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Everything posted by wild_turkey
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A lot of old men in this thread.
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COVID-19 2nd wave - Texas only - Stats and such
wild_turkey replied to justhookit's topic in Daily Texan
And no foie gras or wine for the unvaccinated! -
Flight cancellation and trip insurance
wild_turkey replied to wild_turkey's topic in Food and Travel
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. -
COVID-19 2nd wave - Texas only - Stats and such
wild_turkey replied to justhookit's topic in Daily Texan
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. -
COVID-19 2nd wave - Texas only - Stats and such
wild_turkey replied to justhookit's topic in Daily Texan
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. -
COVID-19 2nd wave - Texas only - Stats and such
wild_turkey replied to justhookit's topic in Daily Texan
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. -
COVID-19 2nd wave - Texas only - Stats and such
wild_turkey replied to justhookit's topic in Daily Texan
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.
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Flight cancellation and trip insurance
wild_turkey replied to wild_turkey's topic in Food and Travel
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. -
Flight cancellation and trip insurance
wild_turkey replied to wild_turkey's topic in Food and Travel
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.
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Flight cancellation and trip insurance
wild_turkey replied to wild_turkey's topic in Food and Travel
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?
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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.
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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.
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??? The website says August 9 to September 5.
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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.
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Mass casualty building collapse in Miami
wild_turkey replied to shadow_operative2.0's topic in Daily Texan
At one point I thought they were saying ~150 unaccounted for? So that would suggest ~10 people turned up elsewhere? -
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.
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Mass casualty building collapse in Miami
wild_turkey replied to shadow_operative2.0's topic in Daily Texan
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. -
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.
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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.
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Mass casualty building collapse in Miami
wild_turkey replied to shadow_operative2.0's topic in Daily Texan
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. -
Mass casualty building collapse in Miami
wild_turkey replied to shadow_operative2.0's topic in Daily Texan
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. -
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?
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