I think this is the first time I've ever posted a completely personal request on my blog, but I suppose there's a first time for everything. A bit of background: my parents live on the coast here in North Carolina, and are volunteers for a group that helps save sea turtles. Sea turtles are almost extinct, if you didn't know. This group finds injured turtles and nurses them back to health, as well as finds and safeguards the annual nests until the baby turtles hatch and head into the ocean.

Animal Planet is having a vote for their "Hero of the Year", and Jean Beasley, who runs the Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center, is one of the candidates. The winner gets a cash prize to help fund their efforts. Could I ask you to go vote for her? They really need all the help they can get as the number of new nests the turtles lay drops every year.

Just go to the Animal Planet poll and vote for Jean Beasley (I think she's the first one). It takes 5 seconds, you don't have to register or anything. And if you're interested in more about what the STRR does, you can look at seaturtlehospital.org. Thanks!

Just thought I'd post quickly that I'll be attending the Adobe MAX conference in Chicago. I know the usual suspects (Rob, Sean, Joe, Ray) will be there, but who else is attending? I'm at the Hyatt McCormick, where the conference is being held. Did everyone else also book there?

It seems rare nowadays that I actually read a non-tech book. I just finished "World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War", and it was superb!

It is a "future history" book, written as a series of first-person interviews with different people who survive a catastrophic war against the living dead. Basically, in the near future a virus causing a zombie outbreak spreads around the world and drives the human race to the edge of extinction. The book covers the whole timeline of the war, from early attempts at containment and denial, to disastrous military counterattacks, to worldwide panic and the collapse of civilization, to mankind's attempt to regroup and fight back against a global zombie horde numbering in the hundreds of millions.

What makes the book great though isn't the zombies. Really, one could substitute just about any natural disaster or disease in and the story could still work. The strength comes from the wide array of people who are interviewed, some heroic, some selfish, from around the entire planet. The situations described by the survivors are chillingly realistic. What do you do when society collapses? Who is really the enemy, the unthinking zombies or the fellow humans who betray each other to try and survive? How does a leader live with themselves when they have to abandon huge numbers of people to the undead because there aren't enough resources to save everyone? These are the kinds of questions and scenarios the book works through.

Anyway, I won't spoil it any further. It's a great read and a welcome change of subject matter. If you're in the mood for something different, something that will stick in your head and make you wonder "what if?" (and scare you to boot), then give World War Z a look!

Readers might remember that a few weeks back I had an almost perfect nightmare scenario trying to get home from New York on JetBlue airlines. I had pretty much given up on the subject when I got a surprising email from Todd Burke. He is the VP of Corporate Communications at JetBlue.

We corresponded a few times while I explained what happened in more detail. He pledged to look into it more deeply. A few days later I got an email from a customer support specialist. I got her on the phone and she expressed genuine regret for the events I had gone through. I told her that it wasn't just the cancelled flight that had angered me, since flights do get cancelled. It was the seemingly nonstop cascade of events that had put me over the edge.

Well, they gave me my money back for the flight I never took home, and also offered me flight vouchers to make up much of the large expense I had to absorb to actually get home via train and other airlines. This was a welcome surprise since the inital email I got from them pretty much said I wasn't getting anything (I think they offered me 50 bucks). It also went a long way toward alleviating my feeling that these people were just screwing me and didn't care at all about what had happened to me.

So, I will ammend the previous blog post with this information so that others who see it will be aware of how JetBlue responded to my complaints. Even though it took them a little while to do it, I finally feel they accepted some responsibility for what happened and tried to make it right.

A Quick Update on 7/23/07: JetBlue did read this blog post and attempt to make things right. You can read about their response in this blog entry: http://www.briankotek.com/blog/index.cfm/2007/7/23/JetBlue-Addresses-My-Complaints

I was recently in New York City for a quick, two day trip. What should have been a simple thing turned into a disaster, and it was due to the incompetence of the airline JetBlue. This was my first time flying with JetBlue. It was also the last.

My flight out of JFK airport in New York was canceled on a Thursday night. Normally this wouldn't be a big issue; flights get cancelled. But this goes beyond the normal cancelled flight. The way JetBlue handled this was really quite unbelievable.

The most damaging blunder that JetBlue made in this situation was that they did not cancel the flight until one hour before it was to leave. I was literally arguing with a JetBlue representative who was telling me that the flight was not canceled. I had to point HER at the departure screen at the airport to show her that it was. I had checked the flight status just before I left for the airport to be sure it was still on time.

Now I want to know how the hell JetBlue did not know until 1 hour before the flight was to leave that it would be canceled. This is either a very bad mistake, or proof that their logistics systems are terrible. Knowing beforehand that the flight was canceled would have saved me $120 in cab fares alone. That's the whole point of checking the flight status!

So, the first thing I did when I found out the flight was canceled was to try and call JetBlue. Unbelievably, I was met by a recorded message that essentially told me they were too busy, to call back later, and then hung up on me. Nice, huh? This is how they deal with customers when they are at their most vulnerable.

I waited for over an hour in line to finally be told that I could not fly out for more than 40 hours. No attempt to compensate me for this huge delay or help me find lodging was made. I was now stuck in New York City with no clothes, no money, and no place to stay, for 2 more days.

Since JetBlue does not offer WiFi internet access at their terminal (why I can't imagine unless, as seems to be the trend, they actually WANT to irritate their customers), I went to another terminal. From there I was able to plan an alternate route to get home. It took me 9 hours, a train ride to Philadelphia, a ticket on another airline (Southwest), and $350 to do it, but I got home. Again, I must point out, no thanks to JetBlue.

When I contacted JetBlue about this, the response was almost hilarious:

Our records at this time indicate your flight did not qualify for compensation. Our Compensation Team carefully reviews every aspect of our Bill of Rights before making that determination. Even though we cannot provide you with all of those details, we want you to know that we cannot reverse that decision. What we can do, is sincerely apologize and ask that you give us another opportunity to serve you.

Isn't that great? We can't give you anything. We can't tell you why we can't give you anything. But we're really sorry. Fly with us again.

Well, I won't be flying with JetBlue again. And I would urge anyone reading this not to either.