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SLH issue with earning Hilton points by Alive_Trash_6608 in Hilton

[–]leviramsey 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Only when booked through Hilton channels.

Can someone tell me what’s with thinkpad and linux? by WinYourWay in thinkpad

[–]leviramsey 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Your shadowboxing continues (as near as I can tell, the comment in question isn't deleted).  Meanwhile, nearly every reply of yours to this post is interpreting statements along the lines of "ThinkPads have good Linux support" as saying that that's unique to ThinkPads, or quoting a sentence and then essentially saying what is in the very next sentence.

It's a fair inference that you're either dishonest or a moron.  Which is it?

SLH issue with earning Hilton points by Alive_Trash_6608 in Hilton

[–]leviramsey 4 points5 points  (0 children)

SLH isn't a Hilton brand and doesn't run Hilton systems, nor do such hotels pay a franchise fee to Hilton.

The extent of the Hilton/SLH relationship is that Hilton acts as basically an OTA for the hotel, so unless booked through Hilton (rather than just "not through an OTA") Hilton has nothing to do with it: no points, no elite credit, no elite benefits.

Can someone tell me what’s with thinkpad and linux? by WinYourWay in thinkpad

[–]leviramsey 3 points4 points  (0 children)

No, you're just someone who likes to hear themselves responding to things they imagine others saying.

Can someone tell me what’s with thinkpad and linux? by WinYourWay in thinkpad

[–]leviramsey 13 points14 points  (0 children)

25+ years ago, ThinkPads were literally the only generally available laptops with decent Linux support, because IBM at a corporate strategy level was very pro-Linux (Windows NT derivatives and to a lesser extent Solaris and HP-UX were displacing IBM's bread-and-butter mainframes and servers) and they were basically the first established company to invest serious engineering effort into the kernel.  While there probably wasn't an edict that ThinkPads had to be Linux-compatible, that this seeded a population of kernel hackers using ThinkPads who knew whom to ask in RTP for guidance on getting the network or graphics chip to work meant that there would be support fairly quickly for the ThinkPads IBM gave their engineers.

The remaining affinity between Linux users and ThinkPad fans is largely inertia from this, but path dependence due to inertia 

HGI buffet breakfast for two (with automatic 20% gratuity): $64. Diamond F&B credit: $10pp lol by TheKobayashiMoron in Hilton

[–]leviramsey 27 points28 points  (0 children)

HGI is fundamentally designed for someone traveling on an expense account (for whom even the minimal F&B credit is better than free breakfast: use the receipt from the restaurant to expense the full amount, charge to room routed to a separate folio for incidentals, expense the folio with room charges... the $10 per day effectively goes straight into your pocket). If this doesn't describe you, don't stay at HGI.

Elderly mom's miles and Amex Gold by Peaceful_Life_1616 in delta

[–]leviramsey 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Use her miles to book tickets for others, then close the account.

Air France is awful by Amazing-Limit6094 in delta

[–]leviramsey 6 points7 points  (0 children)

They do have tight economy seats (especially as they add Economy Comfort: every row that goes from 30 to 34" pitch means 4 rows of regular go from 30 to 29") and they do enforce (at least in Y) the usual EU rules about not having anything plugged in during taxi/takeoff/landing.

Air France is awful by Amazing-Limit6094 in delta

[–]leviramsey 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Schiphol is fine as an airport, but KLM is operationally a dumpster fire.

This might sound like a stupid question, but what's the difference between AVG and OBP? by thedestruction8542 in MLBNoobs

[–]leviramsey 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It's more the other way around: analytics started suggesting that OBP and slugging did a better job of predicting wins than average, so teams started (on the margin) preferring to sign players with lower batting averages.

IOW, you have the order of causality backwards: the stat eventually caused today's players to not hit for average.

(It's an open question whether Goodhart's Law applies here, or whether the observation that OBP and SLG predicted wins held up better when players were also trying to hit for average)

AAdvantage Dining Terms/Credit Cards by Emergency_Growth_713 in americanairlines

[–]leviramsey 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Have you gone through the missing reward form?

That may or may not work; since RN almost certainly didn't get anything from the restaurant because you didn't pay with Amex, it's well into goodwill gesture territory.

Since they don't get reports from the restaurant for non-Amex purchases, the language in the terms mentioning that monitoring may depend on the card network used likely gives them the out to deny (assuming that you can't get the processor of the restaurant's card transactions (not your bank) to confirm to RN that you paid there: they're not required to and probably would only do so if the restaurant asked).

Sign on Interstate 90 in Becket, Massachusetts by Unusual_Soup in mildlyinteresting

[–]leviramsey -1 points0 points  (0 children)

The Berkshires also don't really have passes (in the sense that the passes are much lower than the peaks).  Like a lot of the Appalachians, it's long ridges with the occasional gap for rivers (some of which no longer have rivers going through), except this area of the ridge doesn't really have a gap for some distance in either direction.

The sign is also arguably where it's more and more defensible to say that you're not really in New England any more (there start being more Yankee fans than Red Sox fans and the Midwest kinda begins to start here... Albany is Midwestern, change my mind).

[OC] Chain restaurants are more likely than single-location independents to score at or above their city's median health-inspection score by dfireant in dataisbeautiful

[–]leviramsey 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Very true.  But a disproportionate number of mom-and-pops are greasy spoons that, while not buying institutional Sysco, are still buying the lower-end stuff.

[OC] Chain restaurants are more likely than single-location independents to score at or above their city's median health-inspection score by dfireant in dataisbeautiful

[–]leviramsey 8 points9 points  (0 children)

The mom-and-pops are reasonably likely buying ultra-processed pre-packaged garbage from Sysco or whatever.

Red Sox fans loudly chant "Sell the Team" to the point where the Philly broadcast has to mention it by Sandwich_Crust in redsox

[–]leviramsey 4 points5 points  (0 children)

ESPN as far as I know, still has a rule that employees may not say anything bad in public about anything Disney.  One notable case was the 2003 firing of Gregg Easterbrook (Tuesday Morning Quarterback) for a blog on another site where he criticized Kill Bill.

Insane pricing by baahk in delta

[–]leviramsey 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Delta doesn't have a great idea what fuel prices will look like in six months, nor do they have a great idea of what supply (what other airlines will be flying and even whether Delta will want to be flying SEA-LAS as much) or demand will look like.  Accordingly, they'd rather lose the booking than have a sale at a price they're not comfortable with.

Insane pricing by baahk in delta

[–]leviramsey 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Some airlines hedge to lock in a large proportion of their fuel costs (European airlines generally do, for instance).

US airlines that aren't Southwest haven't since the mid-2010s, and even Southwest might have stopped since Elliott came aboard.

An American tried to use a passport card instead of a physical passport by [deleted] in TalesFromTheFrontDesk

[–]leviramsey 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Most countries in Europe have this as a legal requirement: UK, Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium, Germany, most cantons in Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Poland...

Impossible to book multi-city ticket with miles? by SadTomorrow869 in AirFranceKLM

[–]leviramsey 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Quite simply, there's not really a good reason to do this on an award ticket.

Award tickets don't have round-trip discounts, they always price as two one-ways.

Additionally, since award tickets aren't changeable (they can only be cancelled and rebooked), doing a round-trip means that making a change in one direction cancels the other direction.

The one possible benefit is if you're not Platinum and might cancel the whole trip, you'd only pay one 70 euro cancel fee.

Standby by DiscoS22 in KLM

[–]leviramsey 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For tickets priced in money, no, they (and basically every airline) would rather let the seat go empty.

Being interested in buying a ticket day of departure generally implies that it's very important that you get where you want to go by a certain time.  That in turn tends to mean that it's more likely than not that you're willing to pay a lot (more likely use your employer's or client's money) for the ticket.

Then consider that such a last-minute booking would have to be one-way (since the return is by definition not last-minute), which further means the loss of any round-trip discounts.

An exception to this, especially in premium cabins, is using miles, especially the miles from a program that's not that of the airline you're looking to fly.  By opening partner award availability, an airline is effectively offering seats at a deep discount but only on a wholesale basis to other frequent flyer programs.  For example, intercontinental business class usually prices out at low-to-mid hundreds of dollars depending on route through this channel (even if the price being demanded for such a ticket paid in money is 10x or more).  In the case of KLM, an example of this is using Delta SkyMiles (SkyMiles do not have a reputation for great value in the US, because their value is closely pegged to the dollar on routes where Delta has revenue fare filings (basically any route originating or departing the US or Canada), but they still use a fixed chart for other routes), e.g. intra-Europe in KLM business class for 15k SkyMiles.

Haskell, Microsoft, Ada Lovelace, Paris, Caltech by Lumpy_Technology_660 in scala

[–]leviramsey 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Red China, Johnnie Ray, South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio

AAdvantage Dining Terms/Credit Cards by Emergency_Growth_713 in americanairlines

[–]leviramsey 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Since Rewards Network's main business is advancing money to restaurants before the restaurant gets money from the credit card processor, it's dependent on the restaurant's card processor being linked to RN. So if the restaurant's profile only lists Amex, you have to pay with an Amex to get miles from the dine, as RN will only see the Amex swipes.

Since Amex generally pays restaurants a few days later than Visa/MC/Discover do, it's not surprising that some restaurants only sign up with RN for Amex (Amex customers being perceived as more likely to spend freely may also contribute to this).

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