The photo in our holiday card is a bit old. Here is the original.

Posted on December 25th, 2010 under Other. Tags: christmas. Comments: 1

We spent last Christmas on an island in Thailand. This year we are with family in Utah.

Posted on December 24th, 2010 under Other. Tags: christmas, night photography, utah. Comments: 2

My blogs (and many other blogs on the internet) have once again been hacked. This time I don’t know an easy fix. Every blog post has had a script which loads the script here: http://acrossuniverseitbenet.com/js.php?kk=10 The script tries to scare the viewer into purchasing fake virus removal software. There is no real virus so if such a script loads for you, exit out of your browser ASAP before a bunch of crap gets downloaded to your hard drive.

If you know how to remove a line of script from every blog post in a wordpress blog, please let me know how by commenting.

Posted on December 22nd, 2010 under Other. Comments: 5

Here is the skinny on hotwire.com. Avoid hotwire. Beware of hotwire. Hotwire sucks.

For the longer version, read on.

Next month I’m taking a little trip to Seattle with four unrelated people. My job was to book the hotel. Somehow I ended up on hotwire.com. They had an unnamed hotel in the location I needed for a good price*. Before booking I read all the rules, restrictions, terms of use, etc. on their site. One said, “room type will be determined by the hotel based on the number of guests provided at time of booking.” This worried me a bit as there are no couples in my group of five. Therefore, I needed at least five beds. So I called hotwire before booking and asked them if booking three rooms for five people meant three beds or five (or six) beds. I was assured that I would get at least as many beds as people. I was told to call the hotel after booking to confirm this.

So I booked the non-refundable rooms and called the hotel. The hotel told me that I was booked for three rooms with only one, double bed in each room. I explained my situation and asked if they had rooms available with two beds in each room. “Yes,” they replied, “we have plenty of those rooms open on the night you are staying here, but hotwire won’t let us give you those rooms.” “You will have to call hotwire and have them change you to the rooms with two beds.” I explained that hotwire told me to call them. “Sorry,” the hotel says, “hotwire will have to make the change. We can’t on our end.”

I contacted hotwire again. This time they said if I want two beds in two of the rooms I have to pay extra. We went back and forth in a dozen email messages and they wouldn’t budge. Each time a different representative regurgitated the same lines over and over again. “You should have read our terms of use.” I did. And I called you before booking just to be sure. “No refunds.” I know. That is why I called you first to make sure I wouldn’t need a refund.

Anyway, moral of the story. Don’t book with hotwire. Not only will you be stuck with something you may not have bargained for, they don’t follow through on any assertions or promises they make prior to booking. Once they have you in the non-refundable category, they have no incentive to please the customer or make you happy.

*To top it off, the hotel they booked me with has lower rates on their website than the rate I paid with hotwire. Lesson learned.

Posted on December 18th, 2010 under Other. Tags: reviews, Travel, travel related goods. Comments: 1

I’m in the middle of tearing down The Wall in San Jose tonight. It may be a couple days before anything else shows up here as
“The wall was too high,
As you can see.
No matter how I tried,
I could not break free.”

Posted on December 7th, 2010 under Other. Comments: 2