Recent entries
july 4, 2018 - 2018-07-04
the triangle continues of courtney, boobear, & nyota - 2018-07-03
Cookie so cute telling, "Hello" to sparrows - 2018-07-01
lovebirb in love - 2018-06-30
wren with fluffffff - 2018-06-24
|
|
|
|
Read my new book, The 10 Best Things You Can Do For Your Bird at Amazon or at many other fine distributors like Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Kobo, and more.
|
|
|
By public demand, and after a delay of an embarrassing number of years, I've finally put my notorious essay, Ender and Hitler: Sympathy for the Superman, free on the fabulous internets.
|
|
|
A bibliography of my published books and stories.
|
|
|
Here's a simple card-counting FAQ to get you up to speed on the basics. Here's the true story of the notorious DD' blackjack team, told for the first time on the fabulous internets. No other team went from a starting investor's bankroll of zero to winning millions of dollars. |
|
|
| A Sadean take on Asimov's classic Three Laws of Robotics can be found in Roger Williams' NOW REVIEWED ON SLASHDOT!!!
The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect. Adult readers only please -- explicit sex and violence. For updates
on the "Dead Tree Project" and other topics, you may visit
the official fan site, Passages in the Void.. |
|
|
My Bird Lists -- My Louisiana State Life List, My Yard List and, tah dah, My World Life List.
|
| HEY! What happened to the Peachfront Conure Files? The world's only OFFICIAL Peachfront Conure site now features free peachfront conure coverage, including
a magazine length Intro to Conures previously published in American Cage-Bird Magazine, now free on the web. I offer the best free Peachfront Conure information on the internet. If you have great Peachfront Conure info, stories, or photos to share, contact me so I can publicize your pet, your breeding success, your great photograph, etc. on my site. Thanks.
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
a rambling introduction to hotel points
2012-06-19 - 8:43 a.m.
The Points Guy offered this question for the Sunday discussion: Sunday Reader Question: Which Is Better: Hotel Points or Free Nights From Hotels.com?
Well, in my experience, neither is "better." They're both second-choice. So here's what I said:
There's really no contest in my experience. Saving money today is better than points or discounts at some time in the remote future, especially if the saving money today does not commit you to a program. Too many of the miles/points chasers seem to find themselves in the chain hotel ghetto. Also, booking on the chain site just doesn't give you the same discount you get as when you show up at the actual site prepared to negotiate, at least not in America where chains are gathered together in spots off the interstate with plenty of their competitors nearby. If you can't get a better deal on the spot at Best Western, Choice etc. by looking sad or having some competitor's coupon pulled out of the state welcome center book, you haven't tried. Hotels.com and Priceline are for places where you are not sure you would be able to negotiate -- foreign countries where you don't speak the language, some popular event causing the rooms to be booked in advance, etcetera. To my eye, it looks like people who play the hotel points game end up paying a lot more for their hotel rooms overall, and then they have to convince themselves that they would have otherwise paid $500 for a hotel room night in Tokyo. In other words, what the Wandering Aramean said. Nobody's paying $500 a night for hotel rooms unless they're on an expense account, so why kid yourself that you just saved $500? You saved what you would have really spent. In Tokyo, my four nights cost less than $400 all-in. And for two of those nights I had a huge suite with a great view.
If you've never paid $500 a night for a hotel room, you weren't about to pay $500 a night for a hotel room that time either. Students, middle class people on a budget, older people on a retirement pension...they all travel, and there are options for them that they can afford. Even students with no credit travel the world! I will continue to research points etc. but they are not the front line of my travel budget strategy.
Speaking of the hotel game, I did apply for the Priority Club credit card, which came yesterday. Supposedly, I earn 60,000 points the first time I use it, which will take up to 8 weeks to post. Then I'll have to try and see if it's worth more than one night in Kingman, Arizona, which is what put us off Priority Club in the first place.
back - next
All Rights Reserved, Copyright 2002-2017 by Elaine Radford
|