now

i have my credit card linked to both united and american airlines. they both have this thing called idine. certain restaurants give you miles per dollar spent. some up to 20 miles for every dollar. i signed up for the united one last year because i was so close to getting a trip, but my company started using american airlines instead. well, now i have my free trip and i'm over half way to a free one on american soooo....switch! as of now i have both programs set up to the same card and i am going to try to use it tonight to see if i get miles for both or it gets all confused. i'm living in a dream world since i think it's going to work. i just have to use the united trip before they say something like "your account has not been active in the last 12 months, therefore your miles are no longer available". on the work front, they are planning on getting an employee's tahoe, taking a switch out of the steering wheel, replacing it with the one that i have that general motors says is bad and i say is good and testing it in a real live vehicle environment. ummmm...ok, how about recreating the environment via a source voltage in a nice, warm cozy lab? not good enough for them, they want to show off to gm. problem is that i'm the only one with experience of removing them from vehicles and i'm not so confident per the following reasons: a) i haven't done it in at least 2 years b) i've never removed this style of switch c) with it being so cold outside - if they don't warm the steering wheel up completely - it's going to crack when i apply force d) i'm nervous that i don't have any degrees of separation from the vehicle owner e) everyone will be over my shoulder or in my space watching me do it because they are curious as to how it is done. i pitched getting a rental, but we found out that only the airport has them and they don't guarantee that we'll get an actual tahoe. my plan now is to drink a lot of caffeine and have shaky hands so i can't even hold onto my screw driver.