Scripting News: Now that I'm home

Scripting News, the weblog started in 1997 that bootstrapped the blogging revolution.

Now that I'm home

I have to tell Virgin America that I'm not going to be on the flight tomorrow morning. That's proving more difficult than you might imagine. I logged into my account on their website, and it seems to have forgotten about my reservation, even though I just got an email reminding me to check in. Okay, so I called their reservation line, navigated through voicemail, and received a message that due to heavy call volume they can't talk to me, and hung up! Oh man, that's not cool.

So what should I do now? I thought maybe I should call Xeni or Cory or Peter, since I know all of them and they're now spokespersons for the airline. Heh. Okay I'm not going to do that. But I thought about it for a second or two and decided to just blog it instead. ";->"

Now I have to talk to American Airlines to see about getting them to pay for the hotel in Dallas last night. Lotsa luck! (Predictably, they said I didn't read the fine print, so I paid for my hotel room and that's that. Now what to do with all the miles I have on this airline that I'm never going to use.)

One more stop -- Expedia, to see if I can get a refund for two nights in New York that I didn't use. What do you think?? Hmmm. Well, Expedia wins the prize! I'm getting the refund. I asked where she was -- the Philippines. I congratulated her for working for a good company, that made her quite happy. I make a point of thanking these poor people when they help me.

I'm pretty sure I'll get a credit from Virgin America when they actually decide to talk to me, or when the website recognizes me, whichever comes first. ";->"

Later: I did get through to Virgin America, they gave me a credit for the unused portion of the trip, which I can apply to a trip anytime in the next year. A good outcome.

Last update: Thursday, June 3, 2010; 4:01:47 PM

~About the Author~

Dave Winer, 55, is a visiting scholar at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in New York City.

"The protoblogger." - NY Times.

"The father of modern-day content distribution." - PC World.

One of BusinessWeek's 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

"Helped popularize blogging, podcasting and RSS." - Time.

"The father of blogging and RSS." - BBC.

"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.

Mail: scriptingnews1mail at gmail dot com.

Sep Nov