In a fit of abject creativity, my new home page is, well, basically a bunch of links. But that's sort of the point. In an age where one's social profile extends to myriad web sites with poorly interlinked commonalities, I like the idea of having a pivot. So no more netwert.com branding, as I did for more than a decade; instead, a little more me branding, or at least, me-gregation, or whatever the word would be. In due time I'll get the utility of the interior pages of the site to more or less match, and as I play with the site design, I'll give the new home page some much-needed design flair, too.

I also went about perusing my website archives, and I must say, long before it became a paragon of boredom I had some pretty sweet home page ideas. All hail flatbed scanners and randomizer scripts!

So, when you see a guy who gets a lot of curveballs -- say Aaron Rowand -- that is not because he can't hit a good curveball. It's because pitchers believe he can't hit a mediocre curveball. It's a great game. The pitcher knows Rowand isn't very good on breaking stuff. Rowand knows the pitcher knows this and comes to the plate expecting to see breaking stuff. The pitcher knows that Rowand knows that the pitcher knows, so he is on alert that if he throws a hanging curveball, Rowand might just crush it. But Rowand knows this, so he might be overanxious if he sees the hanging curveball and hit it nine miles foul. Or he might be thinking curveball so much that he promises himself to not wing, and the pitcher might cross him up and throw fastball -- even Aaron Rowand got more than 50% fastballs last year -- and Rowand is so screwed up in his head that he just watches it go by for strike three and ... yeah, it's a great game.

Yeah, it is.

Yes, there are premium seats available; no, you can't have them. I asked if I could pay extra to reserve those seats: no. I asked if I could get a seat assignment, any seat assignment, so I knew I would make it on the plane: no. I eventually gave up my attempts to cajole customer service into helping me, and after a few hours of deliberation, I took my business elsewhere.

My story isn't all that uncommon, but it still strikes me as a miss on Continental's part. Why must they hold a random middle seat for an unbooked elite member, thereby denying a paying customer a chance to confirm travel?

Between this and Continental's other discomforts—a small 31" seat pitch in coach; 60,000 miles to book coach-class reward travel—I haven't flown CO in more than five years. In the interim I've been on American, JetBlue, Virgin Atlantic, Northwest, Alitalia, Midwest, US Airways, United and Virgin America, and I've enjoyed all of them more than I enjoy my typical interaction with Continental. (Well, maybe not Alitalia.)