Matt Holthe's Fleeting Thoughts

Well, Delaware tried, at least. I posted a few months ago about Delaware legalizing sports betting. It turns out that the feds had a say, and they limited what Delaware can do. According to this SI article , sports betting is going to be limited to 3+ team parlay bets, and only on NFL football. The NFL is the biggest sports betting, but I bet they were hoping for college football, if not other sports. Only allowing parlay bets will end up being better for the sports book revenues - they pay out less overall than "true odds" would pay out. There's no way to tell, but I wonder how much this affects the potential client base. Meaning, if they had only parlays but allowed college football, how much more would that increase revenue? And, if they allowed single game bets but only did NFL, how much would that increase revenue?

As most of you know, I have been a Cubs fan my whole life. So I'm used to disappointment. Anyway, I was hoping for a third straight trip to the playoffs this year. But, after losing two of three at home to the lowly Washington Nationals, I have basically given up on this season. On the plus side, I now live in Colorado, so I also root for the "local" (about an hour away) team, the Colorado Rockies. They are leading the wild card race right now, so I will be changing my cheering focus to the Rockies for the remainder of the season. The Cubs and Rockies don't play the remainder of this season, so that's good for me. Go Rocks!

Starting August 1 (a few days ago), TSA was supposed to be more restrictive about making sure your boarding pass name matches exactly to your valid ID (driver's license or passport). My driver's license/passport has "Matthew Holthe" and I always had "Matt Holthe" on my boarding passes. So, for the flight I just returned from... Frontier (the outgoing flight) was able to change my name without much of an issue - I sent them an email and it was done. United (the return flight) was a much bigger ordeal. I had sent an email to United asking to change my Mileage Plus (frequent flier) account and asking if the flight could change. They changed the account, but they told me to call in to get the name changed on the reservation. OK, no problem. I called in and they said that AmEx travel would have to make the change but they would authorize it. So I called AmEx travel and they said it would be $150 to reissue the ticket. I said, "no, United authorized the chang...