A Poem!

A Health
By Edward Coate Pinckney

I fill this cup to one made up
  Of loveliness alone,
A woman, of her gentle sex
  The seeming paragon;
To whom the better elements
  And kindly stars have given
A form so fair, that, like the air,
  'T is less of earth than heaven.

Her every tone is music's own,
  Like those of morning birds,
And something more than melody
  Dwells ever in her words;
The coinage of her heart are they,
  And from her lips each flows
As one may see the burdened bee
  Forth issue from the rose.

Affections are as thoughts to her,
  The measures of her hours;
Her feelings have the fragrancy,
  The freshness of young flowers;
And lovely passions, changing oft,
  So fill her, she appears
The image of themselves by turns, -
  The idol of past years!

Of her bright face one glance will trace
  A picture on the brain,
And of her voice in echoing hearts
  A sound must long remain;
But memory, such as mine of her,
  So very much endears,
When death is nigh my latest sigh
  Will not be life's, but hers.

I fill this cup to one made up
  Of loveliness alone,
A woman, of her gentle sex
  The seeming apragon.
Her health! and would on earth there stood
  Some more of such a frame,
That life mgiht be all poetry,
  And weariness a name.

I am screwed...

Excerpt from an email I received today from my employer

"While I realize that your summer vacation will likely put you behind in your studies, we still expect you to sit for Exam 5 in the fall."

Translation: No life for the next 5 years starting now :(

Airline Price Tracker

How to Get Money Back When Airfares Drop

Have you ever bought an airline ticket only to see the price fall and your anger rise? Now there is something you can do about it.

Few customers realize it, but many airlines will give refunds if they cut the price after you have bought a ticket. Alaska, JetBlue, Southwest, United and US Airways all offer vouchers for the full price difference -- if the price drops $200, you can get a $200 coupon towards a future trip. Others offer vouchers, or cash, after deducting change fees (which can run up to $100). In industry jargon, it is called a "rollover," and in most cases it only works if you bought the ticket directly from the airline. (It generally won't work if you bought them via a Web site such as Expedia.com or Orbitz.com, unless the price drops in the first 24 hours.)

ONLINE TODAY

 

How airlines price and sell tickets is one of the most frustrating aspects of travel for many people. Why do they make it so hard to use their product? Share your airline ticketing thoughts and experiences.

• Hear Scott discuss a Web service that helps passengers refund tickets if the price of their flight drops.
 
• Business fares edged slightly higher last week, according to the Travel Index.
 

The rollover policies have been in place for decades, but, until recently, it has been tough for consumers to figure out when their flight's price has changed. The catch is you have to call while the lower price is in effect to get your rollover. That is where a new Web site, Yapta.com, has come up with a clever way to take some of the anxiety out of buying airline tickets.

Yapta, a company run by a former Alaska Air Group Inc. pricing vice president, is being launched today. It tracks fares on specific flights you select before or after you buy a ticket. That is an improvement over Web sites that just track markets, but don't allow you to specify which flights you really want. You can use Yapta before you buy to alert you by email to pricing changes on a particular trip, or let you know if the price drops after you've bought a ticket and you're eligible for a refund. In order to obtain the voucher, you need to phone the airline directly. (You usually can't snare one online.)

Ellen Siminoff, who signed up with Yapta to test the site before its launch, paid $800 each for four tickets from San Francisco to Kona, Hawaii. A few days later, she got notification from Yapta that the price had dropped to about $400 per ticket. She called UAL Corp.'s United and got tickets reissued at the lower price plus four $400 vouchers. "There's no way I would have been checking sites to see if the price went down," she said.

Fares yo-yo based on ticket sales and airline expectations of demand, and the uncertainty and disparity frustrates fliers. Prices sometimes change several times during the day.

Several Web sites are trying to blunt some of that unpredictability. Farecast.com tries to predict whether prices will rise or fall in a market -- it gives you a "buy" or "wait" recommendation. Another site, Farecompare.com, offers historical information that can be useful in trying to decide if a fare may drop in the future. If you are hoping for a round-trip between Washington, D.C., and Houston for $150, Farecompare can tell you that in the past 12 months, Continental Airlines Inc. only offered that briefly in August last year.

Several Web sites offer alerts on price changes for specific markets. Expedia Inc.'s "Fare Alert" is a tool you can download and it sits in the toolbar of your PC and pops up when a lower fare comes along on a route you're interested in. Travelocity, a unit of Sabre Holdings Corp., has a "Fare Watcher" that lets you pick city pairs and get alerts when the price changes by $25 or more. Orbitz Worldwide Inc.'s "Deal Detector" let's you select only nonstop flights or preferred airlines.

Yapta raises the bar by allowing you to pinpoint prices on specific flights. Alerts from other sites may be triggered by 6 a.m. departures or redeye trips, for example, that may not be acceptable to you.

To use Yapta, you have to download it on your PC and then it will automatically integrate itself into your flight searches. So far, the tagger works with Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz and most U.S. airline Web sites, but not with sites that search multiple vendors like Kayak.com.

When you search, Yapta places a button on the screen for you to click if you want to "tag" one of the flights offered. Tagging doesn't take you away from the Web site you're on -- it just sends the information to Yapta.

Once you tag a flight, Yapta will email you when the price changes. If you buy the ticket and record the information with Yapta, it will alert you to refund possibilities, taking into account the policies of that airline.

With 275 people using Yapta as beta testers, the average voucher was about $85. United and Alaska had the most generous refund policies, offering a choice of free vouchers or cash back after change fees, says Yapta Chief Executive Tom Romary. American and Continental are generally the stingiest -- any price drop has to be greater than the $100 change fee the airline deducts before a voucher will be issued.

Most airlines and travel vendors have more-liberal 24-hour or same-day price guarantees, offering to rebook you at a lower price and refund the difference if the price drops in the first 24 hours, without change fees. Expedia and Travelocity go a step further offering their own 24-hour guarantee. If prices drop more than $5 within 24 hours, they will reissue tickets at the lower price, refund the difference and give you their own $50 voucher toward future purchases. Of course, many tickets never go down in price, so Yapta's primary use is as a bit of price protection for travelers. "If the price goes down, there's something to cover me," said Mr. Romary.

Several airlines said they are pondering whether they think Yapta is a good thing for them or not. If it spurs sales at higher price levels and vouchers build customer loyalty, carriers will support it. On the other hand, a flood of refund requests could force changes in rollover policies.

I have used Yapta, which stands for Your Amazing Personal Travel Assistant, for the past couple of weeks and found it helpful at tracking flights. For my own test, I tagged a bunch of flights from various Web sites. A Denver-to-Boston round trip in June that United offered me at $742 dropped to $463 one afternoon, a 38% tumble. A Dallas-Washington round trip for June that I had followed for some time for a family trip typically priced around $350. But early one morning, Yapta fired notice that the American flights I wanted fell to $229.

But as they say, you must act quickly. Prices can bounce back up before you are done with breakfast.

Immigration

Business Divided
As Debate Opens
On Immigration

As the Senate begins debate on a landmark immigration bill meant to address the future need for workers in the U.S., a divide over the measure among the nation's employers could undermine its chances of becoming law.

From the moment the White House and key lawmakers struck a tentative deal on immigration last week, it was clear that not all employers were on board. The deal, the most significant potential change in immigration law since an amnesty program for illegal immigrants in 1986, was designed to provide for the labor needs of industries ranging from high technology to agriculture, as well as to resolve the status of the estimated 12 million people now living in the U.S. illegally. (See related article.)

Employers like farmers, restaurateurs and construction contractors who rely heavily on unskilled workers generally support the deal, but high-tech industries that need skilled workers complain that it doesn't give them the flexibility to recruit workers with the specific mix of skills they need.

For employers of the unskilled, the tentative deal offers a welcome path to legitimacy for their work forces, which typically include a high proportion of illegal immigrants. Under the deal, illegal residents who can prove they entered the U.S. before Jan. 1 would get a temporary-resident permit. The plan would essentially erase their illegal status and let them work while awaiting a so-called Z visa that would entitle them to live legally in the U.S. The bill also eventually would allow 400,000 temporary workers to come to the U.S. on a "Y visa" each year to fill mainly low-skilled jobs.

"Overall, we feel very positive about" the bill, said Tom Nassif, president of Western Growers, which represents 3,000 farmers who grow more than half of the country's produce. "There's a program for legalizing our existing work force."

For agriculture, it is a deal worth protecting. Mr. Nassif voiced concern that some of his industry's victories could be eroded as the bill moves through the legislative process.

High-tech companies, however, say the deal doesn't provide enough visas for software engineers, computer programmers and other workers whose skills are in short supply in the U.S. In addition, they say a new merit system envisioned in the deal, which is designed to ease the way to legal entry for educated immigrants, wouldn't necessarily ensure the specific skills high-tech employers need.

"As the bill stands, the bill is a disaster for high-tech employers," said Stuart Anderson, executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy, a nonpartisan research organization, and a former staff director of the Senate Immigration Subcommittee.

What follows is an industry-by-industry snapshot of employer reaction to the deal:

Food Processors: The meat-packing industry has grown increasingly reliant on immigrant labor, and in recent months has been the target of raids by the Department of Homeland Security that rounded up hundreds of undocumented workers. As a result, the industry is largely relieved by the deal, which could make much of its work force legal.

"We are pleased that the White House and key members of the Senate have found common ground on the issue of comprehensive immigration reform," said Sean McHugh, vice president of investor relations, public relations and communications at Swift & Co., the nation's third-largest processor of both fresh beef and pork.

The company, which has annual sales of more than $9 billion, employs about 15,000 people in the U.S., and has seen hundreds of its workers arrested in raids. "We hope these reform provisions remain intact through the balance of the legislative process and ultimately become law," said Mr. McHugh.

At Tyson Foods Inc., one of the nation's largest poultry processors, immigrants account for as much as 60% of the workers at some plants. Archie Schaffer, a company spokesman, said Tyson supports the basic concept of the draft bill. However, he expressed concern that a requirement for workers to return home in order to apply for permanent legal residency -- known as a "touch back" provision -- could be disruptive.

"We don't want to lose any continuity," said Mr. Schaffer, noting that the company invests as much as one year and thousands of dollars in training for each employee to become proficient at his or her job.

Restaurants: The National Restaurant Association, the industry's main lobbying group, lauded the measure for allowing undocumented immigrants already in the country to stay. "I think that finally we're going to get something done," said Craig Miller, who was the association's chairman until last year and remains a board member.

Mr. Miller, who is also chief executive of Ruth's Chris Steak House Inc., a national chain of 106 restaurants, praised the bill for decriminalizing immigrant workers "because they're here and working hard."

Technology: High-tech companies, which often need to import skilled workers from overseas, have quickly voiced a variety of concerns about the proposed immigration overhaul.

Jenifer Verdery, director of work-force development at Intel Corp., said the Santa Clara, Calif., chip giant, which employs about 90,000 workers world-wide, is less than thrilled with the proposed plan. That's because, she said, the proposed number of visas for skilled workers remains too low. She cited, in particular, the so-called H-1B visas employers use to bring workers with specific skills into the country. "There aren't enough new visas -- period," she said.

The new bill proposes raising the cap on H-1B visas from 65,000 to 115,000, or up to 180,000 if demand is high. But Ms. Verdery said that this year employers filed more than 115,000 petitions for H-1B visas on the first day of application alone. "The proposed new numbers wouldn't even be enough to meet the first day's demand," she said.

There are also big concerns about the "merit system" for obtaining work permits, or green cards, which is skewed toward allowing educated foreigners into the U.S., but not necessarily the people high-tech employers want. Currently, high-tech companies submit requests to the government for specific job candidates; the proposed compromise for green cards would create a job pool of educated workers, rather than give companies the flexibility to recruit the specific individuals they want.

Betsy Mullins, vice president of government and political affairs at TechNet, a bipartisan group representing technology CEOs, said her group "has a lot of concerns regarding highly skilled workers" in the bill. In particular, TechNet says the new merit-based system is deficient because it isn't employer-driven.

Under the proposed system, the government would award points based on education, work experience and English proficiency. That could bring more professionals and people with advanced degrees into the U.S., but it wouldn't give high-tech companies the license they would like to recruit the specific foreign workers best-suited to their needs.

Since tech companies undergo change quickly and often, that means the system could quickly be out of date with a tech employer's needs, Ms. Mullins said. "We need a market-driven system in an innovation economy," she said. "To throw the current system out for something that hasn't even been tested yet will give people pause."

Agriculture: Few industries have come as close to admitting they can't survive without the labor of illegal immigrants as agriculture. At least half of the 1.8 million crop workers in the U.S. are undocumented, according to the Department of Labor. They sustain an industry valued at $30 billion annually, and the industry has been quick to applaud the prospect of legitimacy for its workers. If anything, the industry is worried about concessions in the weeks ahead as the bill moves through Congress.

Farmers have some concern about the details in the agreement, however. Mr. Nassif, a former U.S. ambassador who has openly acknowledged that U.S. agriculture couldn't exist without foreign workers, said that the industry wondered whether field workers could afford to pay a $5,000 fine, as mandated by the tentative deal, in order to get on the path to U.S. citizenship. "I'm not sure that it matters to them," whether they become U.S. citizens, he said.

Service workers: About 500,000 immigrants are believed to sneak into the U.S. illegally each year. Eliseo Medina, executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union, which represents janitors, nursing-home workers and other blue-collar workers, deemed the new bill "on the whole as very positive."

However, he expressed concern that a requirement for those now in the U.S. illegally to return home in order to apply for legal permanent U.S residency could be problematic for both employees and employers. "If you're a Mexican, you can make a run to Tijuana," he said. "If you're Chinese or Irish, it's a really long haul."

Would You Ever Do This?

Today, I went out to meet my MAcc friends Yue, Rachel, and Courtney after finishing CPA study.  We had dinner at some awesome Mexican restaurant and I got to hang out with 4 girls and listen to them 'gossip' kind-of, not really.  It was radical.

That's not the point of my main story.  To get downtown and meet them, I had to take public transportation.  I forgot that the bus that runs by my house only comes once per hour on weekends, since nobody needs it anyways.  So, after waiting 10 minutes and realizing I could potentially wait for 40 more, I started walking towards Howard myself.  Then I did something for the first time.  I hitchhiked and asked a stranger on the road for a ride.  Granted, I kind of gender profiled and picked a lady and she happened to be African-American.  She was very generous and took me as far on Howard as she went, and I was able to get to the train station on time to meet my friends at our appointed time.

Now, was that something you would ever do?  I figured, since I don't LOOK like I'm worth much, and since I'm the hitchhiker, I have minimal risk.  Am I crazy?