It's cruel to mock the stupid

[pecunium]

Which is why I am not linking to this, but it's an amazing moment of WTF!?!, and I can't keep it to myself (I'm not always the nicest of people).

Today I’m on a flight to San Jose, CA. Well, two flights. Couldn’t find a direct flight.

It was yesterday that I discovered LA and SF were not in the same location… See, I don’t know CA very well and I’m actually headed to Palo Alto. So I mistakenly assumed that LA was pretty much right there, too.

I think the confusion came from last time I was in CA, I flew into SF and out of Oakland, so I had this impression of all the cities being close to each other.

I'm croggled. Not so much that a grown man, and an american citizen, might not know LA and SF are 400 miles apart from each other, but that he would look at a state the size of California, and assume all the metropli are adjacent because two of them were so colocated the last time he was here.

That's the first bit.

The second is that he admits it, with a sense of blasé delivery which implies he thinks this a reasonable mistake to make.

Comments

[michiexile]

I can, with some certainty, place mentally all larger cities in Sweden (say over the size of 250'000 at least - I might get hazy at the 100'000 cities). I can, with some certainty, place mentally all major cities in Germany. I certainly have a feel for which direction they'd be in.

I know the states of the giant cities in the US. But I use Google Maps constantly. Not only for trips I end up planning, but also for my current job search: which universities are good to apply to if I want to be able to visit Ypsilanti or Ann Arbor regularly? How far, REALLY, is Williamstown MA from Ann Arbor? et.c.

I really wouldn't even try to navigate a flight booking system without checking locations on Google Maps while I'm at it.

[robot-scandal.livejournal.com]

The whole story is -

I travel for work. I'm a software consultant. In most cases, a project manager will give me a list of closest airports. In this case, the project manager was on vacation when I was booking the flight.

I had worked with this particular customer maybe 8 years ago. I flew into LAX for that particular meeting - that was when I discovered that cabs aren't really useful in Cali, as opposed to NY, where I would never rent a car. It turns out, I am working with a different group this time and they're in a different office.

I booked the flight while doing other things. I did manage to get a hotel right next to the customer, which is lucky, because I had 3-4 different addresses which the appointment could be at. I only had to change flights and rental cars. Not really a big deal. Would have sucked if I actually took the flight.


I really don't like guessing which is the closest airport, because often times the nearest large airport can be a couple hours away, but there might be a tiny one near by which has a convenient connector.

Recenty I flew in to Allentown, PA. They have a nice little airport. Newark and Philly are about an hour away. It was much more convenient and I probably never would have found it if not for the customer.

That doesn't always work out, though. Last week, I flew into Spartanburg, SC. Minutes from the customer. My connecting flight was in ATL. My layover was 2.5 hours. Spartanburg was a 2 hour drive from ATL...

So, maybe now you can see why I might be a little carefree about it. Not that it matters. I'm really not embarrased by it. I'm relieved I caught my mistake. That's about it.