About Time!

I just realized it’s been almost ten years since I last posted! There’s a lot of water under the bridge, but we’ll tackle that later! In the meantime, much about blogging has changed, so I have new technology to learn! Stand by!

More Shenanigans in the Fox House

The repeated denials of any responsibility just, in my humble opinion, make Fox News look all the worse for this incident. Also, it's just another in a long (and growing) list of such things.

On Fox News, percentages don't add up to 100 and, apparently, 'zero tolerance' means 'unless we get caught'.

Media Matters busted FOX News -- again. Yesterday, during FOX and Friends, the network provided these misleading numbers on a poll about climate change: [...]

Fox News, Global Warming, Climate Change

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Another Move

It's official, folks! In case you haven't figured it out, the blog has a new home. Again.  www.dougkrile.com
Plain and simple. No more long url.  Just my name. www.dougkrile.com

This move should be good for a long time - we're hosting my blog internally on the servers we use for Station X. Options galore!

Don't forget to check out my Arkansas posts at The Examiner

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Site Update

For those of you who have bookmarked (or otherwise saved) this site as http://krilefiles.blogspot.com please note that the new location is up and running at http://www.dougkrile.com - for those of you who are used to coming in through that domain, everything should be back to normal. Except that I have a lot of catching up to do.  It'll come around and (hopefully) be better than ever! It's not a real Wordpress site, running on our own server.  Creativity and flexibility galore.  Now, I just have to study up on how to make it sing!

Another Experiment

Just be warned...we're moving to a locally hosted WordPress blog, so there might be some crazy stuff popping up over the next week or so.

The Wedding

Those of you who follow this blog will have already taken note of my rambling rant about the horrendous problems we had with American Airlines in the final couple of days before the wedding. However, I'm in a much better mood now - not that AA has resolved ANYTHING, but simply because the wedding went off without a major problems, everybody seemed to have a good time, and the bride and groom had a great honeymoon.
Now that all of that is behind us, you'll get the chance to read the thoughts of a father who managed to tap-dance around some of the emotions involved with his only daughter's wedding and the resulting move to a new home in another state. For those of you facing that in the years ahead, let's just say that it's enough to put a catch in the throat and a tear in the eye of the toughest of men. Read on and feel free to pass it along to others who might benefit.
It's Time

It's time. Time to let the youngest fly off to a new home and career, with a new husband, to start a new life. The wedding has been in the works for nearly two years, but it always seemed to be something distant, something "way down the road". The location was secured, but had to be changed when the original choice was sold to be used for another purpose. The scramble for [...]

Technorati Tags: Wedding, Family, Transitions

The American Airlines Rant Continues

For those of you who have not been following my frustrations with American Airlines on Twitter, allow me to briefly bring you up to date.  Our daughter's wedding was this weekend. Her fiance' flew in from their new home in North Carolina, arriving Thursday morning - without his luggage. This was a one-stop flight and the bag contained not only his wedding clothes, but clothes for their honeymoon, too. He immediately filed a claim with American Airlines and was soon told that his bag had been located and was on another flight to Little Rock, scheduled to arrive later on Thursday. "We'll bring it to your location", he was told. Hours later? No bag; no contact from American Airlines.  Another call got much the same response - "your bag is on the way and we'll deliver it, no later than late  Friday morning. You're getting the picture now, right? Friday morning came - no luggage.  Now, American Airlines "customer service" people are saying that the bag somehow ended up in Atlanta (strange, considering the lone stop on the flight was in Dallas) and would be coming to Little Rock on a Delta flight. Hours later, with no sign of the luggage, more phone calls were made. This time American Airlines said they had no way to track the bag, since it was on Delta, but they promised to call Delta and get an update. Of course, that attempt ran into the same problems we encountered: no one staffs the baggage areas except for brief moments around a flight's arrival. So, American could not get in touch with Delta, or so they claimed. By now, it was obviously that the first responses that the luggage was on a flight to Little Rock were nothing more than blatant lies, designed to keep us off the phone. The next move was to try to get some type of compensation from  American, so the groom could replace at least some of his clothing. After being told to buy new clothing and bring the receipts to the local American Airlines desk, the local agent said he could authorize payment for only $200 of the $350 that was spent to replace the minimal clothing for the wedding and honeymoon.  He was told he could appeal to the company, but not to expect much in the way of a positive response.
If there has been one bright spot, it's that a local American Airlines employee happened to be searching through the US Airways baggage area and noticed a bag with a name he recognized from earlier communications - it was the groom's bag! When did US Airways get involved?  Nobody can answer that.  When was the bag found? AFTER the Saturday wedding. In time for the honeymoon, but still extremely frustrating.
Even more frustrating to me was a story that just happened to appear in our local newspaper this (Monday) morning; a story about how the low-cost airlines are doing a much better job of using Twitter and social networking sites to communicate with frustrated passengers than the major carriers. Particularly telling was this reference to American Airlines' philosophy: "American thinks that social media shouldn't be a replacement for existing customer service in which representatives respond to calls and e-mails from consumers".
Yessir - they respond.  With lies and bad information.  That's just a great way to run an airline. And, yes, I've tried giving them a chance to respond, directing Twitter posts to the lone account that seems moderately active.  However, most posts are promoting fares and activities in destination cities. Obviously, nobody who cares about customer service or who has any power to respond and make things right is reading.
Most of this post is personal, since our daughter's wedding and honeymoon were made more stressful by the horrid performance of American Airlines.  Some is professional. Our business, Station X, grew out of the realization that many businesses need help in managing customer service via social media. American Airlines, we need to talk. You have a problem and it's not going to get any better until you look around you and realize that you need to change.

Food for the future

I'm seriously thinking that moving as much as possible toward being a locavore is where we're headed in this household. What's a "locavore?" Basically, it's somebody who buys as much food, as possible, from local sources. We've long been fans of the Little Rock and North Little Rock Farmers' Markets, but we're now seeing the emergence of sources that will offer products throughout the year, not just during the growing months.

Reason to become a locavore

Here's the scenario: with a coupon for $1.00 off a bag of Dole lettuce, I ran into my friendly, neighborhood, Kroger store on the way home one night this week. With the produce area directly ahead, I started scanning the horizon for the section of the department that usually held the Dole products. Whoa! What's that? I'm staring at [...]

Technorati Tags: Locavore, Food,

The End of the Moon?

Thanks to @amybhole on Twitter for making me nervous about this whole "smash a rock into the moon" thing. Guess I might as well watch. In case...

Watch NASA Bomb The Moon Online

Like something out of a ’50s sci-fi movie (with a little Kubrick thrown in), tomorrow NASA is going to BOMB THE MOON. Nothing more awesome will happen this year, and you can watch the whole thing online. After slingshotting around the Earth, [...]

Technorati Tags: Moon, NASA