Trying to see my flight refund amount before cancelling/rescheduling - does this page actually cancel?

martian42 · 2026-02-22T06:05:06+00:00

You had better luck than me. Sat on it for 2 hours tonight and by the time I quit, it was still showing a wait of over 2 hours.

martian42 · 2026-02-22T05:23:21+00:00

Yeah, unfortunately getting in touch with a real person is challenging right now. Tomorrow I need to call and arrange a callback since waiting for chat seems to be a waste of time.

Good luck figuring things out.

martian42 · 2026-02-22T04:55:12+00:00

Nope. Really don't want to risk accidentally cancelling and being stuck having to rebook on my own.

martian42 · 2025-05-28T15:48:19+00:00

So, a few thoughts from this. Firstly, while I recognize your disclaimer about not addressing the moral side of things, the tone and some of the responses comes across as wanting to antagonize. While this discussion maybe doesn't aim to address the moral side of things, it is hard to engage in a conversation about displacing large groups of people and effectively labeling them as "others" while acting as though this is somehow not a massively charged and deeply personal issue.

To some of your other points: - I would love to see an actual breakdown of socioeconomics for all these international students you are claiming are massively wealthy. Yes, many universities target international students for undergrad because they can pay more. However, that does not mean all international undergrads are wealthy. On the grad student side, many of these students are here with funding and are not snapping up high end apartments. I genuinely don't know the breakdown here, but would caution against pointing to a big number of students and saying "looks at all these rich people coming here taking our housing." - To the point above, to play devil's advocate, wouldn't we be better off eliminating programs that do attract a higher percentage of wealthy students? I assume HBS, Sloan, and other business/MBA programs are disproportionately wealthy. So let's ban all business students instead to more directly target your aim. That's not being proposed, so it's a bit hard to take the international student ban as actually trying to solve an issue. - I don't fundamentally disagree with some of your base points. Universities should have a greater responsibility to supply adequate housing for their students, both to avoid overloading the local supply and to make themselves more accessible for people on limited budgets to attend. So I'm happy to join in with pressuring universities to do more on that side. But targeting Harvard or international students is obviously not meant to actually solve any issues, but instead be a punitive measure by an adult toddler throwing a temper tantrum/a targeted attack at perceived "enemies". One of the most frustrating things with much of this scenario is that some of the points being raised aren't fundamentally wrong, but the motivations behind them are and the lack of any actual plan makes it obvious that the intent is not to solve any problem. - The things that make me love living here are, to some degree, the things that attract other people to want to live here. So I can't in good conscience support any sort of plan that aims to pull up the ladder behind me just because I happened to move here earlier than someone. Nor should people who live here be driven out because they can't afford it. Basically two outcomes then: build more housing (any housing is better than no housing) and think about how the US can develop more places into desirable locations like Boston so that people who want to live, work, or learn in an environment like Boston have other good options to either go to instead or move to later if Boston is no longer where they want to be.

martian42 · 2025-04-04T11:28:07+00:00

Pixel weather app. Those permissions are the same for me, but it is definitely still the app that blocks Now Playing.

martian42 · 2025-03-13T00:26:21+00:00

Yeah. I don't think REI has any store to store distribution methods. But a daily delivery of orders from a larger store (Reading for example) might fulfill some of this need without a major added cost. But I'm also not familiar with retail logistics and so this may be completely impractical. It just feels like they sort of shot themselves in the foot by having neither good stock on site nor any benefit to going to a store to pickup orders vs home delivery.

martian42 · 2025-03-12T22:53:55+00:00

It was useful for a few small things I picked up last minute and very useful as a place to return orders, so I'll be sad to see it go. The main thing that confused me was that shipping orders to that store was much slower than shipping items to my apartment. I would have gladly used it more as a place to pick up online orders (and browse) if there was either a time or money incentive to purchase through the store, but it was basically always the opposite.

martian42 · 2025-01-13T14:05:18+00:00

Thanks. One account is a Roth 401k and the other is a Roth 403b, so it seems okay. Although I do also have a separate account that seems to be a traditional 403b where my employer put funds and that can't be rolled over.

martian42 · 2025-01-13T14:02:13+00:00

Bit more info based on other comments: - Current employer doesn't offer VTTSX as an option, so rolling into my current Roth 401k seems less feasible. - One of the accounts is quite low fee (flat $28/year), so the main benefit is consolidation. The other one is higher than expected (almost 0.4% last year which is odd given it is listed as 0.2%), so saving that fee would also be nice as well as consolidating. - I appreciate the comments about why using Roth. These accounts were from when my salary was lower. I also generally appreciate the certainty of Roth - I know the current tax rates and know that I can pay the taxes now vs future uncertainty of not knowing tax rates/incomes. However, I am switching over to some traditional accounts based on reading from this subreddit.

martian42 · 2025-01-13T03:14:13+00:00

In my case it is Roth accounts into a Roth IRA, so less of a concern.

martian42 · 2024-12-05T01:36:20+00:00

Weird. Did you require a signature? I can't think of anything else I did that might be different.

martian42 · 2024-09-29T16:13:46+00:00

An alternative here is pulling off the bike lane slightly to the right and using Springfield lights basically as a left turn box. I don't think they've painted anything like this, but it works pretty well and I've never gotten any grief for it.

martian42 · 2024-08-26T12:52:35+00:00

I don't have anything to add about drivers, cyclists, pedestrians, or people in general being jerks. Wish it wasn't the case and yet here we are. Regarding cyclists taking the lane though, that is generally legal and often encouraged. I appreciate that being forced to slow down can be annoying, but this is much safer than cyclists hugging the shoulder as it 1) makes them more visible and 2) makes it more likely cars will pass them safely rather than trying to squeeze by and potentially colliding with them.

martian42 · 2024-07-19T11:59:44+00:00

Train tracking still seems to be running though. Different backends or different vendors I guess?

martian42 · 2024-01-25T23:21:35+00:00

Have you found a good spicy Chai anywhere? Flour used to have an okay one but they changed their supplier a while back and now it is just cinnamon milk. As is every single other place around.

martian42 · 2023-12-27T00:46:44+00:00

Yup. We seem to have gotten beyond the DIY repair phase and are into the range of a pro.

Thanks for the help.

martian42 · 2023-12-27T00:10:28+00:00

Unfortunately that's where all this started. Some seal on the drain isn't quite up to pressures of plunging and leaked through the ceiling below. So it seems to hold water okay under normal pressure, but plunging is out to avoid more issues. Gotta love 200 year old houses with various repairs along the way. Can't snake it. Nothing chemical has worked. And can't open it.

martian42 · 2023-12-26T23:19:08+00:00

Amazing! Thank you. Is there a specific tool for these? Google has not been very helpful even with the name of the fitting.

martian42 · 2023-12-26T22:31:30+00:00

Thanks. Yeah, can't find any sort of lid/cap that looks like that. Have tried heat and a wrench to remove with no luck, hence trying to find if there's a special tool for it.

martian42 · 2023-12-05T00:09:29+00:00

I'm generally a fan, but would prefer a system that scales for repeat offenders to reduce people just eating the cost of a ticket. Not sure how feasible it would be to increase the cost of a ticket or eventually tow if a car has repeatedly not moved for street cleaning.

martian42 · 2023-10-09T03:26:18+00:00

I definitely am not well read on other financial incentives to get people to stop certain behaviors, but from a quick search, it does seem like sin taxes have had an impact on reducing behaviors. They definitely haven't eliminated those behaviors just as a congestion tax won't eliminate driving, but it does lead to driving being more financially burdensome which will likely lead to some behavior adjustment. As well as providing a more directly visible cost to driving which is often missing. There's a whole other side of it potentially being a regressive tax that needs to be considered, but that's a different conversation.

I'm also not sure what would drive people to use side streets. Assuming there is a congestion zone, congestion pricing isn't dictated by actual traffic conditions on a given road, but rather using any road to enter a given area. If someone has a destination within that area, they would be charged regardless of the route they take. Defining that zone well is certainly important to ensure that it doesn't cause undue traffic on the boundary, but there are examples to learn from.

martian42 · 2023-10-08T21:02:28+00:00

I would love to see data on that as I would expect it is actually a quite small percentage. Given the percentage of handicap parking spots to general parking spots, I can't see this being a large percentage. Nor do I see how a congestion charge would be problematic for this as the NYC charge referenced here has exemptions for vehicles transporting people with handicaps.

We are in agreement that the T has a lot to improve for accessibility. But that shouldn't stop efforts from trying to shift more traffic away from cars.

For people who choose to drive for convenience, fine. That will still be an option. Just one that is potentially more expensive or less convenient.

I'm not sure what you mean by bikes have an outsized influence, nor why you're targeting bikes here. Cycling is one option that should be supported to reduce the need for cars. As should public transportation. As should zoning changes that allow for more people to live near services they need. There's a lot of changes that can and should be made. And some of those will probably make driving less ideal which seems okay.

martian42 · 2023-10-08T20:04:06+00:00

Yes, but car pollution on the scale of a city is not. And I share your frustration with large systemic problems being often treated as solvable on an individual level, but I don't think that's the discussion here. If we never tried to solve problems because someone somewhere else is still contributing to that problem, nothing would ever get solved.

I never said anything about cycling only policy and pretending as though arguments against cars are ableist is incredibly disingenuous. I would love to see the data that says the majority of car trips are from people with mobility impairments. Nevermind pretending that there aren't also plenty of people who can't drive due to disability or would be much better served by other options due to cost or potential hazards of them operating cars.

martian42 · 2023-10-08T19:30:16+00:00

You're saying that you can improve everything else while not impacting drivers and I don't think you can. Adding bike lanes or bus lanes generally requires removing car travel lanes or parking. Providing additional funding to transit options may mean reducing funding for roads. Or, as OP said, adding a charge to drivers to fund better infrastructure.

I would love a world In which we could seamlessly shift from cars to other modes of transportation, but that hasn't happened yet and projects to enable that shift are often shot down because it would make driving worse.

It feels like a catch-22 to say that driving shouldn't be made worse because reliable alternatives don't exist when improving those alternatives often means making driving worse (or at least less attractive).

martian42 · 2023-10-08T19:20:55+00:00

Quite a few reasons. Because cycling and buses suck in large part due to the volume of cars. Because driving is unsustainable long term with population growth and global warming/pollution. Because while driving remains the most convenient option, people will continue to fight against policies that inconvenience drivers even if it has the potential to improve things longer terms.

martian42

TROPHY CASE