Keeping my AA Points Alive

A few weeks ago I wrote about the peril of frequent flyer points expiring. Some programs ditched expiration during the pandemic and have made it a permanent change. Others still cancel all your points if you don't touch them for a certain period of time. American Airlines is one of those programs. If your account goes without activity for 24 months, you lose all your points. That would be quite a loss for me as I have nearly 750,000 AA points!

Fortunately it's not hard to generate activity with airline and hotel points programs. Sure, you could fly somewhere or stay somewhere, but even if you're not traveling with a particular program— perhaps you're saving your points for something big in the future— there are generally easy ways to keep your points alive. Remember, you don't have to use the whole balance; you only have to earn a point or spend a point. One point.

🎵 Stayin' alive
Stayin' alive
Ah, ah, ah, ah
Stayin' ali-i-i-ive 🎵

Some of the approaches to keeping a trickle of points coming into your account (or spending from it) are: 1) Owning a credit card affiliated with the program and spending on it occasionally; 2) Finding small redemption opportunities in the program, like a digital song download for 100 points; and 3) using partner affiliations to earn points from other kinds of activity, like shopping.

I'm preserving my AA points with a form of (3). American Airlines has a program called Aadvantage Dining. You register one or more credit cards with them, then whenever you dine at one of the restaurants in their program you early a small number of points. The participating restaurants aren't exactly plentiful, but in metro areas there are definitely choices. I signed up a few weeks ago and have already earned points 3 times. Even if I'd just earned points once it would've been enough. Remember, you just need to earn one point to renew all of them. Now my 750k AA points will live for another 2 years.

My New MacBook may Arrive Tomorrow! MAY.

There's good news/bad news on the new MacBook Air I ordered July 23. The good news was that it shipped on the 29th with expected delivery by Aug 9— an improvement over the estimate of Aug 10 ~ Aug 19 when I ordered. Even better, it cleared US customs this morning (it was shipped from China), and UPS estimates delivery by tomorrow.

The bad news? It's UPS. Their drivers are notorious for not even attempting to deliver a package when it requires a signature. Waiting for a signature would slow they down too much and hurt their numbers. They just tag a "Nobody was home" sticker on the door and hop back in the truck. Fuck UPS, that bunch of fuckups.

Last-Minute Trip to PNW this Weekend

Hawk and I are taking a last-minute trip to the Pacific Northwest this weekend. We made plans last night. We leave Thursday evening and return Sunday night.

The last-minute impetus for this trip was a dental appointment being canceled. Hawk was due to have a tooth pulled on Thursday afternoon and arranged to take Friday off from work for recovery. I arranged Friday off from work, too, plus the following Monday, as comp days for working a trade show last weekend. I didn't plan to travel during that time off. I merely figured it'd be nice to have a long, restful weekend after working 11 days straight. But then the dentist canceled.

"Let's think about what we can do with a three-day weekend," Hawk suggested in a phone call yesterday afternoon. "Maybe travel."

"Oh, I have plenty of ideas already," I chuckled. "We just need to determine which one we like best."

It turned out that was easier said than done. Hotels are totally booked up in many places and seemingly twice the price they should be in others. Ditto for rental cars. It's understandable that a lot of people want to travel right now; it's "revenge travel" after 2 years of travel being slowed by Covid. Booking reservations at the last minute means we're left with slim pickings. But I did piece together a plan last night. It'll entail more driving than we'd like, but I believe I can make it work.

Ayman al-Zawahiri Killed in US Strike

Al Qaeda terrorist leader and 9-11 attack planner Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed in a US drone strike at his home in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Sunday. The strike, which was months in planning, was notable for its lack of collateral damage. Zawahiri was killed as he stood on a balcony of the building. No other residents of the building were harmed, the building itself was not collapsed, and nobody in the neighborhood was harmed.

Intelligence experts studied al-Zawahiri's movements, and those of people around him, and pinpointed his habit of spending time on a balcony of his building. He apparently hasn't left that building since moving to it earlier this year. His wife and children do run errands, though, and intelligence operatives found them using sophisticated counter-espionage techniques as they moved about the city. Anyway, the US targeted him with a drone strike as he stood on the balcony and killed him without harming family in the house or anyone in the neighborhood.

Zawahiri had been the leader of al Qaeda since the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011. Prior to that he was the terrorist organization's second-in-command, having joined it when he merged the group Islamic Jihad into it in the 1980s. Islamic Jihad, BTW, was the group that claimed responsibility for the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981.

RIP Nichelle Nichols

Actress Nichelle Nichols passed away this past Saturday, July 30. She was aged 89. She was best known for her role as Lieutenant Uhura in the Star Trek TV series (1966-1969) and several feature films.

In her role as Uhura, Nicols, a black woman, was a trailblazer. Star Trek featured one of the first multi-racial casts on TV. Her kiss with star William Shatner in a 1968 episode is thought to be the first interracial kiss on US television.

No less a luminary than Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. weighed in on the significance of Nichols portrayal of Uhura. In a story she's told many times, she met King— surprisingly, a Trek fan— and confided in him that she was thinking of leaving the show for a role on Broadway, or even to join him in his marches. King told her to stick with the role of Uhura as she was fighting the same fight as him by playing that character on the screen.