Find The Boots

Rantings from a few corporate types about life, technology, travel, guns, politics, and everything good in the world.

Id for Pancakes

Sunday, December 10, 2006

An IHOP in Boston was requiring id in order to get a meal. Evidently they had problems with people skipping out on the tab, and an innovative employee decided to have a security guard collect drivers licenses for entry.

The disheartening part of this story isn't that some employee actually put this into place. Employees do stupid stuff all the time. It's that 40 people were willing to hand over their ids to a pancake house. It's one thing to show an id, quite another to hand it over so someone can copy down all of the details....

I think I'm going to have to rethink my position that another 9/11 can't happen because the passengers would fight back. Apparently, all the terrorists would have to do on a flight originating in Boston is to ask the passengers for ids and feed them pancakes.

No, You Can't Bring that On Board

Sunday, December 03, 2006

Guess what one of the most confiscated items at the TSA checkpoint in the Louisville airport is? Yep, it's the Louisville Slugger. Apparently the TSA takes them away from passengers all the time.

Now I'm sure freedom loving patriots will object and demand that people be allowed to bring their sporting equipment with them wherever they go, but what are these people thinking?

It reminds me of a sign in the Anchorage Airport: Ulu knives are not permitted in hand luggage. (An Ulu knife is a flat bladed knife that you might use to skin a bear.)

Well duh.

Fake Boarding Class Generator Guy Freed

Friday, December 01, 2006

The guy who wrote the fake boarding pass generator has been freed.

I thought the whole thing was a bit of an overreaction, but it doesn't bother me that this guy was inconvenienced. Surely someone with his skills could have worked on something a little more important than fighting the tyranny of boarding pass inspections.

Seriously, if you talk to some people you'll hear that being asked to take off your shoes and present id in order to fly is equivalent to a train ride to Treblinka. It's an inconvenience, and it may only provide a small measure of increased security, but it's hardly the end of democracy.

Find The Boots

An executive goes on a business trip. When he arrives, it's raining cats and dogs. To avoid ruining his shoes, he purchases a pair of galoshes for $15, which he expenses under "Misc." on his expense report. A week later, the accounting department rejects his expense report, with a post-it note that says that the company does not reimburse for items of clothing. The next trip, the executive turns in an expense report without the galoshes, but with a post-it note that says "FIND THE BOOTS!".