I'm going to Australia in March on Credit Card/Marriott points: Here's how I did it

Let me first say that this wasn't some sort of life hack where I got enough points to pull this off in a couple of months.  It took more than a few years, and I play the long game when it comes to points and patiently accumulated them until I found a trip I wanted to take.  The good news is, you could probably do a similar trip in 12-18 months.

THE PLANE TICKET

This part is pretty straight forward.  In the Fall of 2015 I applied for the Chase Sapphire Preferred credit card and it had a sign up bonus of 50,000 Chase Ultimate Reward points after spending $4,000 in three months.  Chase points are the shit because you can transfer them on a one-to-one basis to partners such as United and Marriott.  There are others, but those are the two I primarily use, so that's all I really pay attention to.  You can also book flight/hotel directly through Chase's redemption system. Now, you may be skeptical and say, "What's 50,000 points worth?"  Chase's redemption system gives you 1.25 cents per point, so that bonus is worth $625 in travel, and since Chase is basically purchasing the flight/hotel on your behalf, so you don't have to deal with blackouts and all that other bullshit when it comes to redeeming travel.

This past fall, the new kid on the block was the Chase Sapphire Reserve that offered a 100,000 point bonus (which is fucking absurd, which is why it's dropping down to 50,000) along with higher 1.5 cents per point redemption.  After I got that bonus, I had accumulated enough points to book a roundtrip flight from Denver to Sydney.  Ended up being 132,637 for a ticket that cost just under $2000.  Not bad.

THE HOTEL

I don't like redeeming random nights with my Marriott points (though I have), my main goal was to save up for a 7-night + United Miles package.  In this case, I spent 290,000 Marriott points to get a 7-night stay at this pimp ass category 8 hotel in Sydney, along with 55,000 United miles to boot.  Gotta turn back the clock all the way to 2009 when I was moving from Arizona to Virginia.  I planned out a road trip and decided to sign up for Marriott rewards and only booked Marriott hotels on the way.  A few months later, I decided to sign up for the Marriott rewards credit card that offered a sign up bonus as well as 5 points per dollar when used to book a Marriott hotel and 2 points for travel and dining per dollar.  I used this from 2010 - 2015 for those purposes to rack up points.  I also preferred to book a Marriott whenever possible.  I know some people aren't brand loyal and like to book on Orbitz, Hotwire, etc.  That's all fine and good, because those people aren't getting a 7-night stay at the fucking Sydney Harbour Marriott Hotel at Circular Quay.

Now I'm super psyched to see this down under:

HOW CAN I DO THIS?

The cool thing about all this is that if you haven't opened any new credit cards in the last two years, you can get started and get a shitload of points quickly.  Chase has this asinine rule that if you've got 5 credit card accounts opened in the last 24 months, they'll deny you most of their cards.  That said, here's my list of bonuses to get to amass points:

Chase Sapphire Reserve - 100K bonus if applying in a Chase branch, 50K online, $4000 spend/3 mo
Chase Ink Preferred - 80K bonus, $5,000 spend/3mo - this is a business card, a lot of people don't know this, but if you sell tube socks to Navy guys on Ebay, you have a sole proprietorship, which means you can quality for a business card.
Chase Sapphire Preferred - 50K bonus, $4000 spend/3 mo
Chase Marriott Rewards - 80K bonus, $3000 spend/3 mo
AMEX Starwood Preferred - 25K Starwood bonus, $3000/3 mo - this makes the list because due to the Marriott-Starwood merger, you can transfer your points between the rewards program and 1 Starwood point is equal to 3 Marriott points, making this bonus 75K Marriott points

Doing the math for you, you can get up to 230K chase points and 155K Marriott points in around 15 months.  You can do some serious damage with that.

All of these cards have bonus categories like spend on travel, dining, etc.  I could explain it here, but I really don't feel like typing all that shit out.  You can read about it on your own, the information isn't hard to find.  One other cool thing though, is that Chase has some no-annual fee cards that earn points in different areas better than the Reserve/Preferred and you can transfer points between those cards so you can use different cards but amass points into one pool.  Sounds a little confusing, but you can read up on that elsewhere too.

Finally, I'm not advocating you go into debt to get these bonuses.  The beauty of points is collecting rewards for money you were going to spend anyway.  Don't go out there buying something stupid like Justin Bieber concert tickets just to hit your bonus spends.


TLDR - There are a lot of good bonuses out there that can get you free travel.  People who think travel redemptions are too complicated and prefer cash back credit cards only like vanilla ice cream and missionary sex.

Michael Bay made another Transformer movie with the sole purpose of ruining my childhood and you can't convince me otherwise

Look at this fucking poster.  "Rethink your heroes" and then you've got the Decepticon purple in Optimus Prime's eyes.  It gets better.  Take a look at this trailer:

WHAT KIND OF FUCKING ASSHOLE BODYSLAMS BUMBLE BEE?  Bumble Bee was the first transformer toy I had when I was a kid.  Yes, it was a piece of shit and broke after a few months, but I still thought Bumble Bee was the shit.  As for Optimus Prime going full heel as if Michale Bay decided to turn the Transformers franchise into the WWE, this is the Optimus Prime I remember from my child hood:

Just going full HAM on the Decepticons and giving zero fucks.  Does that song sound familiar?  It should:

Is it a coincidence that Mark Wahlberg sang "you got the touch" in Boogie Nights, the same song Optimus Prime wrecks house to, and Mark Wahlberg is in this latest installment of Transformers?  I don't fucking think so.

As for Michael Bay, I'll just leave you with this question posed by Trey Parker and Matt Stone in Team America: World Police:  "Why does Michael Bay get to keep on making movies?"

I just ordered wrapping paper from Amazon because I'm a lazy piece of shit

Amazon Prime is the best.  Hands down.  I have a white elephant party this Friday and forgot to buy wrapping paper for my gift.  I thought I would have to endure an after work trip to Target, when I realized, why don't I just order that shit on Amazon?  It'll be here by Thursday just in time for a half ass wrap job.  But you know what's better than Amazon Prime?  $49 Amazon Prime, because I'm getting the student rate, as you may or may not recall my exploits at an online university.

Since I'm getting in the Christmas spirit, let's play the greatest Christmas duet of ALL TIME:

There's a lot of estrogen in that video, and 83% of it is coming from Justin Bieber.

The College Football Playoff Committee has got to be PISSED at the state of Michigan right now

The Big Ten has had a throwback year to the late 90's and laid claim to the best conference in college Football.  With that comes some complications as they had four teams in the CFP top 10 rankings all of which were in contention for the Big Ten crown coming into yesterday, and oddly enough, the best Big Ten team Ohio State, did not control their own destiny.  There's been a lot of talk about what does the committee do with an 11-1 team that doesn't win its own division, but has wins over Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Nebraska and Michigan on its resume?

That's a question the committee wanted to avoid, so for them it would be simple:  If Michigan won in Columbus yesterday, it would have eliminated Ohio State and Penn State from the CFP picture and set up a clean winner-take-all scenario between Michigan and Wisconsin in the Big Ten title game.

So when this was happening:

You know the committee was like:

But then this happened:

And then the committee was like:

And of course, this happened:

And then the committee was like:

After the dust settled from that epic game in Columbus, I'm sure a committee member who's a glass-half-full kind of guy piped up: "Wait a second!  If Michigan State beats Penn State, then Ohio State will play Wisconsin and we only need to put one Big Ten team in the playoffs!"  So they flip the channel to ESPN and see:

And the roller coster of emotions continues:

But of course all good things come to an end:

And then the committee does this:

So this is what the CFP committee is dealing with right now.  Alabama is a mortal lock.  Nick Saban could walk to mid-field before the SEC title game and take a shit on the 50-yard line, tell the head referee he just had sex with his wife, and walk of the field and forfeit the game and they'd still be the No.1 seed.  So at least the committee has that going for them.  After that it becomes much less clear.  Washington was left for dead after getting worked by USC a few weeks ago, but they just destroyed Washington State setting up an opportunity for another quality win against Colorado in the PAC-12 championship game.  The debate I alluded to earlier is now what the hell to do with the Big Ten.  Two highly ranked teams in Wisconsin and Penn State play for the Big Ten Crown, and you have 11-1 Ohio State.  Flying under the radar a bit is Clemson.  Just a few weeks ago they were a shoe-in, but they were only ranked 4 in the latest rankings, and their resume has continued to take a hit as Louisville has decided to phone it in and lose to Houston and Kentucky in consecutive weeks.  Now Clemson's best wins are against 8-4 Auburn, 9-3 Florida State, and 9-3 Louisville.  They could be the odd team out even if they win the ACC.

What I love about this mess is that everyone thinks they're a fucking genius by saying "Hey, this is why they should have eight teams in the playoffs!"  Right.  So you can be like this guy:

Making an eight team field would just push the controversy down further and you'd have the teams around 9-10 making the case why they should be "playing for a national championship" and be in the eight team field.  My opinion here is that teams ranked 5-8 don't deserve to play for the fucking national championship.  College football has the most crucial regular season in sports (don't even bring up the EPL and how they don't have playoffs.  I'm not here to discuss a European sport) and letting eight teams into the field would diminish the importance.  Look at College Basketball.  There are 34 at-large bids, and you ALWAYS have some team bitching about how they deserved that last 12 or 13 seed.  Get the fuck out of here.  That's why I don't start paying attention to College Basketball until after the Super Bowl.  College Football?  I'm paying attention from week 1.

But hey, after all this craziness, Michigan fans can take solace now that they've fucked Ohio State two years in a row after losing a conference game before playing Ohio State.

Last year, it was this:

If the Michigan Punter doesn't lose his fucking mind and just falls on the football, Ohio State goes to the Big Ten title game.  Instead, MSU wins the tie break, wins the Big Ten, then gets put in a body bag by Alabama in the playoffs.

This year Michigan's loss to Iowa screwed Ohio State.  If Michigan were unbeaten, an Ohio State win would have created a three-way tie between Michigan, Penn State, and Ohio State.  Penn State would have been eliminated due to overall record, leaving Ohio State to take the head-to-head over Michigan.

So even in losing, Michigan fans can smirk at Ohio State being held out of the Big Ten title game.  Man, I fucking love college football.

This Panda Express Infographic about General Tso's chicken is so full of shit that it's fucking hilarious

Where do I begin? So they say Chef C.K. Peng created General Tso's chicken in Taiwan, so why the hell do they have the plane graphic originating in China?  Are they trying to illustrate that Chef C.K. Peng fled communist China to Taiwan to give birth to the Tso's chicken?  I'm sorry, I just have to call bullshit on some chef creating General Tso's in Asia.  If you go to Asia and ask for General Tso's chicken, they'll look at you like you have a dick growing out of your forehead.  It's a completely American fabrication.  Just like the fortune cookie.

I also like how they vaguely saying in the early 70's Chef T.T. Want brought General Tso's chicken to the US.  Kind of a timeline gap there if you ask me.  Then the arrows shooting all over the place as if NYC was the hub of General Tso's chicken is just fantastic.  As if they're blessing all corners of the US with that delicious chicken.  A+ depiction of the Rocky Mountains.

Finally, my favorite fucking part of all this is how they say in LA, 2016 "Panda Express Introduces America's favorite General Tso's chicken".  A little behind the times, are we?  Did you guys just find out about the polio vaccine too?  Practically every fucking Chinese restaurant you set foot in has a version of the General's chicken, and the places that don't serve it don't exist anymore because I went there, got viscerally angry when I didn't see it on the menu, then burned the place to the ground.  "Introducing" General Tso's chicken in 2016 reminds me of this guy:

Oh, and the best General Tso's I've ever had is hands down this place:

Do yourself a favor and pop in if you ever find yourself in State College, PA, or enroll in a graduate program at Penn State and relocate so you can eat the best fucking General Tso's chicken in the world and feel what it's like to have an orgasm in your mouth without sucking a dick.  It's totally worth it.  I've been all over the US and the rest of this fucking planet and I have still not found a better General Tso's.

A Chick-Fil-A opened 3 minutes from my apartment so I'll probably gain 50 pounds in the next 3 weeks

It's finally happened.  The people of Glendale finally have everything they need on one block: strip clubs and good chicken.  This location opened on Wednesday and I went in there for my maiden voyage yesterday.  What did I order?  A medium nugget tray of course.  I don't fuck around.  I'm going to plead the fifth as to whether I brought that to a party or if I just went home and ate my feelings while watching college football.  You'll never know.

HR discouraged me from going to work in a costume today because I was interviewing people so I wore this instead

I'm pretty proud of myself about this one.  I think I've discovered a new dress code: "80's cop business professional."  When you show up to a partner or client meeting, you immediately send the message that you are not here to fuck around, but to get shit done and eat a jelly doughnut.

If you don't find this remotely amusing, you're probably a millennial that wasn't alive in the 80's (or if you were, you didn't have full control of your bowels, so that really doesn't count).  Let me educate you and show you the look I was going for:

The only way this could have been better if I found someone to dress up as Tubbs.  And while we're on the topic of cops who wear cool suits with T-shirts, how the fuck did Moonbeam City not get picked up for a 2nd season by Comedy Central?  Show is hilarious, and the theme song is the shit and that alone should have been reason enough for it to be renewed.  HIT IT!

Good luck not jamming out to that for the rest of your life.