Thoughts Archives - Page 7 of 9

Jun 30 2015

I took a break from earning and burning – and the world didn’t end

If you’re a regular listener to the Saverocity Observation Deck podcast (if not, check it out!), you probably know that I’ve been pretty busy preparing for some major life changes. Because of that, I ended up taking a break from earning and burning miles, points, cash back, everything (!) for a few weeks. Usually the only time I do that is when I’m on vacation, though like Trevor (who is GALLAVANTING), I do sometimes feel a tinge of regret when I’m vacationing and not earning.

Still, this little post will serve to grease my wheels for takeoff (writing again) while expressing this point: my world kept spinning, quite decently actually, even though I didn’t earn any miles or plan any trips! In fact, it was nice to take a little break and live vicariously through others via Twitter. The reality is, I was mostly spending time at Target to manufactured spend and while that’s still viable, I’ve just been so busy that once dark days began I let my routines fall by the wayside a bit.

And that’s okay. A bunch of deals have come and gone over the past few weeks, but I just couldn’t summon up the energy to pounce on them. I think part of it is I know I’m not going to be seriously traveling for awhile, and another part is I just needed the break.

Anyway, I kind of felt compelled to write this because I saw a lot of “SIGN UP FOR DELTA AMEX BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!” posts today. While I personally think the 50K bonuses are great deals in this day and age, it’s all a little too alarmist for my tastes. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, while earning and burning on a regular basis is great, the reality is, deals come and go all the time and nobody should ever feel pressured into one just because everyone on Twitter is doing it. If you miss a deal, another one is just around the corner – patience is fine in this game as it is in life. Just my two cents.

I’ll be back out there earning and burning in no time (aka next week), but the world hasn’t ended since I’ve taken a break. I’m sure some people think I must be crazy for doing this, but hey – to each their own!

Jun 08 2015

Google Photos Takes You Down Memory Lane

It should come as a surprise to no one that I’m not the most organized person when it comes to photos. I have them all backed up and organized by date but other than that it’s a bit of a mess. So when a buddy put me on to this article about the new Google Photos, I thought I’d give it a try. Here’s my initial (very positive) experience with the product.

Some caveats: I’m not a camera nerd – I’m writing from the perspective of a dad who has a ton of photos of our family vacations and our family, and very little time or desire to organize them. I’m sure if you’re into photos/cameras/organizing/logic you might have a much different take.

What is Google Photos?

I’m not gonna pretend that I’ve been paying enough attention, but basically, as far as I can tell, Google finally decided that Google+ is pretty much garbage and is more or less shutting it down. However, they also figured out that hidden within the confines of Google+ was an amazing storage and organization system for photos. So that’s how Google Photos was born (apparently – I don’t totally care because all I care about is how it works).

A "stylized" photo from our honeymoon — A “stylized” photo from our honeymoon

So you can now download an app to your phone and clients for your PC or Mac called “Google Photos”. What this product basically does is send all of the photos on your devices up to the proverbial cloud. You just choose which folders to use and then leave your computer on for days and all of your photos will upload. You can buy 1 TB of storage for $9.99/month if you want to upload your photos at full resolution. You can also upload an unlimited amount of photos if you allow Google to automatically downsize them to 16 megapixels.

That downsizing might be something serious camera aficionados might care about, but I do not – not at this moment in time at least (perhaps I will when cameras get even better). I also have a local backup – so I’m using Google Photos as my online backup.

OK, enough boring stuff.

Setting Google Photos Up

Setting Google Photos up is pretty straightforward, download the program, then choose which folders you want to backup and let it run. I do need to mention that I seemed to have some hiccups for awhile – for some reason the program kept opening up Internet Explorer. It also can be a bit confusing but basically, use the desktop client to upload, but go to http://photos.google.com for everything else. That’s what I’ve found to be easiest.

Why Google’s Scary but Powerful Algorithm Makes Google Photos Kinda Awesome

For the avid traveler, uploading to Google Photos is like taking a trip down memory lane. Google, starting with Auto Awesome (they call it the Assistant now), has started to figure out how to group and organize your pictures together. So Google will auto enhance, auto collage, or auto animate groups of photos for you automatically.

The nice thing is, as you upload pictures, Google does this with old photos that you haven’t seen in years. Not all of these creations completely land, but they take your old photos and

a) Bring photos to the forefront that you haven’t seen in years, and

b) Organize them in ways that make them feel fresh.

Note to young lovers: bubbles are preferable to birdseed

Many of these photo collages and auto animations can feel deeply personal – I was especially moved by what Google did with some of our wedding photos. I got lost for hours just looking through all the different stuff Google did for us – I’ve used nothing but Google Photos Auto Assistant photos for this post.

It's like a thermos - how do it know? — It’s like a thermos – how do it know?

Google also does an amazing job of figuring out where you went and when you went there. If you’ve used Google+ at all, you might be familiar with Google’s “Story” feature. Essentially, they make a scrapbook of photos for you whenever you travel somewhere. In the past, I’ve found this limited, because it only uses photos from my phone (which used to be the only photos I uploaded).

The Auto Assistant creates more stories than you could imagine

Now that my entire collection is uploaded, Google has created stories for every single trip our family has taken ever. It’s really amazing to go down memory lane, to just really sit back and enjoy all the places we’ve gone. Google’s facial and location recognition is kind of scary – they manage to nail down a lot of the places you’ve been even though you never told them. Skynet type of stuff. (They don’t get everything right though, so I feel like we still have a few more years before Judgment Day).

A story Google created out of trip to the aquarium

We make photo books every year, but the nice thing about Google Photos is that it makes these photo books online and automatically. So if you’re too lazy, or run out of time, at least you have something. They’re not extensive but they do the trick. You can edit photos in your automatically generated stories, add or subtract pictures, etc., so you can also use it as a jumping off point. As you can see from the above screenshot of one of my stories, Google doesn’t always choose the best photos, but it’s a great start (and the blurry pictures still bring up the same fond memories as the clear ones).

I didn't tag any of these people but GOOGLE KNOWS — I didn’t tag any of these people but GOOGLE KNOWS

One last note – Google has some kind of crazy facial recognition software. This is going to come in handy especially for parents – you can search for your child’s photo and Google will track him or her through the years. It sounds scary (it is) but it’s also awesome for reminiscing. In fact, if you type anything into the search, like “wedding”, you’ll be surprised at how accurate Google’s results are.

Final Thoughts

I had a ton of fun playing around with Google Photos. As a dad on the go, I don’t have the time to sit down and organize my photos as I’d like. So for me, something like this is great. But what’s even better is Google takes old photos and shows them to me, reminding me of all the fun from the past. To steal from Ryan Gantz’s article which I linked up top – the service just “delights”.

Don’t think too much about Google’s crazy search algorithm. Embrace the technology. Embrace Google Photos. Then go home and embrace your loved ones. Enjoy.

Mar 10 2015

Three Things I Learned at FT4RL2

A ton of people have already posted on the very successful Family Travel For Real Life (2!) conference this past weekend so I’m not going to rehash the conference. Suffice it to say there were a lot of great presentations and it was a lot of fun. Part of me wants to say “Why weren’t more people there!?” while another part of me thinks the success of the conference was in large part due to the smaller and more intimate numbers. But I digress. Here are three things that I’ll take away from the conference.

1 – It’s fun to turn internet friends into sorta real life friends

To be honest, I felt a little awkward when I went to the hotel. In fact, I had dropped by the night before – I was at the front desk and I heard someone say “Leslie!” – I now believe that was likely Dia. I didn’t turn around to say hello because I’ve never been in the situation where I’m meeting people I only know on the internet for the first time!

Anyway, my social awkwardness was totally confirmed when I rode the elevator up the next morning with Dia, who told me she was glad I made it – I had no idea who she was until an hour later when the conference started! AWK-ward.

But after the initial weirdness (I sat next to Chasing the Points but didn’t know if he knew if I knew he knew I knew who he knew I knew he was), eventually I had met everyone in person and it was all good.

The After Party - photo courtesy of Leslie from TripswithTykes — The After Party – photo courtesy of Leslie from TripswithTykes

The internet is a weird place – you talk to people all the time who you’ve never met and when you finally meet them you’re never quite sure if they’ll turn out the way you imagine. While I was mildly surprised at a few people’s real life personas, to a person everyone at the conference was kind, smart, and incredibly savvy at points and travel.

It’s even more fun to be surrounded by great minds in person than it is to be surrounded by them on the internet!

2 – Others’ travel stories inspire me to travel more

When you’re one of the few families amongst your “normal” friends dragging a toddler around the world, it’s natural to start second guessing your decisions. So it was nice to be at a conference where the people who prefer staying at home are the “weird” ones, even if it was only for 24 hours.

This conference really reaffirmed my belief that traveling with kids, even toddlers, is worth it. A month or two ago, my Uncle asked me why we drag M everywhere – “You know she won’t remember a thing.” Well here are some paraphrased quotes that run counter to that thinking that really stuck with me.

“Even if she doesn’t remember it, her experiences are shaping who she is and she’ll be better off for it…by the time she’s four she’ll be a pro at traveling.” (Kenny from Miles 4 More)

“I’ve gotten the chance to see how travel has shaped my son into the man he is becoming and it’s amazing to see.” (Shawn from Miles to Memories, who really was dropping gems all weekend)

“Traveling regularly together bonds us in a way that I don’t see other families I know experiencing.” (Kirsten from The American Travel Project, and many others)

“My most vivid memories from my childhood are from when I traveled and I just want to be able to give that to my own family” (Tom)

“Now that my kids are grown, we still travel together as a family – it’s a different and fuller experience than if we were just to get together and sit at home” (Cheryl)

“You are a rude adult.” (the wife of Dan from Points with a Crew to someone who called her kids “unaccompanied monsters”)

“My daughter doesn’t actually have a great imagination, she has a great memory.” (Dia the Deal Mommy to her daughter’s teacher who was skeptical at her in class travel recap)

3 – Traveling with the family is a lot of hard, yet worthwhile, work

Talking about the conference with my wife after (she, incidentally, spent the day in Charlotte taking M to see animals with her sister and her husband – overstimulation city), I posited that the biggest thing I took away was the desire to continue to travel with our family. Dare I I’d even want us continuing to do it even if we couldn’t use points and miles – they are just a means to reach that end.

No matter how you pay for it, traveling with the family is a lot of hard work, for points and miles enthusiasts, that hard work also extends to the “earning” portion of the trip.

The Orlando version of this sounds next level

But after you’ve acquired the means, you still need to plan the trip – and thanks to Leslie from Trips with Tykes I now know that I need a PhD in nuclear physics to plan a trip to Disney World. Fastpass+/rider switch/pin trading whaaaaa?

But no matter how hard the work is, I think ultimately it’s worth it. Like Tom, my most vivid memories from childhood are from traveling or living overseas. I’m sure it was tough for my parents to take us around (we still all remember a 2-day drive to Disney with a stay at the Johnny Appleseed inn, not to mention being stuck all day in the Outer Banks WITHOUT FOOD I WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU MOM AND DAD JK).

Yet those are the stories we still recall with laughter when we get back together and some of our most cherished memories. In the end, mom and dad, whatever you went through was worth it in my book. Hopefully one day M can say the same to us.

Final Thoughts

Special thanks to Dia for organizing a wonderful conference and all the speakers and attendees for making the community so great. This post may sound soapboxy, partially because it is. But 4reallife – consider traveling with your family and children. You just might surprise yourself at how much you enjoy it. And if you’d like a kick in the butt to get into gear to get out there and do it – there’s a boot with your name on it at asthejoeflies@gmail.com. Happy trails!

Mar 05 2015

Cleaning out my RSS reader – please help rebuild it!

I’ve been playing the miles and points game for about four years now. When I first started out, I voraciously added blogs to my Google Reader (R.I.P.) – I’m sure you can guess a lot of the blogs I added.

After the first couple months, I barely added anything to my RSS reader (which is now Newsblur) – in fact aside from the Saverocity global feed I can’t think of any blog I’ve added in the last two years – not because I haven’t discovered any new, interesting ones – just because of inertia.

This is all that survived my Points folder purge

So this is a call for help – I’d like to outsource my revamping of my RSS reader. I’ve pretty much gotten rid of everything except Saverocity, EF’s blog, The Flight Deal, and Travel Codex.

What do people suggest I sign up for? I can’t access social media at work so my RSS reader is my lifeline to what is going on. I’d like to stay on top of:

– Credit card deals

– Miles and points happenings

– Family travel stuff

– Affiliate link pumping (jk. Though I should say I don’t mind it if the content is good).

– Anything else interesting

Any advice or suggestions would be most appreciated! I’m actually really curious to see who people follow.

Feb 12 2015

On mistake fares and miles blogging

If you were looking forward to sitting in one of these... — If you were looking forward to sitting in one of these…

So there was a big mistake fare yesterday – United premium cabin awards were pricing out at like $150 or less. News hit today that United isn’t going to honor these fares, I missed all of the action – I didn’t even find out about the fares until they were already dead.

https://twitter.com/asthejoeflies/status/565556968040177666

Anyway, people have a lot of different reactions when these things hit the blogs. Some people love that blogs are alerting them to these deals, others hate that blogs are killing them. Of course now you have to throw social media into the mix – the reality is there are so many avenues out there to hear of these things.

You’ll even have the good credit card offers hitting sites like Slick Deals which really annoys people in the miles game because people who aren’t necessarily trying to be good stewards are hammering these deals.

I’m not gonna really dip my toes too deeply into that hot mess – though I do think these conversations are productive and fruitful to have if done right. Instead, I wanted to illustrate some of the factors that a small blogger, like myself, considers (and frankly, is torn between) when deciding whether to blog a deal like this. I’m always interested in knowing other people’s thought processes on these kinds of things – these are mine.

The factors I consider before posting a deal

I decided to list these factors alphabetically, because although at the current moment there are some that weigh more heavily than others, I find that the weight varies from situation to situation and depending on my current place in life. My guess is a lot of other bloggers weigh these same factors when making their decisions (and probably some others I haven’t thought of).

My point of this post isn’t to espouse one line of thinking over another, just to explain my personal thinking and also to note the fact that making decisions on what to post or not to post can be influenced by any number of factors – for me, at least. Also, if you haven’t gathered, it’s another ramble post – feel free to check out right now if you hate these!

Business Considerations

This is the lowest out of the five factors for me, but it starts with the letter B so I’m touching upon it first. The fact of the matter is, many of the miles and points blogs are businesses – they are in it in large (or at least in some) part to make money. I’m a small blog, but even I have a business side and earn a small amount of money each year.

Credit card affiliates are big in this game

Right now business considerations are low on my personal totem pole, namely because I don’t have any credit card affiliate links (except for like Discover). But it’s simple to see how this is a factor when posting deals – there’s a United Award Sale? If you need to top of your miles, you can get the United Explorer Card (insert affiliate link here).

Now I know there are some out there who are very cynical and think some blogs are only out to make money. Maybe this is the case, but I think that thinking is a bit too binary for me. But if I were to say that my blog posts aren’t influenced by my thoughts about my blog as a small business – that’d be an outright lie, no matter how small asthejoeflies is. So the business side has to be acknowledged as one of the factors in many of these deal posts, and really posts on the web in general.

Community at Large

One of the many complaints about “deal” posts is that they harm the overall community at large. For example, if a 100,000 point bonus hits Slickdeals, the general public starts hammering it and “hurts” the points community because some people in it miss out before the deal dies.

I think there are two competing motives that often get mixed up together when discussing protecting the community at large. The first motive is simple: greed. “We” don’t want to get a deal killed by a number of rookies who don’t know what they’re doing.

This show used to be amazing (image from www.nbc.com)

Greed may seem like a strong word, but at least for me, a part of me that doesn’t want a deal killed or screwed up wants that just so I can benefit for myself. I once had a killer loadable card that was amazing and didn’t want too many people to know about it so it could survive as long as possible and so I could keep benefiting.

Another aspect of protecting the community is building it up by helping new members learn the ropes of how to not be a “fat pig that gets slaughtered.” When a deal comes along, what’s the best way to take advantage of that deal while minimizing the risk of being screwed over by that deal or killing it for future use? Stuff like that.

These two motives get confused, in my opinion, because a lot of times the means to achieve the ends of these motives becomes “avoid killing deals on blogs”. Then bloggers who post these deals can automatically labeled by some as not caring about the community at large. And bloggers who don’t post these deals can be labeled as selfish and keeping it to themselves.

The bottom line, though, is that I think almost every blogger considers their contribution to the community at large when considering whether to post something. Obviously, different bloggers fall on different sides of the argument, but the community at large is a factor.

For me, I’ve been trying to only post deals that I think will contribute positively to the community at large. Part of that, for me, is trying to outline all the risks involved with a certain deal, or spending a bit more time writing out some fine print so people don’t just follow circles and arrows. I’m not anywhere near perfect at doing this, just trying to do my best – and if I think posting a deal is going to be detrimental to our community, then I’d like to think I’d avoid posting it.

Loyal Readers

A third factor influencing bloggers’ desire to post deals is their loyal readers. I’m not sure how many regular readers I have, but I know I do have some (hi mom!). The thinking becomes – if X deal is getting posted everywhere, am I doing my regular readers a disservice by not alerting them to it?

Personally, one of the reasons I missed the deal yesterday is because I didn’t check any of the blogs that posted it. But there is a certain element of trust between a blogger and her or his readers – I trust that blogs I read regularly will alert me to things that I might not have found on my own otherwise.

So I might post a deal because I want to make sure my readers know about it, in case they haven’t seen it elsewhere. And despite how small I am, this is possible (hi mom again).

There’s also the whole worry about, “man, asthejoeflies isn’t on top of any of these deals, maybe he’s not worth following anymore”. A blogger always wants to retain their readers – so the loyal ones are always going to factor into whether a deal gets posted or not.

Personal Code

When I say personal code, I mean the personal code a particular blogger lives by. Dia started an interesting discussion on her site today – she didn’t personally feel comfortable pulling the trigger on the United deal yesterday because she drew the line at changing her credit card address.

I never got the chance to explore where I’d draw my line for this particular deal, but there are deals or techniques that I don’t feel comfortable with – either because they violate my personal code or because my code dictates they are not worth the risk.

This, obviously, is going to factor into whether I post something or not. I must have made a post about something I don’t personally do in the past; I find it impossible to think that I haven’t. But if I don’t feel comfortable with the mechanics of a certain deal, it will give me real pause about whether to post it or not.

A blogger’s personal code will also of course factor into whether they feel comfortable posting a deal as it relates to all these other factors.

Site Traffic

The obvious reason to post a deal? Site traffic. If you post a deal first, you’re going to get a ton of traffic and then a ton more on top of that thanks to hat tips (if everyone is being civilized of course, fodder for another discussion). If you’re a small blog, that increased traffic is going to result in new loyal readers.

How often do I hit refresh on this page? No comment.

So it’s a real temptation to allow the lure of site traffic dictate whether I post a deal or not. In the end, so much on the web comes down to site traffic; it’s no surprise this is a major factor in whether to post a deal or not. To say otherwise for myself would be a lie.

Final Thoughts

First a summary of how I personally weigh these factors and then some thoughts summing all this up in general.

asthejoeflies is a small blog, almost purposely so. I don’t have a desire to do this full time, it’s just a hobby and something I enjoy doing. So in terms of how I’d rank these five factors in terms of posting deals personally, it’d probably be:

1 – Personal Code

2 – Loyal Readers

3 – Site Traffic

4 – Community at Large

5 – Business Considerations

Hopefully this image makes sense. I weighted my pentagon according to my personal preferences

That’s just me being honest. A post like this is my attempt to contribute more to the community at large, but being so small at the moment makes that factor fall behind increased site traffic at the moment. But really, since it’s just a hobby, I want to be true to my own personal code and help out my mom, I mean, my readers. That’s just what it comes down to for me.

Overall, I think it’s easy to get pitchforks out when people post deals and accuse them of putting Site Traffic or Business Considerations #1 and demonizing them. I certainly do so sometimes. But hopefully this post has illustrated that there are a lot of things bloggers have to consider when deciding to post something. It’s easy to villainize, hard to see us as people just trying to figure it out and do the best we can.

I don’t know, maybe I’m just being Polyanna-ish about the whole thing. If so, so be it. I’m just trying to figure it out best as I can.

And somebody text me next time there’s a hot deal.