I previously posted that at the start of the new year I would drop American Airlines for Southwest, so I decided to post an update and let you guys (and gals) know how it was going.
I couldn’t be happier, except for the cattle call boarding, because I already have 6 free flights and a companion pass to show for only 4 months of travel. After traveling my ass off on American for over 7 years I have nothing to show but 1 ticket to Europe in coach.
Furthermore, it is company that the employees love and a company that respects its employees and their contributions. As you walk into their headquarters, employees and visitors see this message:
The people of Southwest Airlines are the creators of what we have become - and of what we will be.
Our people transformed an idea into a legend. That legend will continue to grow only so long as it is nourished - by our people's indomitable spirit, boundless energy, immense goodwill, and burning desire to excel.
Our thanks - and our love - to the people of Southwest Airlines for creating a marvelous family and a wondrous airline!
I couldn’t agree more, as I wipe a tear away.
-CP
What is Burger King without burgers?… Absolutely nothing! The highlight of my week in STL is heading to the airport and getting a Whopper at Burger King and a beer at Chili’s. Unfortunately, the Burger King today didn’t have any burgers. I’m still confused over the whole ordeal, but I do know whomever manages the location should be fired.
-CP
At one of my current client it looks like we will be writing our own custom Security Token Service (STS) as part of a large SOA effort. I actually think that this is a common situation in an enterprise, so I’m a little shocked that I find myself saying this. This client has three identity stores on different platforms with different communication mechanisms. Each user will authenticate against one of these stores but we need a consistent way of providing data integrity, data privacy, and non-repudiation. The non-repudiation requirements knocks out Kerberos because it uses a shared secret. We aren’t transforming one token to another token or mapping authorization roles across organizational boundaries so that rules out Federation. Even if we need Federation, we are driven towards a Smart Client implementation, which falls under the active-requestor profile, so that rules out Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS). ADFS on Windows Server 2003 R2 only supports the passive-requestor profile, or basically web clients. Finally, authentication to one of the systems is time intensive so we will require some method of credential caching because passing credentials with each request would not be feasible given the performance requirements of this application. So, at this point it looks like we will roll our own.
-CP
I wish Microsoft would have let a single XBOX 360 connect to multiple Media Center 2005 PCs. Laptops are frequently starting to come with Media Center and the cost differential for desktops is such that it doesn’t make sense to not upgrade.
-CP
While I was in Seattle, Verizon installed FiOS TV with an HD DVR in my home. Because it uses the same pipe as my Internet connection I was a little concerned I might have to sacrifice some speed. Even though I knew I wasn’t anywhere near tapping the full potential of fiber, I headed out to Broadband/DSL Reports just to make sure. With ESPN HD and ESPN SD running on both STBs, here are the results:
Absolutely no degradation in performance! With true VOD the possibilities here are tremendous. The cable and satellite folks should be rethinking their strategies.
-CP