wild_turkey

It’s such a Ted Lasso thing to do to air a Christmas episode in August. And it was great. And it will be an instant classic that we watch each year while having Sexy Christmas.

I was in disbelief as well. That’s why at first I thought it must be a scam or a simple mistake, because surely a tech savvy auto company with the highest market cap in the world would not accidentally approve a loan and hand over a $56k car to a new owner without all the financial stuff resolved. How does that even happen? Very sloppy on their part. We finally received some communication from various Tesla people in the past 24 hours, which I think is due to increased intensity of phone calls and emails on our part. Still no resolution but at least a few people are now acknowledging that we do exist and that we did receive a car from them and that some stuff needs to be fixed. They are “working on it” and we should expect a call in 1-2 days. Wife also got a temporary tag exemption that is good until Sept 9 so at least she can legally drive the car now. At least the car itself has been great.

When we ordered our Model Y in April, we used the Tesla financing program because the interest rate was lower than our mortgage so why the hell not. The Tesla application said financing was instantly approved with Wells Fargo who we currently bank with. Ok cool, easy enough. We took delivery of the vehicle on June 2. On July 9, over a month after having the vehicle, I received an email from fundingresolution@tesla.com saying there was a problem with the financing. Apparently the car was ordered under my wife's name (her car) and the loan application was under my name (higher income), so the SSN didn't match up. I'm not sure how they didn't catch this on the application when they initially said the loan was approved. The email correspondence was kind of sketchy and at first I thought it might be a phishing attempt, but I tried to work with them to figure it out. Then, that person stopped responding to all of my emails as of July 14. Nothing at all past that point despite multiple emails from me. Since that point, I have called Tesla multiple times at both the local store and at their main "Tesla Finance" number with very little help. None of them seem to have any visibility of the problem and simply say "they are working on it" (they as in the mysterious Royal They which is a department deep within Tesla that you cannot actually speak with directly). No one ever returns my calls and it's been going on a month. I then called Wells Fargo since Tesla gave me an approved loan agreement for Wells Fargo as the lender. Turns out, Wells Fargo had record of an application being submitted but never gave a decision due to the SSN discrepancy mentioned above. So there was never a loan to begin with. Wells Fargo has offered to do the loan application again, but that would circumvent Tesla and might mess things up even worse. At least Wells Fargo is trying to help. They also call me back about once a week to check the status, which is more than Tesla has ever done. Ok fine, I pretty much decided to quit worrying about it and figured Tesla will eventually contact me if they want to get paid for the remainder of the vehicle. Except there is now one major problem - the temporary dealer tags were good for only 2 months, so they expired on August 2 and we can no longer drive the car legally. The full registration is apparently being held up by the funding problem which no one is attempting to fix. Great, so we "bought" a car from them that we can't drive. I have explained this multiple times to the Tesla and the local store says they don't know what to do but that someone will contact me soon, which no one ever does. I called my local tax assessor office to explain the problem about the tags. They said I could file a formal complaint against Tesla as a dealer, except that the Tesla dealership is in Washington and a complaint in Texas will probably be worthless. I guess I'll file a complaint anyways. They said I can also go pay $29 for a temporary 30-day tag exemption, which can only be done 3 times in the life of a vehicle, and Tesla actually burned the first 2 times when they gave me "dealer plates" that weren't actually dealer plates. Great, so I can do that 1 more time which buys me until September 2nd if they get their shit together by then. I could write them a check for the rest of the car but no one will ever respond. This shit is absolutely ridiculous and by far the worst customer service I have ever received from anyone, which includes AT&T and American Airlines. /rant TLDR: if you are considering financing a Tesla through Tesla, please do yourself a huge favor and go directly to your lender of choice.

Anyone have a rec for a lawn care service? I’m in central FW and need someone to do weekly mowing plus someone to do fertilizing and weed control.

This thread is full of a bunch of “get off my lawn” old men who seem to have a negative worldview about everything. This Olympics was held under the worst possible circumstances - once in a lifetime pandemic causing a year delay, no fans - yet it still had amazing competitions, amazing athletes, and amazing stories. Simone Biles story gets you down? Umm.. she was sexually abused by Larry Nassar and she self reports mental health issues. She’s also the greatest gymnast of all time and she returned to competition to win a bronze medal with a great beam performance. Sorry if that triggers you. American athletes should really learn to internalize their sexual abuse and mental health. Athletes look like they don’t want to be there? Are you fucking kidding me?! Are those of you saying this actually watching or are you merely projecting your own shitty worldview onto Olympic athletes? I’ve seen a bunch of athletes who look completely pumped to be there, and that’s without fans to increase the excitement. Not enough star power? Do you only enjoy the Olympics if you are watching Carl Lewis or Michael Phelps or Usain Bolt? Do you only watch UT football if VY is taking snaps? Come on.. Alysson Felix became the most decorated U.S. track and field Olympic athlete in history. Caeleb Dressel won 5 medals in the pool. The men’s and women’s basketball teams both continued their dominance, the men being led by a particular star who has now scored more points than anyone in Olympics basketball history. The women’s 400m hurdles featured 2 amazing runners - McLaughlin and Muhammad - who BOTH broke the world record in the same race, only to go on to destroy the competition in the 400 relay. Simone Biles withdrew from competition and then we get to see Suni Lee rise to the challenge. There’s plenty of star power, what more do you want? Don’t forget the ton of other cool stories like Molly Seidel winning a bronze medal in her 3rd ever marathon. Yes, I get the time difference. It’s annoying but the internet and smartphone are both here to stay and we can’t turn technology back to 1992 to maintain suspense on the outcome of competitions. That isn’t going away. Deal with it. I think we’re lucky to have even had Olympics, and given the worldwide circumstances of the last 17 months, this year was pretty damn good. Our athletes represented the U.S. very well and we walk away the overall medal leader with a lot to be proud of and plenty to be entertained about.

They are all incredible. So happy to watch them dominate the competition.

NYT The Daily podcast has an episode about unvaccinated people. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily/id1200361736?i=1000531193097 They interviewed a few people and the reasons for not vaccinating were pretty much what you would expect: -I’m not an early adopter of anything so I’m waiting to see how this plays out. -Waiting for a more effective vaccine that will prevent infection from all future variants. -I don’t like any vaccines and my child is unvaccinated and I plan to keep him that way. -I don’t trust the government putting something in my body. -It’s still experimental and hasn’t been fully tested or FDA approved. -Vaccinated people can still get sick so what’s the point? -Vaccinated people still have to wear masks so what’s the point?

I’m a fan of Dalilah Muhammad and wanted to see her win another gold, but I also like Sydney McLaughlin and it’s easy to be happy with that result. What a race and they both smoked Sydney’s WR that’s only a few weeks old.

I love the Olympics despite its shortcomings. I think it’s a great event that brings people together from all over the world to showcase athletic abilities and creates national pride. Yes, the IOC is corrupt. Yes, hosting the Olympics is difficult and creates financial hardship for host cities. Yes, there are certain sports that should be eliminated. All of those things need reform, but that doesn’t detract from my ability to love watching anymore than NCAA corruption prevents me from loving college sports. It’s also ok to not like every event. Watch the ones you like and skip the others. Someone else may like them. Finally, this is a very difficult Olympics mainly due to COVID, so I wouldn’t write off the entire event based on one exceptionally atypical year. Lots of sports have been negatively affected over the past 15 months.

Watched it last night and thought it was fine for what it was. Entertaining mostly with lots of plot holes. Enjoyable while watching but I’ll probably forget it ever existed in a couple years. Of the many plot holes, the part that bothered me the most is that Chris Pratt jumped back to 2022 with the female toxin with intent to mass produce it and return to 2050. Then they found out the jump portal no longer worked so the plan was thwarted and everyone felt defeated. Why not just mass produce it and wait ~26 years for the war to start? Once they have the proper technology in the earlier timeline, it’s pretty straightforward to start preparing and wait. Losing the ability to jump forward was not a problem.

A lot of old men in this thread.

And no foie gras or wine for the unvaccinated!

Normally I don’t either because my credit card has decent travel insurance. I thought in this case it might be good to have an extra layer of coverage, but I guess that was a waste of money. Oh well, lesson learned.

First of all, I work in healthcare and wear a mask every day all day at work. So I'm not shedding the mask anytime soon as much as I would like to. I don't wear a mask to go into stores lately, but I also don't go into a lot of stores and I generally don't get too close to other people. I travel a decent amount and wear masks in airports and on planes. I'm not sure where else I should be wearing a mask that I'm not already. Second of all, I'm highly skeptical of the idea that vaccinated people who don't wear masks will significantly increase the likelihood of a new deadlier variant emerging. I still feel like the rate of transmission from vaccinated people to each other or even to unvaccinated people is exceptionally low. Do I think it happens somewhere? Absolutely, but that's a tiny fraction of the total new cases of COVID in our country and worldwide, and therefore, a tiny possibility of a deadlier variant emerging. If people are truly concerned about variants to that exceptionally small fraction of cases, then we should've never stopped masking to begin with, and we should continue all distancing precautions until the disease is completely eradicated from the earth. Close the bars, close the schools, stop allowing spectators at sports. Any new COVID case could be the deadly super variant that overpowers the vaccines and humanity will end. But that would be ridiculous and we all know it, and anything to that effect, including asking vaccinated people to wear masks in public again, undermines the integrity of the vaccines and further supports unvaccinated people foolishly deciding not to ever get vaccinated.

Seems like there are a few ways to more strongly encourage vaccination: 1. Restrict freedoms for unvaccinated people. No more flying on a plane without a vaccine. Travel is a privilege and air travel currently has a mask mandate from the federal government, so replace the mask requirement with a vaccine requirement. Maybe restrict in person learning at public universities to vaccinated people only. I suppose that would be a state level decision which means a lot of states with low vaccination rates wouldn’t do it because politics. 2. Provide more freedoms to vaccinated people. If unvaccinated people can’t fly, then everyone in the airports should be vaccinated and should be allowed to fly without a mask because we believe the vaccines are working. Get rid of the COVID test requirement for vaccinated people entering the U.S. from foreign travel. On that note, almost every situation that currently calls for a COVID screening test should be supplanted by proof of vaccine. 3. Pay people. At a certain point, it’s simple economics. Estimate the healthcare cost of the projected Delta wave, take half that money, and divide it up as a tax incentive to everyone who was vaccinated this year. They probably should have made the last round of stimulus money contingent on having a vaccine. If people are really hurting financially and need money, then they need to at least do their part to help end the pandemic that triggered their hardship.

Well sure, but even if the U.S. was 100% vaccinated with very low new transmission, variants can easily emerge in other parts of the world and make their way here.

Someone remind me why vaccinated people should be concerned about Delta? Even with breakthrough cases, it's very rare for an otherwise healthy vaccinated person to become seriously ill from Delta. Is the whole point that we should start masking up and distancing again out of concern for the unvaccinated people? The expectation is that those of us who have done the right thing should now take extra precautions to help people who are too selfish or lazy to help themselves? This pandemic should be effectively over in the U.S. but we all still endure it because 40% of American adults won't get their vaccines. Meanwhile there are poor countries around the world where people desperately need vaccines but can't get them because they are sitting unused on a shelf in our country. There should be a cutoff date of September 15 where any vaccines that haven't been administered will be shipped to 3rd world countries and Americans just have to live with their decisions beyond that.

We went to Il Modo this past weekend, the new Italian restaurant in the Harper Hotel. We weren't overly impressed. Food was okay, but for a place that advertises their in-house pasta making and pasta making classes, they only had 4 pasta dishes on the menu - bucatini, spaghetti, linguini, and risotto. That means they basically make spaghetti and linguini in-house, which we each had one of those dishes and they were both just okay. Not really worth the price, and even though Ft Worth has a void of good Italian joints, I still think there are better options. Edited to add the Harper Hotel does have a whiskey bar on the 24th floor, which we didn't make it up there, but it does look pretty cool. I'll be curious to know if anyone tries it. We instead opted for Thompson's, which we hadn't been to since pre-COVID but used to really enjoy. I think Thompson's has fallen a bit. They used to have an extensive cocktail menu in a book that you could always find new stuff to try. Now they have a QR code menu with about 10-15 cocktails on it. It wasn't a bad experience, but it felt like a watered down version of the bar.

If that’s what it boils down to, then I’m ok with that outcome. I generally expect some degree of unforeseen expenses when traveling, but just wanted to make sure I’m not leaving money on the table by eating that cost.

Normally I prefer a recovery day as well. This was kind of an exception.

Some wine bars have been doing this for at least 10 years. I think it starts out fun and then turns into an overpriced gimmick pretty quickly. It makes slightly more sense for beer, but if you just want to try a lot of different beers, many traditional beer-focused bars will pour you samples, half pours, or flights.

That wasn’t an option. United only had one flight per day which they canceled. Best case scenario I would’ve flown home the following day (assuming it didn’t also get canceled) and I needed to get home for work. Missing a day of work costs more than the flights.

We recently went to Croatia, booked flights through AMEX travel portal on United. Knowing how crazy everything has been with Covid and travel, I bought the AMEX trip insurance for the flights. Flight there was fine. Flight home got cancelled 3.5 hours before the flight due to United having limited crew availability. United informed me via text message with no options for rebooking. I immediately called AMEX (the travel number, not the insurance because I forgot about it) and they agreed to petition United for a partial refund for the return flights. The partial refund was about 35% of the total expense. Seems like it should've been 50% given than I only flew half way, but I realize there's probably a behind-the-scenes pricing breakdown that isn't always an even split. I then had to purchase new flights on KLM the same day. Those flights were more expensive (booking an international flight the day of travel) but at least I got home. I booked it through AMEX at the same time they were cancelling my United flight, so I was basically out the difference. I then got home and remembered I had bought the AMEX trip insurance, but when I try to file a claim, they say flight cancellations are only covered if the flight is cancelled due to weather. In my case, the flight crew was unavailable and that's not a covered expense. Do I have any recourse here with AMEX or United Airlines? Or is the take home lesson that airlines suck right now and expect to have unexpected expenses and expect trip insurance to be mostly worthless?

Wife has had her Model Y for about 7 weeks now. It's overall a great car and very fun to drive. There are a few minor annoyances I will mention, which seem to be entirely fixable if Tesla wanted to, but I suppose they have their reasons. 1. No Apple Carplay - seems like it could be integrated without significantly disrupting the existing Tesla interface 2. The built-in Spotify app should recognize and associate a different Spotify account with each driver profile. It's always logged into my wife's Spotify, so if I'm driving by myself, I listen to her music, which is also problematic if she's doing something like working out and needing to be on Spotify at the same time. 3. No HomeLink garage door opener - seriously?!? The car has a bioweapons defense mode, dog mode, valet mode, can stream Netflix and play video games, voice command...but it can't open a garage door. 4. The center cup holders are tiny. Good for a 12 oz can but not most of our re-usable water bottles and tumblers. None of these would sway me against buying the car if I had to do it over again, but they don't make a ton of sense for an otherwise great car.

Had a frustrating flight experience today. Was supposed to fly Dubrovnik to Newark to DFW. Woke up to a text from United that our DBV-EWJ flight was canceled due to not enough crew. Text came through 8 hours before departure with no info on rebooking. I had originally booked through Amex so I called them and they agreed to cancel the booking and work with United on a partial refund (we already flew the departure leg getting here). The estimated partial refund is less than half the original round trip ticket amount, which pisses me off. I then had to pay more money to book flights home on KLM today. Right now my priority is just to make it home. I think once I get that out of the way I’ll call Amex and complain a little more about the expenses. I also paid for their travel insurance on the original flights so I’m not sure what that’s good for if not to cover these situations.