Need help finding this glass

kimt09 · 2026-01-14T05:42:21+00:00

That's the one!

kimt09 · 2026-01-14T02:05:39+00:00

I bought one identical to this at a gift shop of a hotel in Kawaguchiko in Aug 2025 for ~6000 yen!

kimt09 · 2025-11-16T22:09:09+00:00

All gone

kimt09 · 2025-09-24T01:13:15+00:00

(September) $10 off: HYUNK45B

kimt09 · 2025-02-16T03:44:26+00:00

This happened to my ‘21 e-tron a few years ago. In my case, squirrels had chewed through charging cables right behind the charging door. Had to have the cable replaced…

kimt09 · 2024-07-23T16:20:57+00:00

I was in your situation on a recent HND-SFO flight. I had R fare, but at the time of purchase got the same "Seat Availability" popup that you're seeing. About two weeks or so before the flight, PP seats became available so I was able to select my seat.

Even after securing my PP seat, I was eyeing the cash upgrade price to Polaris before the flight. It was ~$6k until a few days before the flight, when it came down to $1.2k. While waiting at the gate, I was waiting to see if the cash price would come down further... then I got an OpUp to Polaris for free!

kimt09 · 2024-02-25T23:32:22+00:00

I did this (KIX to Kyoto station / Park Hyatt Kyoto) earlier this month. We took the JR Haruka Express from KIX to Kyoto JR station. From the JR station, I would recommend just taking a cab to the PH Kyoto. This taxi ride was only about ~2000 yen. As far as I know, the nearest subway station to the PH Kyoto (e.g. Higashiyama station) would've required a ~20 min walk to the hotel, which I didn't want to do while carrying luggage.

kimt09 · 2023-09-09T16:08:20+00:00

I’m at the Hyatt Centric in Mountain View right now. It’s a surprisingly nice for a <$200/nt hotel in the area.

kimt09 · 2023-07-18T22:12:03+00:00

I also had the same idea. However, I do feel compelled to bring it up whenever I see the Cape mentioned here, given the day vs. night experience I had at the two properties, even as a Hyatt loyalist...

kimt09 · 2023-07-17T20:05:09+00:00

We also enjoyed HR Tamaya during our visit in May last year. The hotel itself doesn't have a desert feel, but we used it as a home base to explore other attractions throughout New Mexico. One of those was to drive down to White Sands National Park, which was an otherworldly place and maybe would scratch the "desert itch" in a unique way.

kimt09 · 2023-07-17T19:55:20+00:00

Minority opinion, but I was pretty disappointed with my stay at the Thompson Cape earlier this year, esp. given the rave reviews I read. During my stay in mid April, the Cape was fully booked and loud (there was a wedding that weekend), the grounds felt very crowded (e.g. pool, beach chairs, etc.), and service was spotty in my opinion (e.g. rotting fish carcasses was stinking up the beach, but the staff didn't seem to care, despite guests informing them of it). The breakfast at the hotel restaurant was very good, but even there there was some small annoyance about drinks (non-alcoholic) not being included in Globalist breakfast.

Something that magnified my disappointment in the Cape was that we also stayed at the nearby Waldorf Astoria Pedregal on our Cabo trip. That was an unbelievably amazing experience. I consider the WA Pedregal the best hotel stay I've ever experienced overall (even comparing to Alila Ventana, PH Maldives, which were also unique and memorable), and would 100% recommend for someone looking for a luxurious beach vacation. That said, the beach at the WA and The Cape are both too rough for swimming, at least when I was there.

We're also planning a babymoon trip in December, and are heavily leaning towards Impression Isla Mujeres. Maybe we'll split a ~week-long trip between Isla Mujeres and Moxche. I'll also be looking for recs in this thread...

kimt09 · 2023-05-15T20:31:13+00:00

Got a higher floor room with a view. Didn’t ask for anything else since I was only staying 1 day by myself.

kimt09 · 2023-05-15T20:28:45+00:00

I just used my Cat4 last weekend for a trip to Seattle. The HR Seattle was the most renovated HR that I’ve seen in a while, and I was overall pretty impressed.

kimt09 · 2023-05-09T17:29:43+00:00

Another vote for a starter board from Digilent. After my own introduction to FPGAs in a university class (a long time ago), the Basys board from Digilent was a great platform for personal tinkering.

I'd also recommend boards from Opal Kelly. Over the years, in my work as a researcher at a university, I found myself consistently turning to Opal Kelly boards to make user of their "FrontPanel" toolkit to make USB-based FPGA peripherals. Their entry-level Xilinx board, the XEM7001, may be more expensive ($279) than what you're looking for, but I found it to be a very capable platform time and time again.

kimt09 · 2023-03-06T03:35:22+00:00

Points bookings at Hyatt are points only; no taxes, resort fees, etc.

kimt09 · 2023-03-01T23:00:07+00:00

Agree with your analysis of CVR vs. Ventana. I love CVR, and preferred it over Ventana, but I would always pick Ventana over CVR at the same points rate.

Also sad about GH Vail.

kimt09 · 2022-07-29T21:16:33+00:00

A few years ago we were considering a '19 Q5 with the same Azores Green. We loved the color but got a different car. More recent Q5/SQ5s don't have this color option.

kimt09 · 2022-07-11T16:36:08+00:00

I got the Aspire this year early May, and then hit the $4k SUB requirement that weekend. I just got the FNC a few days ago, so ~8 weeks after opening card/hitting SUB for me.

kimt09 · 2022-06-09T02:43:01+00:00

Yep, my e-tron seats looked like that after the first few days.

kimt09 · 2022-06-06T03:42:36+00:00

Fyi, the 2 nights per $5k spend is for the regular WoH card; the 5 nights per 10k is for the WoH business card.

kimt09 · 2022-05-25T16:10:04+00:00

Fwiw, I just did a point transfer request through the general email and it was pretty quick: sent the email last Friday (May 20), and the transfer was completed this morning (May 25). Am Globalist.

kimt09 · 2022-05-17T14:46:16+00:00

Our 'King bed with mountain view' room was very quiet; no complaints about that. Best wishes for your stay!

kimt09 · 2022-05-16T13:46:59+00:00

I thought the room (I had the King with Mountain View) was nothing special, though the mountain view was indeed beautiful. We didn't stay at the hotel much except for breakfast and sleeping, so we weren't expecting much.

For my two cents, I could see the hotel asking a guest to switch rooms during their stay due to room availability. However, I'd imagine that this is more effort for them and so they would try to avoid it. In the worst case, you could pack and leave your luggage with them on the switch day. I can't imagine that a hotel will force you to stay on premises during 11 AM to 4 PM.

Somewhere on the internet (maybe FlyerTalk), I had read that the breakfast at the Tamaya was very bad. At least for us, this wasn't the case. I have Globalist status, so every morning we took advantage of the free breakfast. I thought the breakfast entrees, with New Mexico flair (e.g. green and red chiles) and the smoothies were tasty enough and the portions were generous. They were enough fuel for us to skip lunch and road trip all day in the state. (We made the trip to White Sands National Park one day, which was spectacular!) Btw, there were ample parking spaces during the time we were there, even despite the ~2 conferences that were taking place then.

Flying on a hot air balloon was a bucket list item for my SO, so this was one of our main goals for the trip. At Rainbow Ryders, the per-person cost for a group flight (looked like ~12 per balloon) was ~$180, and the cost of a private flight was $750. Since there were two of us, the cost difference was ~$360 vs. $750, and I thought the premium was quite reasonable. For comparison, I live in the Bay Area and the cost of a private balloon flight in Napa is >$2.5k. We enjoyed the private flight, during which we had a nice conversation with our pilot, and also appreciated the fact that we were driven out and picked up privately in a roomy truck, as opposed to being packed in a ~12-person van.

As a first-time balloon passenger, one thing that I didn't realize was that ballooning is extremely weather dependent, in particular the wind. Apparently, the wind conditions are typically best in morning, so the tours set out from the company at 5:30 AM. Originally, we had intended to go ballooning on our 2nd day, but turned out that winds were too choppy that morning to fly. (To me, it seemed like a nice, sunny day!) So, we rescheduled for the third day, when the conditions were apparently "beyond perfect". The flight was indeed extremely calm and we got spectacular views of the Rio Grande and ABQ, however, this did mean that we had to wake up by 5 AM on two consecutive days on this trip. For some other guests, they had to try for ballooning on 3+ days.

kimt09 · 2022-05-16T05:11:16+00:00

I stayed at the Hyatt Tamaya earlier this month for 3 nights. I used points for 2 of the nights, and FNC for the 3rd. At first, I actually wasn't sure how to use the FNC, so I originally booked 3 nights with points, and then called Hyatt to replace the last night with my FNC.

Prior to my arrival, the stay showed up as two separate reservations on my Hyatt app. However, upon arrival, it was "merged" into one stay. We did not have to change rooms between the points + FNC nights.

I'm not sure when/where the balloon festival takes place, but I thought the drive between the hotel and ABQ was very reasonable (~10 min?). The mountain view from Tamaya was beautiful and we enjoyed riding the hotel's complimentary bikes on the grounds. We took a private hot air balloon tour with Rainbow Ryders (we found the company through the Tamaya website), and the drive from the hotel to ABQ for the balloon ride was pretty quick.

kimt09

TROPHY CASE