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So a couple weeks ago I railed against National rental cars and their insistence that I pay them $50 over what I had already been shelling out to them, so they could come jump-start the car in a situation where I had nothing to do with causing a dead battery.  For this second trip to Houston, I asked the company travel agent for an alternative, which turned out to be Hertz car rentals.  Having not used them before, I could only hope that they were better than my experience with National.  Boy, have they impressed me!

• Check-in time was about the same.  Hertz and National took the same amount of time to process my reservation, charge my credit card, etc.  No difference here, and the two lots were right next to each other, so no time lost on either case getting to my car.

• In terms of price, Hertz is a lot cheaper.  National charged me ~$450 for 4 days of driving.  Hertz has estimated that 5 days will be ~$300, including all the "hidden fees" that they load on your rental bill.  National didn't let me know of these charges until I returned the car; instead they only quoted their daily rate when I rented the car from them.

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  In terms of car quality, I received a much better car from Hertz.  My National car was a Pontiac G6 with the bare minimum of features (I believe it had power windows/locks, and that was about it for "special touches").  On the other hand, my Hertz car is a Mazda 6 with lots of extras, including a Bose sound system, retractable sunroof, power seats, heated seats (not that these are useful in Houston in the summer!), and of course the uber-cool flip-key that Volkswagen started to popularize a few years back.

• In terms of service, I cannot yet compare, as I have not had to call Hertz about a dead battery.  Not having to call customer service is a benefit in itself, however.

So which of these two companies will I be renting from in the future?  Hertz, hands down.  National had their chance to keep me as a customer before I even ventured to another company, and they lost it quibbling over a service fee.  From the talk I've been spreading around the office, I might not be the only customer National will be losing from our company…

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I was so afraid that I would have something about the latest HP novel spoiled for me that between Friday and when I finished the novel, that I avoided any webpage on which I saw the word "Harry" or "Potter" or "Hogwarts" or "Spoiler" or etc…

It seems I've developed a new reflex – just a second ago, I instinctively closed my RSS reader tab in firefox when I saw the words "Potter" and "Spoiler" in a post's title….even though I've FINISHED the novel and have nothing left to be spoiled!!!!

The really ironic thing though, is that some poor soul who isn't done with the novel is going to come across this post in their neighborhood or on the explore page and do exactly the same thing to this post, instinctively, before they realize that was probably safe to look at…

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I love to people-watch – everyone is fascinating in some way or another.  And airports are great people-watching locations.  So in between sucking down chapters of the last Harry Potter novel on Monday, I looked around and saw some interesting character vignettes:

• While waiting at my gate, I watched a woman sign up for a US Airways credit card because "she was cold" and wanted the blanket that came in the free gift set you received when you signed up.  And people wonder why so many Americans are in debt…

• After parking my car in the parking garage at the airport, I trundled my big-ass suitcase over to the elevator/stairs down to the shuttle bus.  I looked over at the elevator in time to see a woman walk into the elevator, turn, look at me, reach down and push the button, and then look furtively at me, apparently hoping to get the doors to close before I could make it to the elevator.  I wheeled my suitcase up to the doors just as they finished closing.  Moving quickly, I grabbed my suitcase and jogged down the single flight of steps, making it to the ground floor while the elevator was still settling down from its slow descent.  As the doors opened, I walked past and gave her an evil look (she seemed surprised to see me but didn't otherwise react to my mad stair-descending speed).  I made it to the shuttle first and took the last available luggage-rack space.  We both had seats on the shuttle, but she had to steady her suitcase as the bus jounced its way to the airport terminal.  Maybe I would have been nicer if I had already had some coffee that morning, but part of me thinks she deserved it.

• In a brief bout of irony, an airline employee driving one of those people-transport carts nearly ran over two elderly people on her way to pick up some other elderly people waiting just down the corridor.  The two near-victims finally shuffled out of the way but oddly enough were not offered a ride to their own gate.

• The man across the aisle from me put his headphones on his ears as soon as he possibly could, ignoring all warnings from the flight attendants that doing so could cause a fatal electromagnetic pulse that would take out the pilot's electric razor (or some other jabberwocky along those lines).  He then proceeded to fall asleep and snored the entire 2.5 hour flight.  Either he was really tired or he was listening to "Hypnotize Yourself – The Audiobook".

• On my way to the vendor's office, I drove through a corporate park that had a 4-lane road (2 lanes each direction) running behind some of the buildings.  I passed a UPS truck who had stopped in the left lane.  Next to the driver, facing the other direction in the other left lane was a station wagon.  Apparently, the guy's wife/girlfriend was passing him his lunch and thermos while they were stopped in the middle of traffic.  At least he stooped into her window to give her a quick kiss before he hopped back into his truck and got moving again…

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5 word challenge Group on Vox

http://challenge.groups.vox.com/

This is how it works: you get 5 words and with these 5 words you have to write an entry. The words might or might not be related. You decide how to combine them, and how long your entry will be. You tag your entry with 5wordchallenge and whatever other tags you like. Finally, you put the words in bold. In one week the challenge will be passed on to someone who participated in this one.

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