Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/06/29/pricing-truck-rentals-budget-vs-penske/
[Notes from my move from Brooklyn to Mountain View, CA in July 2010. We rented a truck and towed a car. We drove via I-80/I-70. We stayed at Motel 6 when we could, and I asked my Android GPS to avoid tolls, especially East of the Mississippi.]
When I moved from California to New York I went with Budget Truck rental, based on price. It went well enough. This time I’m going with Penske, based on my sweetheart’s AAA discount. Penske’s web site is more polished, especially the “enter make and model of car to be towed” interaction. Today I received a 20% discount coupon for Budget. I made my reservation and was pleased that the price came out lower, until I reviewed my Penske reservation and saw they had included tax in their total. Budget did not. It also looks like Penske applies the AAA discount per-item, where Budget’s discount was only on the truck itself.
| Item |
Budget |
Penske |
| Discount |
20% coupon |
12% AAA + web discount |
| 10-day one-way 16′ truck rental |
$1,291.20 |
$1,250.06 |
| Tow Dolly |
$185.00 |
$264.00 |
| Hand Truck |
$35.00 |
$17.60 |
| 2-dozen furniture pads |
$54.00 |
$26.40 |
| “Cost recovery fee” |
$33.00 |
| Total |
$1,598.20 |
$1,558.06 |
Notes:
- Penske applies “web reservation” and AAA discounts to the truck rental.
- Budget coupon code ON113 for 20% off Sun-Thu pickups registers as “AARP discount.”
- Budget applies a “web reservation” discount of around 10% if you don’t enter a coupon code.
- Penske applies the AAA discount to tow dolly, hand truck, furniture pads.
- Budget’s tow dolly is cheaper.
- Penske hand truck and furniture pads are cheaper even before discount.
- Penske hand truck and furniture pads seem perfectly reasonable, where Budget looks like they’re padding the price.
- Budget tacks on their “cost recovery fee” after you enter your credit card to make the reservation, with a vague explanation that it is standard practice in the industry.
- Budget adds a refundable deposit of $150.
- Penske includes taxes in their total, making their total appear higher than Budget.
4 Comments
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/06/29/hope-we-dont-run-out/
“We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature’s inexhaustible sources of energy — sun, wind and tide . . . I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”
—Thomas Edison
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/06/28/cat-house/
Maggie peers out from the Cat Ottoman.
Yes, we have a “Cat Ottoman.”
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/06/27/ken-robinson-ted-talk/
Trying to get your week going? Can’t quite find your groove? Try and spend 20 minutes with Ken Robinson.
Lots of good humor to deliver a simple and important message. We face an important problem in that we designed our primary education systems to build conformist factory workers. As we rocket ever faster in to our collective future, what we’ll need more than ever is the capacity to formulate creative solutions to our new problems. Kids start out creative, then we educate the creativity out of them. We need to do what we can to help our kids grow with access to the various disciplines which move them, so that they can realize their potential as 21st century human beings.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/06/26/medical-consultation/
I bet that bear gets hungry some times. But since he moved to Palo Alto he's a big sushi fan, so this lady will be okay.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/06/24/hello-my-name-is/
This printer is in the big leagues now!
“My friends call me Figaro.”
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/06/22/to-change-a-lightbulb/
How many municipal employes does it take to change a light bulb? In Mountain View, CA, it apparently takes two.
This seems reasonable to me.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/06/21/pretty-caltrain/
Sometimes, the tail end of the newer trains look to me like a tugboat.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/06/20/tire-failure/
You don't see a bike tire do that very often.
For some time I had noticed and been avoiding the weird bulge in my rear bicycle tire. Finally it gave way on my commute. The threads inside the tire appear to have been separating, and I guess I hit something sharp at a weak spot.
I put on my spare tube and made it home. I have since replaced this tire with a knobby road tire, paired with a puncture-resistant inner tube and a puncture-resistant liner. If I never have to change a bicycle tire again it will be too soon!
2 Comments
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/06/19/pie/
Mei's folks were in town for Father's Day, so she made him an Apple Pie, and a pork roast, and other delicious things for dinner.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/06/18/bird-watchin/
Maggie hops up on the porch railing, to get a better view of the bird feeder.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/06/13/cisco-wants-you/
This amusing slide hopefully doesn't reveal any proprietary mojo, other than that some parts of Cisco may or may not possess a sense of humor.
That is Cisco CEO John Chambers as Uncle Sam, in case you are wondering.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/06/12/mixed-fish-head/
Eat them up! Cheap!
Sometimes I like to wander around in 99 Ranch and have my mind blown.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/06/08/can-haz-ipv6/
SysAdmins, check with Tom.
My employer (Cisco) makes IPv6 available internally on a test basis. Once I configured the isatap hostname on my system, all I had to do to get my Ubuntu laptop on IPv6 was:
sudo apt-get install isatapd
I look forward to trying this on a few more systems:
sudo apt-get install isatapd && ping6 -c 1 www.ipv6.cisco.com && figlet -c 'I CAN HAZ IPv6!!'
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