A depressing day to be sure

I have to fly to SFO tomorrow. It's sort of the first out of town job with my new, old job. I'm back to being a ProServices engineer person that flies all over our not so green earth like a hired gun. It was a sad morning as I had decided to fly my old carrier United. United Airlines and I have spent much time together. In the hey days of the tech boom I was a 1K member flying many, many miles and enjoying lots of perks from the airline but sacrificing any kind of social life.

Now, I haven't really flown for business for about 18 months. I've lost all status, everywhere. I just did online checkin for my SFO flight and I'm in seating area 4. For those of you not familiar with United's designation for seating this has to do with when you get to board the plane. Obviously, first class and global special people are first. Then seating area one which is reserved for anyone with status on United (this used to be me :-( ), then seating area 2, 3 and 4. If you board in seating area 4 you can just forget getting any overhead bin space and you know you must have pretty much the shittiest seat on the entire plane. Basically, as far as United is concerned, you suck, and you're lucky they are even letting you board at all. Matter of fact, I'm surprised if I'm not just thrown into the belly of the plane as excess baggage in the passenger compartment.

A sad day indeed......