The current thing to discuss in Delta forums is a change for SkyMiles loyalty program from a miles flown program to a revenue spent program.

I think there are enough places to discuss the rumor already so I will just say what I think.

I have to fly on the cheapest airline within reason (which is why I fly Delta at all living in a US Airways hub) so I have that working against me, but since most of my tickets are booked less than 7 days in advance I often have higher fare class tickets.   A 500 mile, 2-leg each direction trip often costs $500-$700 so this might work to my advantage.  I will have to see how everything plays out with the earning to know if this will actually help me.

I don’t know how many of you enter the site through flygracefully.com instead of through boardingarea.com/blogs/flygracefully, but I have fixed my DNS.  After Boarding Area’s outage last year they changed from hosting in Colorado Springs to using Amazon Web Services.

I just never got around to making the change because the website still worked after the initial changeover.  I checked this week and realized it no longer worked so I went ahead and changed.

Back to business as usual.

Well, it looks like my house should be finally closing pretty soon here so after that I am free to begin applying for credit cards again.

Stay tuned while I read up on Mommy Points to figure out where to start.  She seems to love Chase Ultimate Rewards as much as I do.

Hilton HHonors members can earn double points or double miles for stays from April 1 through June 30, 2012.

HHonors Promotion registration is required. Promotion FAQ link.

HHonors Points & Points Earners with Double Points

Double points means 20 points per dollar for all brands except Home2 Suites where double points is 10 points per dollar. A Points & Points earner gets 25 points/$1 and elite bonuses are on top of that.

• HHonors Silver = 26.5 points/$1.
• HHonors Gold = 27.5 points/$1
• HHonors Diamond = 30 points/$1.

HHonors Points & Miles Earners with Double Miles

Most US airlines earn 500 miles per stay at most Hilton HHonors hotel brands for Points & Fixed Miles earners. Double miles is 1,000 miles per stay.

The main thing to remember with double miles is the low earning rate with most airlines for stays at Homewood Suites, Hampton Inn and Home2 Suites typically at 100 miles per stay for Points & Fixed Miles earners. You are not allowed to switch to Double Points once you have chosen Double Miles, so keep in mind that Double points are likely much higher value than Double Miles if your stays will be heavy on Hampton and Homewood.

There are some exceptions like bmi miles where members earn 1,000 miles per night for up to three nights. That can be 6,000 miles per stay.

Points & Variable Miles is usually the best miles earning preference for guests on extended stays.

HHonors airline partners and miles earn rate link.

Hat Tip to Loyalty Traveler

I prefer Hilton points over airline miles so I opted for Hilton points.

I’ve used VOIP for about 5 years now.  I was with Vonage for a few years but switched to Voipo 2 years ago.  It’s a long story, but I didn’t want to change my business number and Voipo has call forwarding for $3/month and many of the other services promising cheap call forwarding were folding right and left.  I switched to using their full blown and whopping $18/mo plan a year ago.  I like the online controls of Vonage much better, but as a whole the quality of Voipo is as good as Vonage and Voipo keeps adding features without raising my price.  Although the vPanel isn’t easy to navigate, when I do check it out I realize they have added the ability to simulring (ringing my cell phone # and my VOIP line at the same time so if I’m in the office I can answer my office phone and if I’m out I can answer on my cell) which is the key feature from Vonage I missed most.  Voipo allowed me to easily forward all calls to my cell, but that meant if I stepped out for a quick errand I had to forward my calls before I left and change it back when I got home.

Get to the point already, Grace!

So, I just now realized I can use the BYOD (bring your own device) settings from Voipo to use a SIP client on my iPhone.  I always thought I needed Skype, but when I used Skype on my cell phone on a great Wifi connection I kept getting dropped on my conference call and my cell signal where I was didn’t yield better results.  Since I like to try before I buy I’m currently using Media5-phone since it’s free.  It registers with Voipo just fine and I get calls to my office phone and on Media5 simultaneously, but when I answered on my office phone, Media5 kept ringing for minutes on end which was quite annoying.  Also, my iPhone battery seems to drain faster.

I do like being able to return calls from my office line instead of my cell line since I prefer to not give out my cell line, but if I use this extensively I will most likely need to purchase codecs to allow better call quality over 3G or maybe just a better SIP client.

Acrobits seems to come up the most in online discussions and it’s $6.99 in the iTunes store

Bria also is highly recommended and is $7.99 in iTunes.

I always got confused since buying these apps is equivalent to buying a phone, just because you have a phone does not mean you have service.  I just now realized I’ve had service all along!  If I find that I am using the VOIP account more than my normal cell phone I might just go ahead and purchase Acrobits and the G.729 codec (apparently the codec is still proprietary and requires a license for use) to get better quality over 3G.  Best of all, I can call home from abroad and not have to worry about Skype credit anymore!

I bought a Mophie Juice Pack Air from the Best Buy Express in MSP one trip in December when I forgot my iPhone charger.  I really like it because it uses a MicroUSB to charge which meant I was able to borrow chargers from my friends with Android phones and it also has no problem charging from the USB in my car stereo even though my phone will not.

We’re not even in April yet, I’ve maybe taken the thing on 5 trips and the Micro USB had broken off and is just rattling around in the case.  Apparently this is a known issue from previous versions as well because a simple google search turned up this video from the iPhone 3GS:

(NOTE: don’t actually open it because you can’t fix it!)

I like the form factor of a wrap around case and I like the Micro USB charging because that gives me 2 options to charge and I usually have a Micro USB cord for other reasons anyway, but sounds like this case has issues.

I’ve had problems with FedEx delivering packages to my apartment in the past (or with sticky fingers of my neighbors I guess I should say).  I just received a notification from work that they FedEx’d me something.  I have no clue what it is and the other person celebrating the same length of time with the company does not have any shipment in the system so I’m assuming this is something I might want to actually receive.

Since the package just was shipped today I knew I still had a window of time, but would not be home for the actual delivery.  I noticed a feature to hold the package at a local FedEx.  I pass 2 FedExs on my way home from the airport so it is no problem to swing by one to pick up a package and much safer than leaving the package out for several days until my return.  I don’t trust FedEx with my life, but I am pretty sure they will not steal a box of business cards or a coffee mug!

I shall pick up the package in a couple days and all will be good.  I like this service since it is much better than advertising to the world that I am out of town.

According to Engadget this morning doesn’t really say much, but does mention that the FAA just may consider reevaluating electronics during taxi and takeoff.

One of the key things it mentions which I had heard on Flyertalk before is:

Currently, airlines complain that they have to test each model of device individually, on every single plane in the fleet, and with a separate empty flight used for each test, before they’re allowed to relax the rules for that model.

I thought that sounded ridiculous, but apparently may be true.  Considering airlines run on razor thin margins and are in the hole enough as it is, of course they don’t want to waste time on that since it doesn’t get them any more money.

Another key thing is attention.  If you are reading your nook then you are not paying attention…but oh wait!  If you are reading a paper book the same situation exists, and certain airlines such as United and AirTran allow you to listen to the IFE during taxi and landing (although they can interject in those systems)