The More Things Stay the Same: United Airlines is clearly still managed by morons. We debarked from our Auckland to Los Angeles flight early yesterday morning. In the span of the 30 minutes we spent going from seat through immigration and customs, I counted 6 completely unnecessary employees. First, a nice person in a blazer stared at each dazed passenger as we exited the plane. This person's job appeared to ensure that everyone was able to take a hard right and follow the sign labeled "exit" in multiple languages. Two minutes later, at baggage claim, we witnessed not one, but TWO people whose job was to catch baggage coming down the chute and place the handle outwards for easier grasping by passengers. And finally, the coup de grace occurred at immigration where two different people stood in front of the signs marked "visitor" and "non-visitor" (again in multiple languages) and pointed people in the right line. These were all United employees. At $75k in cost per employee per year, just in one terminal in LAX they could save $300k. Is it really that difficult to walk around and see this stuff as a highly paid CEO of United Airlines?

.. the More They Change. I went and checked out a local LAN gaming cafe here in San Francisco last night. It's an internet cafe that specializes in computers geared for PC gaming. So, the audience is typically male, 13-30, and playing computer games against each other and on the Internet. I saw these across NZ and Australia. As for the location here, even in light of some poor management (I was charged for 60 mins even though I was there for 90 mins), they appeared to be doing well. At 9-10pm last night there were 10 young men (and one woman!) playing Counter-Strike and Warcraft at about $5 an hour. I asked if it got busier and they claimed that the place really got packed after 11pm and on weekends. If they're doing $50 an hour gross for 10 hours a day, 7 days a week year-round -- they're not doing too bad. Of course, it's not as good as a Starbucks (their average store is estimated to do $500k per year, which gives them the best revenue per sq.ft of any retail chain by far) but still decent. Also interesting -- I was the only non-asian in the place. I walked in and the management freaked out until I said "You got Battlefield 1942?"