Geeks Fall from the Sky
By: Sarah Mann, Zillow Senior PR Specialist | November 13, 2006
We have all heard the phrase “your whole life flashes in front of you,” when faced with a frightening life or death experience and as of last Wednesday, myself and a plane full of others fall into that category.
On my way home from Ad Tech New York, an industry trade show for the advertising world, our plane lost cabin pressure, which resulted in oxygen masks coming down and the plane dropping about 25,000 feet in only a few minutes. While we weren’t nose diving, we were definitely headed rapidly toward the ground. Let me put it this way: Many of us thought this was the end. After learning that the pilot simply needed to get down to the 10,000-ft. level so that passengers could all breathe normally, we all did just that, plus let out a deep sigh of relief.
We made an emergency landing in Bismarck, North Dakota, and after the shock wore off (or at least began too–I am still pretty shaken up), I was fascinated by meeting the people around me. By the time we were off the plane and in the airport lobby, one guy had already uploaded pictures of the scene to FLICKR via his camera phone. Another spent the next hour blogging about the incident and our fate (who knew the Bismarck airport would have wi-fi?). As the hours passed — and as the SiteProNews blogger noted, I learned that many of the “best and brightest,” were on this flight with me.
After roughly a 5-hour layover in the lovely Bismarck airport, we finally arrived safely in Seattle. I have no doubt that my path will cross with those on the flight at some point in the future, but for now, I am just glad to be home.
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Comments
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Larry on November 13, 2006 5:20 pm
Sorry to hear about your flight, I have had a similar depressurization flight as well.
I’m going to be a total a**hole and post a question here not related to the posting, so please accept my sincere apologies…
..But, I have corrected information in the King County records more than 6 months ago, which has caused my property taxes to go up due to increased accuracy in their database. But I corrected their data primarily to get it updated on zillow, which has not happened yet. I have filled in the “owner” info, but people will only look at the initial zestimate 95% of the time.
When will you update the db again from the county/tax records for various regions? I would think maintaining a knowledgebase would require this to be always ongoing, not just entering new addresses but updating existing ones as well.
Any word on if this happens, and what frequency it does?
Cheers
Larry
David G from Zillow.com on November 14, 2006 1:22 pm
Larry -
Thanks for asking - my apologies for your frustration and thanks for correcting King county’s records for your home. While sales transactions get passed on to us shortly after they are recorded by the county, changes like you’ve made to the tax assessor’s data are not regularly published to our data providers — and in some areas, the updated tax roll is only published once annually. You’re right that we are constantly both growing and updating our database. We don’t however have visibility into when counties publish their tax rolls or when our data providers plan to collect them — this is one reason why we allow owners to set the record stratight on Zillow.
Thanks for claiming your house and for updating your home’s facts on Zillow. Your updated home facts should communicate to viewers that your house’s Zestimate is questionable due having been calculated based on incorrect information. We are also investigating using owners’ facts in calculating Zestimates which would lend further credibility to the owner-contributed information.
mooncooler on November 14, 2006 11:40 pm
It must be a terrifying experience for you Sarah. What was the airline you booked with again?… the next time you fly “Take Quantas, it never crash”… From Dustin Hoffman in the movie The Rain Man.
I’m just glad you’re still alive. Thank God!
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