...constantly searching to find the best travel deals and places to visit. A never-ending quest for adventure!

Thursday, October 26, 2017

The Starwood/Uber partnership is ending

One of the easiest ways to maintain active status in Starwood since 2015 has been to use Uber - for every $2 you spend on Uber you accrue 1 Starwood/SPG point.  There are some pretty interesting Starwood properties - one that I'm saving up to stay at is The Liberty (a former jail) in Boston.

Unfortunately, this partnership is coming to an end.

I received the following notification today via email:


I'm disappointed the partnership is ending, as the occasional Uber ride would guarantee account activity.  I'll need to investigate some other options for points (and maybe structure things to include a property here or there outside of my usual Hyatt stays).

Friday, October 20, 2017

Next trip Coming Up: Back to San Diego!

I'm excited that next week I'll be able to get back to the west coast and San Diego!  I've got a quick jaunt planned for Thursday evening through a Sunday return where I will be able to reconnect with friends and colleagues at USD and SDSU (as well as take advantage of a yearly eye doctor appointment).  The last number of weeks have been focused on the rollout of Field Services and it will be nice to fit in a short trip.

Thursday, October 12, 2017

Conference Trip 2017: IMTA

Greetings from Switzerland!

My week so far has been a bit of a blur, though I finally think I'm adjusting to the change in timezone (and sleeping through the night).  Of course just the time I get this all figured out, I have to fly back on Sunday.  Oh well.

I'm here attending and presenting at the 2017 IMTA conference - my presentation was on a chapter submission that Jimmy, Mo, and I submitted and were accepted for earlier this year.  Unfortunately neither Jimmy nor Mo were able to join me here so I took the reigns of our presentation.  All went well and feedback was good for our work!  It also didn't hurt to see and receive a copy of the actual book onsite:


We have one final day of activities here and then its off to Brussels for the ILA conference.  Fortunately the timing worked out that I could attend these back to back.