I should have known better than to pre-pay for a rental car. Saved me like 50%, but sure enough, I'm trying to slightly change something and I'm totally getting the run around.

I just want to move my pickup time from 10am to 7:30am. The website gives me an error saying "Sorry, our online reservation system shows the location is sold out for that date. Either change your entries and try again or call the location directly to confirm availability."

The lady at the national number said that she can't alter pre-paid reservations because that's an online feature. She forwarded me to online services. The lady at the online services number said that it was some kind of issue with the location's office, and she would get the same error if she tried to alter the reservation. She said I should call the location's rental center. The DCA rental location has a sweet automated message: "the location is busy helping other customers, you will now be transferred to our world-wide reservations assistance." And we come full circle.

Tomorrow morning I'm just going to head out early and hope to get an early car. I'm driving down to Raleigh. I'm kinda looking forward to the long, relaxing drive. I don't drive around very much these days.

(from a Eurogamer article about the Microsoft Kinect)
The elephant in the room is that, well, most people can't fit an elephant into their room - and a great many people don't have space for Kinect in their rooms either.