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Drop everything. Right now! Click on this link and go read one of the funniest Top 5 Credit Cards US Paper Currency Denominations for January by Online Travel Review. If you don’t laugh reading this you have some serious issues, you probably suck the life out of every party you go to so please leave my site pronto 🙂 And don’t miss the comments who also really get into the spirit of the post…Thank you Jared for the laughs, much appreciated. You keep this up and you may make it into my “Blogs I Like” list!
Insane Bulgarian Communist Monuments – Size Really Did Matter. By Yomadic. Words do not begin to describe…okay, the pictures begin. Must click too! To fellow travel bloggers (who are really financial product sales people): THIS is how you do travel related blog posts. Not stuff like: there was a table of cakes and pastries, bad picture of the table with cakes and pastries, caption says lots of cakes and pastries. 🙂
View from the Wing had another one of his Open blog posts titled “What’s On Your Mind?” just asking for feedback to get ideas for future blogs posts. Not much to see actually, I just like to share with you comment #19 by Nelson Goldberg: “I’m disgusted by all the additives, preservatives, and gluten in things today. Let’s put an end to artificial insemination by starting a new company that does natural insemination only.” Hahahahahahahahahaaha. Let’s get Nelson to start commenting here, looks like he belongs!
Chase sent me a new Ink Plus already! Everything in my accounts appears fine and Hilton Honors continues its investigation. Must have been a fluke.
Travelblawg wrote “Courts On Blogging: Tax Write Offs, First Amendment” which should be of special interest to fellow bloggers. He reviews two recent court decisions:
In the first one the Tax Court disallowed some alleged business deductions. The guy tried to deduct $19k with NO revenue, that is ridiculous! My two most recent tax returns will have mostly deductions for the TBB venture (pun intended) and pretty much no revenue which is not going to cut it dear readers, therefore my entirely shameful recent moves to pimp a Support TBB page with some referral links that at the current pace may be enough to cover the revenue derived by just one credit card app by the end of the year!
In the second case, the Court pretty much reaffirmed again the First Amendment protections are allowed for bloggers. Actually, I loved this a lot more than the first case (which was nothing new to me, I know a few things around taxes myself ). I reproduce here the last paragraph which is hugely important imho:
The Takeway: Putting bloggers on the same level as “traditional media” by a federal court of appeals is huge for freedom of speech rights in online speech and for building on the foundation of the still young medium of online content and transmission of information. The added hurdle of requiring a defamation plaintiff to show an online author had actual knowledge that the published content was false at time of posting builds a greater burden on the plaintiff to seek any damages, rather than on the defendant who would affirmatively defend it. Remember: The truth (in a blog) will set you free.
YEAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Interview with a globe trotting porn star. By Matador Network. I sure enjoyed this fun read. She wants to have sex in the Eiffel Tower. Me too, sounds like fun!
Taking in Some Greenery: Strange Photos of People Standing in Trees. By Dashburst. These are strange indeed!
Fearless Goats on Cliffs. By Bored Panda. Incredible photographs of goats you look at and wonder how in the world they managed to get to where they are standing! I am Greek, what can I say, goats have a special place in our hearts lol.
I added Capital One 360 and Starwood SPG 5k Referral links in the glorious Support TBB page (see link at the very top, just did not feel right to hit you with another one in the same post!). Feel free to please pimp push them for me and I will email you seconds before I publish a blog post so you can be first to comment, deal? I should add a smiley here but you knew that already.
I work on these posts inside WordPress. The editor does not allow me to do much so I am wondering what you use to write your blog posts? #DumbQuestionPleaseBeGentle
Check out my updated blog lists: Blogs I Love, Blogs I Like, Blogs I Ignore
Thank you for reading and supporting my blog! Please pass my blog link to your friends and family if you think they will enjoy it too.
George
travelbloggerbuzz@gmail.com
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Not again…
How do you do it? 🙂
This time by pure luck 🙂
LMAO at the currency review, can’t wait to see what else he has in store for us!
Surprised you didn’t mention that the pornstar’s next must visit destination is Greece. 🙂
I actually thought about adding my spicy commentary abt it. But I thought I should play it safe. So…I saved it for the goats LMAO
I would gladly bring her in to the airline lounge with my Platinum Amex…oh wait, I don’t fly Delta anymore and even if I did I will have to spend $29. Never mind then lol.
I’m surprised that you wouldn’t pay $29 to bring her into the lounge with you. 😉
if she is flying Delta I will gladly use two Delta Skyclub lounge passes to go in with her & tell her everything she needs to know about Greece 😉
Do you use windex on everything too? 😉
Actually I have never heard of the windex trick until I saw that movie. But then again I am not a typical Greek. Those traditional dances you see on films like Zorba…I could not do even a single step!
I use the wordpress editor to write my posts. what were you looking/hoping to do? Email me if you need help.
Same hear, not sure what else you need to do other than search for plugins that may work/not work well. I wouldn’t change a thing.
Same here. Writing in, say, Word is generallly seen as a bad thing because a lot of unnecessary code is imported when you cut and paste into WP.
i heard something about Live Writer or something like that that connects to WordPress and is more flexible in making posts pretty. The stuff in the native WP editor just does not allow too much flexibility (extra fonts,smaller font size, tables, etc.) and requires me to be logged into WP.
Am I hallucinating?
That is all true. Although none of it has ever caused my a problem!
Damn I was hoping goats and artificial insemination were the same story………
Lol, good one!
Hey yah go:
Artificial Insemination (AI) – Goats & Health – GOATWORLD.COM
http://www.goatworld.com/articles/ai/ai.shtml
Artificial Insemination in Goats – YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vF89Ar83M7g
I think TBB is the only miles/points blog with a link to Goatworld and a video showing goat artificial insemination. I call that Innovation, thank you Elenor 🙂 #keepingitrealaroundhere
#FreetheGoats!
Just read OTR’s currency post, very well crafted and had great ideas. The only think I wish is if Jared’s website would load faster. Takes almost a minute on my smartphone.
I don’t check these things. All I know is that my site loads fine in my phone.
We expect a real trip report “Amsterdam Coffee trip report – Part 236”. Actually it would be fun if someone did a parody of a hotel review on an AMS coffee shop 🙂
I loved Berlin last time I was there (before you were born!)
It’s about 25 degrees in Berlin with snow on the ground. Not too much snow where I come from. I’m going on a walking your of the city tomorrow #boringtourist
I was there when Checkpoint Charie was still there. I remember I got close for a pic with the East Germans in the background and they started yelling at me and friends told me to get the hell away, you know, just in case. Good times. Enjoy
It makes my day whenever I’m included in the same link-roundup as a porn star.
Please excuse the brevity of my comment, G, but I need to spend some time studying Tasha Reign’s umm… “itinerary”.
Love the names the porn stars pick.
If Tasha signs up for your Balkan trip please reserve the cabin in Tito’s train for me. I am coming LOL.
George, the TBB deductions against zero revenue would easily pass in a Greek tax declaration. 😉
The only question is if they will try to add the bribe to the Tax Office employee on to the deduction.
Travel Challenge: 5 nights in Seattle using only $20 bills
Step 1: Sign up for an ATM card
Step 2: Take out lots of $20’s [insert link to $20 bill] from the ATM
Step 3: Buy plane ticket with that cash
Step 4: Pay for hotel with that cash
Step 5: Pay for car rental with that cash
Total Cost: Lots of $20 bills [insert link to $20 bill]
That was so good, a classic. I would like to try to do parody interviews here and Jared would be one for sure.If there were more than 24 hours in a day…
Mostly I cannot believe I spent two weeks in Bulgaria and was in both Plovdiv and Varna and missed some of those Bulgarian Communist monuments. Don’t think I missed many antiquities, but sure would have loved to have seen these equally fascinating stone monuments! Another trip to Bulgaria is in order! Great Yomadic photos.
In 2009 me, my brother and another friend drove from Greece to Sandanski and Bansko in Bulgaria. Interesting place. We were thinking about driving to Plovdiv but decided not to. Bulgaria is very cheap for Greeks. Many Greeks have established businesses there as they are much easier to get off the ground than the crappy anti business and still expensive Greece. I definitely need to go back to see some of these buildings. Especially the Communist HQ, that UFO building is unreal!
Buzz, you’re 4500 Avios points away from being able to hear your favorite band live….
http://nypost.com/2014/01/21/pussy-riot-to-appear-at-amnesty-concert-in-brooklyn/
Full disclosure: I never really liked their music.
LIFE ON MARS…CRUSHED DIET COKE CAN FOUND BY MARS ROVER….CHECK IT OUT…………..http://news.msn.com/science-technology/mystery-white-rock-inexplicably-appears-near-nasa-mars-rover
Looks like Bud Light to me!
Funny comment on TPG’s blog:
“Is this a blog about maximizing your travel points or an episode of Entourage?”
I saw that and had a laugh about it!
George regarding Tasha, you really said you were coming and none of the males commented on this?!??? Whoaaaa
Finally someone picked up on that! Thanks for keeping it real and hope your trip goes well!
Dear readers,
No blog post tomorrow. Life got in the way. My Samsung Galaxy 3 died suddenly and my life was turned upside down. Long story short, I got me a new Samsung Note 3 and have been playing with it pretty much since 4 pm. It is still downloading the apps I had and then I had to configure some of them. What a giant pain!
If anyone is looking to move to Sprint, please email me to give you my Framily ID number (yes, there is an r in there!). It is Sprint’s new policy to make us all pimps to get people to move to Sprint because, this is true, we can all save some money! Details here at Sprint’s site:
https://now.sprint.com/framily/?ECID=SEM:Google:P:2014_Q1_Brand:Brand_Framily_Plan:Core_Phrase:sprintframily:Phrase&gclid=CKqNz8-6k7wCFYpaMgodtRMAfw
I will add my Framily ID number in the Support TBB page, I feel like a whore putting it here in my blog’s comments 🙂
The problem here is you are using a Samsung product, go with LG, or HTC or even Moto, plus shouldn’t;t you have all your apps and contact info backed up and re-sync via cloud when start the new phone.
Actually the app redownloading process was not bad at all. I really like the Note 3, the screen is just gorgeous. But phone reception/sound is not as good as the S3 or maybe I am just not holding it properly or something.
I used to have an HTC but moved to Samsung. Before that I think I had a Palm Treo (which I loved!).
I am clearly not an Apple guy, I have not touched the ipad in three months! I find the iphone screens too small.
Sad to see Howie degrade himself with these awful travel “challenges”
Using credit cards that have no blackout dates or can be used on any type of travel to get from Jacksonville to Pittsburgh is now a “challenge”?
“Open these cards. Use it to book whatever flight you want, stay at the local hotel on whatever days you want, and rent a car for however long you want”
Next travel challenge: Going to the grocery store and buying milk
The problem with the travel challenges, or really with any posts on the FTG blog, is that the posts are too short and lacking in detail to be helpful. It’s as if the bloggers are told that they must keep posts to 200 words or less. It’s been a long time since I’ve found anything helpful on this blog. Very occasionally I will find some info I can use. A while back Andy Shuman wrote a comprehensive article on how to book an infant-in-arms on an award ticket. It really helped me as I was getting award tickets for kids/grandkids and it seems that every airline has a different policies in place for lap infants.
Ingy has proudly declared that the blog has more and more new readers. It’s obvious that the blog is written to attract new credit card sign-ups for people just getting into the game. If that strategy works for them, then more power to them. But won’t readers just go away after a few weeks or months of reading, when they discover that there are so much more helpful details out there on other blogs?
“MMS never got the memo”
To answer your final question, yes, people will go away after some time (except those of us who read the blog for comedic purposes :)), but they’re fine with that. Don’t be fooled by the word “travel” in the name of the blog – it has long since moved from being about travel to a credit card selling blog. So as long as the newbies replace the people migrating away, they’re fine with that. Not having engaged readers (as evidenced by going months at a time without comments) is less of a big deal if your goal isn’t to “help people see the world at prices they can afford” but instead “click this!!! like totally!!! do it now!!!”
MMS never got the memo….. about keeping it to under 200 words
>>>>>>>The problem with the travel challenges, or really with any posts on the FTG blog, is that the posts are too short and lacking in detail to be helpful
Yep. I have told them about this. These writers can do so much better imho.
Well….I agree with what you guys posted here so I better stop 🙂
Most of the writers actually DO much better
They just don’t do it on Rick’s blog.
Ariana, Andy, Drew etc….. they pump out great material when they’re not shackled under the Rick/FTG “SELL!!! SELL!!! SELL!!!” umbrella
Is it just me or is the pace of the credit card pushing reaching even higher levels at this site? I am wondering if they are on notice due to the loss of Chase links in other sites (one of them was killing it we were told). I am used to seeing a lot but lately it has been a giant torrent of them day in and day out. I find it nauseating. In my own opinion. In my own blog.
Polar vortex Dos is coming tonight…
You should get money for sending people to the blogs you love/like…not sure how…but I think the blog list is valuable.
No, it just does not feel right. And I am totally clueless how to even think about getting anything like this done. No, just expressing my opinion. I am proud of these lists!
For every new reader who discovers a blog listed in the love/like list the world becomes a better place.