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More than a few of you have cut business travel to the bare minimum, I’m guessing. The improvement in video calling and presentations is probably the biggest reason – with things like Skype video and screen sharing we’re not all that far away from having a near-in person virtual experience. But the orchestrated indignities of air travel – and you know exactly what I mean – also play a part. Flying from one place to another, unless you are doing it from a small airport on a private jet, is just going from bad to intolerable.

I’m not talking about leg room, which for someone like me who’s 6’4 makes flying coach over long distances torture. Or the indifferent TSA, who often seem to be the biggest security threat in any given airport. I can’t get a bottle of water past security, but I’m pretty sure I could get a gun on board a plane if I wanted to. No, what’s really making flying just terrible are all the people that work for the airlines. My expectations are pretty low after flying mostly with United Airlines for the last decade. And even so, Delta managed to, somehow, make United actually look good.

The newer crop of airlines understand that happy employees tend to make good employees. Southwest, JetBlue, Virgin America – I’ve had recognizably positive moments on all of these airlines. Sometimes just from an employee who went slightly out of their way to do something right.

But Delta, oh God that airline sucks. I flew them to New York and back last week, choosing them because of the ticket price and because they now have wifi on some flights. This was my first, and last, experience flying that godawful excuse for an airline.

I bought a first class ticket, which is one of the small luxuries I’m willing to pay for in life. This was a last minute purchase and the flights were around $1,500 each way.

I travel light – a computer bag and one of those very small roller bags that’s always considered a carry on. I don’t check luggage because, we all know, it adds at least half an hour after you land.

On the flight out to New York I was stopped at the gate and told my bag was too big and they couldn’t let me take it on. They said it wasn’t their fault, it was FAA guidelines that prohibited them. I told them that I wasn’t going to get on the plane unless I could check it. When they realized I was in first class they said to go ahead and bring it on.

As far as I can tell there aren’t really FAA rules on the size of carry on baggage, it’s pretty much up to the airline. And my bag has been carried on to countless flights without, as far as I know, endangering the plane or any other passengers. And if that bag was a danger, it certainly wasn’t less of a danger just because I was in first class.

But what really got me was just how gleeful the two gate employees were about the whole thing. I could tell that they lived for moments like this. But that was just a taste of what Delta had for me.

The flight back – 1843 from JFK to Seattle – that was the one that I won’t soon forget. I got to the airport and checked in just less than three before the flight. I checked that small suitcase this time because they’d put the fear of God into me on that flight out. That was about 48 hours ago exactly, and I still haven’t seen that bag again.

The flight had the obligatory JFK 2 hour wait on the runway, which isn’t Delta’s fault. But the obligatory hateful flight attendants were there too, and seemed pretty happy that they hadn’t stocked enough food on the flight. I heard grumblings from cattle class about it, and an attendant got on the intercom to let them know that they wouldn’t be eating any time soon.

Then we landed. At this point my bag was somewhere other than inside the airplane, and Delta should have known all about it. It turns out that at least most of the bags for the first class customers were, likewise, not on the plane. You’d think that they’d maybe let us know about it. Instead, they let us all wait 30 minutes for the bags to start coming out, and another 20 minutes until they were all gone. Then we, the first class passengers, walked over to the Delta baggage counter. To be told that our bags were never put on the plane. Even though I at least checked in hours before the flight.

Why weren’t they on the plane? I’m making an educated guess here, but it’s probably because some Delta employee who hates his job decided not to bother.

Ok, lost bag. It happens. And it’s annoying that they didn’t take a moment to tell us instead of making us wait and find out an hour later. But the fun was just beginning.

They would not deliver my bag to my home. I could choose to come back to the airport over the weekend. Or they’d be happy to fedex it to me for delivery on Tuesday. Can I have a receipt? No, our printer is broken.

The guy next to me needed his tuxedo, he said. No luck. Another guy, traveling from India, said he had medication in his bag that he needed immediately. That put a smile on the baggage counter woman’s face as she told him to go find a doctor over the weekend and get new prescriptions. Welcome to America.

So I’m now patiently waiting for the Fedex delivery of my bag on Tuesday to my home in Seattle, and I’ve charged back the entire flight on my credit card (I’ll just print out this post when the paperwork comes). And eventually Delta will either get their act together or just flail into bankruptcy and be destroyed by better, smarter, happier competitors.

But what I’d wish would happen is that some of these super expensive management consultants that are advising the airlines would just tell them one simple truth – I can live with no leg room, no food, dirty bathrooms and long delays. I can even live with lost bags.

If only a flight attendant, or baggage person, or whoever, would just commiserate with me for one moment. Maybe smile and say they’ll try their best to help. But until all that bad energy is gone, and the airlines have employees that don’t stare daggers at their customers, I’m out. I’ll stick to Virgin, Southwest and Jet Blue. Mostly Virgin because they have Internet. And if I can’t fly with them I’ll just cancel and use Skype video. Because life’s too short to deal with these assholes any longer.

And if you’ve read this far, thank you for indulging me. This was cathartic and sometimes I just have to rant a little, or else turn into one of those miserable Delta people and hate the world.

We’ve been hearing Verizon iPhone rumors for years now.

It’s to the point that no one really believes the rumors anymore, since analysts and pundits have cried wolf so many times.  But this time looks to be different due to some key dynamics in the semiconductor value chain, and I am going to go on record to say Verizon will be selling an iPhone this coming January. Here’s why:

Smartphones like the iPhone are built from a collection of components, which are sourced individually from suppliers—e.g. the iPhone 4’s cellular baseband (the core chipset used in mobile phones to handle voice and data communications) comes from Infineon and its GPS chipset from Broadcom.

Component purchases and manufacturing starts don’t typically reveal strong links to individual handset OEMs. But in some cases components have a DNA which is traceable through the supply chain. For example, iPad rumors became much more concrete when we knew Apple was procuring large LCD screens.

For typical refreshes of GSM-based iPhones (the model that works on AT&T’s network), suppliers and component product families remain fairly consistent between models.  But a Verizon compatible iPhone would be CDMA-based, which would make its DNA distinct from other iPhones and traceable through the supply chain.

The dominant supplier of CDMA chipsets is Qualcomm, the largest fabless chip company in the world. Apple has never procured baseband chipsets from Qualcomm before.

If Qualcomm were to plan for orders from Apple, there would be a ripple effect through the supply chain. It works like this: Apple’s iPhone forecast links to Qualcomm’s CDMA chipset forecast, which then trickles down to their foundry partner TSMC, who uses the forecast to plan wafer starts.

A CDMA-based iPhone would likely sell 2-3 million units in the first few weeks (modeled after iPhone 4’s oversubscribed launch). The lead-time associated with upside in the semiconductor world is huge, sometimes as long as 26 weeks (supply is tight right now so this rule is in effect and Apple had major supply problems with the iPhone 4 and iPad).

Sources with knowledge of this entire situation have assured me that Apple has submitted orders for millions of units of Qualcomm CDMA chipsets for a Verizon iPhone run due in December. This production run would likely be for a January launch, and I’d bet the phone is nearly 100% consistent with the current iPhone 4 (with a fixed internal insulator on the antenna).

I can’t say with 100% accuracy that an iPhone will hit Verizon store shelves in January, but all of the signals point that way, and it would give Verizon’s CEO some interesting things to talk about in his CES keynote (though he may have to refrain as CES comes before Apple’s typical January keynote). I may be proven wrong, but based on my history dealing with components and selling to Apple, a Verizon-compatible iPhone looks to be a done deal.

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Contributor Steve Cheney is an entrepreneur and formerly an engineer & programmer specializing in web and mobile technologies.

Former Digg biz dev head Bob Buch will as of Monday take on a new role as AOL‘s VP of Business Development. Buch will be joining Digg’s former Chief Strategy Officer Mike Maser, former Marketing Manager Aubrey Sabala, and former Head of Communications Kiersten Hollars, who have all made the switch over to AOL.

Buch will be part of a team helmed by former Google Managing Counsel and current AOL Senior Vice President of Business Development Jared Grusd.

From Buch:

“In addition to working with the usual suspects (Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, etc.), I’m going to prioritize working closely with a lot of the startups where most of the innovation is happening in this space.”

Since Buch joined Digg in 2007, he’s negotiated key partnerships for the site including the New York Times, Dow Jones, Facebook, Twitter, CBS, CNN and Microsoft. Buch also launched and managed the Digg Ads Platform.

The talent migration (Hollars was the first employee to switch) presents a challenge to the news aggregation site at a critical time, as the impending alpha launch of Digg 4 is rumored to be coming next week, co-founder Jay Adelson has also recently left and the site is currently on the receiving end of allegations of a gaming scandal.

Update: The story has developed. Digg CEO Kevin Rose claimed in a tweet that two out of the four employees who moved to AOL were “let go,” but insists in an email that Buch was not fired, whatever that means. Buch informs TechCrunch that while it was technically true that he was part of a layoff, he had asked to be laid off.

Update 2: Ashton Kutcher has also weighed in on Buch’s departure, from his iPhone.