I grew up in very rural Minnesota - the county did a great job on it’s roads, and someone (possibly the county under contract?) also kept the township roads clear. If you are in an area that gets snow every year I’d be surprised if the same isn’t true.
Its 250+ miles from me, I’ve never been on their local roads in a snowstorm so I really don’t know how good or bad they do out there.
That’s an impressive commitment to a hobby, and understandable caution.
That was Plan B, Plan A was 400 miles each way! I average between 6-9 500+ mile weekends a year; some of them are three days while a couple are only two days.
In an agricultural state like Minnesota (and mine, Nebraska) roads that are designated Farm To Market Roads often have better maintenance and snow clearing than in cities and towns because there is some federal subsidies supporting ag business. With more cows than people, that area might well be one of them.
Of course getting there might be a whole ‘nother issue if it is 250 miles away.
IMO it sounds like the opposite of enshittification. Non-assigned seating is what’s shitty, I can’t see any benefit to the customer for that. So I may get stuck in a middle seat next to strangers instead of family? Why is that supposed to be better than picking where and who I sit next to in advance?
Have you ever flown SWA? Did that happen to you?
I’m guessing no, because a small party not being able to sit together would only occur if you happened to be one of the last 20 or so people to board, which means that you probably bought your tickets very shortly before the flight. In which case the same thing would probably have happened on a flight with advance seat assignment as well.
SWA boards people by group (A, B, C) and number (1-60) within the groups. One’s position in that order depends on a few factors, including your membership status, but mostly on when you bought your ticket. You can also choose to pay extra (~$50) to get one of the first 15 positions, while they’re available. They also offer family boarding between the A and B groups so that families with small children can sit together.
Furthermore, SWA was pretty much the only airline that used this model, so for regular customers like me, it was a feature, not a bug, because, as I explained, it is much faster: about 30 minutes instead of an hour or more for some airlines.
The Mythbusters cite I linked to does point out that, although open seating is definitely faster, it is also least liked. But I think it is the idea of the process that people dislike, not the reality that SWA has actually implemented and refined, which was their standard operating procedure for 50 years.
So whether you think it is enshittification or not, it was, until now, available for the people who liked it. Now, AFAIK, there are no airlines that offer it, so choice has been reduced. That’s enshittification.
Not if I went out the night before & it doesn’t start snowing until 10am or so. The plan hope was to be there for sunrise; of course when sunrise happens within three hours of when it’s supposed to start snowing it’s typically cloudy so that part of the vision I had in my head for the shot was already shot down by Mommy N in the forecast days ago.
Nit - I believe it’s check-in time, not purchase time, which really sucks when you have a, say 5am flight in that you need to be up the day before to check in at 5am just to get a good spot in the queue
It’s all those “probablies” that people hate. With other airlines you know as you’re booking the ticket where you’re going to be sitting, and might be able to just pick another flight when you find out you aren’t going to get contiguous seats, before you buy the tickets. Non-assigned seating is a gamble people don’t like.
Yep. Which is why there were commercial services to snipe that for you. And SWA sold sniping for IIRC $50 a head too.
All that is moot now.
I never quite understood the rationale that SWA provided when they announced they were going to conventional assigned seating. It wasn’t quite corporate BS-speak devoid of actual content, but it sure smelled like they were doing it for reasons that mattered to them, not the customers.
I’ve certainly ridden a lot of SWA as well as assigned-seating airlines. To me it seems an acquired taste. Anyone who uses it regularly will probably find they like it. I do.
But it may be a large barrier to first-time users. And especially to first time users traveling in a large party AKA “a family”. If you want to recruit loyal lifetime customers, it sure helps to not have customers with kids steering away from your product. It doesn’t matter what the reality of the (in-)convenience of scramble seating is. What matters is the uninformed perception of how the (in-)convenience of scramble seating will be. And it appears that perception is heavily negative.
Not necessarily, with some airlines, especially the budget ones, to choose your eat() costs extra; otherwise they will randomly assign them to you. I don’t know if they try to keep people who purchased together seated together (as much as possible) or not because that’s not a gamble I’m willing to take or getting stuck in a middle seat.
More & more the airlines are treating us like a cash cow; seriously, it helps if you “Moo” to be in Basic Economy. I looked at a flight to somewhere & Economy was more than double Basic Economy; not First or Business, just basic (small b) Economy, which used to be the standard.
Yeah, it has gotten worse over the years.
Yes, I forgot: it’s a mix. If you use and SWA credit card (which I always do), or buy the Early Bird seating (as @LSLGuy referred to), then it’s counted from when you buy the ticket. Otherwise, it’s your check-in order.
For some reason Adobe will no longer send documents to my printer. When I try to print anything and select my printer from the drop-down menu, then press the print button nothing happens. I’m able to print a test sheet, so I know the printer is connected to the computer. I’ve tried disconnecting the printer, waiting 30 seconds and reconnecting it, and even rebooting the whole system, but nothing works.
It’s only pdf files that won’t print; I’m able o print doc and Open Office files with no problem. Adobe Help is useless, particularly since it seems to assume that I’ve paid for the full version, which I really don’t want to do just so I can print something.
I use free SumatraPDF as my default for PDF files, and only use Adobe if I have to enter things into a fill-in-the-blanks file. Never had any print problems.
I’ll check that out. Considering that most of my records (bank statements, credit card statements, tax forms, etc) are in pdf format, I’d hate to lose access to them by losing Adobe.
My agency has a $500,000 deficit due to government funding cuts and I’ve been selected by the board of directors as the determining factor in increasing agency revenue. The pressure on me right now is incredible, and during a meeting yesterday (a meeting in which I requested intermittent FMLA to deal with my son’s ongoing care needs) it was vaguely implied that my job could be cut if I don’t overperform.
Many of you know that my current work situation is not really conducive to winning grants, given how little attention is paid to getting me needed items on time, and how often I’m asked to apply for things we haven’t a chance of winning, thus wasting everyone’s time.
At any rate, I’ve been informed that I have to work five days in office effective immediately. I don’t have the impression that executive leadership has a problem with my work, but they wish to take the heat off themselves from the board of directors with this bit of productivity theater.
When I took this promotion three years ago, I was guaranteed that I wouldn’t have to work full time and that I would have absolute autonomy and remote options and now here we are. Here I am under a microscope. Of course, grants can’t save us, particularly not now when they are more competitive than at any other point in my career because every other nonprofit in existence has also lost funding. But what the hell, let’s try it and see what happens.
I feel strangely detached from it all. It’s my worst case scenario coming true, people are literally saying “this is all on you,” so what else do I have to lose? If they are going to dump all of this on me, the gloves are coming off. I have been writing grants for fifteen years. If these people want to win grants, they need to listen to my expertise, and I am done holding back out of fear of hurt feelings. Things will have to change.
I don’t particularly dread working in office five days a week. It might actually be better than dealing with the constant intrusion of my personal life. I tend to do better with structure. So I’m not fussed about that. But the idea that I’ve somehow not been performing adequately when I’ve been ringing the alarm about decreases in federal funding for the last three years and nobody was responsive to my sense of urgency just pisses me right off. After ten years of service, I’m supposed to prove I belong here? Fuck that noise.
This is all bringing out my competitive spirit. I’ll show you some fucking grants.
How many times have you told the BoD and the executives exactly this stuff?
Or tell them you’ll need firing authority over anyone else who doesn’t agree w the BoD directive that your work is now the most important work of the organization. Then clean house with great relish. You know who needs the axe; you just need the BoD to hand it to you and tell you to let 'er rip!
You can also open PDFs in the Microsoft Edge browser (no add-ons or other software needed because it has native support for PDFs) and print them. It’s clunkier than Adobe Reader, but it won’t require you to go get any other software. Assuming you have Windows, you should have Edge already.
Speak the fuck up.
Say: “I want to bring in revenue, but
Edit: I know you’ve had these conversations already, but it’s worth doing again.