Dear United Airlines

When you make me pay for the internet in the SFO lounge, I feel like you don't value me as a customer. When you try to get me to pay for it in SAN where there's free internet throughout the airport it makes me think you think I am stupid. Please stop being soulless schmucks. Ok, thanks.

Small pleasures, Vancouver edition

I am sitting in the lounge at Pearson about to hop on the early flight back to North Bay. I flew the red eye from Vancouver.
I am just coming back from the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association. It was a great time. I stayed with Daniel's" family in Vancouver and we spent a good bit of time checking out the city. I look forward to moving there in September. Indeed, I checked out Green and it looks quite agreeable. And I finished up the visit with dinner at Kits beach with the Cynic in Chief.
As importantly, we held our workshop on experimentation and it was a smashing success. I cannot really say I ever read a representative sample of the work read at the CPSA. A lot of it doesn't interest me to begin with and a lot which does seems a bit old. Experimentation is another story, so I was thrilled to spend a day listening to people talk about their projects and then to hear great academics discuss the work. We finished off with a big dinner at Daniel's house after which James Fowler gave a great talk on genetics and politics. Small pleasures, all.

Is Air Canada double ticketing?

I actually like Air Canada. I've taken twenty flights since January, all of them on Air Canada (or a SA partner). They've all been pleasant, and their staff have been helpful (for instance, when I missed a connection mostly because of absentmindedness).

But today I was booking a flight to Chicago in two weeks. Air Canada offers the cheapest direct flight from Montreal. The indicated price with taxes and fees was $511. But then, just as I was about to hit click the price jumped to $554. I don't understand why, and I don't understand how this is different from double ticketing, a fraudulent practice in which stores "mistakenly" put two prices on an item but insist on charging the higher price at the register.

It's hard to know what to do in this case. Do I wait until I can talk to someone at AC, or do I book and then complain and hope to get the difference. If I do the first, I risk a higher price. If I do the second, I risk no refund of the difference. Damned if you do...