Minneapolis Star Tribune

HARRISON FORD

What are we doing in the Amazon?

KAREN ALLEN

Cate wants to return the Crystal MacGuffin to the ancient City of Gold.

HARRISON FORD

City of Gold? Isn't that what Nicolas Cage was looking for in National Treasure 2? Are we seriously getting the plot for our shitty sequel to Indiana Jones by ripping off the plot of a shitty sequel to a shitty knock-off of Indiana Jones? I feel like that should unravel the space-time continuum or something.

And the Lakers get absolutely throttled.

Link via Kottke.

Here's more of that haunting score, as seen in one of the most amazing auditions ever on So You Think You Can Dance.

Absolutely sick-riculous.

It's Wednesday morning at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, and the United Airlines check-in area is a mob scene. Passengers queue up in a line that runs the length of the counter and doubles back. Customers waiting for agents block the self-serve kiosks. Finished passengers must push through the crowd again. Average check-in time: 25 to 30 minutes.

Down the hall at Alaska Airlines, employees roam a spacious hall, directing customers toward kiosks. Lines aren't more than three deep, and travelers are on their way to security in eight minutes or less. One woman pauses, looking confused, and another turns and says, "It's this new check-in thing. Don't worry, it's really fast."

Moving customers from frustration to relief--in a fraction of the time--has been at the root of Alaska Airlines' Airport of the Future project. The carrier has spent more than a decade designing a better way to get customers through airport check-in, debuting the first iteration in its Anchorage terminal in 2004. Last October, the $3.3 billion carrier began rolling out its redesign in Seattle, where Alaska and its sister airline, Horizon, have almost 50% market share. The project, to be completed in May, has already reduced wait times and increased agent productivity. "People come to the airport expecting to stand in line," says Ed White, Alaska's VP of corporate real estate, who ran the project. "It's an indictment of our industry."

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/123/hustle-and-flow.html

Via Signal vs. Noise. ]]> http://www.robertkbrown.com/2008/06/change-is-in-the-air.html http://www.robertkbrown.com/2008/06/change-is-in-the-air.html Tue, 17 Jun 2008 14:38:32 -0600 Posting has been sporadic, mostly due to a slew of family activities and a fairly busy schedule at the office. But I'm going to take a moment, here, to describe the awesomeness that is mid-June in Minneapolis. Temperatures appear to be hovering around 70 degrees or so. A slight breeze pushes through the trees in the neighborhood. Birds are singing from all directions, and occasionally light down in the yard. I'm using my laptop in the backyard, where sprinkler is back-and-forthing over by the garage, making sure to cover not only the newly planted peonie, but the flowers on the other side of the yard, in the planter box that lines our patio. Instead of enjoying the wireless -- and the fading evening sun -- at the patio table, I'm relaxing in the hammock underneath the maple (one of our two oldest, tallest trees). Everything is blue and green and pleasant and warm. All in all, a very good way to wrap up a Monday. http://www.robertkbrown.com/2008/06/good-things.html http://www.robertkbrown.com/2008/06/good-things.html Mon, 16 Jun 2008 19:15:27 -0600 While the eight-year-old daughter was in the middle of a Sunday morning construction project.

She'd just turned the page on the instructions and realized she was about to start adding some of swiveling side-mount cannons: "that's awesome, with a capital "A!"

1. Applying Divine Proportion to Your Web Designs (via Vinny)
2. 10 Books on Investing Recommended by Warren Buffett (via Kottke)
3. Kurzweil on the approaching Singularity
4. A good Minnesota point-of-view on meetings: the blizzard goggle test.
5. You can't give away five quid. (via Boing Boing -- not sure, myself, if I wouldn't be overly skeptical of the offer, either)
6. How to Sell Security
7. Curt writes about his Dad on Memorial Day
8. and tugs at the heart strings, writing about a fire
9. Zappos bribes new employees after their first week: quit now for $1,000! (via Mark Hurst)

Update: the joke probably makes more sense if you've seen the movie. And although you only get to hear Prince Caspian utter one line in the trailer (at about the 0:33 mark), imagine more of the same throughout the entire flick.