I am on a major catch up mode after my glorious vacation in the Canadian Rockies! This is the TBB Buzz post covering July 24 – 27, 2013. I will eventually catch up!
Thank you for your understanding and patience! If you like what you see here please pass my blog link to others too, thank you!
TRAVEL
Aerial footage of surfers at Steamer Lane, Santa Cruz. OMG, what an awesome video! Makes me want to learn surfing but I doubt I can stand on that board after eating my way through my Canadian Rockies recent vacation lol. Sorry I could not embed here, something wrong with the code! First seen at The Adventure Blog. It is a must watch in my opinion!
Stars and lightning over Greece. By memolition
The Cherry Blossom Express. By Twisted Sifter
Sled Dog Determination in Alaska. By Vagabondish
Know Before You Go: Great resource for international travel by IATA. Bookmarked it! (HT to Frequent Flyer Guy)
MILES/POINTS
The Points Guy wrote “Lessons Learned from a Misbooked Avios/American Airlines Award“. Be careful about this. I must admit I have never had any issues with many American Airlines Detroit to New York tickets booked with Avios points. But this will certainly make me extra careful, you should be too!
Looks like US Air will leave Star Alliance and join Oneworld on January 1, 2014. Wow, that is fast!
ON MY MIND
To catch up, to catch up…
ODDZ & ENDZ
The World’s Most Amazing Treehouses. By Serioulsy, For Real?
For crying out loud, please do not hire this guy lol.
What a catch! On top of a Russian submarine!
This is the Sharknado sequel!
BLOG BUZZ
Extra Pack of Peanuts has a deal for you! For only $199 (from $299, limited time offer!) you get a whole bunch of benefits you can easily find answers to online by using google:-) A commenter asked: “Who are you? How dare you claim to be an expert, selling information that is not originally sourced and is all free online what a waste of money. You pollute the Boarding area hope page with garbage advertising like this, how shameless“. Travis responded well by saying “hey, most of this stuff is indeed free, I just put it all together, you are free not to buy”. True…Amazing how this quirky hobby has become indeed big business now. I don’t like and I know it is a fact of life we have to live with…
Randy Petersen interviews Gary Leff on his experience taping the Colbert Report. It’s the look Gary, it’s the look! And Ben’s (nut aficionado) Top 5 Nuts. Southwest, really Ben? Like you have flown them lately? Fun videos, thanks guys!
A fantastic article by New York Times: “Travel Blogging Today: It’s complicated“. Must read for all travel bloggers! Wow, talk about conflicts of interest indeed!
Welcome back! Missed your buzz posts, wonder how you managed to go through 3800 feedly posts 🙂
It was 5,841 when I went back into Feedly. How? Well, how about not sleeping:-)
Oh, I am still going through them lol.
Those pictures are awesome! Welcome back George. Thanks.
Thank you! For some totally absurd/insane reason, I missed doing them too;-)
I have missed your posts. Typically, you are the first thing I read when I get to work. Since you have been gone, I have been forced to start actually working earlier than normal. Now, I can go back to slacking off for the first 30 minutes.
Slacking off is way under rated you know;-)
Thanks!
The big/HUGE “gotcha” in booking award travel is what I call “the infrequent user problem”. If you do a task only once in a while, you never really learn how to do it efficiently. When it comes to award booking, there are so many little “tricks” to squeezing out value that, unless you are very familiar with it all, you are bound to not do as well as those guys that do this every day.
I’m not saying that EPoP is claiming to teach you exactly how to book tickets “like the pros” but, if he is, that’s really kinda misleading. Yes, you can book great award tickets after a lot of reading up on the subject and learning some of the tricks but will you ever be as good at it as those guys who do it everyday? No way. I don;t know about you, but I don’t have time to learn how to use KVStool (or whatever) for my 2 or 3 award bookings that I do for myself every year.
I don’t know if there is a good way to gather all of the tricks and tips about award booking for the do it yourself, so I’m just musing here….
But did you get where you wanted to go at a reasonable rate? I’m not reasonably concerned beyond that point; you’re still sitting in a metal tube.
The EPoP offer is targeted for the same people that pay for award booking services: rich, busy people and scared or ignorant
suckersnewbies. Probably just the latter; the former may not read EPoP.Hey, George while you were gone:
Jason Steele reviewed the pre-paid fee-laden Rush Card at TPG (spoiler: not right for anyone), Lucky became slightly more self-aware and renounced excessive mileage runs, Milepoint premium memberships started expiring, surprising observers like me who thought they were lifelong, and well over a half-dozen people posted comments at F2B. Something about home improvement cards happened and then left
suckersslower readers with ordinary Home Depot cards in their wallets. The Southwest card bonuses were all bumped up at the wrong time of year to get them, but, as they say, if you have the Chase links, make the linksade…. Oh, and the SPG Amex 30K is coming back this week.Saverocity went to Sri Lanka. Miles to the Wild went birding in Africa. “Wow!” MileValue went to the FCT in Frankfurt, and for the first time a blogger noted this unknown hobbit hole. Nomadic Matt was on Lifehacker today.
Just add Google ads, George.
Reading less on this hobby because a) driving out to 7-11 and Wal-Mart to get $20 worth of points is silly, or getting a $15 card for $500 in Visa gift cards is silly, and b) the ranks of spoiled adults whining are making me roll my eyes too often, driving up my ophthalmologist bills.
The constructive part of criticism: more bloggers should go to places on my personal bucket list: KNO, JZH, POL, TNR. TIA.
harvson3: Missed you right on summaries;-)
I did not get the message about the Milepoint premium memberships expiring. That looks like an AA move on them “your miles are good for life” move!
Loved the MV reference, I am still laughing “for the first time a blogger noted this unknown hobbit hole” re: the FCT in Frankfurt!
A fellow blogger told me the most she made per month on Google Ads was $1.12. Most months less than a quarter. I think I should not have them attack my readers’ eye sockets:-)
I had to look up three out of five airport codes you wrote. One day I may get there. I am aiming for Maui next year for a family trip.
I had Google Ads for the first couple months of my blog. The $1.12 sounds about right. The problem is that most people use Adblock Plus if they have any brains at all. I tried to get my clicks up by getting my personal Facebook friends to click on the ads and also using my cell phone browser which has a different IP to my laptop to click on the ads and got banned from Ad(non)sense.
Thanks for confirming what I figured in my very limited research. Ad sense is Ad(non)sense, like it:-)
bluecat: I hear you and I am with you. I alway said “I excel in earning, I suck in burning” lol. I played with KVS some years ago, it was quite a traumatic experience:-)
I like all the new award booking services, it should bring prices down. I still refuse to do it because, well, I am the expert damnit:-)
To be fair, my Africa trip was from 2009, before I had a blog but my parent site Feathered and Free has been up since 2008.
Welcome back George, hope your trip was awesome! Love the treehouses except the mirror one which is dangerous for birds. Next week I will be in a treehouse in Belize. http://www.parrot-nest.com/ I’ll be on the road for a month and have posts set up to post once per day as I probably won’t have internet much. We will be in California and Hawaii in Sept on the way back to Australia. I have a few days in Cali to manufacture some spend-if any of the deals are still working by then. I have a Bluebird (yes, the plastic kind). Just approved for Chase Freedom, Ink, Amex PRG, Citi AA. Still waiting on Barclay’s Arrival.
Harvson3, I hope you are patient because I will be in TNR in 2015.
Fantastic. Look forward to being there vicariously.
Parrot nest looks like all kinds of fun. We loved Belize—cave activities are really unique–and hope you do too!
Did cave tubing in Belize. Great site but my butt was sore for days:-)
@Tara: Sorry about the mirror house, I was not sure which one to pick!
The only tree house I every stayed in was a tiny one kids in the neighborhood made at a vacant lot. Did not last more than a week. It was very cool.
Nice job on the cards. I need to get back in the game…Still on major catch up mode but getting there gradually.