Ambulance pulled up and parked next to sbux while I was outside getting some sun on my face: both the paramedics went in and left the engine running. 
was it your engine they left running? I’ll have to check the signals thread…
Well, I did say “Excuse me” to the lady paramedic so I could place my mug in the to-be-washed basket. She didn’t even offer to hernia check me… 
i’ve learned cop cars (for example) remain running bc they need the battery power for the computer stuff they have in the frint seat. maybe ambulences are similar. or they had a guy in the back
Interesting. The engines aren’t running when they’re parked in the fire station. Do they run a power cable to the peripherals to keep things charging there when parked in the station?
I am currently being haunted by ads for an item of clothing I looked at. Make it stop.
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Just Google something like “bathroom replacement” and they’ll be replaced
This is why when I book hotels or flights for events that I cannot miss I book directly.
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I’ve spent about 4 hours on the phone with their customer service, much of it in automated phone tree hell, and most of the rest of it on hold.
At no point could I get past their claim that “It’s the hotel chain’s fault” even though the hotel chain insisted “It’s Expedia’s fault”
Expedia ultimately booked me at another hotel that’s 10 miles from where I want to be staying, and they ate the price differential, which was less than $100. And I had to pay the initial reservation off today, not next month.
That sucks. I guess it’s better than nothing, but I’m sure that’s no consolation.
A fun suggestion when you finally get a human on the phone is let’s get them on a conference call now.
I want them all to feel bad about their treatment of me, in proportion to how f’ed over I feel. Short of weaponized plutonium, I don’t know how to make that happen.
Also,
- once i finally got to a human, they are in a call center. Tons of other call center people in the background making it difficult to hear
- call center was clearly outside the US and the speakers were not native english speakers, which makes issue # 1 above even more difficult. That by itself is not necessarily the issue, but when they don’t have the conversational skills to convey the message that intend to convey, it’s a problem. She kept insisting that Expedia would pay for the replacement hotel, without clearly being able to convey that I needed to pay off the reservation that they were cancelling. In other words, she was covering the overage on the new hotel price over the old hotel price, but she kept saying that they were paying the whole thing. I even said, “you are not lying to me, are you ?” and she said no. But she was. She just didn’t understand English enough to convey it.
Unfortunately airlines and hotels overbook regularly in the chase for 100% utilization, so even with direct booking you can get screwed. Haven’t had it happen to me yet on a flight, but I have at a hotel despite “guaranteed late check in”.
obligatory Seinfeld clip on the topic of not honoring a reservation:
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If hotels do this they should have a program similar to airlines where they bid for cancellations among those who booked. Eventually, the person who cares the least about the booking and the most about the compensation will take the offer, and everyone will be a lot happier.
The people you need to feel badly about this is some program manager at Expedia who didn’t coordinate the right terms of overbooking with their vendor hotels. I see this as an Expedia problem - they took your money (or were going to), they need to make it right. Not a hotel problem. However, the call center people are making peanuts. They aren’t paid enough to be at fault here.
In my case I got there about midnight and they had no rooms left. Because hotel guests check in in staggered fashion an auction format wouldn’t work like it can at the departure gate.
Note that because I booked the “guaranteed late check in” they were going to charge my card if I no showed.
Yeah, that can be problematic when they stand to make money from rooms that don’t exist.
I can see the issues with auction for hotels, but maybe something where you confirm your reservation 24 hours before, in which case it becomes nonrefundable, and then if there are any overbookings they can start the bidding through emails then? In that case they can get to 100% regularly, but I guess they’ll lose the potential income from non-existent rooms. Which I don’t think they should be making money from. (Well, at least not if it comes with a cost that you might turn someone away at midnight. If it wasn’t for that, I’d say go for it.)
Was annoyed because I didn’t see the difference. Now I do: whether there is an accent on the e in bristol. But are both in fact correct?
(Related but different annoyed thought about Duolingo: generally it accepts answers that are just wrong by the accent as correct, but “you have a typo”. Annoyance increases since in duolingo on a mac, it can be hard or impossible to add the accents.)
WTF is wrong with my dog owning neighbors?
-They don’t control their dogs when you pass by them on the sidewalk. Some are too large for their (small older woman) owner to control
-A few don’t seem to be in any fence at all as they will approach you in the street. They are generally older, calmer dogs that just lick people, but NO THANKS to that either
-Several have electric fences that come up to the sidewalk where they bark/growl at people walking by from a short distance and no physical barrier
-They let them bark constantly at everything from in their yard/fence/house (I cant imagine the abuse their front window takes daily)