I bring you eclectic content I find online such as living in airports, the improved child tax credit, US Special Ops, yet another credit card sales frenzy, drive and listen around the world, look at volcano pics and watch the action live from Iceland, more stimulus free money on the way, we address the Obamacare changes in the latest Biden law, the best Covid-19 coverage, an amazing short film and much more!
TBB Blog Mission: To Educate. Entertain. Inspire. In That Order!
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TRAVEL
I may have posted this before: Drive & Listen. Take a drive somewhere in the world while listening to radio…
Fun list! List of people who have lived in airports.
This blogger went to Iceland and then you would not believe what happened next! I Took Pictures Next to the Erupting Volcano in Iceland. You will definitely find me nowhere near an active volcano! And you can watch the action live.
PERSONAL FINANCE
The latest on the stimulus checks, be on the lookout for those weird looking envelopes containing debit cards! IRS Says More COVID Relief Payments On The Way, Mostly By Mail This Time.
We are having several tax goodies to account for. Among them is the improved Child Tax Credit: Who Gets $3,600? Will I Get Monthly Payments? And Other FAQs?
This is a must read for all with Obamacare or COBRA policies. Add anyone with unemployment insurance compensation too: Client Opportunities for Health Insurance Coverage Under the American Rescue Plan. There is a LOT in here, amazing how much help a socialist government can provide its most needy citizens! #sarcasm
COVID-19
Let’s just keep vaccinating, let’s not screw this up too! Why you can’t compare Covid-19 vaccines?
We stick with the vaccines mode…Who Can and Can’t Get Vaccinated Right Now. Here is the archived link.
We all can not wait for this! The Pandemic is Ending. Here is the archive.is link.
This is up to us. Disease modeling is complex, but the virus isn’t. As Lipsitch put it, “Epidemiology of infectious disease is, basically, one case becomes two. It’s not rocket science.” The virus itself is so simple as to not even qualify as a life-form. It’s a string of nucleic acid in a rudimentary shell. Its behavior is absolutely predictable—almost mechanical, like gravity. The complicating factor is us. And unlike the days of variolation, we now have many extremely safe and effective vaccines. We have modern technology to produce extremely effective masks and indoor ventilation systems. What must be done to save lives is just as clear as the mechanics of the virus itself. The path before us should involve extremely straightforward decisions. All we have to do is decide to make them. I have no certainty that we will.
ODDZ & ENDZ
Feeling Through is a short film about a late-night encounter on a New York City street leads to a profound connection between a teen in need and a man who is DeafBlind. It is slow but deeply moving. Instead of doing senseless acts of violence how about we all do senseless acts of kindness instead?
This article goes deep into US military matters: American Special Ops Forces Are Everywhere. They’ve become a major military player—and maybe a substitute for strategic thinking. Link.
Amazing shots! 30 Top Wedding Photos By FdB Photography Awards.
MILES & POINTS
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If you do not see a credit card with my affiliate links, perhaps I could refer you? Contact me!
This section is about my hobby addiction of collecting frequent flyer miles and hotel points since the early 1990’s! Feel free to skip this section and parts of the next one if this is not for you.
Newbies: This section will focus on helping newbies going forward. For more advanced miles and points hobby stuff, please see the next BLOG BUZZ section, thank you.
You may have noticed that all the bloggers with credit card affiliate links have been in an orgy of posts trying to sell you the Chase Sapphire Preferred card that now offers 80,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points. As of this time I do not have an affiliate link. I should get a referral link in the near future I hope. So, if you wanted to help this blog I sure thank you. If you can wait for my referral link I will certainly appreciate it. If not, please give your click to a blog you want to support.
The Chase Sapphire Preferred card is a solid keeper card imho. We all have it in my household except my 18 year old daughter. And we keep it every year. The earnings rate is decent, it has had excellent Covid policies and I like to transfer my points out to United and Hyatt (and sometimes Southwest). The Chase Sapphire Reserve is the bank’s premium card soon to cost $550 per year. It now offers a signup bonus of 60,000 points and it is available with my links. In my opinion, this card is over rated. No I am not going to fake my enthusiasm so I can sell them to you…no wonder my blogs’ credit card conversions totally suck lol!
But of course you can not get both Chase Sapphire cards together. I agree with this: Should You Get the Chase Sapphire Preferred or Chase Sapphire Reserve?
If you have any Chase co-branded card there may be a way for you to register for several spending based promotions: Chase 5x & other spending bonuses Q2 2021: Hyatt, United, Marriott and more cards [possibly targeted]. This is the Chase direct link to try by the way. If you do register, make sure you check the dates are indeed for the 2nd quarter of 2021!
I do not use the Chase Travel portal, even when it makes sense for cheap tickets. Why? Because my experience has not been good. At all. And when you read something like this How Chase Really Let Me Down with My Travel Booking you will realize why it can work against you. You know, American Express used to have amazing customer service. Chase customer service used to be fine too. It just looks like all banks are really deteriorating when it comes to customer service. And of course Citi is in a world class of suckiness when it comes to this and it is not even close!
BLOG BUZZ
We are now entering BLOG BUZZ, a section for advanced hobbyists and veterans of this fast imploding hobby and also a section where I go on and on about some stuff that happens in my life because it helps me feel better about myself.
I am no longer recommending the Matador Network site for travel. I also deleted it from the Blogs I Like list. The reason? They just started selling travel rewards credit cards too…Just what the space needed, another credit card sales site smh! That now makes 40 44 the blogs I have wiped out in my Feedly RSS list, hooray! Any eclectic travel blogs/sites I should be following?
Update on my running walking: I continue physical therapy sessions. I am now walking at least four miles a day and the pain has subsided and I know I can start running (slow) again but my physical therapist wants to wait one more week. I have a half marathon race in Toledo on April 27 which had rolled over from the canceled 2020 year. No way I am going to run it but I am thinking maybe I have enough in me to walk it or even jog in parts of it. We shall see what happens until then.
My mother in Greece finally got her first vaccine dose yesterday, hooray! We all have had our first dose in my household now and counting the days for dose #2.
I am very bored of this hobby as I have wiped out so much I used to read…Or am I getting older, as in…evolving?
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Every day I get at least one email like this. Every day I delete them…
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Hi!
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We are a content marketing agency, and we’d be thrilled if you’d allow us to post relevant and non-promotional content on your website. You can help us by placing an article with a do-follow link on your site.
We make payments through PayPal or Payoneer. We look forward to having a long-term relationship with you.
We’ll be happy to hear from you soon.
Kind Regards
…
I was always slightly curious about how much those people would pay, but never curious enough to respond to them.
A few times I responded when they asked for my price with $1,000 and…never heard back from them obviously 🙂
That article on unemployment, the affordable care act and COBRA could be life changing for some people! Wowza! Thank you for posting that! I love reading your blog! : )
And that is why I posted it as one of my goals with my blog is to save someone’s life 🙂
And thank you for the kind words…If it was not for them this blog would be gone years ago.
Your comment about the Matador site made me wonder; is there any website left that posts real true reviews and ratings? I used to trust tripadvisor, but now there are so many obvious fake reviews on there and every hotel seems to be a 4.5 star place. I now filter to read the low star reviews to try to get an idea of what it might be like. Of course I do realize some people are expecting 5 star service for a place with a budget price. Any suggestions?
The state of online travel sites is just plain awful right now…And this is the reason for my question, I was asking for help because I am running out of worthy travel blogs/sites to follow anymore…I had a link to a Matador Network link about pink beaches in this post but I deleted it after back to back Chase card pump posts….it was like reading The Points Guy or a bunch of Boarding Area blogs so many bloggers are looking up to—->kissing their asses.
Anyone?
Thanks for the link to the Iceland volcano article! It is good
to remember trips and to think about new ones.
Right now…I am thinking at the current rate of non $ clicks I would start laying off staff…oh wait, I have no staff. When I start traveling again this site would post sparingly because of that balance of $ and costs is way off, sad!
Good job on sticking with the physical therapy! Keep up the walking and PLEASE do not rush into the running again as re-injury is so easy to do!
I am glad your mom got her first shot! Waiting for my second as well, but not until 4/7. I am planning to be on a road trip to… somewhere before end of April! I am SO tired of not traveling, but for now air travel still seems crazy and places I want to go are still having trouble. So I shall wait.
The points gathering thing has become more, shall we say, boring, lately for me as well.I have been accumulating but not with much effort or even caring. No travel and a lot of doors for good points earning have been dying, for me at least. Where I live there is not easy ways to burn through GCs and other things have been closing down. I think mainly the hassle is starting to get to me. I’m 64 and am losing interest to some extent.
Maybe when things fully open I will get back into it, but with lots of down time to think of where I want to go AND what I want to do, I am not too sure.
Take care of yourself and stay safe!
Thanks for the advice, it really helped me to…hold off from running and let the healing continue!
2nd shot on April 6, fully vaccinated on April 20, may go for a road trip to…Chicago 🙂
Even after getting rid of so much crap in the latest cleanse I still run into the main blogs on twitter, just relentless credit card shilling, hideous clickbait shocking video posts and a whole lot of just unimportant crap…It is a really sad state….just as bad as me trying to get some revenue for this blog lol. I guess I could answer some of those sponsored post emails 🙂
Watching Spain vs Greece first World Cup soccer qualifying game!
It took a couple of weeks but Hyatt points and nights are finally posting on our accounts!
The 5k for the February 50 Visa transactions posted today in two accounts.
Chase owes son a night for the December spending one…and it is a clusterphuck and…I am beginning to suspect I may have not registered him (I got mine)…#developing
Hey George, time to move out of Michigan, so many brainwashed morons in your state
https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-health-watch/these-five-michigan-residents-getting-covid-vaccine-hard-no
For a moment…I thought that was Florida. Can you imagine family members reading this, so embarrassing, wow!
Confession to all: I am missing the Amazon link. The few dollars acted like a little psychic stimulant to keep this blog going. Only two conversion this month and a few Paypal donors. And just lost another subscriber. I mean, this is not even pretending to be a business anymore…
In the meantime yesterday, OMAAT posted 8 times. Four were pure credit card sales pumping posts (probably written by a lowly paid ghost staffer), one post involved breasts, one post about Finnair buying 19 EV planes, one post about Air New Zealand flying somewhere and a review of a Four Seasons…I mean, WTF am I doing here huh?
This blog is about to fade away…
– Finally scheduled a vaccine appointment. Turns out Walgreen’s desktop version doesn’t show available appointments. The phone app does! Got to love computer engineers!
– Spain had a bad day at the office? Or does Greece have potential to reach the WC?
– Biden doesn’t have a plunge protection team?
– SD unemployment rate is 2.9%. If only that state was as populous as California.
– Resellers will benefit from the Suez canal “crisis”
I was able to get my first one scheduled for next week as my state is opening eligibility to all over 16 years of age. When I put my zip code (within 10 miles) in at Walgreens it showed nada. But when I changed it to a suburb (well within 10 miles of my zip code) of the city I live, found several options a short drive away.
Obviously no idea how repeatable this will be for anyone’s specific circumstances but may be worth 2 minutes of playing around with to see if anything pops up.
Non sequitur – I have an award flight booked with my remaining Sky Miles and notified price had gone down. With a few clicks in the Delta app, I was able to ‘modify’ my flight but select the exact same flight and get the mileage difference back. Perhaps this is common knowledge but was news to me. Either way, it just feels a little sunnier in this lost year to have a vaccine appointment and trip on the books.
I watched the Spain – Greece game. In summary: Spain attacked, Greece defended well. But Spain was uncharacteristically kind of flat and not much imagination to break the Greek wall. In the one counterattack a Spanish defender miskicked and gave us a PK to tie the game. It was really good to see the players cover for each other and play as a team after a very long time. This is a new team, almost every single player plays outside of Greece…and some with chip on their shoulder to prove they belong. It was a point that was a real gift! Of course, it will mean nothing if Greece does not beat Georgia at home which played well at Sweden only to lose 1-0. Last time these Georgians visited Greece they beat us 4-1…Greece has had a rough stretch post 2014 for sure!
It is raining vaccines. Need to tinker with the tech, the shots are out there!
Plunge protection team: Kamala…to fix the border…oh boy.
Amazing how many futurists predicted a Suez canal disruption hey?
Good to see that on the Delta app…But just be prepared for a devaluation orgy, it is coming…Maybe I should burn some miles to at least get some trips on the books. Malaysia opened up, wife wants to go see mommy…have some Singapore miles expire this June…it is like a repeat of 2020 burning lol.
One of my clients called. They are really into traveling internationally. Fully vaccinated now I ask them if they have any big trips on the books? Yeah, we are driving to Myrtle Beach to see family in June 🙂 And that’s that.
I have some amazing content ready for the next TBB post….Cutting out so much crap from my life, focusing on the real gems.
Found a Delta card while walking yesterday. Tracked down the owner on Twitter and met to give it to him. Kind of felt good…we talked about the good old Northwest days lol.
Reader emailed about a Chase Freedom Flex to help out the blog…I really appreciate that!
For TBB readers, here’s a free trick that might unveil a path to vaccine shots.
Here in Colorado, large hospitals have patient portals on which you can access your medical info, check your doctor’s notes, etc. normally people sign-up for these portals when they’re being treated by a doctor at the hospital.
However, some hospitals let anyone sign-up for an online account. In turn, some of these have vaccine appointments or even send out emails announcing available times.
Good tip.
For Michiganders, Ford Field mass vaccination site is open:
https://www.wxyz.com/news/coronavirus/covid-19-vaccine/mass-covid-19-vaccination-site-opens-today-at-ford-field-heres-everything-you-need-to-know
For some reason, vaccine supply in Ohio is plentiful.