bonesinger

One key difference is licensing. As a physician you have to take the USMLE Step 1,2,3 and then potentially other board certifications. We engineers don't have any of that.

Yep, I agree about limited industry but it does work in that respect. I see it used a lot for content creators as a way to organize and tier out their fans as well.

IMO its a good competitor to slack. They probably make money from businesses too. They have lots of options for permissions/roles and all kinds of API access to write bots for.

Sports are a business and fall under entertainment anyway in my opinion. Owners make a lot of money and you won't see them footing the bill for new stadiums/fields generally too. Thats all tax-payer funded in the US. Internationally I'm not sure but I doubt they are footing the bill 100%.

This is exactly what TRX (Tronix) cryptocurrency is trying to achieve. They want content creators on their blockchain to distribute content and want to reward them with coin as payment.

https://cryptocurrencynews.com/altcoin/tron-trx/

Its pretty easy to use points to book rooms for other people, I was able to gift 4 reservations a few weeks back for an event. All I had to do was write "Gift Reservation for xyz person" in the Request option.

For ANA its pretty sweet. 85k round trip on business to Asia. But, in general I agree I think they are on the down fall and they need to come up with some new things to remain competitive. The hotel status are the only reason I have them because I have been traveling a lot lately and its worth it. I may end up cancelling it in the future.

When I signed up to those two cards, it was $3k spend in 3 months for each card. I also signed up at different times. For my Amex platinum I actually put my security deposit on it for 2k and 2k down on a car haha.

You can manufacture spending and spend something like $10,000 a month on gift cards, then turn that back into cash to pay your credit card bill. Not sure how to do it and its also risky. AMEX/Chase have been closing accounts for it and one guy was doing it with Money Orders and the US Postal Service went after him for money laundering.

As for me I have a natural spend of about 5500 a month for all expenses and rent. I paid rent using Plastiq (2.5% fee) for a while and got triple points before Chase cut off the triple points offer on Plastiq's services. They re-categorized it as a business service instead of travel.

It definitely favors higher incomes for sure.

I can put 4-5000 a month on a card and with point bonuses, earn something like 6-8000 points per month. So in 2 years we'll have enough to go on another dream vacation (Probably Japan again cause it was amazing!).

EDIT: You can down grade your card to a no fee card after you've gotten your bonuses. Then later re apply. AMEX has language in their Terms that limits you to 1 bonus per card per lifetime, but recently some of their cards do not have that language. Chase limits you to 5 cards opened in a 24 month period, regardless of the credit card servicer. Citi also has some form of restriction. This all recently started in the last year or 2.

I know they aren't normally that much, but at the time they were like 8800 per person. I had a specific airline in mind when I flew because I wanted the full experience. ANA currently is like $6500/person for business but I felt it was well worth the cost. I know you can get cheaper tickets.

Yes thats true, I conceded that point in another reply to Sleeep. I did look up tickets just now and they are about $6500/person on ANA. I specifically looked up ANA because I wanted to fly on one of the better airlines. The service I got was absolutely fantastic.

I do not believe its disingenuous to say that they are $18k in value. That's how much the tickets cost at the time. Could I afford the tickets if I paid cash? No, but isn't that the whole point of churning?

I looked up the cheapest flights on ANA business class in September 2017 and they look to be around $6500 per person. That is still quite a bit of money saved. I potentially could afford that if I was extra frugal for a few years. It also means you can use the money for other things, which we did in the form hot springs ryokan, more gifts and souvenirs.

Figuring out which points to collect really wasn't that hard, it takes 10 minutes to look up that information. There are plenty of sites that catalog that information like reddit.com/r/awardtravel, www.awardace.com, www.awardhacker.com

Figuring out which time of the year to go may change the amount of points you need, that I agree can be annoying.

I will concede that its not a straight forward process, but its also something you can look up and research in a day.

As for the huge sign up bonuses, yes they probably won't come around again for a long time, but you can still get the amount of points needed pretty quick. Since I booked our trips in 2016 (2017 was the vacation), I have accumulated 50k Amex points and 40k Chase points. Amex has quite a few offers that double, triple, or even 10x the normal amount of points received. I bought a TV from Best Buy and got 3000 points. I signed up for "Pay over time" and got 10,000 points. I had to ship a few packages (ebay stuff) on Fedex and got 10x points for 2k points.

With Chase I put all my grocery/dining/travel expenses on it. I get 3x for that.

At the end of the day, I guess it depends on how much you want out of it. I do not do manufactured spending and buy gift cards, but I do look at deals and offers and try to maximize my point earnings. Whether you believe that's a chore and is worth it or not is up to you.

When I got it was $450, they recently raised the prices. Even if you run the calculations, its still worth it.

$550 a year fee

$200 airline credit

$200 Uber credit

$20 Global Entry credit per year (Prorated. Global entry costs $100 per 5 years and AMEX will cover the cost).

Gold status with SPG and Hilton

Lounge access at many airports

Free subscription to GoGo for in flight internet (domestic) And lastly, AMEX Platinum Concierge is still the best service for any card.

5x points on airline purchases.

Chase Sapphire has even better value.

$450 fee

$300 credit per year (When I got this card, I was able to redeem the credit twice due to the timing and how Chase calculates the year.) ALso Chase's credit is far more useful since "travel" is loosely defined for them.

Lounge access

$20 Global Entry Credit per year (used this one for fiance)

Travel insurance

No Foreign Transaction fees

3x points on dining and 3x on travel.

I don't know if your assessment of that is accurate. I opened 2 cards last year, the AMEX Platinum and Chase Sapphire Reserve deal. I got 100k points for each card. I had some existing points and then some extra spending and I was able to get 2 business class tickets to Japan ($18k value) and 15 nights in 5 and 6 star Hyatt hotels. That was probably another $8k in value. I spent 170k AMEX points on the flights and 155k Chase points on the hotels. That trip was amazing and it was only possible because of the points.

Was it a lot of work? Not really. I just put all my spending on my AMEX for a few months. Then I switched to the Chase Sapphire for a months. Once I got all the points I needed, I just transferred the the Amex points to ANA and the Chase points to Hyatt. I then booked my flights and hotels. Booking flights was slightly harder as my fiance and I weren't married so we had to transfer points to separate accounts, but it definitely wasn't a chore at all. A simple phone call to AMEX took care of that. Booking rooms with Hyatt and using points was a breeze.

There are other benefits of having high end cards too. I got Global Entry for my fiance and I ($200 value). We didn't have to go through customs on the way back to USA. I got $300 travel credit from CSR card per year. $200 airline credit from AMEX Plat. I was able to get orchestra tickets to Hamilton in NYC for $399 through AMEX plat.

If I had a million points, I could book 3-4 dream vacations. Not sure what went wrong with your redemptions.

This is commonly called "keto flu" and its due to a loss of electrolytes. http://ketosizeme.com/keto-flu-101-everything-need-know/

I did it in reverse. I used points for my flights and hotels and booked those first. I had a rough itinerary planned. Going to Tokyo -> Osaka -> Hakone -> Tokyo. Once I booked all the rooms first, then I planned activities. Hakone was the hardest to book since it was a hot springs hotel and I got lucky with an opening.

I figured out what I wanted to do and then matched that up with the days. I ended up removing stuff since jet lag and delays can always ruin the best plans. My days are more guidelines now. I know if I want to go do something, I can and have a list of things, but if I don't feel well or just feel like exploring, I can do that too.

Edit: I made a google doc, then turned it into a spreadsheet. I also have a TripIT account and used that for any travel notifications. I also added all the locations to google maps and plan to download them in case of bad cell service. I also looked into Maps.me.

I like to use VSCode to open C# or web.config files, basically any .net related file since its pretty quick and you get all the highlighting.

I guess, sorry if I am coming across as touchy. I'm a diabetic and there is a ton of misinformation out there about it!

Using the term "inability to process carbs and sugar" is misleading and totally not the same thing as insulin resistance.

Its generally assumed that processing carbs is the act of digestion. You're using the word processed in the wrong situation here.

EDIT: Also you can still process carbs, you just can't utilize glucose in the blood as a diabetic.

Hes pointing out that what you said was factually incorrect. Diabetics don't lose the ability to process carbs at all.

Carbs are broken down along with proteins and fats. What Type 2 diabetes entails is glucose building up in the bloodstream with no real way to utilize it due to insulin resistance.

Possible, I live in the midwest and there are quite a few obese people in my area.

Cereal wise, I would say 2 servings is pretty common, most people think its 1 bowl anyway. If you have 2 bowls, you're already close to 4-500 calories (depending on the cereal).

Also something like a DD coolatta or starbucks frapp are pushing 3-400 calories easily.

I think close to 1000 is pretty common for breakfast. I used to eat Dunkin Donuts a lot and I would see people order a Bagel with Bacon, Egg and Cheese on it. That is 470 calories. A side of hash browns is another 140. And then top of it off with a donut (350~) and an a large ice coffee (170) and you are over 1000 (I took the calorie # from DD website).

Also a single serving of cereal is really small. Until I started using a food scale, I was routinely eating 2 servings of cereal (Multi-grain cheerios) which was about 250 calories.

XPS 13 Developer Edition has been out for a bit and it comes with Ubuntu http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd

Actually my current and prior are both submit resume and interview path. I don't know anyone where I live so I had to go a quantity approach and just blanket apply to all dev jobs I can find.But I agree I hate resume filtering. One recruiter told me to add keywords like Angular and MVC to my resume because some HR will auto dump your resume if its not there.

Overnight Oats is a great recipe for breakfast and is prepared in 5 minutes. It won't hit the $2.15 mark and it's roughly ~400 calories, ~40g healthy carb, ~40g protein, and ~10g fats, ~10g fiber, but its easy to make. (All depends on the brands you use to make it).

Toss 2 scoops protein powder, 1 cup almond milk, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1 tablespoon chia seeds, 1/4 cup steel cut oats in a jar and shake, refrigerate. Add fruit if you like.

Cook with your wife. Make it a date night and stay in, cooking together, or with family too. I did this with my gf last week and we had a blast while we made pasta from scratch.

But I will say this can't be done often. We try to cook together at least once a week, but more often than not we eat out cause its fast and we both work long hours + long commutes.

I also think the Sony VR specs are pretty high. They want people to buy a PS4 and play games on their VR system.

It's anecdotal for me, but where I am in Illinois, there is a BN in Old Orchard Mall which is a Simon property and is a high end mall (Nordstrom, Bloomingdales etc...). It gets a ton of foot traffic and is packed on the weekends. There is another BN in Schaumburg, IL, an affluent suburb about 20-30 minutes away and it is not in a mall. I used to live there and go to that BN a lot, it was very quiet and empty unless they were running an event.

Maybe you are right, but I do enjoy going to BN and I do buy stuff there from time to time. My gf is more willing to buy in store than I am, probably because of the nature of books she purchases (kids books for school) versus my books (Tech) which are significantly more expensive.

I'm in no way obligated to buy something in the store, especially when they have obfuscated policies regarding pricing. How can you justify a higher price in store when you have a lower price online and your competitor has a lower price and same day delivery? I get 25% BN discount from my gf's teacher discount and stuff is still more expensive than their own online pricing.

If I find a significant price difference, I'm going to buy it online. However, I will go out of my way to purchase at small business because there are benefits to that.

I love Barnes and Noble, however, one of my issues with BN is that they are mostly out of the way and not near malls where they'd get a lot of traffic.

Another issue I think is absolutely mind boggling is that their online prices are not what's in store; you can't even price match their website with their own in-store pricing, let alone price matching with Amazon.

I generally browse BN and then pull up Amazon to check pricing there, and either order the book with same-day delivery/next day or buy the e-book. Its still cheaper to pay for same day/next day than to buy it in store.