It's deja vu all over again

I'm sure that's what Yogi Berra will say when he hears that Virgin America Airlines is vying for the right to fly from Dallas Love Field.  It would be a real coup as they are fighting the big kid on the block, Southwest Airlines, for those last 2 gates at Dallas' in-town airport.

Sitting there in Fargo, ND you might ask, "Why should I care about this?  I'm sitting here in Fargo, North #@$%^ Dakota?"  Here's why:

It was in 1971 from Dallas' Love Field that Southwest Airlines flew its first scheduled flight.  It was the "rebel with a cause" that stood the airline industry on its head.  For the next 30-something years it moved in to one airport after another and undercut the going airfare there by 50% or more.  We all benefited.

The airline execs said this caused much turmoil in the industry, causing some of the weaker carriers to go belly up.  Consumers said YEAH BABY!  

SWA's eventual CEO Herb Kelleher (now retired) is an absolutely brilliant, crazy guy who put sex appeal back in the air.  I like Southwest Airlines.  It's still based in Dallas, and is an absolute hoot to fly.  But it is no longer the precocious kid with big plans.  It isn't even a true "low cost airline" anymore. 

Now the Wright Amendment (the political deal that inadvertently pretty much gave Love Field to Southwest) is being repealed and other carriers are fighting for the right to go toe-to-toe with SWA.  Now the winner has been announced and it is......

 

....yes....Sir Richard Branson and his Virgin America Airlines.

It's like Herb Kelleher had an illegitimate son and he started his own airline, too.  Both are flamboyant, both love the airline biz, both love ladies in sexy uniforms, and both know how to treat customers.  Now we'll see if Sir Richard can set Dallas on fire today like Herb did in 1971.

Straight from Herb's playbook.

Do you see it?

I'm glad Dallas didn't cave and give the 2 gates up for grabs to the entrenched 500 pound gorilla.  SWA already has 97% of the business at Dallas Love.  That's enough too much.  Competition is good, and I think Virgin America will be good for us consumers and will keep SWA on their toes, too.

Welcome to Dallas Virgin America!  Now go out there and shake up the airline biz just like Herb did.  (Might you some day make it to Fargo, North #@$%^ Dakota?   I sorta promised.... :)

S

Conversations with K

My wife, K, has a very....unique....way of thinking.  Yeah, let's go with unique.

K:  "We're having pasta for dinner tonight.  Do you want a vegetable with it?"

ME:  "Sure.  What are my choices?"

K:  "We don't have any vegetables."

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A few weeks ago during one of our icy weather spells K said Luke the Wonderdog's paws would be cold when I took him out for his dootie call.

K:  "We need to get him some of those doggie booties."

ME:  "He'll never wear them.  Dogs don't wear shoes.  That's dumb."

K:  "Yes he will.  Besides, they're cheap.  You can get 3 or 4 for $8 at Pet Smart."

ME:  "THREE or four?  THREE....or....four?  They have a 3-legged-dog section at Pet Smart?" 

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K is currently on one of her thrice yearly health food kicks.  She's all excited about Omega 3 vitamins (some kind of fish oil) and came home with these words of wisdom:

K:  "We need to eat fish every day three times a week."

ME:  "Wha....what?"

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I'm thinking she and Yogi Berra sit on adjacent limbs of the same family tree.

Definitely.  :)

S

Cars and Coffee, January, 2014

But first, a conversation (soliloquy?) I had with K this morning:

K:  I only have two real hobbies....books, coffee, and chocolate.

ME:  Wha....What?  (She's like a female Yogi Berra!)

I suspected the January Cars and Coffee wouldn't be that great as the weather wasn't, either.  The temp was only in the 30's, but the wind was really kicking up making it pretty miserable.  I managed to stay warm enough, but I think my eyeballs are windburned.  Ouch!

I did manage to see well enough to appreciate this beautiful Morgan, though. It's even the right color (IMO) for an English sports car...British Racing Green.

While it wasn't cherry, and in fact looked to have been "well enjoyed", I still like this era Porsche 911.

A badge on the rear identified this car as a proud member of the "Porsche 356 Tub Club".  He/she also appears to do a lot of vintage racing.

This one is for you, Doug.  As I recall you liked the Porsche 968.

The agony and the ecstasy....those nasty 1970-ish government mandated bumpers on an otherwise very nice BMW 2002.

There seemed to be a lot of the "boy racer" types out today.

I'll at least give this Mazda owner some style points.

No points, though, for this VeeDub refugee from the frozen tundra, aka Canada. It must have been a slow trip south, what with those tires rubbing the inside of the fender wells like that.

This little egg-looking thing is winning a lot of praise from the automotive press these days.  It's a ST model Ford....umm...."egg-looking thing". 

A slick '56 Cheeeevy.

And a '57 from my yout, too.

'57 was a good year for Thunderbirds also.

I'm guessing this Lamborghini Murcielago owner, billing himself as "the Violin Guy", is writing off his car as a business expense.   That, or he's the ultimate narcissist.

There are always a lot of photographers at Cars and Coffee, for obvious reason.  This guy, however, had the coolest set up I've seen yet.  He could raise and lower his camera and still maintain the perfect  angle to view his subject.  A definite "Big Boy Toy".

You've heard of "chick cars"?  This lady wore her "chick-ness" loud and proud!

Which begs the question....why do some model cars, like this BMW Z3, get a reputation for being a "chick car"?  Another is a Mazda Miata.  Why?  What is it about a car that makes it a chick car?  Anybody....?

That's my take on Cars and Coffee for this month.  :)

S 

"It's deja vu all over again"....

....At least that's what the legendary Yogi Berra would call it.  Only after I'd left the store did it dawn on me that I must be entering my second childhood.  I can just barely remember it, but I felt like the ultimate 1st grade stud when I got my first big boy tablet:

Now here I am many birthday candles later with another new "tablet":

It's a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 (7.0). 

We're breaking ground tomorrow on a new custom home and it looks like I'll be spending a fair amount of my semi-retired time on-site.  From what I'm told a "tablet" is the new clipboard, the universal symbol that says, "Don't ask me to actually DO anything.  I'm just a supervisor."

So far my impression is it's very intuitive, which is good because if it wasn't, this old Neanderthal would simply be the proud owner of a Samsung Rock.  I had an early iPad and didn't care for it because it was too big to lug around.  This is about the size of a Kindle.....juuuuust right.

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If you're on the waiting list for a new iPhone 5 your wait just got a little longer.  It seems that last night there was a big riot at one of the Foxconn factories in China that makes components for Apple:

The plant employs 79,000 workers and it took 5,000 riot police to restore order.  The facility is closed for at least today.  If there's a silver lining in this (for the US) it's that Chinese workers are getting restless and demanding better pay and working conditions.  Maybe we'll see a few of those outsourced jobs start to come back home?

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The TV news (?) this morning was all abuzz about who wore what to the Emmy Awards last night.  What caught my eye/ear was they kept saying "....and it looked like she was wearing Jimmy Choo shoes."

So how can you tell?  Is there some identifying logo on there somewhere?  I mean, if you're wearing the shoes, and your foot is covering the name, how would anyone know?  I guess in glitzy Hollywood this is a big status symbol, but where I'm from this just screams, "Look at me!  I just dropped a THOUSAND bucks on a pair of shoes.  How dumb am I?"  I wanna know who Jimmy Choo's VP Sales/Marketing is.  He's good.  Really good!

Guess I'd better go do something constructive.  Have a good day everyone.

S