We go on a wild run through the Southwest Rapid Rewards program, learn of bad moves at Delta and Amex, check out a wonderful trip report of a flight in Singapore Airlines Suites, travel to New Zealand, Swiss Alps and Bardarbunga Volcano and check out some awesome age maps, Iraq, and the top 1% in each state.
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MILES/POINTS
5 Things You Should Know About Southwest Rapid Rewards – Travel Is Free Another excellent post on, in my own humble opinion (so, in other words, making crap up), the best managed airline!
Game over: Losing lots of award searches – The Wandering Aramean [Well, this sucks. It appears most of the award searches in the Tools provided by this website are no longer functional. I never used them myself but know many who have been using them. I guess all good things come to an end. Thanks for all the work on this Seth. Well, someone tell him anyway. He has never read my blog #sadface NOT! Some people don’t get TBB’s humor and I am cool with that!
Delta is continuing the squeeze. Effective January 1, 2015 it will effectively limit America Express Membership Rewards transfers into Delta Skymiles to 250,000 miles per year. Well, thanks a lot…we sailed from that ship long time ago! Of course the Delta apologists will find excuses once again. And the credit card salesmen would love to sell you Delta Amex cards all the time!
On top of that, the 15,000 Membership Rewards bonus for “spending” over $30,000 on the AMEX Premier Rewards Gold card is also gone, starting with 2015 spending. Boo Amex!
If you are going to do a review of a flight make it like this one or…just don’t! What It’s like to Fly the $23,000 Singapore Airlines Suites Class. Looks like I added yet another blog to Feedly…Will it ever stop or…fold?
4th Quarter 2014 Hotel Promotions Round Up. By Loyalty Lobby.
TRAVEL
The Living Spree – A Summer of Adventure in New Zealand – The Adventure Blog 3 young friends doing crazy stuff in New Zealand. Awesome inspirational travel quotes in the clip!
Hundreds of Mountain Climbers Scale the Swiss Alps for a Monumental Photoshoot – Dashburst These are AMAZING. I am speechless!
The 20 Places Where You’ll Pay The Most For A Hotel Room. Not sure about the prices but the pictures are lovely! Of course we hack them so we can stay for Free!
11 Photos of Iceland’s Bardarbunga Volcano Erupting That Are Just Unreal – Bored Daddy Holy Mother of Boarding Area! Unreal is a huge understatement!
ODDZ & ENDZ
22 maps and charts that will surprise you – Vox Here is one to get you to click on the affiliate link, just kidding. We do disclosures well here but we are shy, really shy about inserting them affiliate links!
27 maps that explain the crisis in Iraq – Vox Everything you needed to know about the clusterphuck that is Iraq. And unfortunately we had a big role in making it that way…
Here’s How Much You Need To Make To Be In The Top 1% In Your State
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Gold medal?
That SQ Suites guy stole photos and text from a bunch of blogs. Supposedly the review has now been changed since he was contacted by the original authors. Not sure he is worthy of your Feedly. There is nothing lower than stealing other people’s work.
I was the one who posted the review originally in yesterday’s TBB comments, and yes, later saw that parts were plagiarized..
Felt bad for not doing the HT…and then I felt better about it 🙂
Not sure what’s changed. Seems the same review to me.
He shouldn’t have ripped off photos from other blogs to post as his own. However, how is his actions anything different than bloggers including yourself taking images from corporations (Hyatt, American Airlines, and others) and posting them on your blog? My apologies if you or the other bloggers have received prior permission to publish the images
Best List of Top 10 Uses of Chase Ink Bonus (MMS vs TPG)
1. MMS (UA), TPG (BA): After the UA deval and addition of US to OW, Avios are looking up. (+1 TPG, +0 MMS)
2. MMS (WN), TPG (Hyatt): Unless your middle name is “Vendome”, per point SW miles may be more practical (plus did you know you can get a companion pass!) (+1 TPG, +1 MMS)
3. MMS (BA), TPG (KE): KE miles too difficult to redeem to be ranked this high. I’ll give this one to Avios. (+1 TPG, +2 MMS)
4. MMS (VX), TPG (IHG): Weak PointsBreak lists recently and high fuel surcharges on VX. Draw. (+1 TPG, +2 MMS)
5. MMS (SQ), TPG (UA): SQ miles are now among the easiest to acquire and SQ Suites are sweet. (+1 TPG, +3 MMS)
6. MMS (KE), TPG (VX): Tough call. Another draw. (+1 TPG, +3 MMS)
7. MMS (Hyatt), TPG (Ritz-Carlton): R/C properties are overpriced and hard to get to even $0.01 in value. Book through UR if you must stay there. (+1 TPG, +4 MMS)
8. MMS (IHG), TPG (WN): Most can get more value from a WN point than IHG. Give this one to MMS for getting the relative rankings more correct. (+1 TPG, +5 MMS)
9. MMS (Marriott), TPG (SQ): SQ behind RC, KE and IHG? (+1 TPG, +6 MMS)
10. MMS (RC), TPG (Amtrak): Do we need rankings for both Ritz and Marriott? (+2 TPG, +6 MMS)
11. MMS (Amtrak), TPG (Nothing): What happened TPG??? I read your entire post and no bonus ranking??? Point to MMS. (+2, +7 MMS)
Winner: MMS by a blow out.
Only 10 items in a Top 10 List? Further proof that TPG is out of touch with his peers.
Also VX = Virgin America, VS = Virgin Atlantic.
I second Shawn – that guy stole a bunch of stuff for “his” Singapore Suites review. It not only came from different bloggers but different posts from the same blogger as well. If you want to follow somone, follow the blogs he stole from. When he finally took the stuff out, he never eve acknowledged his wrong. 🙁
Guys, I usually go to bed and see the mayhem in the morning!
I did not know about the pics about the SQ guy, that is LOW! The ones on the top appeared to be stock photos from the SQ website? And this is him right? I am not condoning what he did in any way of course!
But I must admit I liked the WRITING STYLE!
I will watch out for sure after this. Thanks for letting me know, You guys are the best!
I need to get my act together…probably taking some time off…I hope!
If you liked the writing, follow Andy’s Travel Blog… he’s the one who got most heavily “borrowed” from by the little plagiarizer. And he takes pretty amazing photos too.
I do follow it. I remember seeing a post about pics being stolen but did not read it…so this what it was about! Thanks for connecting the dots. Yes Andy has made it here a few times and do love the photos!
@The esteemed prez of the TTB Fan Club, Monsieur Ramsey – Thanks for the get well wishes. And the tip about the TWA terminal. I’m still a bit under the weather and haven’t read as many blogs as usual so I would have missed it!
@Jed: First first? Welcome, you are now part of a unique group. First requirement is for you to RT TBB’s Amazon link day as much as they pump credit cards. Just kidding!
@ Shawn & @Charlie: Thanks for the heads up, ouch! I need to update the post!
@MilesMath: Thanks for taking the time for this. I could start a cable TV show and have these two “compete”…and me pretend I am Jerry Springer LOL.
@TWA44: I was going to post the TWA piece in the comments just for you two but Ramsey beat me to it. Nothing goes by that guy, absolutely nothing!
If I do not respond to new comments at all today please excuse moi!
In TBB’s defense, if he’s going to remove the SQ guy for stealing others work, he also would need to remove TPG, MMS, MP, MV and many others as well.
None of us want that to happen.
Good point 🙂
To My Dearest George,
Yesterday it sounded like you might be closing down TBB after it’s 2 year anniversary. This would be a very sad day indeed for everyone (except DP). May I be so bold as to suggest that you consider hosting the upcoming GLEFFies, a blogger award extravaganza. It will be held in BLOGGERWOOD, Hilton Head, South Carolina. Originally it was to be hosted by Ricky Gervais but he found a dead horse head under his blanket one morning and has bowed out. You would be a great replacement and a dead horse head in the morning I know will not scare you away. Of course we will cut you in on a share of the $375 pp fee we will be charging for tickets, and a full share of all the other kickbacks we can line up. Please give this offer every consideration. Thank You and God Bless You. Amen……………….Father Ramsey
TBB should start to host “contributors”
He could have the contributors write about his Mother-in-Law. #TBBGate
He could invert the business model, and the contributors could pay HIM. At least if they don’t earn their space with his Amazon link. LOL
He could auction the space off for sponsored posts by blogs on the Ignore list.
Just a few ideas. Already we’ve seen TBB cut way back, breaking standalone posts into parts and spreading them over multiple days. So in a way the train has already left the station.
Lol. Thanks for the great ideas you guys!
>>>>>> Already we’ve seen TBB cut way back, breaking standalone posts into parts and spreading them over multiple days.
You mean you do not want a Gem Comments post broken down to 18 parts? lol
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/taxi-driver-all-stars-strike-pin-up-poses-bizarre-calendar-article-1.1959852
Wow! That husband and wife pic is…unreal! Thanks for the laugh!
I thought it was the funniest trip report I ever read and most of the pictures were of him. Which ones weren’t his, the food?
The original report had a lot more photos of other features and over half were “borrowed” from other sites without attribution. Many of those have been removed. The text has also been rewritten several times – a couple of the Singapore news sites have posted the plagiarized text and shown the minor edits he made to it.
Wow, just wow!
Great links today, George! Loved the Vox maps & Business Insider stuff–particularly “US city with most desirable People” slideshow (i.e. cities that young rich people have ruined!) Thanks!
You are very welcome. Hope to keep posting…as of now, I got nada for Friday!
You should definitely start a Friday interview series of bloggers that wouldn’t be allowed on MMS because they wouldn’t kiss his ass with answers like “my best advice for miles is following blogs such as yours” or lob softballs for him to get an affiliate link in there
The Saverocity folks, Drew, Raffles, MilesNerd, TheHornyTraveler and so on
Added bonus – i bet their answers to questions wouldn’t even suck!
Thought about doing parodies of them and giving real answers with my spin. And then I came to my senses 🙂
TheHornyTraveler? Who could that be?
nth!