wasted on me

I just discovered that I'll be staying at a 5-star hotel in Delhi. What's up with that? All I usually need is a simple, clean room and not much else. Here's a run down of the places I've stayed at in my Fall 2009 traveling circus.

Hyatt San Francisco - 4 stars! Decent room, fantastic location.
Hilton Garden Inn Manhattan (Herald Square) - 3 stars. Fantastic location, great room.
JW Marriott Rio de Janeiro - 5 stars!
Hilton Sao Paulo - 5 stars! Great room. Great location for business, crap location for seeing Sao Paulo.
Melia Buenos Aires - 5 stars! I have absolutely no idea why this hotel is "5 stars"

My personal ranking - based on the quality of the room, location, and cleanliness (not price)
3 star Hilton Garden Inn Herald Square
5 star Hilton Sao Paulo
4 star Hyatt San Francisco
5 star JW Marriott Rio de Janeiro Copacabana
5 star Melia Buenos Aires

My personal ranking based on smoothness of service
5 star Hilton Sao Paulo - smooth
3 star Hilton Garden Inn Herald Square - everything just worked. We asked them for nothing.
4 star Hyatt San Francisco - everything just worked. We asked them for nothing.
5 star Melia Buenos Aires - charged extra for Internet
5 star JW Marriott Rio de Janeiro Capacabana - lots of screwups followed by ass kissing.

My personal ranking based on ass-kissing
5 star JW Marriott Rio de Janeiro Capacabana - lots of screwups followed by ass kissing. Lots of free stuff at their restaurants
5 star Hilton Sao Paulo - somehow all their recommendations for restaurants for almost gaudy, with OK food
5 star Melia Buenos Aires - even if that only means awkwardness from excessive door opening and button pushing
4 star Hyatt San Francisco - we asked for nothing, they did nothing
3 star Hilton Garden Inn Herald Square - we asked for nothing, they did nothing

Lesson? Get a five star hotel if you want someone to kiss your ass

breast cancer

Just heard on the PA on my flight to NYC:

"You may have noticed that some of the flight attendants are wearing
jeans today... this month is breast cancer awareness month."

I always knew that breast cancer has been a very well marketed cause,
and I've participated in a fair number of drives and run a number of
Race for the Cure events. This year it seems like they've crossed the
line.

With jeans wearing flight attendants, the NFL creating custom pink
gear for players and the refs, and their usual huge marketing
campaigns, I not only wonder how much money is blown on marketing
overhead, but also what other causes are missing out on the
philanthropic dollars being drawn to breast cancer. Nothing against
breast cancer, but last time I checked there were a ton of other
health and social issues that need a ton of work.

the browns

For some reason I was thinking back to the Browns of 2002. So many first round picks it's sickening. Our offense featured:
QB Tim Couch
RB William Green
WR Kevin Johnson
WR Quincy Morgan
WR Dennis Northcutt

On the defensive side, we had two first round picks:
DE Courtney Brown
DT Gerard Warren

Where are they now? It's 7 years later, so with all these young players, they should still be around, right? After all, Couch, Green, Brown, and Warren were all first round picks. Of all of these players, only two are still in the league today: Dennis Northcutt with the Detroit Lions and Gerard Warren with the Oakland Raiders, two teams that are almost as bad as the Browns are this season. The rest of them are all out of the league. So much for using the draft to stock up on talent.