15 minutes work for a free flight

Two weeks after returning from a month abroad I was wondering what to do with my boarding passes. I flew United Airlines and was quite happy with the experience. I decided to see if I could sign up for the frequent flyer program online and claim mileage points for my flights.

You can do this up to 12 months after your flights and you can create the account for free on the web in a couple of minutes. After doing this you can enter the details (date, flight number, etc) from each flight on your trip. I ended up entering the details from the itinerary my travel agent printed out for me and ticking them off as I went.

At the end of that I had 22,439 miles credited to my account. That's enough for a free flight anywhere within Australia. Not a bad reward for 15 minutes investigation!

I never thought I'd be grateful to ACA

Channels Nine's program, 'A Current Affair' is full of recycled sensationalist populist crap.
The only time I watch is when I am too sick to operate the remote or in this case, was lured
by the possibility of cutting my credit card rate.

ACA tease you with a story, making you wait through the whole inane program just to disappoint you at the end. The teaser went along the lines of "what the banks don't want you to know - how to cut the interest rate on your existing credit cards". The story said that if you call up to cancel your credit card, they will offer to cut your interest rate to keep you.

I called CBA and ANZ however I didn't threaten to cancel my cards. I just asked what rate I was paying and whether there was a lower rate available. It turns out the banks were happy to offer me cards with a lower interest rates.

	ANZ		CBA
	Old	New	Old	New
Interest rate	18.75%	11.99%	17.15%	10.99%
Annual fee	$90.00	$58.00	$21.00	$48.00

When I visited ANZ's site I saw a current promotion to draw consumers attention to their 'low rate' cards. You don't need to shout "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore". There's a credit card war on and the banks are keen to retain price sensitive customers without lowering the rates across their established products. A.C.A. weren't letting a secret out, they were just alerting the market to some existing credit products on offer.

Still, they've saved me money and for that I am grateful.

American Sandwich in Melbourne

I want a Chicago Italian Beef Sandwich. I had one in Arizona and now I want to find somewhere in Melbourne that makes them. If there is no-one who can make them in Melbourne then I will have to learn myself.

I may have to resort to following a recipe.

After complaints from readers, I included the image on the right - mainly for readers of TheAge.

Feral Children

Channel 4 did a doco on Feral Children. The Age did a story on Oxana Malaya who was raised by dogs from the age of three. Both sites have a picture of her which appears to have been taken at the on the same occassion. The Channel 4 picture (left) seems less flattering than the one used by The Age. Was her head considered 'too round' for an Australian audience?

At last I have a blog

zefrank wants you to execute your ideas ASAP.

PHILIPS want you to shave your balls.