Where Is Hawkins?Where travel is cheaper than psychotherapy.

I’m not feelin’ any love. Not from friends/family/colleagues…

I have been getting back into swimming and seeing how that goes. I figure, keep at 1200 yards and build 6x a week for a while – it might make me feel better.

You know, the most ineffective thing that a wanker advocacy group can do is show up at Karl Rove’s house and start trouble. Whether you have love for our President or not, this is not the answer.

Sadly, my attempt to get to post via WAP to my blog has failed. Stupid MDS server.

How to be a mile whore:

My friends laugh at me because of my obsession with frequent flier miles. It’s an addiction like gambling. To be honest, it’s just a way to keep score. But after talking with people who love to travel, I figured that I would put together hints for travelling so that some day, with miles, you can come up with a trip of a lifetime, or at least, go in style.

So, some tips:

1) What’s your goal? Upgrades or long haul trips that are expensive? I really like upgrades and flying in the front of the bus. However, it’s generally 2x-3x the amount of miles to go First class to some destinations. I figure if you’re going really far, go in style.

2) It’s a marathon, not a sprint. You can’t just earn enough miles to go to Australia in First class within a few months, so realize that it’s a marathon. Think 3 years or so if you don’t travel much.

3) Pick your airline. Generally, stick with the airline at your home airport and that matches your travel goals. Don’t pick Airline X if a) they don’t fly to your airport and b) if they don’t go to where you want to go. Southwest won’t take you to Europe…

4) Pick up your airline’s mileage card. You earn 1 mile for every dollar spent, which, quite frankly, sucks. But for the annual fee, you’ll get all those upfront mileage (10k and up, usually). The interest rates for these cards suck, so I wouldn’t suggest running up balances. A secondard card is the American Express Starwood card. It’s basically an Optima card that earns Starwood hotel points. Starwood hotel points transfer at 1:1 to a majority of mileage programs. That’s pretty impressive. No annual fee for the first year.

5) Look at the other programs that offer points. There’s iDine, which has restaurants/bars that offer 10 miles per dollar spent. There are dozens of ways to earn miles.

6) Airline status. It always helps that you actually fly some. The more you fly, the quicker you’ll earn your miles and goal. Having any airline status will add percentages to your miles earned, plus provide you with added benefits.

7) Learn the ins and outs of your frequent flier program. Earn bonus miles by booking directly from their website. Earn hotel “double dipping” points (hotel points and airline miles) at some hotels.

Of course, there are more indepth ways to get miles… But this is a brief overview.

So I got pissed off at work on Friday because some chick I occasionally do non-work related projects with got snippy with me. After I wasn’t able to help her out with a technical issue, I said I was sorry that I couldn’t help. Her response? “No you aren’t.”

What the fuck.

Never ever be nice to anyone ever again.

£900.

That’s the cost of a UK work permit processing through some headhunters.

It shouldn’t be *this* difficult.

Frustration has set in. It’s the double whammy of career and personal. It’s paralyzing and crippling. I just don’t feel like leaving the house anymore for a while. If I had an answer I’d fix it, but I don’t.

This made me laugh. I’m going to hell.

And 141 words for ‘drunk’.

Not much is going on. I need to start building up weekend time.

And no fares are presenting themselves in the next few months. It’s sad…

Shit.

I have no more trips planned. Not even mile runs.

I guess I’m a little nuts because I’m 27589 YTD miles, 2721 miles behind where I was last year, but didn’t fly at all in April. I did a lot of hauling ass in H2 2003, something like 65k.

I think I’m going to have to ask my boss to let me work weekends so I can do Tokyo over Memorial Day instead of the Ready BBQ in San Jose. I do need to make a MR somewhere in April. If I can find a webfare for $400-ish to Europe, I’d go for 24 hours.

Ideally, if I was at 55k ytd miles by July 1, then did something over 4th of July, I would be set for renewing EXP in 2004.

Back from England. 2 Airports in 96 hours, 7906 miles.

I got to watch Love Actually on the way over. Hugh Grant’s character said in the beginning, “Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think of the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport.” I’ve never really noticed that before. Normally, I get off airplanes and am ready to begin the day, but I actually took a few minutes and watched. It’s really quite a beautiful sight to see the outpouring of warmth and love.

Had a panic attack while walking to the gate to the flight on my way home. I said, well, if she’s on this flight, then I might as well just fly United.

What have I learned?

1) Check flight loads before you leave the house to see if you’re overbooked. Or, ask when you check in and ask again at the gate. So when the check in person tells you the flight is oversold, you can tell the gate agent, hey, I know this flight is oversold, and I’d like to volunteer to be bumped. No cash for me, just business class seats.

2) There are no hotties in the Flagship Lounge. In fact, there are two types of people in there: the ultra rich or the ultra haggard.

3) The £ to $ exchange rate is crap.

4) Always get cash up front when trying to bring people back contraband OR currency.

5) Writing 15 or so postcards sucks. It’s hard to make it sound exciting. “Slept a lot. Watched TV. Drank a lot of beer. Saw some stuff.”

6) The EU has their act together with mourning.