TBB Mission: To Entertain, Educate and Inspire. Aim to at least do one well!
This blog has been a labor of love so far. If you like what you see here, please let others know by passing them a link to my blog, thank you! Enjoy reading it and have a super nice day!
I am serious..pass my link, Just Do It…please 🙂
Going back to daily post…for today at least!
TRAVEL
The Russia Left Behind. A journey through a heartland on the slow road to ruin. By New York Times. WOW! If you are here looking for the next airline mistake fare you are in the wrong blog.
Via Dinarica: Bosansko Grahovo to Bihac and Una National Park, Bosnia & Herzegovina. By The Blonde Gypsy. I think this picture is da bomb! If you are here looking for flat bed and airline menu pictures, you are in the wrong blog!
If you are looking to travel to Tikal National Park in Guatemala, Miles to the Wild has THE trip report for it. If you are looking for the selfie in the First Class bathroom you are in the wrong blog!
18 Striking Images from Space Show Earth’s Rich Tapestry. By Twisted Sifter
10 Insane Travel Challenges From Around the World. Every metro station in Mexico City, every place in Britain starting with Z. Seriously folks?
MILES/POINTS
New Orbitz Rewards program: Move on, looks like crap. I could have inserted a referral link here to make $25. I can’t do this when I do not like the product!
Milenomics is producing some really good content lately and consistently. What I learned at Fincon13 is that short posts work better. And slow down a bit and/or reduce number of posts as you will burn out in this frantic pace. I just wanted to give a shout out that I like your work, you put sweat into it and it shows. Always appreciate hard work and despise carpetbaggers 🙂
ON MY MIND
One thing that came loud and clear at the blogging conference I attended was that short blog posts are preferable. Most people are too busy these days to sit through a long post. Every once in a while a long post is fine of course as the subject matter dictates it. Then, after a discussion with a loyal reader and friend, it hit me when he said “I get to TBB at my lunch time at work and just could not finish the last one”. So, let’s see how you like a shorter one like today as there is just not that much TBB worthy material in a single day! Lord, help me keep it up 🙂
ODDZ & ENDZ
Insane bike riding captured in a Go Pro camera over a 72ft Canyon. I needed to sit down to watch this…
20 Ridiculously Photogenic Animals. By the Blog of Francesco Mugnai.
BLOG BUZZ
Note: This section is intended for long time readers and miles/points addicts who follow the blogs in this space. TBB reviews blogs and tries to entertain above all. Don’t take this section too seriously or personally, it’s mostly entertainment!
I am having a hard time trying to figure out if Points Miles & Martinis likes Shutterfly more than the Chase Ink cards, hmmm. In another post readers were encouraged to click on a link to watch a video. I would be afraid the Chase Ink Bold app would appear and I passed.
I just could not contain my excitement from all the anticipation of the next installment of the Frugal Travel Guy (the blog) Travel Challenge. If you wanted to travel frugally you naturally pick the Maldives. But no worries, you can do this! You just have to apply for MORE cards than usual. How many? Just 9 cards. Yes, you can do this! Piece of cake. We actually don’t give a crap if you do it or not, we just want to earn enough from the apps to give our company CEO a higher bonus 🙂
Every time I make a TBB post I swear to the Lord that I am not going to mention Delta Points (the blog, always the blog!!!). A blog post of 8 lines typing aboard a flight and saying he loves Delta and that Delta flight attendants are the best and that the crappy first class burgers are the best. Last line is to join him on Twitter. You just can’t make this stuff up…
Deals We Like “Do Chase Ultimate Reward Points Count Towards the Southwest Companion Pass?” The answer is No. Of course it did not stop there!
And I leave you with this:
First? 😛
George,
First you say short blog posts are da latest sh!t, then you trash dp for making a short live inflight review blog entry… Tut tut… You sound angry (as Ingy would say ;))
In other news, have you followed the latest on the luggage mega do?
Not sure who but someone had a pointless post today about UberVIP. About 30 lines of mierda to push a referral link. So lame. By the way keep up the long-ish posts. Some of us spend too much time stuck in NYC traffic in cabs and uber and need the reading material.
I think that guy also blamed UberVIP is not VIP at all and at the end trying to tell Uber they need this guy to do consulting for their program (so that the program can make this guy much more VIP).
Keep the posts short – and skip the pics – all we (I?) care about is ripping bloggers (who surely deserve it). More angries is what is needed – otherwise it’s just the same polite “banter” btw sleazebags looking for clicks to their pathetic blogs.
Georgie, I rest my case
case dismissed
You’re out of order! You’re out of order! The whole trial is out of order! They’re out of order!! It’s just a show! It’s a show! It’s “Let’s Make A Deal”! “Let’s Make A Deal”! Hey Frank, you wanna “Make A Deal”? I got an insane judge Whaddya wanna gimme Frank, 3 weeks probation?
Don’t like angries, DO like pix!
That Namid Desert is really something. Am I the only one who saw shapes that suggested stylized horses and Maurice Sendak’s wild things in them? Totally agree about Milenomics. He’s my fav F2B blogger.
I too concur on milenomics… great stuff, clean delivery!
LOL, sorry no first class bathrooms! I supposed I could scare up a used towel if you really want me to!
Give DP a break. At least he foreseeably took your advice of short blog post (8 lines are short!). Oh! no card pimping.
==== went to see what is on DP and back to TBB ====
8 lines of crap is crap. Short blog post is good, short crap is … CRAP
MV’s latest US Airways post almost looked like one of his old-school superb posts
I say almost because it was bombarded with a ton of links to the SPG Amex and the inferior US Airways card
Regarding the NYT Russian post – this is the area between two most important cities in the country. Now imagine what it’s like thousands of miles away… It’s all the same in Ukraine as well. Excellent article that I can now share with my friends when they seem surprised that I never want to go back.
I disagree with Paul – keep the pics. A wall of text won’t do you any good, even if it is a short wall. But you knew that already.
The Russia article was fascinating, thanks for posting. And yeah, definitely keep the pics, I enjoy them!
I agree – keep the pics! How hard is it to scroll past them? Plus, they help break up the text.
TPG complains about PreCheck lines being too long, but of course you should still get it ‘free’ by using his link for an American Express Platinum card (cough, no mention of better offers out there).
He should try the MMS method of trying to cut the entire line by showing your Vanilla Reload card
Good one!
Back after one of the most boring estate planning seminars I have ever attended! At least I got 4 CPE credit hours, coffee, bagels/muffin/fruit out of it, all for free. Thank you Salvation Army (the sponsor).
I will respond in one message because I have been accused that I run up the comments tally by responding to each message 🙂
@Sterling Traveler: Congrats, I knew you can do it!
@Oliver: Ok, you have a point. But there are short posts and then there are eight lines posts! I saw a post about the factory tour, looked interesting. I am behind on blog posts…
@Dginchelsea & @Wany: I am running behind on blog posts…I will look for the Uber post. Next time give me a heads up on who it is 🙂
@Paul: Come on dude.
@ingy: Come on, it is Paul. You zero in on the negative so much. The beauty of the open forum far outweighs the one or a few posters who just like to be negative. Censoring is so North Korean like to do! Just like you ignore aff cc links, ignore them 🙂
@Steve: Getting to the MV post.
@Pacino c.r.: 🙂
@TWA44 and Mark: I call it like I see it. At some point I piss off every blogger out there. It comes as part of the job (unpaid lol). Despite the belief out there, I dish out more praise than rants. I would LOVE to be all praise….cough, like that is going to happen!
@Tara: In this post I think I gathered the best travel blog posts I have featured together in one post! All beautiful, what travel should be all about.
@wany: I go through my Feedly list and just type what comes to my mind. That’s all.
@Dima: Yeah that piece on Russia was really something. I am keeping the pics, ingy loves them 🙂
@AngryLikeThat: I don’t like the handle by the way, pick something less angry lol. These days the big bloggers will do anything to move product.
Keep the miscellaneous photos. I love ’em. “Keep TBB weird!” The Namib desert is incredible. A must see destination. BTW, I had the same reaction to DWL blog post. Answer to title question is ‘NO’. Done.
It’s not just Rene’s posts that are 8 lines long…
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Can you please kindly show/tell DeltaPoints how to Tweet correctly?
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The paragraph-long Tweets are driving me nutty. (I can’t be the only one.)
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I un-followed his account at one point mainly because of it.
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The amount of scrolling that I did dropped considerably as a result.
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While you’re at it, can you give him a refresher on what hashtags are for?
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Adopting irrelevant hashtags does not make his pro-Delta Tweets go farther. #FF #TravelSkills
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Care to expand your mission of holding bloggers accountable into the world of social media, Geroge?
Perhaps you covered this in a previous post. I noticed that HMT and MMS were promoting NomadicMatt’s new e-book. I would be shocked if newbies buy it at the discounted price of $37. If they do, it opens up a new market. Several books exist in this market, maybe ingy should update his “old” book and give those old military folks some money. At least his book was reasonably priced. This one is a rip off. I would take ingy’s word (anno 2008) over NomadicMatt’s any day of the week. NomadicMatt is pretty lost when it comes to traveling. I was reading about his failed attempt to move to Stockholm for a year. With a little bit of prep work (and having been there before) he could easily have figured out that getting an affordable place to stay is a lost cause (hint, if native college students are struggling tremendously to find places to stay, foreigners are unlikely to fare better (exception, refugee)).
@smittytabb: I do not like doing things others do. I like originality. Definitely keeping the pic feature of TBB!
@S&S: I am having enough trouble trying to keep it up in the blog world, I am not expanding into social media! I may not be up on the techie stuff but I was on social media (mainly Twitter) before it caught on. Sadly, I am finding less time I am on it because of TBB!
@ABC: I had no idea Nomadic Matt was into miles! He has made a name for himself in the travel blogger community and always busted his behind to monetize. And, as far as I know, he has stayed away from pitching credit cards.
I thought the price was ridiculously high too!
This stuff gets so outdated so fast it is hard to put in a book format. Blog is better 🙂
If I updated the book it would all be credit cards and manufactured spend and, are you ready for this: GEORGE IS RIGHT. The game changes too fast for a book. No thanks.
Every month the Wounded Warriors get a few bucks from the first one. I’m good with that.
Nope. You’re both wrong. The principles of the game stay the same, even as CC offers come and go and even as banks increase spend requirements. E-books are easy to update, and writing a new edition every year can easily do the trick. That’s what I’m doing right now anyway:) Now, physical books are tougher, but, interestingly enough, his first book is still selling quite nicely.
Good news foilks, Gary is reporting that the 50K Lufthansa offer is back, so now we can get back to MV expounding on the greatness of the card in the form of thesis paper-length posts
“While my link is no longer functional for it, Lufthansa’s Miles&More 50,000 point credit card signup offer is still available”
….. Nevermind