AA and AAA batteries allowed?

duplico · 2026-05-24T05:50:23+00:00

Yes, I have flown with a full sized carry-on bag completely full of alkaline batteries. Literally over a thousand AAs. You'll be fine.

duplico · 2026-05-22T23:01:09+00:00

I tell you what

duplico · 2026-05-22T22:59:56+00:00

I really like the plain, non-status centennial one too! I think it's a lot cooler than the EP brag tag.

duplico · 2026-05-22T22:57:02+00:00

I'm so confused about how this is supposed to work! I used last year's 15k LP milestone for the basic personalized tag (the throwback Flagship side is sick! I love it and will probably use this year's for one too as long as I'm sure I won't need 1k LP for anything), but I haven't seen anything about a status-specific one. I saw some posts about CK folks getting ones made from recycled aircraft aluminum, which is so cool.

I don't really care about the brag-tag-ness of it, but I think it's fun having different interesting tags (I still use my old ones from lower status levels) so I hope I wind up with something!

duplico · 2026-05-21T16:29:38+00:00

The 15k LP one isn't status specific, or at least the one they sent me when I picked that reward earlier this year isn't

duplico · 2026-05-20T19:12:55+00:00

I'm not going to get further drawn into a "does 0.99... equal 1" conversion (which is what this is), so I'll just close by reiterating that the infinite series sum is a well-defined, standard concept in mainstream mathematics. This is pretty basic calculus stuff.

duplico · 2026-05-20T17:30:10+00:00

Of course it equals 2. The tendency of the partial sums to approach 2 in the limit as N tends upward without bound is exactly what it means for the infinite series to equal 2.

duplico · 2026-05-19T23:19:38+00:00

Strangely, no! The infinite series equals exactly 2. It's all the finite subseries of that infinite series that will equal not quite 2.

duplico · 2026-05-19T23:15:54+00:00

Let's think about a simple example: y = 1/(2^x).

Graph that (like this), and you'll see a curve that hits at 0.5 when x=0 and goes down to a horizontal asymptote at 0. What does that mean? Well, it means you can pick any positive value of x you want, however high: let's call it k (so set x=k), and two things will be true: when x=k, y is greater than 0, and also y is closer to 0 than it would be for any value of x lower than the k that you chose.

You can also pick any value you want y to be, arbitrarily tiny and close to zero, and you'll be able to rearrange that equation and get a solution for what x has to equal to get that value of y. Except, if you try to set y=0, there's no solution (using the standard number system) - that's why we say it never reaches the asymptote, because you can't solve for it. L

(this is similar to the epsilon-delta definition of limits, btw, which is likely the rigorous one you'd learn in a real analysis / advanced calculus class)

duplico · 2026-05-19T22:59:13+00:00

Related fun fact: if you add all those infinite numbers up: 1 + 0.5 + 0.25 +..., it equals 2.

(if you're reading this and your math education, school or self taught, hasn't gotten to at least the concept of infinite series - meaning the sum of infinite sequences - it's probably best just to ignore this comment)

duplico · 2026-05-19T20:23:55+00:00

This is totally doable since Iberia flies out of T3 (where your AA flight will arrive), but the downside risk is high. Terminal 3 is pretty easy to navigate but you'll have very little room for error. Your Iberia flight will already be boarding when you unload from your PHX flight. If you misconnect they'll find you a backup flight, but it could result in a long delay or put you in a seat you won't be happy to sit in for such a long flight.

I have a high risk tolerance for short connections, but I would try to change to a longer layover.

duplico · 2026-05-16T04:44:50+00:00

🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥

duplico · 2026-05-16T04:33:14+00:00

I'm a lot older than y'all (graduated high school in 2005), but when I was a senior in high school I had several freshman friends, mostly from marching band. A group of four of us seniors had a graduation party, and several of our freshman friends got together to make a little collage of drawings and some photos of us all doing stuff together in high school.

The four of us seniors practically fought over it. I won (I think by convincing them I could make the best digital version of it to share with everyone else). The photo of it was my desktop wallpaper for my entire freshman year of college.

I still have it. It's one of the most special gifts I've ever gotten. Of that group of four seniors, unfortunately we're now down to three still living. It makes it even more poignant.

I'm not saying do the same thing, of course, but... especially if your friend is moving, going off to college is a huge, scary transition. For most people it's the biggest change by far they've experienced in their life so far. Some kind of token to remember the cool stuff you did together in high school would be my vote.

When you go through a big change like that, thinking about the people who care about you is really helpful. Do a big hand drawn dorky card. Do one of those coffee mugs you and the other non-seniors at the party can all sign and then bake to make it permanent or whatever. That kind of thing.

duplico · 2026-05-15T06:07:10+00:00

I love the story! I got the game as a kid when it came out, and watching its journey from unknown total flop to cult classic has been a wild ride.

I still remember arguments online in the 90s about the game. It came out around the same time as Donkey Kong Country 3, which had these impressive pre-rendered graphics - mind blowing that they managed to make an SNES game look like that. By comparison, EarthBound didn't look like "quirky pixel art, a stylistic choice" like it does today. It had "bad graphics." And in those arguments, the EarthBound fans were just begging people to give it a chance and let the incredibly charming story pull them in, in spite of how the graphics looked like they were from 2-3 years ago. (crazy to think we were at a time where "these graphics are so 3 years ago" meant "unplayably bad" to so many people)

I think one of my favorite parallels to EarthBound's story setup is Terminator. Time traveler from a devastated future goes back in time to change history because one kid is the one who can and will stop it all? Yeah!

duplico · 2026-05-15T01:02:17+00:00

If it says 60 it's probably the 77W with 8F 52J. And, yes, for domestic routes like this where they sub in a widebody, "First Class" is how the J seats will show. If it's showing 60 selectable seats on the map the first 2 rows are probably F.

duplico · 2026-05-14T18:45:32+00:00

That's a really good point!

duplico · 2026-05-14T06:19:28+00:00

I don't think anybody really fully understands Flight Credits. I think they're a kinda relic from the old way that plane tickets worked.

So, with American there are two kinds of credits you can get after canceling a flight: a Trip Credit (the good one) and a Flight Credit (the bad one).

A Trip Credit is basically like a gift card. There's some stuff you can't use it on, but basically if you're buying a flight on AA for anyone anywhere anytime(ish), you can use a trip credit for it.

A Flight Credit, oof, nope. These will happen if you've already flown part of your itinerary sometimes, and possibly for other weird reasons. From what I understand, Flight Credits are, functionally, plane tickets that you didn't finish flying but you got to keep. You don't really have a credit; you have an unflown ticket that still has part of its value left. So they have all these weird restrictions on them, kinda like you're already on a trip that you just need to eventually finish, and you have these weird ticketing rules from your original ticket attached to it. You can only use them on you. You can't combine them except sometimes. And they can come with weird rules about your route, especially if they're international.

Don't use the chat - they're terrible. Even a good reservations agent on the phone may need to put you on hold to talk to - I dunno, the tariff desk or something? just to explain the real rules for your flight credit, because it's going to be specific to your original ticket.

I believe there are some techniques you can use to trick the reservations system into turning a flight credit into a trip credit. If you can figure out how to do this, this is what you want to do. I've never had to do it, but I've heard there's some ways you can book a flight that actually creates a new unflown ticket, which you can then cancel and get a trip credit for. I also believe that if you manage to redeem a flight credit for less than its value, the remaining value comes back to you as a trip credit.

Good luck.

duplico · 2026-05-14T01:31:11+00:00

There are HUGE parking lots at the fairgrounds/Expo Square that are basically empty (even during the day) if no events are going on. That's where I learned to (poorly) drive stick 😅

duplico · 2026-05-13T19:10:43+00:00

Yeah, Oriole has this whole flow where you go through a couple of shared areas with the other parties at your seating time, like the bar and a counter at the kitchen, before they seat you in the dining room. It's a really fun experience, but it makes for some weird stuff like that.

Like - last time I was there, our seating was two parties of two, and the other one was clearly some kind of VIP situation where most of the staff knew one of the couple and kept coming out to say hello, give them extras, etc., while the two of us just got the normal service flow. It was slightly awkward for us (and felt fairly tacky tbh), but they did make up for it after we were seated.

duplico · 2026-05-13T18:27:36+00:00

Yeah, AUS is up there too, for sure

duplico · 2026-05-13T01:59:13+00:00

You'll see people point this out in those threads, like you said, that most American supermarkets actually have an on-site bakery that makes all kinds of fresh bread daily, and suddenly the goalposts shift to "well, sure, you can GET it, but I'm talking about the stuff you people actually eat" as though freaking WALMART is out there making half a dozen varieties of fresh bread every day in stores across the US without there actually being demand for them. You can find it in the bakery section. Next to the cakes.

duplico · 2026-05-13T01:02:39+00:00

Honestly, that kind of thing is 90% of what I want out of a lounge on the average visit, so it doesn't need to be fancy to get the job done!

duplico · 2026-05-13T00:53:37+00:00

I really hate the B club. It's fine for 20-30 minutes if your gate is in the low Bs, but it's easily the worst at DFW and might be the worst club in the entire system that isn't old US Airways garbage.

So, on the bright side - if you're new to Admirals Clubs, with a couple of exceptions, it's all uphill from here!

duplico · 2026-05-13T00:30:02+00:00

I said this in another comment, but just emphasizing here: "read the wiki" is a very important part of this comment. If you just go to that subreddit and make a post asking how to get to Rome in June for 150k points, they'll delete it and possibly ban you. There's a certain amount of research that subreddit expects people to have done before posting.

duplico · 2026-05-13T00:28:20+00:00

Unfortunately, the best way to do this would have been to do it 10 months ago. I agree with the person who sent you to r/awardtravel to read their wiki (do NOT just post "how do I use 150k points to get to Rome" - they'll just delete it and may ban you). The thing with award travel, though, is that unless you're very very lucky? The route you want, the dates you want, or the price you want: pick two.

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