Flyi

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So I flew Independence Air to New Jersey last weekend. As I mentioned earlier, the discounted new-member tickets turned out far cheaper than the train ride, and I was eager to try out this new airline which had been so actively marketed in the DC metro area. (Indy Air is actually ACA, a “feeder” airline breaking away from prior commitments to United to become its own rebranded low-cost regional carrier.)

Check-in at Dulles is fast and easy, with ticketless check-in meaning that you just hand in your reservation printout and an ID at the counter and receive your boarding pass instantly. At Dulles, Indy Air is located at the far, low end of Terminal A. The planes are Canadair Regional CRJ200 jets, fairly small, with seating for 50, boarded at ground level on the tarmac. Seats are covered in comfortable blue leather, all coach, with decent quantities of space provided. (Note that emergency exit row seating on these small regional jets offers little extra leg room. You get about an extra inch, and that’s it. Worse, the window seat doesn’t have an armrest on the wall side, presumably to make it easier for you to open the hatch — a wall hatch, not a full length door — in an emergency. Also, the hatch is right in the wall beside you, and can be somewhat unnerving to lean against. Skip the exit row for these planes; reservations like that are better on the jumbos.)

After all baggage has been loaded onto the plane, one of the ground crew walks around the plane with a large blue sign saying “YOUR BAGS HAVE BEEN LOADED,” for all passengers to see. After one round, he flips it over to the words “SEE YOU ON THE FLIP SIDE.” Gimmicky, but funny.

Taxiing to takeoff, a recorded celebrity voiceover gives you the safety briefing; it was Mia Hamm for IAD-EWR, and Carville and Matalin for EWR-IAD. Inflight complimentaries: soda or juice, a bag of Sun Chips, and a hot towel — pretty good for a 35 minute flight. The lavatory at the back of the plane was rather cramped (as you can see in my Mirror Project submission), so taller folk might want to consider “going” at the airport before riding. It’s a short flight anyway.

All in all, a good start for this airline, so I’m sure I’ll be flying them again in the future for a trip to NJ or Chicago.

Writing is sparse because I’m busy. Tomorrow: rowing the red rivers.

Amykow

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Amykow.com is now online, and will be home to Amy, my dearest luv. Being more of the visually oriented sort, she’ll be using the site to publish her unique ocular genius in the form of photos and paintings, each one a veritable masterpiece of color, composition, and style.

Why “Amykow?” You’ll have to ask her about that. ;)

Post-Canoe Goofiness

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Me and Amy at the Canoe Pillory.

That’s me and Amy goofing around at the Pine Barrens Canoe Rental place. We had a fun weekend.

Flying North for the Weekend

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Okay, now I’m heading over to Dulles, from where I shall fly (on the new Independence Air) up to New Jersey to visit Amy and her folks over the weekend. Tomorrow we’ll be joining her church group on a canoe trip through the Pine Barrens. With any luck, I may not even touch the internet till I get home on Monday, as I will be enjoying lots of wild rowing fun in the great summery outdoors, and quality time with the girl I love.

Philippines According to Blogs

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The Sassy is trying out a new collaborative Filipino journal project, The Philippines According to Blogs. Unfortunately, the potential for abuse obviates the use of trackback-like pings, which would make it an easier, more dynamic project, kind of like Blogroots. I’m wondering if there isn’t a feed-oriented XML-based way to go about this or something similar; some solution that wouldn’t require registered users to have to go to the site and repost a link.

I also jokingly recommended that she try and get this fine domain for the project, which has expired and may potentially be up for grabs if the action star President-elect doesn’t renew it soon. I think a site called “Finest Philippine Journals” would have a lovely home at “fpj.org.ph” if it could get on the waitlist.

More Social Volcano Spewage

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Some op-ed output from the ‘Pinas on this idiotic “congressional canvas of votes” farce: Amando Doronilla, Rasheed Abou-Alsamh, Max Soliven, and Teddy Benigno. Benigno, of course, is brimming with the requisite “social volcano” gloom and doom scenario, predicting — yet again — that this is what will finally cause the Philippines to boil over into violent mass chaos — yet again. The man’s a great columnist and a brilliant political analyst, but the more he makes these predictions, the less I believe them. Just like when he writes about Iraq and uses the word “quagmire.” (Wolf! Wolf!) Latest word is that Poe’s lawyers have pulled out. Spoiled, obstructionist opposition versus ambitious, power-hungry admin. Guess who’ll win.

I’m happy to see that Philstar has broken out of frames and redone their website a bit. Sadly, they’ve fallen prey to the same marketing clutter that infects the Inq7 front page: a discordant mess of ad buttons — some rather annoyingly animated — cutting through content and interrupting the flow of layout. Large media websites normally set standards on how ad banners and buttons should look, so they integrate well into a design; but hey, if youze gots to make the money, youze gots to take what ads youze can gets. It’s not as though sidebar blogads are any better visually.

Lunch Hour: Instant Replay

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Just had lunch at Chipotlé with Salim, who has been freshly implanted from Boston. Coming from MA, he has delightful things to say about John Kerry — as delightful as the things I had to say about Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Fernando Poe Jr.

Salim, who posts so fast that his entry about lunch was up before I had even gotten back to the office, has some excellent advice on eating at Chipotlé. We’ll definitely be going back there.

On the Priority of Eschatology

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The exaggerated importance of adopting an eschatological position, via Aaron’s link to a lengthy treatise on J. Gresham Machen by John Frame. Oof. I was just speaking with Amy about this a few nights ago. Having “left behind” mainstream rapture-crazy dispensational premillenialism years ago, I’ve been wondering which eschatological outlook to adopt. Postmillenialism’s promise of the church bringing about the new heaven is far too humanistic to be considered properly Scriptural, preterism is too dismissive of prophecies which could not possibly have been fulfilled in the first century AD, and amillenialism just confuses me.

But the “Oof” that I oof above comes from the fact that perhaps I don’t need to categorically fall into a class of eschatological outlook to be a proper believer. Certainly I should not be so obsessed with researching possible “endtimes” outcomes at the expense of feeding the hungry and spreading the good news. “But if I have not love…”

That said, here is the bulk of my eschatology reading for the next year or so. But first, I need to reacquaint myself with the basics.

Update, four hours later: Speaking of eschatology, I failed to mention that ever-indispensable resource, the BLB: Four Views on the Millenium gives a nice, concise summary of the main branches of Millenial understanding, with bible links and bibliographic references.