John McCain’s presidential campaign is asking supporters to go out into the untamed wilds of the internet, leave comments on blogs, and report back to the mother ship.  In return for your efforts “you will be awarded points through the McCain Online Action Center.”  I’m not sure what you can do with those points.

I first found out about this gimmick on Left in Alabama - a decidedly anti-McCain liberal site.  While reading Say Anything Blog - a slightly less anti-McCain conservative site - I learned that there was a list of suggested conservative blogs.  Surprise, surprise yours truly was included in the list of 70 or so conservative blogs.  The only other Alabama blog I recognized was A Bama Blog - a much better, though less frequently updated (much to my chagrin), conservative blog.

If some kind soul wouldn’t mind, please let me know how my theme is working on different browsers - primarily unordered lists (see below).  Not to bore you more than necessary, but unordered lists look just fine on my “test” blog that I use for toying around with the CSS.  However, on the public blog they are aligned at the far left of the post area in Firefox.  They are aligned OK in IE, although I don’t like the way IE handles spacing (whole ‘nother topic).  I’m using the exact same style sheet on each site and the underlying html is effectively the same.

Anyway, here’s a list:

• Item one
• Item two
• Yada, yada, yada

Some of you may have noticed that the author of the previous post on Scott Horton’s event was not yours truly. It was written by an individual that those of you who frequent Alabama blogs might recognize: Reactionary.

I asked Reactionary, a fellow Huntsvillian, to join on as a contributor recently, which he obviously accepted. He brings to the table another good conservative view point as well as increased historical knowledge of all things Huntsville. So, from now on you’ll have to pay attention to the author of each post before you start casting stones!

Regular readers, I’m pretty sure there are at least a couple, might have noticed a new feature I added in the last few days: an upcoming event calendar.  Right now they will show up as regular blog posts and the next five will be displayed in the sidebar.  Typically the events will be political activities taking place either in North Alabama or, in some cases, statewide.  Eventually I will craft a dedicated page to display the entire calendar, but I’m not satisfied with what I have done thus far.

If you have an event you would like to see added just email me (brian - at - flashpointblog - dot - com) or leave a comment.

I endeavor to keep a comprehensive list of Alabama political blogs of all stripes.  Unlike some other blogs I don’t just link to ideologically compatible sites.  Nope, you might actually find an opinion you disagree with as you click through the list.  Such is life.

I’m busy, though, and I occasionally fall behind on adding new blogs.  Sometimes blogs that I read periodically aren’t on my blogroll either through my own oversight or because I assume they are already there.

Here are my newly added blogs, in no particular order:

• Captain Plaid
• Mr. Turnbow
• Real Alabama Politics
• Highway 431
• Bessemer Opinions
• Legal Schnauzer
• Punditry by the Pint
• The Clarion Caller
• AL Democrat Blog
• AL Republican Blog

If you know of any others that I don’t have please leave me a comment.  My only requirements are that they discuss either politics or non-celebrity current events (no gossip or personal blogs) and that they aren’t temporary, candidate specific campaign sites.  Of course I reserve the liberty to make exceptions to my rules!

Also, I’ll be sifting through the list in the coming week or so to determine if any of them have “gone cold” for too long and need to be removed.

As both of my regular readers might recognize I modified my theme in response to some feedback.  It seems that some, most notably my wife, were not too pleased with the white text on a black background.  So I made some changes.

If you happen to notice any squirrelly behavior or substantially unappealing color combinations please let me know.

I’m back from a longer than usual vacation.  I was visiting the in-laws on the left coast.  It was a good trip and the wife and I were able to steal away to Vancouver, B.C. for five days sans kids, which was very welcomed.  It’s a great city to visit and we certainly enjoyed ourselves (while coming in below our vacation budget!).  The return trip to Huntsville, however, left a great deal to be desired - keep reading.

Unfortunately the trip left me three lectures behind in what has turned out to be a fairly challenging, time consuming course on dynamics this semester.  And work remains busy as usual.  Posts will be light as I try to catch up and tread water and I apologize if I fail to respond to comments or emails promptly.  Priorities.

I did get a new toy while on our trip.  I finally got a laptop, well one that actually works.  You gotta love sales tax free Oregon.  The wireless is finally up and running after some choice words.  Maybe this will mitigate some of the drop off in posting giving the other things that are keeping me busy.

Ok, I mentioned the return trip.  I’ll just paste a copy of a letter I’m sending to American Airlines tomorrow, which should sum up the day pretty well.  When my wife read it she said it sounded like I made it up, but I assure you everything is 100% true and I even left out some details that only make it sound worse.

I am writing to describe the agonizing details of a recent American Airlines flight.  On Wednesday, September 26, 2007 I traveled from Portland, OR (PDX) on AA Flight 1380 to Dallas, TX (DFW) and was supposed to continue from there to Huntsville, AL (HSV) on AA Flight 3529.  I was traveling with my wife and three kids (ages three, two, and one).  The flight from Portland to Dallas was uneventful, but the day quickly descended into what can charitably be described as hell.  I am writing this letter for the sole purpose of seeking financial compensation - not in the form of a travel voucher - for expenses we incurred as a direct result of a mechanical failure on an AA flight.

In Dallas we boarded the flight to our final destination on time, but had to wait on the tarmac for approximately 80 minutes due to what the pilot said was inclement weather that was forcing all departures to use a single flight path and space take offs every twenty-five miles.  When our plane was finally next in line to take off the pilot went across the runway and came to a stop.  At least ten minutes went by before the pilot finally told the very anxious, upset passengers what happened: a mechanical failure with the navigation system.

We had to taxi back to a gate and de-board.  Of course we were not allowed to retrieve our gate checked items, which included two strollers.  Instead we were forced to carry all of our carry on baggage as well as an infant and chase a two year old who would have been otherwise restrained.  We stood idly by for a lengthy period of time before we were appraised of the situation at which time we were told the plane was being fixed and that we should stay near the gate.

After approximately half an hour we were told that the plane was not going to be fixed and that a new plane was ready at a nearby gate.  We proceeded to the gate and were told that the plane would be boarded within fifteen minutes.  By this time it was already after 6:00 PM - later than when we were scheduled to arrive in Huntsville.  After half an hour no one was boarding the plane.  The AA staff announced that the flight had now been canceled.  The staff did not announce the reason why the flight was cancelled even though a second plane was available.  The only later flight to Huntsville was already sold out and we would have to stay overnight and try to get on a flight in the morning.

The AA gate agent offered us a hotel room as well as meal tickets for dinner and breakfast.  Normally if I were traveling without kids this would be reasonable, but by this point we were at our wits end.  Our children had not had the opportunity to take naps and were consequently not as well behaved as normal.  We had spent the last hour and a half trying to move about the airport without the benefit of our strollers.  We had not packed enough diapers and other supplies to last an extended period of time; we only packed enough for our scheduled flight plus modest reserves.  Furthermore, we weren’t prepared to stay in a hotel with an infant since we didn’t have a portable crib with us.

We worked with an AA supervisor named Brett (last name unknown) who arranged for us to take a later flight to Nashville, TN (BNA) on AA 324 that arrived sometime around 10:35 PM.  We arranged to rent a vehicle that could accommodate three car seats (Toyota Sienna) to drive back to Huntsville that night.  Brett was very polite and helpful, even taking pains to personally ensure our luggage arrived with us in Nashville.  He informed me that despite the fact that AA was offering to provide a hotel room and meals that he was not authorized to pay for rental cars in advance for liability reasons.  He did give us a $50 meal voucher, which we used to purchase approximately $25 worth of food at TGI Friday’s.  Annoyingly, even though we only used about half of the value of the voucher we still had to leave a tip out of pocket.  We also had to purchase juice for the kids, again out of pocket, at another establishment that we would not have had to purchase if it were not the AA mechanical failure.

In the end we made it back to Huntsville at about 1:30 AM on 9/27/07 - seven and a half hours after our originally scheduled arrival time of 6:00 PM on 9/26/07.  We incurred additional costs that were a direct result of the mechanical failure and subsequent flight cancellation on AA Flight 3529.  I am not soliciting, nor do I desire, any type of voucher for future travel on American Airlines.  I only request compensation for the additional costs incurred, which are itemized below:

Rental car: $296.27 (Receipt attached)
Fuel from Nashville to Huntsville: $22.83 (Receipt attached)
Incidentals: $10

Total:  $329.10

Note: Incidentals include food and additional items needed to travel with small children.

I appreciate your prompt response with reimbursement check to my letter.  Please do not hesitate to contact me by phone or e-mail with any questions.

That rental car price isn’t a typo.  It cost nearly $300 for a one day, one way van rental.  That’s a freaking car payment.

I’ve switched to a new Wordpress theme in order to fix some glitches that crept into my previous theme as new versions of Wordpress have been released.  The biggest glitch was that some Firefox users were not able to leave comments.  I can now successfully leave a comment with Firefox on my PC, but if you don’t mind please give it a shot as well.

Hopefully I’ll be able to tinker with the new theme a bit more in the coming days.  Please be patient with any growing pains and don’t hesitate to notify me of bugs.

brian(at)flashpointblog(dot)com

Now that I’ve started another semester of school in my long, arduous journey to get my masters I’m working brutal hours.  I got into the office at 7:00 AM and left at 11:00 PM.  I did take a couple of hours off in the middle of the day - so I could go to class.  Unfortunately this isn’t a terribly unusual day since I’m pretty busy at work right now, putting in 50-60 hours per week.  For some reason I can’t compel myself to go directly to bed after such long days.  So I decided to tinker with my posting statistics some more.

I grouped all my posts (as of a week ago) by hour of the day.  I typically do a majority of my blogging in the morning before 6:00 AM and in the evening after about 8:30 PM.  I was curious to see if the actual data resembled my expectation.  Surprisingly it did.

That mid-day spike around 11:00 AM is a bit troubling.  I have never written a post while at work, although I have left comments during brief breaks from time to time.  When I broke the data down by day of the week it looks like many of those mid-day posts happened on Thursday and Friday.  I must have taken too many days off over the past year and a half!

Other than the mid-day spike the data looked about like I expected, heaviest during early morning and late evening.  I was kind of surprised to see more than 20 posts for each of the wee morning hours.  I’ve never been a big fan of sleep, though.

Due to a perceived dearth of interesting material and a general lack of motivation I decided to look at some of my blog stats.  The plot below shows the number of posts by me and comments by you per month from when I started doing this in April of 2006.  The average number of posts per month has held very steady at just over 60.  The number of comments left by readers has increased decently, finally besting the number of posts per month earlier this year.