wild_turkey

Peloton was delivered this weekend. They gave us the choice to upgrade to the new bike but we stuck with the original bike for $350 less. The screen is pretty impressive already so I don’t feel like we’re missing out by not getting a bigger screen. I also expect to use it with Airpods more often than not, so better speakers aren’t that important either. I was happy that our existing road bike shoes work with the pedals/clips. No need to buy double shoes. I did my first ride this morning and enjoyed it. It felt pretty similar to every live in-person spin class I’ve ever attended. I like the metrics they provide on the screen so you know if your resistance and cadence are in the target range. I already run and bike outdoors regularly, but this will be a great supplement when the weather is too hot/cold/rainy or when daylight savings hits and it’s dark in the evenings.

Apparently my mom questioned her legitimacy and the person was able to display an Apple ID badge on my mom’s screen. Now it’s entirely possible they did that via their malware without technically having full remote access. I’m not sure the level of sophistication of their scam but it sounds aomewhat poor because I would expect a more sophisticated scam to actually lock her computer until a ransom is paid, which does not seem to be the case. Then again, maybe that’s more of a Windows thing and not as common in Mac attacks.

My mom got a ransomware attack that locked her MacBook screen and showed a number for “Apple support” for her to call. She called the number and the “tech support” person convinced her to allow remote access. The person then looked at my mom’s computer and said that people were trying to get into it and her security software was out of date and my mom needed to pay “Apple” $199 to fix it. She said they only accept checks and not credit cards. Luckily at this point my mom called me while the other person was still on the line waiting for check info. I told her to hang up immediately, power off her computer, and unplug the router. She did that. I then had her power the computer back on and she said it looked normal at this point. I told her to keep her internet access off for now. I also told her to back up any important files to a USB stick. It sounds like a low level scam that almost worked but the check payment was too much of a red flag. They may try it again but at least she knows now. I’m not sure if they copied her files while remotely connected but there doesn’t seem to be much of value there. She doesn’t use the computer for banking except that she has Quicken for some business tax record keeping. I know nothing about Quicken but she doesn’t think any account numbers or SSNs were stored there. I don’t know what else to have her do and I don’t use a Mac personally. Should she restore to backup? Is that a thing on a Mac? Change all other passwords just to be safe? Thanks.

It sucked to ever be in that position in the first place, down 15 with 3 minutes to go. But I also think it says a lot about the team that we didn’t give up in a situation where most people considered the game out of reach. Yes, we got a lucky break on the onside kick, but that’s part of the game. Lots of great football teams have had a similar ugly game somewhere in their season that they’ve had to overcome to go onto a championship. Let’s just learn from it and not make it a habit this year.

Leave him in Lubbock please

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Paging thunderlounge.... I very much appreciate your advice and guidance in this thread. I'm in an almost identical situation to midtown. My first purchase on my CSR was 9/21/16, the first annual fee was 10/1/16, and the 100,000 point bonus was on the 11/12/16 statement. My next annual fee is due 10/1/20, which will be $450 for me + $75 for my wife as an AU. Yes, I know listing your spouse as AU is frowned upon, and I do typically get her the same promos as me (she had the original 100,000 point bonus on her own CSR which was then closed during the first year). So that's $525 total, which after the $300 bonus, I'm not sure I really get $225 value out of this card at the moment. So I need to switch and I'm considering the same thing you just advised midtown. My understanding is this: 1. Call Chase now and request a product switch to CFU. There is $0 AF and I won't get the bonus, but it gives me a place to park my ~80k UR points. 2. Wait until December (I'm in no rush) and apply for CSP. There is $95 AF and current offer is for 80,000 points. I'm at 3/24 on my applications currently. Will this process simply increase me to 4/24 (adding one for the CSP but not for the CFU)? Also, can I put my wife on the sideline through this process and then get the same CSP bonus for her? I unfortunately don't have a record of when her CSR was opened, AF, bonus, etc. I'm assuming it was 1-2 months after mine. She is at 2/24 currently. Obviously I wouldn't list her as an AU on my CSP application, but does it matter if she is an AU on my CFU in the interim? Thanks so much.

So I guess there will be a big shakeup in the polls on 10/25 after the first week of Big 10 games? They’ll just automatically insert 1-0 Ohio State in at the #3 spot regardless of what other teams have been doing for over a month? Most conferences finish on 12/5. The Big 10 is scheduled through 12/12 followed by their “champions week” on 12/19. Will the awards wait until after 12/19 or will they give the Heisman to Justin Fields before their season even ends? What about bowls? So many questions. I hate the Big 10.

My favorite is easily Pliny the Elder. It’s an excellent beer but it’s undoubtedly even more special because it’s not available in Texas. I look for it whenever I’m in CO/CA and it never disappoints. Although one of the best beer drinking moments I’ve ever had was this one: I remember liking the beer a lot but the experience was hard to beat. We had hiked up into the mountains in Banff on the Plain of Six Glaciers trail. It was May and the sun was shining at it felt great outside. The warmth was causing the glaciers to melt and avalanches were occurring all around the canyons. We sat on a glacier for about an hour drinking these beers and watching it all happen. Pretty memorable experience and I remember enjoying that beer about as much as I’ve ever enjoyed a beer. Luckily our glacier of choice never avalanched.

I’ve posted about Shelby a lot over the past year. We said goodbye to her a month ago but we did get her a DNA test before she was gone. We rescued her as a puppy so never knew her true background, but we considered her a chocolate lab that likely had a little bit of something else. She was a little small for a lab with a slender face and a very soft coat. Anyways, we got the DNA results back and I thought it was pretty interesting and glad we did it for our own knowledge. There’s also a page for nearest relatives that shows their pictures and locations (if those users provided them). And you can get health information for an extra cost, which we skipped since she was already gone. The company is Embark and it’s a mouth swab that you mail in. I paid $130 which includes shipping but I have a referral code that will save $30. If anyone is interested, send me a PM. Might make a good Christmas gift for a dog lover.

Interesting. I did 3 days at Crested Butte this past season and the lift tickets were more than that. I would consider a repeat trip.

I haven’t followed this very closely. Suppose I only want to take one ski trip this year and ski 3 days. Is there a good place I can do that without buying a full Epic or Ikon pass? If I had my choice I would be interested in Big Sky or Telluride, but willing to consider other options.

2020 event today at noon. I’m ready for a new iPhone so hopefully the options are good.

The downside is that France and Spain are seeing a significant spike in cases. France is much worse now than during their first wave. When you look at their number of new cases per capita, they are now about equal to the U.S. in severity. The difference is that our curve is trending slowly downward and their curve is trending sharply upward. They are basically us in late June.

Credit to Nice Guy Eddie - I listened to the Planet Money podcast that you referenced. They actually have 3 episodes related to this topic and they are all fairly short and informative. 9/11/20 - Waste Land 9/10/19 - A Mob Boss, A Garbage Boat, and Why We Recycle 9/12/19 - So, Should We Recycle? I highly recommend them for anyone interested. My take home points would be: Plastic manufactures and oil companies don’t care about recycling. Even worse, the oil companies would prefer no recycling because recycled plastic becomes a competitor to their virgin product. These companies only care about their image so that consumers will continue to buy plastic. The recycling logo is stamped onto all plastic to allow consumers to feel less guilty about plastic consumption, even though most of this plastic cannot be recycled economically. Plastic recycling was somewhat successful up until about 2 years ago when China decided to quit recycling the world’s plastic. Now there is nowhere to send it that can reliably recycle it, so the chances are higher that it could simply end up in the ocean. This was the same message reported by 60 Minutes in the OP. At this point, it’s probably better to throw all plastic into our garbage bins and not our blue recycling bins. At least this way, it can be landfilled close to home, rather than shipping it to a 3rd world country to landfill it, or worse, dump it in the ocean. There needs to be a massive American re-education campaign on this, but I’m sure plastic manufacturers would try to suppress this because they want people to keep believing the lie. Even if landfilling plastic is a better environmental decision, if this were to become common knowledge, then consumers would likely feel more guilty about plastic consumption and make efforts to reduce it. Tin and aluminum should always be recycled. Glass is debatable. Perhaps if we invest in our recycling infrastructure, we could improve plastic recycling in our own country to the point that the environmental and economic cost-benefit equation makes sense in the future. It seems like a long shot because it’s cheaper to just keep making new plastic, which is profitable for plastic companies and cheaper for consumers.

I would assume sealing off your doors and windows is necessary at this point. If you’re lucky enough to have a work from home job, do you consider leaving the area and working remotely from Vegas or SLC for a few weeks?

I flew SWA from DAL-LAS in June, then I flew AA from DFW-SJU in July. My experiences were similar to those mentioned above. Nearly empty airports, planes 40-60% full, good mask usage, very little in flight activity by the crew and passengers. I think the airports, airlines, and passengers are doing it as well as can be expected. I think the overall risk is fairly low for young and healthy people, but obviously not zero risk and not a good idea for high-risk people to fly if they don’t absolutely have to. And I also flew Tradewind from SJU-SBH but that’s a bit different and all 8 passengers on those flights had a negative Covid test prior to departure.

Glad this thread got bumped. It’s a topic that bothers me regularly but I don’t know the solution. I’ll look for that Planet Money podcast soon. Since my OP a year ago, I completely quit buying any single serve drinks in plastic bottles. We were going through a Costco case of 24 Propels about once a week. Switched to the powder packets we mix into reusable water bottles. Don’t buy water in plastic bottles hardly ever. I reluctantly drink it if I’m somewhere that provides it. I drink a shitload of sparkling water in aluminum cans and Topo Chico in the glass bottles. I worry about the environmental impact of those types of materials. And of course beer and wine in aluminum and glass. And I drink 2 large plastic bottles of orange juice a week. I feel shitty about that but there are no good alternatives that I’ve found. My concern is that the oceans will become a landfill during our lifetime and it will be incredibly difficult for future generations to undo that damage. Not sure how to prevent this. It seems unlikely that the U.S. would ever pass legislation to restrict plastic waste because the plastic companies and the Coca-Colas of the world have too much at stake to allow that to occur. And even if we did, a majority of the developed world would need to reach similar agreements for any significant progress to occur.

From South Congress... TEXAS!!!!

I just clicked through some COVID numbers from around the world. Places in Europe are spiking - notably Spain, France, and UK. China...holy shit. They are reporting no new deaths since May and hardly any new cases. Is the rest of the world really expected to believe that? What in the hell is going on there?

This is apocalyptic looking shit. Looking beyond the obvious immediate casualties, I wonder what the downstream health effects will be for everyone else in these areas due to smoke inhalation.

I also have one pending for delivery and they emailed me to let me know the $350 credit will be automatically applied. I’m fine with the current version at a lower price.

I ended up doing this card. For anyone interested, The Points Guy now has a CardMatch feature where you can do a soft credit pull and try to find targeted offers for yourself. The advertised signup bonus for the Amex Gold is currently 35,000 miles. Using their CardMatch tool, I was able to get a "targeted" offer for 75,000 miles signup bonus for the same card. Not sure if this is useful information here or old news. https://thepointsguy.com/cardmatch/?tid=post

Wife and I are driving into Austin for the weekend and need some suggestions for where to stay, eat and drink, etc. We aren't going to the game but we'll watch it somewhere on Saturday night. Just want to hang out and get away from home for a couple days. Our normal friends that we would stay with are still fully socially distanced so we are booking a hotel. We want a hotel and not an Airbnb because we need to burn some travel points. The hotel needs to be dog friendly for a big dog (75 lb golden retriever). There are plenty of options for that it seems. We would also prefer the hotel is walkable or at least fairly close to some decent spots to eat and drink in the evening. Ideally places that have good food and dog friendly outdoor dining. No specific food preferences beyond that, trying to break out of our normal Austin routine and try some new (to us) stuff. Current options are South Congress Hotel, The Westin Downtown, The Hilton Downtown, and The Otis. Help me out.

tutanota.com gmx.com Neither require phone verification.