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wild_turkey

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Everything posted by wild_turkey

  1. 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.
  2. Normally I prefer a recovery day as well. This was kind of an exception.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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?
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. ??? The website says August 9 to September 5.
  9. In order… 1a. Dayne’s 1b. Panther City 3. Heim If it’s a weekend for lunch, pick one of the first two. If it’s evening, then Heim is probably the only available option. Disclaimer: have yet to try Brix but keep hearing good things.
  10. At one point I thought they were saying ~150 unaccounted for? So that would suggest ~10 people turned up elsewhere?
  11. That’s actually not true. When we missed a flight last month and spent a “penalty night” in CLT, we checked in that night for the flight the next day, just to avoid the airline agent fiasco the day of the flight. That was AA with a checked bag. For our United flight tomorrow, DFW-IAD-FRA-ZAG, they let us check-in today and get boarding passes so we just need to clear TSA tomorrow. I think their policy is that you can check-in in person within 24 hours but you can’t hand over checked baggage until 6 hours pre-flight. We did have to check-in in person for this trip because an agent needed to verify our vaccine cards, but we’re good on that now.
  12. I’m really curious in the legal side of this when it comes to insurance. For the initial collapse, for owners that survived, will they get a full payout or will there be insurance exclusions on the basis of not maintaining the property? For the secondary planned demolition, same thing except that in this case it was an intentional (yet necessary) destruction of property that was at this point beyond the control of the owners. What about possessions that were all left in the remaining units up until it’s destruction? What about vehicles which I assume were left in their parking spaces below and are now presumably collateral damage? Also, with regards to the other unrelated Miami condo that has now been evacuated on the basis of an engineering report, I expect that to become a much more common occurrence as every building safety concern is looked at under a microscope.
  13. Maybe it’s destination dependent then. Mexico doesn’t require COVID testing so that probably made it easier for you. Or maybe it’s airline dependent. This was on AA, early June, flying DFW-MIA-SXM. Like I said, it was the only time we experienced it since the start of COVID, so it caught us by surprise as well.
  14. I’ve been to St Barth 3 times since COVID started and Tulum once, and this was the first time I’ve experienced this. I think it’s a recent problem for airlines with the influx of travelers post-COVID.
  15. Champlain Towers address is 8855 Collins Ave. A quick Zillow search for recently sold properties at that address shows a unit that sold on 6/18/21 and another on 4/16/21. Imagine being the previous owners that got out right before disaster struck. Imagine being family of the new owners, knowing your loved ones moved into a condo shortly before in collapsed with them inside.
  16. Who in their right mind would ever live in the remaining 1/3 of the building? How would you ever sell a unit? The remaining property owners are probably hoping for a complete demo and some degree of insurance settlement because their property is nearly worthless even while still standing.
  17. Leaving for Croatia next week. We have a connection in Germany but neither Croatia nor Germany require vaccinated U.S. citizens to have COVID tests, just the vaccine card. We went to St. Barth a few weeks ago and missed our departure flight out of DFW due to long check-in lines at the airport. International travel requires check-in with the agents (no phones or kiosks) so they can verify COVID requirements prior to boarding. Needless to say, I'm a little concerned about the upcoming flights to Croatia for the same reasons, and unfortunately, we have a time constraint that will limit our ability to get to the airport more than 2 hours early. Is there anything that stops us from going to DFW the night before our flights (within 24 hours of departure) to do the check-in process and get our boarding passes, then return home to sleep before returning to the airport the following day for the actual flights? We will only have carry-on bags, no checked bags, and we are flying United. I think this should streamline things on the actual day of departure so that we just need to get through TSA, which we have Pre-check for. Is there an unforeseen wrinkle in my plan I should know about?
  18. Yeah that sounds cheap and the opposite of what you want from room service in a luxury hotel.
  19. I don’t like Southwest mainly for their boarding policies. I would like to know my seat in advance, and if I’m paying extra for a better seat, I want to know specifically which better seat. Agree with being able to stay at the bar, bookstore, bathroom, etc until the plane is near the end of boarding. Rushing to get in line for a good seat is ridiculous to me. Beyond that, I’m based out of DFW and it seems AA is much more likely to have direct flights to the places I want to go. I don’t like AA much either, but that’s for different reasons.
  20. Wife got her Model Y on Wednesday. The drop off and trade-in were surprisingly simple. A guy showed up, we traded keys, he took a few pictures of each car and that was it. She traded in a 2007 4Runner with 200k+ miles on it and they gave us $5,900 which seems very high, and the whole thing was done virtually with no full inspection of the car. It runs fine for its age, but it still surprised me how much they offered and how few questions were asked. She only drove the Model Y for a day before leaving for vacation but says she loves it so far.
  21. Not only that, but the technology appears to be a massive leap from where we are (everyone is) currently. It would be like going from the corded home telephone to the iPhone and bypassing all the generations of cell phones that came between. I personally don’t think the Chinese or Russians could make those advancements while maintaining complete secrecy over decades of research, and having the self control to not deploy their vastly superior technology against the rest of the world. They would be playing an extreme long game when they could’ve demonstrated their power long ago and used it for an extreme upper hand in global politics.
  22. Watched it a couple nights ago. Didn’t love it but didn’t hate it. I was entertained enough, it was free through HBO, and I appreciate that it was 1h40m instead of 3hr like many newer movies tend to be. Agree with the criticisms about Jolie’s model appearance throughout the movie. It was distracting. For any GoT fans, the movie might be worth the watch just to see Littlefinger’s end.
  23. That was great. Once I realized who the actual killer was, everything made complete sense to the point that I felt a bit dumb for not realizing it in advance. But definitely a well written conclusion. The only thing I’m a little disappointed about is Dylan’s role, or lack thereof. He seemed pretty intent to burn Erin’s journals, then he became a psychopath chasing down Jess and telling her something about how they were now joined for life, as if to suggest they shared a pretty dark secret. Then in the finale, he simply shows up at Lori’s door and gives her the money. I guess he was just a red herring, but they maybe overplayed that angle a little bit.
  24. Any update? My wife changed the exterior color a few weeks back and it pushed the estimated delivery window out to June 18-30, then suddenly today they said it’s actually ready and delivery is now scheduled for June 2.
  25. I could be wrong, but my understanding is that Congress wants this because the presence of UAPs off our coasts is a significant national security concern. So we need answers, or at the very least, a formal action plan.
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