Major Handwaving

Today I payed the idiot tax, and it was steep. I booked a flight a few weeks ago to go to DefCon, from July 30th, to August 3rd. I thought I was doing everything right, got my tickets for a cool $360. Good deal I thought. However, I woke up this morning to find that I had actually booked the flights backwards. Instead of going from Chicago to Las Vegas, I had booked a Las Vegas to Chicago trip. I started looking up how to fix this mistake and found that I needed to pay the very minimum of $150 to change the tickets. I called up Priceline, who was very nice and helpful about it, and found that because I had bought tickets from American Airlines, I had to fly the whole trip with American Airlines. Non-stop only. The ticket fare difference cost me $170. So all told, I have to leave a day earlier from DefCon, and pay an additional $320, almost the same as my original tickets cost. The moral of the story: Double check your plans, and then double check them again. Then have someone else check it. All before you purchase.