If you enjoy reading my blog, please take a moment to let your friends and family know so they can enjoy it too, thank you!
TRAVEL
Live Journal of Vadim Mahkhorov. WOOOOW!!!!
Exploring Dubai from the Rooftops of Buidings: 60-photo blog post. A most fantastic photo collection! Vadim Makhorov again, I think I just became a fan!
Godafoss Waterfalls in Iceland. By The Looptail.
Big Ship in a tiny canal. By Twisted Sifter. Corinth Canal, Greece
Exploding Sky over Polifitos Lake, Greece. By Vagabondish
A Guide to In-Flight Wifi and Power Outlets. By Gadling. Here is the final tally:
- Air Canada: Approx. 18% of aircraft, $14/day*.
- AirTran Airways: All aircraft, $14/day*.
- Alaska Airlines: Approx. 93% of aircraft, $14/day*.
- American Airlines: Approx 78% of aircraft, $14/day*.
- Delta: Approx. 65% of aircraft, $14/day*.
- Jet Blue: Fleetwide wi-fi expected to come later this year.
- Southwest: Approx. 70% of aircraft, $8/day.
- United Airlines: Approx. 8% of aircraft, $14/day* or $4-20 (depending on flight).
- US Airways: About 90% of aircraft, $14/day*.
- Virgin America: All aircraft, $14/day*.
The tallest residential buildings in the world. Cool infograph! By memolition.
MILES/POINTS
Travel Summary explains how sometimes it makes sense to use your Ultimate Rewards points to pay for a cheaper ticket instead of transferring out to an airline (usually United). The ticket threshold appears to be $312.50. If there is a ticket costing less than this, perhaps you should consider paying/using/burning your Ultimate Reward points!
Jeff at Canadian Kilometers did something innovative! He is offering a PAY YOUR OWN PRICE award booking service. I think this is a very welcoming development and introduces some REAL competition to the whole award booking niche (about time!). A LOT of people need help with award booking; several bloggers have made a pretty good and honest business out of this. Unfortunately, even they are slowly turning into credit card pushers…Easy to figure out why of course. Pumping credit card links is TOO easy and award burning takes WORK. But if you develop a certain expertise lots of the award bookings should be cake walks! Jeff: Do NOT extend yourself, maybe do them at batches of 10 people. The key to this service is, well, SERVICE. Communicate, communicate, communicate and give updates of where you are in the process. Actually, I have no idea about the logistics! And we could do without the charitable donation angle…This is just a personal pet peeve of mine, not your problem! And do not neglect your blog of course. Or, maybe you should be studying:-) This is a BIG job and there are only 24 hours in a day!
Frequent Traveler University Agenda is out. Should I stay or should I go? The only speakers I have not heard before are: Hans Mast, Michael Rubiano (all right Michael!) and Nathan Rau. The topics appear to be a repeat from previous seminars. When the tickets go to a single digit count someone please let me know:-)
PointChaser wrote “How to generate $40,000 in Spending Requirements Next Month“. Well, welcome back to my blog. I think this is the first time since you started writing for the Frugal Travel Guy (the blog)? How do you find the time to do all this is beyond me? I could do this if I did not start this darn blog on top of my other job that brings food on the table!
ON MY MIND
Looking forward to the annual Ann Arbor Art Fair DO this weekend. Talking miles/points non stop with fellow addicts. No tickets, no T shirts, no charities, just great conversations among friends who understand you and think you are totally normal:-)
ODDZ & ENDZ
The latest on Cleveland Hero Charles Ramsey. He denies he is homeless and blamed the previous news report full of BS. He did not deny the BMW purchase. And he is trying to be a web entrepreneur. Website tagline: Dead Giveaway, lol. Sadly, he does have a not so good criminal past, domestic abuse…ouch!
It always kills me when I hear others complain about their first world class problems, my upgrade this or my upgrade that, I did not get my pre departure drink OMG, the valet did not open my door, etc etc. Then I look at these guys going to Afghanistan and I shut up, maybe you should too!
You don’t understand Sir, my smartphone is in there, I can NOT go on without it!
BLOG BUZZ
Note: This section is intended for long time readers and miles/points addicts who follow the blogs in this space. Readers not familiar with this crazy hobby could skip this section!
Loyalty Lobby wrote “Wall & Main Marketing Spam“. Here is his conclusion, no comment: “Sorry, but this “deal” just sounds terrible and is nothing more than badly worded marketing spam from MilePoint that claims to have “no business interest in or with Wall&Main”. That doesn’t mean that parties associated with MilePoint “family” wouldn’t have any interest in Wall&Main. Why would they otherwise email desperate sounding crap like this to their members?”
Delta Points wrote about how to take advantage of Delta schedule changes for the 8,789th time!
Jdomb’s Travels, Crazy Sexy Fun Traveler and Planet D have been on a sponsored blog post trip fest. Every post it appears! Wow, must be nice!
Points, Miles and Martinis is giving away…”Points, Miles and Martinis” napkins! Napkins? Not sure if this is more desirable than Southwest drink coupons. Ok, no it is not. I would be embarrassed if I won any napkin:-)
I see more and more bloggers doing series for beginners. Amazingly, they all pretty much deal with, you guessed it, credit cards! Oh, those helpful bloggers trying to get more people to travel for “free”!
Extra Pack of Peanuts went to the World Domination Summit and wrote a decent post about the lessons he learned there. I always thought this was an interesting name for a meeting! I was once given a ticket to a giant meeting with some Sales gurus and “inspirational” speakers. What a load of bologna sandwiches! A bunch of overpaid speakers telling us all “you can do this” crap talk. I always felt uncomfortable in those settings. Either you do it or you don’t. I don’t need some “guru” to tell me “hang in there, don’t give up, blah blah blah”. To Travis: Dude, you have outstanding web skills and you have some expertise in this stuff, you need to find a “groove”. You are all over the place and you don’t post consistently enough. Nice break to get on Boarding Area! Find your niche. Podcasting is not it…or, to phrase it better, I don’t think that’s it. We are all too busy to listen to long podcasts. But maybe I am wrong on this issue, I have been wrong many times before! I remember your video about the Vanilla Reload cards, it was HILARIOUS! I LOVED your idea about interns, I should look for some WordPress guru kids in my local college to build my dumb looking site! You had a link next to that which gives a 404 error! Good luck.
There is SO much going and Noob Traveler posts: “Noob Card comparison: Chase Sapphire Preferred or Southwest Rapid Rewards Card”. This has to be post #78594 on Chase cards!
First to book and comment
You won’t be having so much free time now to be first;-)
Just miss it by a few minutes again … Thanks.
Try again next time, you can do it:-)
numero IV!
Moving up, keep it up!
hey, what do you know…the same people talking about the same things. better act fast or tickets will sell out. pfft.
I really gotta disagree with Travel Summary here. Unless you are broke and can’t afford a ticket, I think it’s too high of an opportunity cost to use your UR points at 1.25 cents a piece. You’re most likely better off transferring them to WN at that point and at least getting 1.8-1.9 cpm in their revenue based program.
I just think UR points are way too valuable to use them at 1.25cpp when you could easily be getting 2+ cpp by transferring to United or Hyatt, etc. I think it really should be emphasized that unless you can’t afford to pay the cash, you really should save your UR points.
Yep
Yep
George, did you see Gary Leff’s performance on The Colbert Report? Very disturbing.
I think he was in on it. They do that to someone everyday.
But I have to admit that the shot where he is standing looking out the window and then slowly turns to look at the camera, is creepy. He looked like Uncle Fester.
I enjoyed the whole piece in general. I wish he did not have to defend Delta but…it had to be with that also hilarious cello guy. I thought putting him in that budget hotel for almost the whole day served him well lol. Come on, for satire it was excellent!
I know who Hans is. Who are Michael and Nathan? I’m not in the market for FTU because, well, meh. Also, I’m only going to Tampa if someone is paying me.
Someone said it best on FT (I think): Wall and Main is soliciting donations to their for-profit company. It seems their business is to crowdfund start-ups, which seems like a bad (can I say stupid?) way for ordinary folks to invest. So you can get miles and then be first to throw your money at pre-approved start-ups. No thanks. Oh, and it went unmentioned through this hubbub that one can buy UR points (and transfer to United) at 2.5 cents each, up to 5K per month. Should anyone do this? Er….. perhaps, in extreme circumstances.
The Travel Summary advice is only good if you have more miles than cash, or are in a jam (last minute, hitting elite status in December, etc.).
I would guess that the market for award booking services comprises rich people who have no time or interest in learning the tricks, and newbies too frightened or dumb to invest the time or effort to learn. And perhaps a third group of fanboys convinced that they absolutely must book Lufthansa First Class, not Air China, to Asia because they saw pictures of a terminal in Frankfurt on a blog. In short, if you’ve read enough, booking trips is actually quite easy, if sometimes time-consuming. It’s also very satisfying to solve the puzzle at last.
Have fun on vacation George. Hope the Fairmont rooms are worth the $240 in opportunity costs each (wink).
I had a few emails in the past few days asking me if i know what happened to you. Glad to see you back in the comments, we really enjoy your point of view and what you say!
I think I have a pretty good shot in making the opportunity costs worth it:-)
I love your blog, but my friends and family would not relate. Please keep up the great work, though.
Thank you! Most of my family would not relate either. Besides, I don’t have that many friends outside this hobby now, too busy reviewing blogs lol.
With less time and access – imagine this! we stayed with friends in Santa Cruz who do not have wireless internet at home and only a modem! – it is good to come to TBB while at Starbucks and get the gist of the last few days in the points ‘n miles blog business. Sounds like I didn’t miss much.
Great road trip so far. Easy two day trip down from Portland to Santa Cruz where we saw the redwoods and UC Santa Cruz and took walks along the ocean and eat and drank extremely well! Now we are about to meet very old friends from our Princeton days on the Stanford campus. Lovely drive up the coast to Half Moon Bay and then east to Menlo Park.
But a piece of me that remembers A2 art fairs of the late 70s wishes I was there. Have fune at the fir and the do. Guess I’ll just have to be satisfied with another week in Palo Alto, Los Altos, and San Fran with old friends and favorite relatives, none of whom get my new hobby. No matter. Having fun even when internet deprived!
OMG, modem…what is THAT? 🙂
sounds like a nice place to be! It has been so extremely hot this week it’s…brutal! The areas you are driving in sound so wonderful. We are supposed to have mega storms tonight and it will finally cool down!
“If there is a ticket costing less than this, perhaps you should consider paying/using/burning your Ultimate Reward points!”
-Said no expert ever.
Lol. I knew I would get some flak about this…I just did not have time to lay out all my assumptions, it was sooo late at night and I was scrambling to finish my post:-)
The main point I wanted to make (which I completely forgot!) was the article DID have some original thought behind it…something that is rare in this space these days.
Original thought is worthwhile if the premise is solid.
Someone can post all the original thought in the world the next time USAir is selling miles for 2.5cpm or offering a million United miles for 3cpm but if the premise is a dud then what’s it worth?
And that’s my 2c(pm) for the day.
Travel Summary did lay it out:
If someone gets the card purely for the bonuses, the Sapphire ($500) and Ink cards ($625) get you more than either the barclaycard or ThankYou card. Anyone that travels only domestically could benefit from this. Anyone that flies on cheap routes can benefit from this. Anyone that can’t find award availability can benefit from this. Anyone that doesn’t fly United can benefit from this.
And I agree. I still do not have the arrival or thankyou card presently. Most don’t. In this specific circumstance it makes sense. We WILL ALWAYS be arguing about moves like this. People are different with different backgrounds, current situations and goals (learned that in my real job). These decisions are PERSONAL. I will never argue with anyone for burning if it made them happy, the miles are THEIRS and they can do whatever they want with them. Will I disagree sometimes? Sure. But I will let them enjoy the burning afterall.
I was supposed to go to the gym 2.5 hours ago, dang it!!!!
.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Grant: WTF are you asking about life insurance man?…………………..I peed my pants when I saw your MMS interview post…………………………………………….That kid Grant is everywhere……………Fientist..wants..Financial Independence at 32? Is that when he gets his trust fund check? HOW DID HE EARN HIS MONEY, did he buy the GOOGLE IPO? Guess he is not having kids, we know what they cost, right Buzz……………………Thanks for the mention above of my new Intranet service (maybe adding the internet soon too) Dead Giveaway.
You just need to wait for my next blog post. Care to guess how the kid will retire?
You almost never see couples traveling the world year round with kids because they don’t have any (their choice). If I didn’t have any kids I could choose not to work many years ago;)
Looks like another case of There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. The Canadian Kilometers free service seems to be just bait and switch. I got a reply to my request pushing me to “Award Booking Service”, which is not free nor pay your own price. Canadian Kilometers will take at least 30 days before working on my award. I ended up going with a better known service with a fixed price.