Elliott C. Back: Internet & Technology

I got the following message in my inbox from the kind folks at Expedia:

We have received an unconfirmed response on your reservation. This means that the airline has not acknowledged the flight and/or fare that you originally purchased. We have attempted to restore the original flights and have been unsuccessful. Without confirmation from the airline, we are unable to ticket this reservation.

Please call us at 1-800-EXPEDIA as soon as possible and refer to your itinerary number so that we can work with you to make alternate arrangements. Unless you call within 72 hours of receiving this e-mail, your reservation will automatically cancel.

If you have further questions, feel free to reply to this e-mail or contact Expedia customer services at 1-800-397-3342 and reference case ID xxxxxx. You can also visit the Expedia.com “Customer Support” page () for more customer service information.

I always thought when I bought plane tickets from Expedia that somewhere tickets, real tickets, would be issued to me, a seat reserved and noted, etc. Unfortunately, everything seems to operate in batch-mode, where airlines give blocks of seats to online vendors who match them together in strange ways that allow the possibility that the tickets they’ve resold may not represent spots on a plane:

I’m not the only one complaining about this practice. See:

• Expedia dot SCAM?
• Rate IT All Expedia
• Mouth Shut on Expedia
• Victims of Expedia

My bank account also looks quite cute, waiting for $3000 in refunds:

This isn’t to blame Expedia though. To their benefit, they are refunding the total amount over those two cancelled flights. Also, their customer service reps on the phone were extremely apologetic and kind. It’s more a flaw in the system of batch-time ticket booking. With a real-time synchronized process, this sort of thing could not happen.

I was getting the following error in Eclipse IDE 3.1 and Java 1.5 (or 5.0 as some like to call it):

Name clash: The method removeEldestEntry(Map.Entry<K ,V>) of type LRUMap<K ,V> has the
same erasure as removeEldestEntry(Map.Entry<K , V>) of type LinkedHashMap<K , V> but does not
override it

The class in question looked like this:

class LRUMap <K , V> extends LinkedHashMap {
	public LRUMap(){
		super(10000, .75f, true);
	}

	protected boolean removeEldestEntry (Entry <K , V> eldest) {
		return this.size() > 262144;
	}
}

The problem is that I was extending LinkedHashMap without type parameters, not LinkedHashMap >K ,V<. Changing the code to:

class LRUMap <K , V> extends LinkedHashMap <K , V> {
	public LRUMap(){
		super(10000, .75f, true);
	}

	protected boolean removeEldestEntry (Entry <K , V> eldest) {
		return this.size() > 262144;
	}
}

completely fixed the problem! Type erasure is sure a pain, no? I should probably spend more time at home reading the Java Generics Tutorial.

I rarely write about my personal life on this blog, but this story is interesting enough to warrant the diversion.

This Christmas, I had carefully planned a trip home to Phoenix to visit my family. I was to fly out Friday evening, and return Wednesday morning. Then, I planned to spend a few days relaxing in NYC before going back to work. I have gifts for all my family members, and my grandparents who were in town for the warm Arizona winter season from icy Canada. A few of my friends from high school also wanted to see me.

Then something new, exciting, and amazing came up.

The girl I had started seriously dating offered to host me with her family in Shanghai. Wow. I was touched by the invitation, but at first I thought it was just a politeness. I checked it out anyway and found that I could buy a ticket from Phoenix to Shanghai on Tuesday, and returning to NYC the next Monday. I thought that if it were possible it would be the best week spent anywhere of my life–something I’d remember forever. When I came to understand that she really wanted me to come, I purchased those tickets and looked forward to the most lovely Christmas of my life!

Then, a minor mishap tumbled up all my plans.

I had to get a rush L tourist visa to visit China, so I went to the embassy in NYC, documents in hand, Friday. I was there when it opened, and they told me to come back at 2 PM. I didn’t realize that they closed there are 2:30 PM, because their website led me to believe something else, and because I was very tired at the time. When I came back they were closed. I couldn’t take the same flight home, and when I got back to Queens, I found by calling airlines and online that there were no tickets to Phoenix, and then back to NYC Monday night / Tuesday morning.

Calling Expedia I found that my Shanghai tickets were not actually issued yet, and that I could have them canceled and buy NYC to Shanghai tickets. So the new plan is to pick up my visa at 9 AM Tuesday, take a cab to JFK, and arrive in Shanghai later (much later, it’s a 16 hour flight) to spend the remainder of Christmas with my girlfriend and her family. I will visit my own family sometime later in February, since I still want to hand-deliver their presents. In spite of this trouble, I am determined to everything possible to make the trip to Wendy work.

At the end of it all, the experience is a jumbled mix of love, disappointment, excitement, my own incompetence, sacrifice, planning, fate, disruption, tranquility, and happiness. I lose the dollar amount of the flight to Phoenix, but I have a chance to see them soon to make it up. I lose the chance to spend Christmas with my family, but I gain the chance to have a wonderful time with Wendy.