Mokka mit Schlag

In all the brouhaha over JetBlue stranding passengers on airplanes for hours last Wednesday, one thing I haven’t seen explained until now is why this specifically happened to JetBlue. Usually when we hear a story like this, it’s at a major hub airport like Detroit that’s primarily served by one airline. JFK is a hub for JetBlue, but unlike Detroit or Atlanta, JetBlue is hardly the only airline with a lot of planes there. What did JetBlue do wrong that other airlines at JFK didn’t? The New York Times seems to have figured that out. In brief:

• Other airlines canceled more flights sooner due to the weather.
• Communications within the company broke down. Pilots and flight attendants were not able to get assignments.
• The reservation system was overloaded so passengers could not get through to humans.

A lot of this is blamed on both the rapid growth and low cost structure of JetBlue. They hadn’t built enough slack into their systems to handle an event like this.

How many times have I been at the airport waiting for a delayed plane? I’ve lost count. Dozens of times, and I’m not all that frequent a flier. Sometimes I’ve waited almost an entire day. How many times have the airlines told me the flight is delayed before I left my house? Exactly once in over thirty years of flying, and that was almost twenty years ago. Something needs to be done.
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Sleepycat asks some interesting questions about a non-standard persistence API they are developing. By the way, non-standard is good. Ideas like this should be tried out in open source products first before baking them into standards. I applaud Sleepycat for taking this route instead of rushing into the JCP. Indeed standardizing in advance of implementation experience explains a lot of the problems in JEE that APIs like this one are designed to replace. Anyway, on to the questions:
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One Fox Sparrow, Three White-throated Sparrows

Prospect Park, 2007-02-17
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Despite the cold weather I made a quick spin around the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens and Prospect Park Lake for the Great Backyard Bird Count. My best birds were a Northern Pintail that’s been hanging out in the lake and one male Bufflehead, both the first reported in new York State for this count. The wind off the lake was bitterly cold so I didn’t stay out long, but I did tally 22 species and close to a thousand individual birds (mostly gulls and geese):
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Loop Rumors reports that “Unlike today’s Mac Pros, the cooling system will direct hot air through vents at the top of the machine, much like Apple’s Cube of yesteryear.”

I expect and hope that Loop Rumors is wrong. The problem with vents on top is that I (and many other users) put things there.

Putting the exhaust vents on top blocks useful space. By contrast the space on the back of the machine where the vents are now is relatively free.