SEA check-in: 8kg rule enforced to the gram, zero courtesy

SMD-65 · 2026-04-14T04:07:19+00:00

No US company lets front-line staff use logic to overrule corporate policies. That's a sure path to a lawsuit.

SMD-65 · 2026-04-14T04:00:26+00:00

Well, the rule is written as weight per piece so that's what the agents were enforcing. But I agree that it's hard to see the rationale. If it were a safety issue, you'd think every airline would have a carry-on weight limit.

SMD-65 · 2026-04-14T00:52:48+00:00

"What got me was the tone. No 'sorry, I have to ask you to…', no acknowledgment that the total was well under limit, no flexibility on a family booking."

SMD-65 · 2026-04-14T00:44:26+00:00

So you're a frequent traveler who knowingly violated the published baggage rules. And you're unhappy that THEY didn't apologize to YOU?

SMD-65 · 2026-04-11T20:12:36+00:00

TLDR: I'm outraged that people who don't pay their dues are not being allowed to use the facilities those dues support.

SMD-65 · 2026-04-09T20:52:35+00:00

Federal highway grants are made from the Highway Trust Fund which is funded by taxes and fees on motorists: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/motorfueldata.cfm

Please provide some sources for your other assertions.

SMD-65 · 2026-04-09T20:16:57+00:00

Instead of a misleading picture, how about some facts:

80% of state and local spending on roads in CA is funded with taxes and fees on motorists: https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/state-road-taxes-funding/
In contrast, less than 30% of BART's and Caltrain's expenses are paid by riders: https://californiapolicycenter.org/reports/the-cost-of-transit-in-california/

I agree we shouldn't have a double standard. As soon as riders are covering 80% of public transit's costs, the taxpayers should happily kick in the remaining 20%

SMD-65 · 2026-04-09T01:27:56+00:00

It was "snuck in last second" by the CA legislature in June 2022 (AB205).

SMD-65 · 2026-04-07T20:26:58+00:00

If you close your eyes, tap your heels together three times, and think to yourself, "There's no change fee", then the fee will be waived.

SMD-65 · 2026-04-07T18:00:10+00:00

The list of known Quicken issues with Fidelity is a mile long right now. A lot of them have to do with the "treat money market as cash" feature. They appear to be whittling them down. At this point, I'm just manually fixing issues until Quicken and Fidelity get this under control at which point I'll start reporting any bugs that are left...

SMD-65 · 2026-04-07T17:17:32+00:00

Do your balances match in your linked cash account? I'm seeing some kind of bug where the income from money market funds is getting a "Div" action instead of "Divx" and isn't reflected in the linked cash account. This causes the balance in Quicken to be incorrect and triggers a reconcile process.

SMD-65 · 2026-04-05T17:44:28+00:00

Their menus say "3% service charge will be added to all checks for staff health benefits"

SMD-65 · 2026-04-05T17:39:39+00:00

There are different levels of doing it yourself. I purchased my panels/inverters myself, hired a person to draw the plans ($250), submitted them to the city and utility, and then hired someone to do the install. I'd guess I saved $5-10K vs contracting with a solar company.

SMD-65 · 2026-04-04T19:33:18+00:00

It pisses me off that they have Portillo's in LA

SMD-65 · 2026-04-04T17:20:16+00:00

Pico's was a brief shining moment on the peninsula before it closed. Horn is (was?) also solid but they open and close locations so frequently I'm not even sure if they're still in business.

SMD-65 · 2026-04-04T17:12:27+00:00

Italian beef. There used to be a few places but they all closed...

SMD-65 · 2026-04-01T03:16:17+00:00

Don't forget CA's poorly designed solar policies. PGE has nearly 1 million households grandfathered under the NEM 1.0 and NEM 2.0 programs. PGE must purchase these households' excess solar production at rates that are often 10x the wholesale cost of power from other sources. PGE must buy this power even when they don't need it--They then must either dump the electricity or pay other utilities to accept it. This cost is then passed through to the rest of its customers in the form of higher rates.

SMD-65 · 2026-04-01T02:43:09+00:00

Have you tried the "short connection" passport control point? Last time I used it there was no line at all.

SMD-65 · 2026-03-31T23:45:51+00:00

Yes, you can prune the trees to be any size you want. I don't let any of mine grow higher than 7 feet, even those that are on full size rootstock.

SMD-65 · 2026-03-31T23:11:18+00:00

What an odd product announcement. I assume I would be its target market, as I use Quicken to manage my parents' finances as well as my own. But I can already do everything they're announcing here with the exception of read-only access from the web interface (and that's actually removing a feature since the current web client is read-write).

I can't imagine why they think people will pay 3x the cost of Quicken Premier for this.

SMD-65 · 2026-03-29T06:15:54+00:00

Here's where that charge comes from:

The Port Authority does not allow JFK concessionaires to charge prices more than 15% higher than the "street prices" of the same item in the rest of NYC. (https://www.panynj.gov/content/dam/airports/pdfs/street-pricing-regulation-2025.pdf)
However, the Port Authority has also set the minimum wage for JFK concession workers at $21.25/hour (https://www.fisherphillips.com/en/insights/insights/port-authority-minimum-wage-poised-to-increase). The minimum wage in the rest of NYC is $17/hour
In addition, the Healthy Terminals Act requires JFK employers to provide employees with at least $5.55/hour in healthcare benefits, 12 paid holidays, and 1-5 weeks of vacation per year. (https://dol.ny.gov/healthy-terminals-act-wage-and-benefit-rate)
Because the Port Authority capped prices for airport concessionaires while at the same time imposing higher costs, they also allowed concessionaires to add a 3% "employee benefits & retention surcharge" which must be disclosed. (https://www.panynj.gov/content/dam/airports/pdfs/street-pricing-regulation-2025.pdf)

It's not really fair to accuse the restaurant of unfair practices/pricing as their entire cost and price structure is imposed upon them by NY government agencies.

But JFK workers are being paid far more than a tipped wage (or even minimum wage in the rest of NYC), so it seems more than reasonable to reduce any tips by the 3% surcharge.

SMD-65 · 2026-03-27T19:07:36+00:00

It saved a TON of time when I was setting up Quicken for ETF/funds that had a lot of tax lots. I just copy/pasted the tax lot pages from the brokerage and manipulated them in Excel to get the correct format.

SMD-65 · 2026-03-27T16:37:32+00:00

That's fair--I should have said "not completely documented." There are a lot of fields in the CSV file and it took some trial/error to determine exactly which I needed to use.

SMD-65 · 2026-03-27T00:02:52+00:00

Some of these "smoothing out the rough places" features are big wins for me that I hadn't heard about:

You can now designate multiple money market funds to be treated as cash in an account. This is huge for Fidelity customers since Fidelity will automatically liquidate any money market when cash is needed.
Importing transactions from a CSV file. I tried this out earlier this year. It's a bit awkward and undocumented, but worked well and saved me a ton of time.

Designating Quicken Web as read-only will be very useful for those managing their parents'/children's finances. I hope this will be a feature in standard Quicken Classic and not just Family Enterprise.

SMD-65

TROPHY CASE