DansDeals.com

Just grabbing a bite to eat at the Continental President’s Club in LGA (for all its problems it has the best cereal selection of any club I’ve been to) after my 3rd flight leg out of 16 (!) until the end of the year and will be in NYC for the weekend and then in Toronto until Wednesday.  Updates may be sporadic especially while north of the border.

I was the apparently the only elite flyer on the flight who paid for coach as I got the only elite upgrade on the flight and no other elites were on the upgrade standby list and the flight went out with empty first class seats.  Gotta love the transparency that Continental offers via their PDA site! Incidentally (for those of you now checking out my seat assignment on the PDA site) 1B is truly a great first class seat on the 737-500 series. It’s a bulkhead but it has a great cutout for your feet and hand luggage.

Another cool service that I just learned about 3 minutes ago: faxzero.com I’ve always wondered how to print things at the club and this is the answer-fax it for free to the self-service fax machine!

Update: There’s been a ton of comments made on older deals referenced to in this post that nobody will ever read…
Feel free to ask/comment on any of these deals right here in this post or better yet, take the discussions to dansdeals.com/forums where the discussion won’t die when the deal falls off of the front page.

Ever wonder which deals I actually do myself in a given month? Here’s a roundup for October:

-Deposited $60,000 of US Mint dollar coins. It looks like this is the end of the deal as the no-limit Native American coins appear to no longer be available. (Total coins deposited to date? 250,000!!!)

-Opened the new AMEX Premier Rewards Gold Card for the 15,000 MR Points Signup bonus.

-Churned 3 more AA cards for about 100,000 miles. (Total AA miles from churning to date: 2,250,000)

-My wife and I accumulated 44 stays at Hyatt hotels during October.  The total cost was $2,750 for 325,000 miles and hotel points, top-tier Diamond status with confirmed suite upgrades until 2011, and 22 free nights at any Hyatt hotel or resort in the world.

-My wife and I both opened up Chase checking accounts to get 50,000 Continental miles.

-I was able to order $120 in Borders GC’s for just $60 after $20 in instant savings and 40% off…unfortunately by the time I confirmed that the order went through and went to make a post about it Borders no longer allowing the 40% off coupon to work on the $60 GC package.

-Picked up a free after rebate LCD mount.

-Hopefully I’ll be getting a free ticket from Virgin America thanks to all 10 of my “Golden Tickets” being used…we’ll see if it really comes…

-Picked up to 2 tickets to visit the in-laws in Kansas City thanks to Continental matching Southwest’s $25-$100 zone sale.

-Got a Canon battery for just a quarter with free shipping.

-Got a $25 Piperlime GC for ordering a $10 pair of flip flops after a 20% off coupon.

-Opened a Key account to get $275 cash.

-Tried to get some Dippin Dots at BJ’s for just $1.79 after a coupon, but they were sold out of the parve Rainbow Ice flavor.

-Picked up 5 Paul Fredrick monogrammed shirts for just $19/each plus shipped.

-My wife and I both got Windows 7 Ultimate Edition for free!

-Got a few codes for free Hardcover Photo Books from Shutterfly, already made a few incredible looking books!

-Picked up some AA miles and extended the lives of my entire family’s AA miles thanks to Bose. and 700 Continental miles as well.

-Got a bunch of free Banana clothing from their 15th anniversary bash including a couple of $100 winners (sometimes it pays to be signed up for spam in all of your email accounts!)

-Helped my Aunt and Uncle book 2 Continental reward tickets to go to Israel right when the rates went down from 90K to 75K with the switch to Star Alliance.

Now I just need to find a good place to burn some Hyatt nights! Any suggestions? Park Hyatt Sydney ($1,200/room value), Park Hyatt Buenos Aires ($600/room value), Grand Hyatt Kauai ($400/room  value)? Any other suggestions for the best bang for the buck?

Do I have too much time on my hands? Which deals did you do this month? Anyone else go crazy at Hyatt?

Many people have noticed that the site has been loading extremely slowly over the past month.  This was mostly due to increased traffic (which is always a good problem to have!) which was causing my previous host, Bluehost, to slow down or even not allow the loading of dansdeals.com.  This was also due to a new throttling process that Bluehost instituted for high-traffic websites, and because of it I can no longer recommend using them as a webhost.

Eli, the creator of the Dansdeals Forums has single-handedly done all of the legwork moving the website onto a faster host that he recommended, 1and1.com. The tests that I’ve run show that the site is now loading up to 90% faster than it used to-Thanks Eli!

Please post a comment if you encounter any bugs or problems.

I’ve just completed a complete database overhaul due to this scary news.com article that I’ve been delaying and dreading for over a year and a half while ignoring 13 (!) new versions in the interim.

It took me a good 6 hours to manually complete, but I believe that I’ve finally hammered out most of the bugs.  If you do encounter any issues please post them here.

The good news is that it seems that Wordpress has finally included the ability to automatically upgrade to newer versions, so I hope that this will be my last manual install.  Don’t forget to backup your database and make a copy of your content folder if you’re upgrading your own blog to the latest version of Wordpress so that you don’t lose your data while avoiding falling victim to the worm making the rounds!

Back in March I was caught on camera in Cleveland doing 31mph in what is normally a 35mph zone at 3:24pm.
Problem being that the city claimed that this was a 20mph school zone at the time and therefore levied a $200 fine against me.

More interestingly was that I discovered that the intersection where I was photographed was not even one of the intersections with a red light/speeding camera. The picture was taken by an unoccupied vehicle that is parked in various spots.

I didn’t recall seeing the school lights flashing at the time so I went back to the scene and indeed the school lights were not flashing.

So I took a picture of the non-flashing lights, printed it out, and asked for a hearing.

Also working in my favor, we have a good family friend who’s a great lawyer, Fred Bolotin, who came to my hearing and helped me win the case with a whole bunch of Ohio revised code legalese that I’ll probably never understand.

Apparently the school speed limit is applicable even when the lights aren’t flashing, but as Fred pointed out, there was no sign besides for the lights indicating it was a school zone, the school got out at 3:00pm, and there were no kids around. The case was dismissed.

Thanks for the help, Fred!

Care to share how you got out (or didn’t get out) of a camera ticket? Hit the comments!

This is the trip that never ends…My return flight home out of LGA this evening is now 5 hours delayed and counting…

Stickied until 06/09, scroll down for new posts:

Let’s see…I’m driving to Pittsburgh today (05/27) where I’ll spend the Shavuos holiday among relatives.  From there I’ll fly to Los Angeles via Houston on Sunday (05/31) for a cousin’s wedding. I fly back to Pittsburgh via Cleveland on Wednesday night (06/03) before driving home to Cleveland sometime on Thursday (06/04) and then flying from Akron to NYC for my brother-in-law’s engagement party the following Sunday (06/07), before returning home Tuesday night (06/09).

At least there are double elite qualifying miles through 06/15!

Yes, updates may be sporadic at times over the next 2 weeks…Should I write trip reports like I did for Las Vegas and Detroit? (Yes, I know many of you requested a Hawaii trip report…it’ll come one of these days!)

I spent the day today with my dear wife at the Cavs-Pistons game at the Palace of Auburn Hills where the Cavs finished their 1st round playoff sweep of the Detroit Pistons. (12 more wins to go for Cleveland’s first championship in 45 years!)

The coolest part?

The place was packed full of excited Cavs fans! Cavs’ play by play announcer Joe Tait even said that in his 39 years of calling basketball that he had never seen an opponent’s arena so full of fans of the visiting team! The “Lets Go Cavs” and “MVP” cheers easily drowned out any “Lets go Dee-troit” attempts… According to ESPN Joe Tait even joked that “It’s great to be in Cleveland” and the Pistons’ Antonio McDyess said about the Cavs turnout and chants that “It was just embarrassing.” How awesome is that???

The mood after the game all around the arena was breathtakingly celebratory, it’s truly hard to describe the scene, but it was basically a road game with ecstatic Cleveland fans and Ohio license plates everywhere you looked.

It was well worth the 3 hour weekend drive to experience.

Even Sarah’s Deli, a sweet little Detroit kosher restaurant, had at least 4 tables full of Cavs fans by the time I got there. If you find yourself there, ask for a Bubba Burger with Pastrami (A burger with 3 slices of hamburger buns and excellent breaded onions with bbq sauce) together with their famous ranch dressing, it’s truly outstanding.

I’ll be back in Cleveland tomorrow evening, but do any readers have any good Detroit tips for the daytime? Any good kosher groceries to pick up in Canada in case we take the bridge to Windsor? Post ‘em now!

Update: Flying home to Cleveland tonight!

Originally posted on 04/06:
I’m in Overland Park, Kansas for the Passover holiday, updates may be sporadic over the next 2 weeks while I’m on the road…

Update from the (new and quite nice) LAS Presidents club: No need to worry, We both received complimentary upgrades
C’mon did you really think I wouldn’t be able to pull it off?

Originally posted on 03/15:

I fly tonight with my wife to Vegas where we’ll partake in 2 free nights at the luxirous Wynn resort and a free night at the new Encore resort, all courtesy of AMEX. Then we drive to LA to go to the wedding of one of her good friends.  In LA we’ll burn 4,000 Starpoints at the newly lowered category 2 Westin LAX, where I will have the first chance to test out my new Starwood Platinum status (Thanks Gabi!).

While checking in for my 4 hour, 50 minute flight I noticed that Continental upgraded me to first class. As I only hold bottom-tier Silver status, they only upgrade me.  Although there are still a number of first class seats available, companion upgrades are available solely for mid and top tier elites.

On our month-long Cleveland-Houston-Honolulu, Oahu-Lihue, Kauai-Kahalui, Maui-Hilo, Hawaii-Kona, Hawaii-Honolulu, Oahu-Los Angeles-Newark-Cleveland trip I had used 140,000 miles for BusinessFirst seats, but I have never used miles for a US48 trip and didn’t plan to start now.

At any rate, we’re now stuck with 1 first class seat and 1 coach seat…so what would you do?

Just landed back home in Ctown-what an amazing and crazy month it’s been!!!

Thanks for hanging in there, updates will be back to normal before you know it!

Post stickied: Please scroll down for new posts.

I’m headed off with my beautiful and sweet wife Mimi to Hawaii (via Houston of course-the 3 story President’s Club there is a “must-do!”) where we’ll hit all 4 of its’ major islands (Oahu, then Kauai, Maui, and finally the Big Island) and then come back to Cleveland with stopovers in LA and NYC. (Gotta get the bast bang for the buck out of the mileage tickets!)

Posting may be sporadic for the next month or so, but thanks for hanging in there and keep checking back because it will be updated!

Stay tuned for a report on Continental’s BusinessFirst service to Hawaii…

Update: To the 37 of you that emailed me about getting this room for another night. This was a one-time offer for the night of December 22nd only. There’s no purpose at asking it for other nights, if I have it for other nights I will be sure to post it!
Also, major LOL for the emailer who writes that he called the hotel’s front desk asking to get the free hotel offer for a different night but they didn’t know what he was talking about…that made my day!

Originally posted on 12/22:

Please email me if you would like to spend tonight in the Hyatt Place Cleveland, courtesy of Dansdeals.com!

If you haven’t been to a Hyatt Place before they are actually quite nice.  In each room there is the Hyatt Grand Bed and a nice sized sofa-sleeper separated from the bedroom by a half-wall.  There is a 42″ LCD HDTV, a small kitchen area, and best of all, free Wi-Fi!  The complimentary breakfast has a nice selection of individual sized cereal boxes and other goodies including some great new teas that I’ve discovered, like Tazo Passion (Yum!).

At any rate, if you’d like a room for tonight on the house please email me at: and we’ll figure out how to rendezvous.

The Hyatt Place Cleveland, which has a complementary “Stay Fit” fitness center and pool, is located in Independence, near the intersection of I-480 and I-77.

I’m right now in Pittsburgh for a couple of days and will be on the road for the majority of the next 6 weeks…I’ll keep on posting, but it may get sporadic at times.

For the curious, here are the flights that my wife and I have booked so far over that period of time…

Somewhere along the line that does qualify as a honeymoon, albeit in my own bizarre way…

Luckily we’re confirmed in first class on every flight that has first-class seating!!! Continental’s BusinessFirst service to Hawaii is said to be the best…we’ll see and report back if it was worth the extra miles!

Related Posts:
3rd Anniversary Post Linky
2nd Anniversary Post Linky
1st Anniversary Post Linky

Today is the 4th anniversary of this site, which for me means that I just turned 24 years old!

It’s been a heck of year, I’m still amazed that between racking some 50,000 elite qualifying miles (I was a 23 year old single religious jew living in Cleveland…why do you think I racked up so many flying miles?), getting married (!), and finishing up my MBA (I graduate in December!) that I’ve found the time to keep up the site.  And hey-we’re coming up on 2.5 million hits!  Here’s hoping that I can keep it going!

So, any votes for your favorite deal of the year?

The big day is THIS SUNDAY! Feel free to peruse our wedding website where you can sign our guest book, see photos, or even vote where we should take a honeymoon (or you can check out our registry ) at www.MimiAndDaniel.com

The 28° temperature recorded on Tuesday in Overland Park, KS gave me the chills, but hopefully this weekend’s forecast pans out as predicted!!!

13 days left ’till my big day in KC…but be sure to keep checking back for intermittent updates over the next few weeks!

I apologize for the light updates-I’ve been on the road for an 8-state marathon tour since last week and won’t be home until the beginning of next week.

Updates will continue to be sporadic, but be sure to stay tuned!

NEW YORK, August 12-PRNewswire-FirstCall-I’m thrilled to announce the latest corporate merger between entities in Cleveland, Ohio and Overland Park, Kansas. I am known by some (i.e. Rabbi Chaikin and others) as the “Sprinter Rebbe,” so this merger seemed apropos as the world headquarters of Sprint Corp. is in Overland Park.

After 23 years of searching I’m ecstatic to announce that I’ve found the most priceless deal ever: My engagement to Mimi Goldberg of Overland Park, KS! I’d like to take this opportunity to welcome anyone with a Starwood AMEX (just kidding!) that would like to share a L’chaim in honor of the latest Dansdeals merger. G-d willing we will be at Beis Levi Yitzchak this Wednesday night starting at 8:30pm. The address is 556 Crown Street, Brooklyn, NY 11213. The entrance is from the side, on Albany Avenue between Crown and Montgomery Streets.

Mazal Tov! Mazal Tov!

Daniel Eleff, CtownChosson (formerly known as Ctownbochur. )

CONTACT:
Wish us a mazal tov (or contact us for any Dansdeals.com advertising/barter opportunities!) at: mimianddaniel@dansdeals.com

HT: Berel and Chanie Sosover!

I’m going to be in Pittsburgh for the weekend and probably won’t be updating the site until Sunday night or so…

5 more promo entrants and there will be a 3rd Jetblue ticket being given away on Monday!

I flew out of LAX early this morning on Continental attempting to get to Chicago via Houston in order to go to my cousin’s wedding on Sunday.

Yesterday I noticed on Continental’s mobile site that my departure flight had been downgraded to a much smaller aircraft and I had also lost my seating assignments. Luckily I was able to still grab a good seat.

At the Continental President’s club I was told that due to the equipment downgrade I could volunteer my seat and receive a $300 voucher, a hotel room, and a confirmed first class seat if I would fly out the next morning. If it wasn’t a Friday I would’ve probably done it, but being that it was I passed on the offer.

With a scheduled 1:45 layover at Houston I went into Continental’s 3-story club in terminal E, where I learned that my flight to Chicago was canceled. All nonstop flights into Chicago were booked solid until Friday evening, but despite an obnoxious agent I still managed to finagle my way onto a Continental flight to Detroit from where I’d be able to take a Northwest flight to get me to Chicago by noon.

So, after 4 airports and 4 airport clubs visited (Including my first time in the stunning Northwest Worldclub in Detroit where I grabbed a quick yet luxurious and refreshing shower) all on the same day, I’m finally in Chicago.

My luggage? Only G-d knows where that is now!

-Posted from the shared Continental/Northwest club in Chicago.

I’d like to wish a hearty Mazal Tov to my dear brother Dovid who will receive his Smicha (rabbinical ordination) from Rabbi Dovid Schochet tonight in Los Angeles at Rabbi Dovid Schmukler’s Kollel Tiferes Menachem smicha program located in YOEC. (And this is not only because you provided me a good excuse to rack up some more miles and upgrades with the transcontinental flight )

Also congratulations to brother #3, JJ, (watch out guys, there are 6 of us boys in the Eleff family!) on graduating from high school tonight in Pittsburgh.

May you guys have the best of luck in all of your endeavors and go from strength to strength!

Wishing everyone a joyous and meaningful holiday.
Next scheduled update: 06/11

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jh0M17_DMQ[/youtube]

Update: There have been over 1,300 posts made on dansdeals.com/forums in just a week, great job guys!

Post stickied: Scroll down for new posts.

Call me skeptical, but I didn’t think it would work.

Sure, 2 discussion posts each yielded hundreds of great comments, but the last time (some 2 years ago) I tried replacing comments with a forum it was a rather miserable failure.

However Eli decided that he had enough of the long discussion posts and created dansdeals.com/forums

Major kudos to “Eli” (and also to “WhYME”) for working out the technical aspects of the forums.

The forum had its soft launch just a few days ago and it’s already impressively active with topics and posts!

The purpose of the forum is not to replace dansdeals.com or the comments on dansdeals.com, they will continue as normal. Rather the purpose is to better facilitate the discussion of all miscellaneous topics that aren’t dealt with properly on dansdeals.com.

Registration isn’t required to read the forums, however it is required in order to add your own thoughts.

Forums aren’t for everyone, but they definitely help facilitating discussion in an orderly fashion.

Comments on deals posted here will continue as normal, but if you have a miscellaneous question unrelated to a deal please post it in the forums in order to get the best response.

www.dansdeals.com/forums

Consumerist.com is a great website/blog filled with pro-consumer tips and stories. After they ran a story on Thursday about Delta’s retroactive baggage fee I let them know that according to Delta’s contract of carriage you have the right to demand a refund due to the rule change.

Their current top headline is “Delta’s Retroactive Baggage Fee Entitles Travelers To A Full Refund,” with a link back to the 2nd checked bag fee roundup that I wrote back on April 23rd.

So I’d like to give a special welcome to any consumerist.com readers who have found their way over to DansDeals.com!

Along with practical advice, credit card tips, mileage promotion scoops, and travel information you’ll find some of the best deals, free stuff, and price mistakes available on the web right here at DansDeals.com.

Ask any question that you may have (well, almost any question!) and either I or one of the many helpful commenters will try to help you out.

Sign up to be a member of our facebook group (it’s free!) and you’ll be the first to know about any truly incredible deals!

Originally posted on 04/18:

Post stickied.

I’m on the road for Pesach.

Updates will be sporadic until 04/29.

I’d also like to take this time to congratulate O.T. on his “Dansdeals inspired wedding.” What’s that supposed to mean? Well, here’s the email he sent me in the end of March that just made my day. I’m not going to use his full name in case he doesn’t want it to be published…

“Dan,

I hope you’re well. I stumbled upon your blog a long time ago when I was searching for information about the Starwood Amex card. I bookmarked your site and I’ve been checking it daily ever since.

About 6 or 7 months ago you blogged about a 1 dollar fare sale from Spirit Airline. I live in Los Angeles, so I figured out that I could fly to Guatemala for a dollar each way ($80 r/t after tax). The only catch was that I would have to fly in on a Wed and out 32 hours later on a Thur. It sounded crazy but fun. I called my (girlfriend) while at work, laughing on the phone, and she said, why not, let’s do it. Long story short, I hired a tour guide and private car for the day and we saw all of Guatemala City and Antigua within the span of 10 hours. (Just a little background info: My girlfriend and I had been talking about getting married in the months leading up to our trip and the thought of another cookie-cutter L.A. wedding really wasn’t something we were excited about.) When we were in La Antigua (45 min outside of Guatemala City) our tour guide told us we had to see a hotel there that was beautiful. We told him we weren’t interested and wanted to see more of the culture and not the hotel. He insisted. We gave in. As we were walking around this hotel (Casa Santo Domingo) we were enthralled and found it to be beautiful. At a certain point I looked at my girlfriend and said “this would be the perfect place to get married.” She was thinking the same thing. The light bulbs went off for both of us. That was 5 months ago. In less than 3 weeks we’re getting married in that hotel in La Antigua with over 100 of our family and friends.

Anyway, thought you might be interested to know what a post on your website can lead to!

Best regards,

O.T.”

That is one “Smoking Hot” deal indeed! Thanks for sharing your unique story and once again, congratulations!!!

Uri asked in a comment,

“Question for Dan and other mile collectors: approx. how many miles do you have in total?

I ask this because I want to get an idea of how “expensive” it is for you guys to take such a trip. The more miles you have, the less expensive it is to use up 25,000 of them.”

Well, because you asked so nicely…

Contrary to popular mileage philosophy, I’m a big believer in spreading miles out across numerous programs and alliances. In this manner I greatly increase the odds of finding a mileage ticket when I need it. By having miles and elite status in all alliances I am able to access the mileage inventory of literally dozens of airlines, and travel in comfort when I find the award ticket.

Additionally, I basically never use 25,000 miles for a domestic coach ticket, there are significantly better values to be had by traveling in international premium classes than domestic coach…

Anyway, these are my lifetime earned miles (not necessarily how much I currently have in each account):

One World: (Current Status: AA Lifetime Gold, Oneworld Ruby)

AA: 1,350,000

Cathay Pacific: 795,000

LAN: 105,000

Skyteam: (Current Status: Continental Silver, Skyteam Elite)

Continental: 380,000

Delta: 130,000

Northwest: 4,500

Star Alliance: (Current Status: United 3P, Star Alliance Silver)

United: 225,000

Miscellaneous:

Jetblue: 275 Trueblue points (100 = Systemwide RT ticket)

Airtran: (Current Status: Lifetime Elite) 1,600 A+ Credits (16 = Systemwide RT ticket)

Southwest: 48 RR Credits (16 RR credits = Systemwide RT ticket)

Starwood: (Current Status: SPG Gold) 300,000 Starpoints

Hilton: 40,000 points

AMEX MR: 60,000 points.

Avis: Chairman Status (Automatic free upgrade to best available car on the lot)

OK, Now it’s your turn! How many miles have you earned and what kind of elite status do you hold?

Update: Due to a bug I have temporarily disabled the highlighting feature, you will still be able to search posts and comments, but the search terms won’t be highlighted.

-You are now able to search for anything written in posts and in comments.

-The term that you search for will now be highlighted on the search results page.

-When you click on the comments of a post that came up during a search, the search term will be highlighted every time it is mentioned in the comments.

-If a post that comes up during a search has no highlighted words, than the search term only appears in the comments on that post.

-A general note about this site’s search functionality: The more search terms that you enter, the less results you will get (the search is set up to only look for posts that contain all search terms) By using fewer search terms you will get more results back…

I’ve also added a favicon. Think you can do a better job? Send it on over and share your work with the world (or at least quite a few thousand people…)

Amazon offers great prices on all kinds of clearance items every Friday.

I scan through the sale looking for the best deals, but obviously I can’t find and post every great deal, so you should look through the clearance pages yourself to see the entire selection.

If you find something that interests you-it probably interests others as well, so please leave a comment!

Finally, every week (after Friday of course) there are people that email/comment telling me that the price I posted is incorrect…

The prices for items that say “Amazon friday sale” are only good on the day that they are posted, they will go up in price after Friday!

Additionally, Amazon will often sell out of a clearance item during a Friday sale, in which case you may see higher 3rd party prices for the item on the day it was posted.

Good luck, and enjoy the weekly treasure hunt!

Update 2: After just 3 days we now have 100 members! (And not much else to show besides for that…suggestions anyone? Or is the group feature just pointless?)

Update: If anyone has any miscellaneous questions-feel free to start your own topic in the new dansdeals.com discussion board on our facebook page!

Originally posted on 02/12:
Dansdeals.com Facebook Group Linky (Facebook account required)

I still have no idea what exactly is the point of the numerous “social-networking” sites (is it to show off how many “friends” you have?) However enough people have asked why there is no dansdeals.com group to warrant its creation…

Anyone care to fill me in on what I’ve been missing?

Stickied until 1/31:

Originally posted on 1/20:
I’ll be doing a pond jump with the family today-expect sporadic updates for the remainder of the month.

You may have noticed the lack of comments over the past few days.

Earlier this week I finally decided to take the plunge and upgrade my publishing software for the first time since the switch to Dansdeals.com this past August.

Unfortunately it messed up my ability to approve new comments.

I have a temporary fix in place in the meantime, so hopefully that’ll work out…

If you use Firefox, just click here to add Dansdeals comments to your live bookmarks and you’ll be able to catch up on what you missed!

Save $300 Off Of A $749 Dell Vostro Slim Tower Desktop: 4 comments
I Don’t Think AA Would Get Away With This Ad…: 5 comments.
Readers…Getting Out Of Sprint Or Verizon For Free: 6 comments
Rent A One-Way…Starting At Just $1/Day: 7 comments
The First Compelling Mac: 18 comments

Related Posts:
2nd Anniversary Post Linky
1st Anniversary Post Linky

Well, today’s the 3rd anniversary of this site, which for me means that I just turned 23 years old!

It’s been an exciting year for me:
-I escaped shaken, but thank G-d miraculously unharmed, from an angry slum uprising in Brazil. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time!
-I was able to experience Israel for my first time, and spent an incredible 3.5 weeks there.
-Ctownbochur.com became Dansdeals.com!
-Dozens of graphic designers submitted logos in a successful logo design competition. They were whittled down to the awesome primary site logo, designed by impactingimage.com, which is displayed for about half of the time. 6 secondary logos were just too good to pass up on and rotate the other half of the time.
-This site has continued to grow, and recorded its’ 500,000th hit in February and its’ millionth hit last month.

It’s also been a year of some incredible deals. Please post a comment about what your favorite deal was!

Thank you for your continued support of this site, for posting helpful comments, and for “spreading the word!”

Random musings about my first trip to Israel for 24 days this past August with 2 of my younger brothers.

Israel Trip Part 1 Linky

Conversion note: When I went to Israel in August the Dollar:Shekel exchange rate was about 4.3:1, it is now 3.9:1.

Planning the trip:

The trip was based around tailoring everything we wanted to see along with where the Starwood hotels were located!

This was where we stayed each night:

08/03-04: Friday-Shabbos: Sheraton Jerusalem Plaza, Starwood category 3. Upgrade: No.

08/05: Sunday: Le Meridian Haifa, Starwood category 1. Upgrade: Yes.

08/06-09: Monday-Thursday: Sheraton Tiberias, Starwood category 2. Upgrade: Partial.

08/10-11: Friday-Shabbos: Rented an apartment in Tzfas for $150.

08/12-08/14: Sunday-Tuesday: Herod’s Vitalis Spa Eilat, Starwood Category 3. Upgrade: Yes.

08/15-16: Wednesday-Thursday: Le Meridian Dead Sea, Starwood Category 1. Upgrade: No.

08/17-18: Friday-Shabbos: With relatives in Rechavia, Jerusalem.

08/19-23: Sunday-Thursday: Sheraton Jerusalem Plaza, Starwood category 3. Upgrade: Yes.

08/24-25: Friday-Shaboos: With relatives in Ramot, Jerusalem.

08/26: Sunday: Boeing 777.

Getting from TLV/Ben Gurion To Jerusalem:

We arrived in Israel on Friday morning, however I didn’t rent a car at the airport for a few reasons:

-You must be 23 to rent at the airport at most agencies (I am only 22.)

-We were leaving Israel just over 3 weeks later, on a Sunday, so the extra 2 days would add a not insignificant sum.

Everyone that I spoke to before the trip told me not to take a regular taxi but a Sherut, or shared taxi, from the airport. With 3 passengers I was quoted a cost of US$75 for the shared ride. With a little bit of negotiating our regular taxi to the Sheraton Jerusalem Plaza was just $47, and we didn’t have to wait for 9 other riders to join in…

Car Rental:

There’s no way around it, if you want an automatic car you’re gonna pay for it! There is an agent called Chayat at 011-972-3570-5102 that has OK rates for Avis and free underage rentals.

Don’t rent a Hyundai Getz-the Mazda 3 is worth every penny for the upgrade over the Getz.

Only the World Mastercard covers CDW in Israel. As far as I could tell no other AMEX/Mastercard/Visa that covers CDW in Israel.

Driving:

I hate to downplay the risk factor, as I know the statistics for Israeli car accidents are among the highest in the world. However I honestly didn’t find driving in Israel to be much worse than in NYC. Yes, driving in Jerusalem is not easy (and parking is even harder) but overall it wasn’t too bad.

Getting around Israel-Maps:

I came to Israel equipped with 2 great maps that I bought from Amazon:

Streetwise Jerusalem

and Globetrotter Israel

Both were very good, but not quite good enough for navigation in unfamiliar territory.

Being in Israel and having a rental car for nearly a month coerced into buying a GPS for Israel.

GPS:

Yes, I do own a GPS, the excellent Nuvi 680 courtesy of Sam’s Club. Unfortunately Garmin apparently does not make Israeli maps, and the Nuvi can only use Garmin maps…

So on our first day in Israel we went to the Office Depot in the Kenyon Malchah shopping mall in Jerusalem. I bought a small Mio GPS on my Starwood AMEX. It is light-years behind the Nuvi. The satellite lock took forever and the maps were passably accurate at best. It didn’t know that many of the streets in Jerusalem are one-way or only for taxis and buses. (We learned the hard way that the yellow arrows mean taxis and buses only. We were flagged over by 4 cops before we finally got off of the offending road)

However without the GPS we wouldn’t have accomplished half of the things that we got done. It was very helpful in many places where signage was spotty and best, but the most helpful part was the POI section. By just typing in “Tomb” we were instantly informed of the final resting place of every tzaddik ever buried in Israel. We always knew where the nearest gas station was. Best of all you could just search all POI’s and it would spit out tons of neat places that we didn’t even know existed!

All in all, the GPS wasn’t perfect, but I can still strongly recommend it.

To be continued…

If anyone’s going to be at NYC’s LaGuardia airport tomorrow morning please drop me a line!

Non-baseball fans, feel free to skip this post, there’s no need for nasty comments as I won’t publish them.


Preface: For some great “Manny Being Manny” stories, check out his wikipedia entry’s section on it…

The Cleveland Indians are a win away from sending Boston home and advancing to the World Series.

During game 4 after the Tribe played an incredible 7 run, bottom of the 5th inning, the BoSox came alive as Youkilis and Big Papi homered.

Then Manny knocked one out of the Jake. (Fast-Forward to -0:20 to watch his celebration)

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=Yh-Y6sGYv78[/youtube]

The national media, as well as Beantown and Cleveland fans, united in criticizing Manny Ramirez for “preening” and “admiring it for a few seconds like a golfer watching a 70-foot putt heading into the hole.” You just don’t do that when you’re still losing 7-3 and about to fall behind 3 games to 1.

Here’s one excuse suggested by a fan from Red Sox Nation,
“When Manny went deep, my first thought was, ‘Quit posing, Manny, we’re still down 7-3.’ Then it dawned on me that Manny probably had no idea what the score was. In fact, he probably isn’t aware that baseball games are determined by which team scores more runs.”

Ouch.

Today, Manny got himself into more trouble when he was asked about the possibility of losing the series,

“It doesn’t happen, so who cares? There’s always next year. It’s not like it’s the end of the world.”


He has my forgiveness, and the reason for that takes me for a trip down memory lane…

Manny played 8 great years with the Tribe, but what I’ll always remember will be the encounter I had with him as a 10 year old at the Westin Harbour Castle (No, we weren’t there to get Starwood points, it’s simply the hotel that the Indians stay at when playing the Blue Jays!) in Toronto in August of 1995.

My brother (age 8 at the time) and I were having the time of our lives getting signatures from the players of the excellent, World-Series bound team. We had gotten everyone’s John Hancock except Albert Belle, (He was really mean and actually screamed at us for having the chutzpah to ask for a autograph) Eddie Murray, (Who simply ignored us) and Manny (Who we somehow hadn’t bumped into)

Retrospectively, perhaps many of the players were so nice to us because they were together with their families for that series…

We had some interesting neighbors, on our left was Jim Thome, who was quite friendly, and on our right was Jim Poole, whom I hated and had already nicknamed “the nightmare on the mound.” (He would go on to give up the only run scored in the 6th and final game of the ‘95 World Series against the Braves.)

On the day of the last game we were in the elevator about to go up to our room when a guy calls out to hold the elevator. Well, not just any guy, as soon as we pushed the “open door” button we realized that the man who just walked in was none other than the 23 year old Man-Ram himself. We shyly asked him for his autograph, which he readily gave to us. Then he asked, “So, do you guys have tickets to the game tonight?” We actually didn’t have enough tickets for the whole family, so we told him that we didn’t. “Well, let me take down your name and I’ll leave 6 tickets for you at the box office.” He came through and our whole family was able to enjoy the game, courtesy of the “Baby Bull.”

Pure class.

So, Manny, for all I care you can act all you want when you go yard. Just don’t beat us, OK?

Some post division-series victory ramblings…


Sorry Yankee fans, but your season (and era???) is done!

Your $216M payroll couldn’t defeat a team with a payroll less than a third of that.

The NY Times has perhaps the quote of the series,

“Indians General Manager Mark Shapiro, who should be the executive of the year for the impressive way he has made Cleveland a division champion, put the economic difference between his team and the Yankees in context Friday.

“They had a $20 million pinch-hitter last night,” he said, referring to Jason Giambi. “That’s a third of our team.”


Commenters on the “Golden Ticket” thread: Remember what I said about Sabathia, Carmona, and our 2 Raffi’s?

Sorry Nooch-That subway series will just have to wait!


The Indians take on the Red Sox for the American League Championship this Friday.

Go Tribe!

It seemed that this day might just coincide with the site’s 3 year anniversary-but it happened over a month early!

2,632 posts. 33,763 comments. Countless chance encounters around the world with site readers.

Thanks for your help in making this site a continued success!

(Rabbi) Daniel Eleff

Post Stickied:

Light posting period from now through the end of the Jewish holiday season-10/06

Indians-Yankees ALDS ESPN Page Linky

7 out of 10 experts picked the Indians over the Yankees to advance to the ALCS.

8 out of 10 said it will be a 5 game series…

Accuscore Baseball forecasting gives the Tribe a slight 52%-48% advantage to take the series.

I better stop there before I alienate the 45% of my reader base that hails from New York…

AA is the only remaining airline that still counts all mileage activity towards lifetime elite status.

United and Delta used to count all miles, but currently only count actual flown mileage for lifetime elite status.
Continental used to have a program that if you were a top-tier elite for 5 consecutive years you got lifetime top-tier status, alas Continental no longer offers any chance at becoming a lifetime elite today.


On AA every mile earned, even those from credit cards, is counted.
At 1,000,000 miles you get lifetime Gold Elite status and at 2,000,000 miles you get lifetime Platinum Elite status.
In addition you also get other nice goodies when you cross each million marker.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve redeemed miles, the only thing that matters is the “program to date miles.”

Today I finally entered the home stretch…I just hope they don’t pull the program before I cross the finish line!

From my AA account: