We learn about Alaska Airlines miles, how bloggers get free products, fly over London, travel to Wakhan Afghanistan, how we booked a 25k Delta Award Ticket, more how airlines nickel and dime us, another #WestCoastDO review and philosophize about life’s unanswered questions.
TBB Blog Mission: To Entertain. Educate. Inspire. In That Order!
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Alaska Airline Miles Best Program Best Prices (from the first partner award) – Travel is Free Another solid original content post. While others recycle stuff I posted in the last week or two or post repeats (dogs in Hawaii anyone?) this blog just keeps digging into award charts. I also think Alaska will eventually get bought out by Delta or, drum roll for TBB’s outrageous prediction, by Southwest (they are bored and are looking for the next move!). The comments complement the article very well, especially the one by TBB reader PedroNY #hint.
Reflections on #WestCoastDO – The Free-quent Flyer Another solid review of the meeting in Phoenix. The healthy respectful debate with Marathon Man is refreshing for the hobby, instead of this weird angry TBB dude taking shots at other blogs from his pulpit hehe.
How bloggers get free products – The Travel Hack Very interesting information.
How airlines nickel and dime us Great list of all the darn fees!
London From the Air This video is awesome. Give it a click. If you like please click on the Credit Cards tab….just kidding!
Welcome To The Gorgeous Region Of Afghanistan That Has Been Untouched By Decades Of War Photos from the Wakhan Corridor by Benjamin Rasmussen
November 11, 2014: A historic day in the history of Skymiles. I was goofing around for an award RT ticket from Detroit to San Diego in late January for a conference. I have 185,227 miles for exactly this purpose looking to preserve 160,000 miles for that elusive trip to Australia with my daughter flying V Australia (she has 160,323 miles!). I checked the Delta website looking for a miracle. Of course I get a bunch of awards for 32,500 or 40,000 miles. For giggles, I clicked on the one with the best times that suited me for 32,500 miles looking to see what other shenanigans the awful search engine will do to me! And then BANG, there it was staring at my face: 25,000!!!! After falling off my chair and rubbing my eyes I looked at my screen again just to make sure I was not dreaming. It was still 25,000 miles, omg!!! Super dang, I better get to work then and book this baby. Which I did. 25,000 miles and $11.20 taxes/fees. The smell of victory!
Life’s Unanswered Questions – The Motley Fool These are great questions indeed! Just don’t click on the sneaky text ad at the bottom of the article!
Entering Blog Buzz territory, grab your helmets!
My latest round of travel cards – what did I get & how did I do? – Delta Points After a phenomenal play by play of a domestic mileage run on Delta, complete with credit card links, we get another one with just credit card links. Added one non affiliate link, must be so proud of that!
The balloon ride into a cave in Croatia I posted two weeks ago made it into its own blog post at…..Johnny Jet! Should I feel validated?
Evolve Money Now Lets You Pay Bills With a Credit Card! – Million Mile Secrets Hey, this is ancient news! Well, not for this blog. Love the exclamation mark! Reader choi left a comment (why???): “this news broke ground last week, you used to be on top of latest news but lately you just follow other leads.” And here I am with staff of one! For the record, the post had SIX DiscoverIT card links…because one or two was just not enough!
Become a Hero on your trip to Hawaii! – Million Mile Dogs I have lost count of how many times this post about the dogs in Hawaii will be repeated….Unebelievable! And I feel bad when I do a repost…
Earn 500 Bonus Starpoints by Updating Your SPG Profile – The Points Guy Zzzzzzz. Hey, the most commercial blogs are the slowest or what? What the hell are all the staff doing all day? Oh wait, they are massaging the credit card links to fall in compliance? 🙂
And I leave you with two pics of, well, pretty much nonsense. Who cares though…if you laugh it is certainly not nonsense! Whatever.
Need to dial down the length of TBB posts as other life has had one (possibly two) huge developments. #developing
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First? 🙂 now I can go read the post!
I think not reading the post is a prerequisite for being first here 😉
first?
Just missed it I guess
happens around here a lot, thanks for playing along!
Ok, we’re venturing into “who wrote it” over “what did he write” territory. TIF has done some good work, but this was a clearly nothing more than what’s easily available on the AS website and the FT wiki. Plus an excel chart, which we all should have our own by now. Let’s not praise everything someone does just cuz of who they are. He’s good, maybe the best lately, and earned some street cred, but this is a bit over the top imo.
And do you think really think TIF doesn’t know the Pedro stuff? Or he just chose not to say it?
Mark: Fantastic questions to ask and ponder!
I don’t cover airline websites and FT wikis (easy way out) 🙂
Hey, in the sea of crap I see every day I liked someone actually spending time to produce some worthy content, that’s all. He could have mailed in a post about dogs in Hawaii or something. That’s all. I never linked to the Air France Flying Blue stuff as I thought the fuel surcharges were not highlighted as they should have been.
Your last question is KEY to this whole blogging conflict of interest world…if you know what I mean. Sometimes I catch myself thinking this way “If I write flat out how to churn a card/trick/etc will the affiliate compliance people send me a nasty email that I am completely out?” or things of that sort…
I admit it kept me from linking to that Points Centric post about the Business Gold Reward targeted offers playing around with the URL to get…up to 75k MR points.
Anyways, thanks for your thoughts. This is not science by any means. A whole lot of art and biases is involved!
No worries, I’m down. I think TIF is very very good, like I said maybe the best. I don’t roll with AS much or know the details of the hint, although I might be able to guess. Just interesting series of comments there today.
If TIF won’t share “the Pedro stuff”, will someone else?
Sam: See my response above to Mark. Same thoughts around in my head…I mentioned the #hint.
No blogger with direct cc links will post stuff like this anymore…
Which is…well, sad.
Time for more coffee!
Loyalty Lobby wrote about the 500 free Starpoints even after TPG. Will TBB call him out tomorrow? I worry about Mark’s point above, that bloggers Buzz likes get praised and bloggers Buzz doesn’t get zinged no matter what they do. That would undermine the great work that Buzz can do (and used to do) to shift bloggers towards being better.
LL vs TPG in breaking news: Come on, there is no comparison! I was surprised that LL was late to the party on this one but the fact is this guy breaks open more stuff than many bloggers combined! I consider the HISTORY and credibility of bloggers first and foremost. LL is in the Like list and TPG is in the Ignore list and I am very comfortable about these classifications! So, after some time, we see a reversal in the content of these two and (gasp) change in the TBB Blog Review classifications….you will notice it here of course how we praise/condemn 🙂
Now here is something I have been thinking. Being a blog critic has an ulterior motive to challenge everyone to get better and improve this community. And that comes with a lot of flak which I absolutely expect and deserve. But here is what I have been thinking lately and bothers me…
By praising a blogger who is not doing this full time am I making him/her more inclined to spend more time on their blog to justify TBB’s praise to the expense of other more important things in their life? Should I be more understanding towards the true part timers and treat the full timers differently? To this point, I have not made a distinction, I generally stuck to blog content alone. Should I? Perhaps I should not praise part timers and instead get them to do other more important things in their life (e.g., look harder for a real job that will support them instead of spending so much time in their blog for not much money!, etc). I am feeling weird and guilty about this lately…
“Look harder for a real job that will support them instead of spending so much time in their blog for not much money” – guilty! I have my priorities all messed up. Writing blog posts is so much more fun. At least people read those, as opposed to the many resumes I send out daily. It’s frustrating, which is one of the main reasons I started my blog.
As for the LL vs. TPG debate, I was talking to Julian @ Devil’s Advocate and I shared my writing goals: be first and be the best. If I couldn’t be the first, I would at least try to be the best. If I couldn’t be either of those 2 things, I didn’t bother writing about something. No point in talking about things that were mentioned several times before.
Lastly, is there any room on your Blogs you Like list? After meeting a few bloggers face to face at FireSky, any chance for some new additions to your list? *wink, wink*
If I add you to the Like list you would be more inclined to spend even more time on your blog which may prolong the time you live with your parents 🙂
I think lots of us in this hobby have our priorities totally messed up!
I think you should spend a lot more time to look for a good job that will give you marketable skills to last a lifetime and start building your financial future by enrolling/maximizing your contributions to a 401k Plan. As you well know, this blogging world is extremely difficult to make a living. We can’t be all Titans 🙂
This issue has been bugging me lately…a lot. I don’t really need this blog…Yes it is a lot of fun and I like to build things from scratch…but is it really worth it when it comes to the expense of more important things? And the answer is HELL NO! But we perservere…Why? Maybe I should start a support group for all non Titans miles bloggers Wooohooo!
Please no winks in public, makes my reviewer from the pulpit job very difficult to control biases!
Maybe you could somehow end up doing a PBS or Travel Network travel show based upon travelling on points and miles.
No one get upset- I’m not talking about outing all the deals and tricks y’all enjoy knowing/doing but weird me out.
Just…sort of…okay, so you signed up for this loyalty credit card. You’ve earned this much points on this card through actual travelling. Now what do you do for true luxury fun with 500,000 points… You could go through various brands.
Why not? Make it into a true business that earns you points/miles AND earns you actual cash. Plus, hello? TV!
I can’t do it, but why can’t it be you? Seems like a niche that is still available and “new”. 🙂
For some time Randy Petersen has been talking about four different things in the works involving TV. Not sure if they are still going to happen or fell by the wayside. And I can assure you TBB’s face will not near a screen as it is not too screen friendly. TPG’s goal is to do more TV so if there will be a blogger doing this it will be him. Having said that, I thought Gary Leff’s segment on Colbert’s show was hilarious!
Loved the Wyoming wind sock! I lived and worked there during the oil boom, and the wind is no joke. The locals said they liked it because it kept the Californians away (sorry, just repeating what they said.)
Lol. I thought it was TBB worthy, glad you liked it!
It’s rare I point out MMS but Drew’s Alaska post largely covers topics MMS addressed several months ago. And MMS went much more in depth on the nuances and pitfalls.
http://millionmilesecrets.com/2013/12/17/what-can-you-do-with-50000-alaska-airlines-miles/
One thing that raises a flag in my mind about Drew’s blog is how little it references the rest of the miles and points community. Some things are original, but many are topics well covered and known by others.
Greg or is it Gary? Gary posted the same remark on Drew’s Alaska article yesterday. …………….Greg/Gary what are your thoughts about people who leave room service trays in the hotel hallways and they don’t get picked up right away? Are you a Titan?………………………………..48 hrs. until Dumb and Dumber To, I am already on line at the theater.
almost forgot……… Maybe Drew wrote that 2013 MMS article you are referring to. Remember Authorgate 2013…
I would be surprised if that was not the case 🙂
Wait…So I put the two blogs content side by side and I get these reactions:
TIF: Hmm, interesting, hey I could learn something new here, comments add to it, yeah sometimes they get long winded…
MMS: OMG, barf, you added 25 cc links to a stupid question someone asked, help dogs in Hawaii again, loooong trip reports in 39 parts (at least mine are long but one & done….maybe that is why I am no Titan!), mothers in law who come and go, too many pics and arrows, moronic comments…
Spare me please….
I do appreciate you taking the time to comment here and thank you. And thanks to Jake from State Farm, aka Lloyd…Can’t wait for Dumb and Dumber too! Jeff Daniels lives in my area by the way, he is the dumb one and so proud of him to be from the area lol.
21st!!!
Thanks for the laugh….Waiting for…”last!’….waiting….
I will be the first one to say, I don’t know much about airline mergers and don’t predict (or tried to) what will happen next. What’s the overall feeling of Hawaiian Airlines + Alaska Airlines, are these distant #5 and #6 have any potential for a merger or partnership? Maybe I just like the idea of 49th and 50th states joining forces.
Curious,
PedroNY
the bigger question is what would such a merger imply for the Hawaiian World Elite Most Distinguished Supreme Commander Mastercard?
No idea really. It’s not like Gary Leff’s predictions have been anywhere close so I just like to throw out wild stuff over here 🙂
>>>>>>Hawaiian World Elite Most Distinguished Supreme Commander Mastercard?
LOL
Coincidentally, I’m going to London next week for work-related reasons. I’ve never been. I’m in search of a good curry near King’s Cross.
What’s the story behind your morning tweet about “fans?”
Good luck with your new real-job projects. I have some thoughts on the second anniversary of TBB, but no time to write them out.
Pop a question over at Head for Points, they may know about curry. I LOVE curry!
The story is, well, developing. Nearing the point of, well, developing…
I need to up my game now so this baby will drop a step back…I know I said that before…Or maybe I should hire me some help…I will ponder all that in my trip to Hong Kong in 3 weeks drinking wine in First Class (champagne is not for me) in Cathay Pacifc & Thai Airways flat beds. Wondering if I should do a lavatory selfie for amigo Ramsey 🙂
PedroNY-
Is that you? Are you an airport? As Cheech and Chong might put it, how’s the “stuff”, man?
Send me a PM.
PedroNY, send Sam a PM man!
Cheech
To all:
If you applied for a credit card through my site can you please let me know the date and the type of card?
According to the metrics not a single card has been applied for…
Trying to figure this “system” out…
I sent a friend your link yesterday with instructions to apply for the CSP. Will followup with him and let you know when he goes through.
Thank you Neil!
Buzz-
I’ll be hitting your links right around Thanksgiving weekend. I will hit several, though I thought doing 7 in honor of the turkey would be a deserved tribute. Doubt I’ll get to 7, but I’ll send you a trip report, and a dog from Kauai.
Might I really be the first to be a conversion for you? Probably not- ol’ Jed will beat me again with all his (now $80) oil. Depletion allowance keeps a comin’. Damn hillbillies.
Make sure they are the best offers. Need to find that BOP dude (Best Offers Patrol) to be a Managing Contributing Hipster Editor (TPG like title!).
Down with the hillbillies, keep the dog 🙂