A few days ago I read an article on MSNBC that had me scratching my head.  Basically, American Airlines came out and tried to justify their $15 per checked bag fee, and claimed that the new fee would affect fewer than one in four customers this Summer.   They also claim that the fees won’t result in longer lines at the ticket counter.

Right.  I don’t believe them, but that’s really not the point that really got me steaming.

The airline then went on to try and passify its customers by trying to spin the fee as a “bargain”.

The airline defended the fee, saying it was a bargain compared with the cost of …

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I’m starting to realize that there must be a tipping point to advertisement.  There must be a point where ads are so visible and omnipresent that they actually take away from the medium in which they’re delivered.

American Idol for instance.  I don’t watch a lot of television, and I’ve never really been a huge fan of American Idol, but since David Cook is a local guy, I started to take interest in the last couple weeks of the show.  During the few episodes I did watch, I started to notice the gratuitous placement of advertisements.

From the shows host rambling on about how great the iPhone is, to the three super-tall …

It seems that AT&T is no longer seeing the value of the pay phone.  The company announced today that its pay phones will be phased out over the next year. They declined to say how much revenue its pay-phone business generated, but the number is small and declining, after all, how can they compete with cell phones at $0.50 per call?

It’s interesting that a service long thought to be impossible to live without could be phased out of service, but it’s happening.

It certainly leaves one to think about what other iconic items once thought to be revolutionary will be a thing of the past in the not too distant future…

From …

It’s that time of year again. Holiday cheer, Christmas shopping in conjunction with raiding the left over Halloween candy isle at the grocery store, and oh yeah, open enrollment for benefits at work. Blehhhh.

That’s probably my least favorite administrative task at work. Pick a health plan. There’s only three, they’re all free, but if you foresee yourself needing this little benefit in fine print, you need the “premier blue” plan, but that comes with an additional $500 deductible, a smaller approved doctors lists…

…and this is where I lose interest.

To its credit, my company spends a lot of time and money …