Have you ever had a day or two when you didn’t watch TV or ready a newspaper and someone mentions something to you that makes you go “Was I in a bubble, I haven’t heard that?”… Well, that happened to me this weekend. You see I am in Germany for a couple days and did not hear the news that the US credit rating was downgraded by the S&P and someone mentioned it to me but I did not believe they understood what they were talking about so I paid it no mind. And because I haven’t been seeing English-speaking […]

I was traveling to Germany when I learned of the riots in London and what was remarkable was how wide-spread and cross social boundaries the looting spread. When you looked at the faces it covered different ages, ethnicities, but the class was generally the same – the lower end. All the haves of the world should take this as a wake up call – if ever the have nots turn against them there won’t be any B&O stores left. After all, think about it in the US where the top 400 richest people have the wealth of 100 million at […]

Let me preface this posting by saying that I was impressed and eagerly awaited the Snapdragon-powered HTC phone long before it was ever was released to mobile carriers. I was then stoked more than ever to hear that Sprint would get it and the model would be called the Evo. But nowadays I am more a cheap bastard more than a technophobe. So when Sprint changed the Sprint Premier program which before the change would in exchange for lengthening my contract would give me a new phone annually. With the change though now I would have to wait 2 years […]

Everyone has seen it and if you didn’t recognize it I would probably guess you probably started jamming unnoticeably to the Travelers commercial… the one with the cute dog and the “I just want to be okay, be okay” melody!!! I think they cast the best actor – the cute dog – as he looks at the newspaper and ‘reads’ about the cat burglar on the lose and thinks about his worldly possessions that that ‘cat’ is going to steal. So he guards his bone and squeaky toys and forgoes from leaving his doghouse for a walk with his master […]

Just looking through my closet and found my all-time favorite shirt… The shirt says: Damn! You’ve let yourself go! When I saw it in the galleria a few years ago I laughed sooooooo hard I was bent over for about 20 minutes – man, that was the heartiest laugh I had had in such a long time I had to go back and buy it. Pity I’m not mean enough to actually wear it out and about from fear someone would take it too seriously and try something. BUT IML is coming up again so I think I’ll have to […]

As a frequent traveler many times I get upgraded to first class and I am astonished how many people up in first class have no class at all. Think about someone coming to your house and putting their feet up on your furniture. Or someone coming to your house and immediately pulling their shoes off to expose their barking dogs to the world — smell and all — sometimes. Think about someone coming to your house and thinking someone should wait on them hand and feet – bring me another glass of wine, another cookie please, this is cold-go warm […]

Shame shame shame!!! Can you ever imagine making so much money in one year that your income by minute is so extreme as to be unimagineable by most people. Well here’s the story of John Paulson – the multi-billionaire hedge fund royal. I get that year-over-year he re-invests money into his fund but that just means that his share of wealth only grows larger year-over-year. I would only wish that somewhere this paper wealth gets burned up and resurrected somewhere in my near vicinity… As the article further entertains, Mr. Paulson laughingly was the third-highest paid behind George Soros and […]

Now, I was one person who thought the merger of United Airlines and Continental Airlines (see merger info here) would be good in the long run. Unfortunately I am already seeing some things that make me cringe. One such thing as Mileage Plus published late last year about next year’s program changes is how elite passengers qualify for their elite status for next year. For as long as I’ve been a UA Mileage Plus member you can qualify for elite frequent traveler status based upon segments traveled or miles traveled. For those of you who do not understand such things […]