller. The year? 1935. No shit.

The story goes that the first answering machine was a three-foot-tall machine popular with Orthodox Jews who were forbidden to answer the phone on the Sabbath. The Ansafone, created by inventor Dr. Kazuo Hashimoto (Phonetel), was the first answering machine sold in the USA, beginning in 1960.

A few years and a few enhancements later - voicemail.

We all love it, right? Hell, even Gordon Matthews, the inventor of voicemail, was quoted as saying “when I call a business, I like to talk to a human”.

So that brings us to U.S. Patent No. 4,371,752, the pioneer patent for what evolved into voice mail. Gordon Matthews was the founder of VMX (Voice Message Express), the company in Dallas that produced the world’s first commercial voice mail system. Old Gordon became known as the “Father of Voice Mail.” He applied for a patent in 1979 for his voicemail invention and sold the first system to 3M.

Please fast forward 25 years and join me in pondering this. My 70 year old Auntie has a cell phone and a laptop. Can we agree that even our “older” generation now knows what to do at the beep?

I think so.

Why is it, then, that when I call someone and get voicemail, every fracking one results in an extra 15 seconds of my life being wasted with something like this:

“This is (blah blah) sorry I couldn’t (blah blah blah) leave a message” followed by “to leave a message, press one or stay on the line (blah blah blah blah blah), to page this person do (yadda yadda yadda)” and so on and so on and so on.

WHY do we need the second set of instructions? Oh, right, because the cell companies are run by THE MAN and he’s just trying to burn up my minutes.

It strikes me that there was a time we didn’t know what to do “at the beep”. A time when your family would come home to find messages on the answering machine with your grandparents saying things like “Hello? Hello? Howie? Hello?” (rustling…click).

Those days are gone. It’s been a quick jump from a jumbo machine with an actual tape to office, home and cellular voicemails that will find any means necessary of alerting you that you have a potentially life changing message waiting.

Exploring the history of voice messaging, I was amazed to find that the first machine was actually invented by a Mr. Willy M&uumlller. The year? 1935. No shit.

The story goes that the first answering machine was a three-foot-tall machine popular with Orthodox Jews who were forbidden to answer the phone on the Sabbath. The Ansafone, created by inventor Dr. Kazuo Hashimoto (Phonetel), was the first answering machine sold in the USA, beginning in 1960.

A few years and a few enhancements later - voicemail.

We all love it, right? Hell, even Gordon Matthews, the inventor of voicemail, was quoted as saying “when I call a business, I like to talk to a human”.

So that brings us to U.S. Patent No. 4,371,752, the pioneer patent for what evolved into voice mail. Gordon Matthews was the founder of VMX (Voice Message Express), the company in Dallas that produced the world’s first commercial voice mail system. Old Gordon became known as the “Father of Voice Mail.” He applied for a patent in 1979 for his voicemail invention and sold the first system to 3M.

Please fast forward 25 years and join me in pondering this. My 70 year old Auntie has a cell phone and a laptop. Can we agree that even our “older” generation now knows what to do at the beep?

I think so.

Why is it, then, that when I call someone and get voicemail, every fracking one results in an extra 15 seconds of my life being wasted with something like this:

“This is (blah blah) sorry I couldn’t (blah blah blah) leave a message” followed by “to leave a message, press one or stay on the line (blah blah blah blah blah), to page this person do (yadda yadda yadda)” and so on and so on and so on.

WHY do we need the second set of instructions? Oh, right, because the cell companies are run by THE MAN and he’s just trying to burn up my minutes.

It strikes me that there was a time we didn’t know what to do “at the beep”. A time when your family would come home to find messages on the answering machine with your grandparents saying things like “Hello? Hello? Howie? Hello?” (rustling…click).

Those days are gone. It’s been a quick jump from a jumbo machine with an actual tape to office, home and cellular voicemails that will find any means necessary of alerting you that you have a potentially life changing message waiting.

Exploring the history of voice messaging, I was amazed to find that the first machine was actually invented by a Mr. Willy M&uumlller. The year? 1935. No shit.

The story goes that the first answering machine was a three-foot-tall machine popular with Orthodox Jews who were forbidden to answer the phone on the Sabbath. The Ansafone, created by inventor Dr. Kazuo Hashimoto (Phonetel), was the first answering machine sold in the USA, beginning in 1960.

A few years and a few enhancements later - voicemail.

We all love it, right? Hell, even Gordon Matthews, the inventor of voicemail, was quoted as saying “when I call a business, I like to talk to a human”.

So that brings us to U.S. Patent No. 4,371,752, the pioneer patent for what evolved into voice mail. Gordon Matthews was the founder of VMX (Voice Message Express), the company in Dallas that produced the world’s first commercial voice mail system. Old Gordon became known as the “Father of Voice Mail.” He applied for a patent in 1979 for his voicemail invention and sold the first system to 3M.

Please fast forward 25 years and join me in pondering this. My 70 year old Auntie has a cell phone and a laptop. Can we agree that even our “older” generation now knows what to do at the beep?

I think so.

Why is it, then, that when I call someone and get voicemail, every fracking one results in an extra 15 seconds of my life being wasted with something like this:

“This is (blah blah) sorry I couldn’t (blah blah blah) leave a message” followed by “to leave a message, press one or stay on the line (blah blah blah blah blah), to page this person do (yadda yadda yadda)” and so on and so on and so on.

WHY do we need the second set of instructions? Oh, right, because the cell companies are run by THE MAN and he’s just trying to burn up my minutes.

It strikes me that there was a time we didn’t know what to do “at the beep”. A time when your family would come home to find messages on the answering machine with your grandparents saying things like “Hello? Hello? Howie? Hello?” (rustling…click).

Those days are gone. It’s been a quick jump from a jumbo machine with an actual tape to office, home and cellular voicemails that will find any means necessary of alerting you that you have a potentially life changing message waiting.

Exploring the history of voice messaging, I was amazed to find that the first machine was actually invented by a Mr. Willy M&uumlller. The year? 1935. No shit.

The story goes that the first answering machine was a three-foot-tall machine popular with Orthodox Jews who were forbidden to answer the phone on the Sabbath. The Ansafone, created by inventor Dr. Kazuo Hashimoto (Phonetel), was the first answering machine sold in the USA, beginning in 1960.

A few years and a few enhancements later - voicemail.

We all love it, right? Hell, even Gordon Matthews, the inventor of voicemail, was quoted as saying “when I call a business, I like to talk to a human”.

So that brings us to U.S. Patent No. 4,371,752, the pioneer patent for what evolved into voice mail. Gordon Matthews was the founder of VMX (Voice Message Express), the company in Dallas that produced the world’s first commercial voice mail system. Old Gordon became known as the “Father of Voice Mail.” He applied for a patent in 1979 for his voicemail invention and sold the first system to 3M.

Please fast forward 25 years and join me in pondering this. My 70 year old Auntie has a cell phone and a laptop. Can we agree that even our “older” generation now knows what to do at the beep?

I think so.

Why is it, then, that when I call someone and get voicemail, every fracking one results in an extra 15 seconds of my life being wasted with something like this:

“This is (blah blah) sorry I couldn’t (blah blah blah) leave a message” followed by “to leave a message, press one or stay on the line (blah blah blah blah blah), to page this person do (yadda yadda yadda)” and so on and so on and so on.

WHY do we need the second set of instructions? Oh, right, because the cell companies are run by THE MAN and he’s just trying to burn up my minutes.