Stark Raving Nomad

All Marriott and Sheraton hotels participate in Priceline and other name-your-price sites. I can (and I have gotten) $250+ published rate rooms for $45 to $65 per night during the week. That is a massive discount against published rates. But going from one hotel to another every week gets tiring, so I rather stay put…

I need to stay in the Washington DC area for six months plus, flying in on Sundays and flying out on Thursdays (and sometimes Fridays) – meaning either a 4 night or 5 night stay per week, every week for my current consulting gig.

Right now, I am at a hotel that does give me a discounted rate but their customer service department is on the “very lacking” side of the equation. So, I am hunting around for another hotel.

Now, if the hotels are at sellout conditions on a frequent basis, there is no reason to deal. But they aren’t and they use Priceline and still have empty rooms on a daily basis (on the average of course, if there is a special event, the hotel may be sold out for a few days in the week).

So do you think they would sell me one dinky room on a weekly basis for more than they can get for Priceline or have that room go empty?

Empty.

All the Marriott and Sheraton (all brand levels) that I talked to would rather have the room go empty; or, if lucky, some pittance from Priceline – than to negotiate a long term deal. How idiotic can you be, especially when the economy super-sucks like it is now?

Aaargh!

Convergence was excellent as usual. Jill (JAR) from Illinois made it and so did Tina (my LosCon buddy Nathan’s sister) from California. Charissa and Shelly from Indiana didn’t make it due to a SNAFU at the Indiana airport – that was a big bummer…

As usual, if you click on the pic below, you’ll go to my pic site at generalgeneral.com. (I was going to move all my pics here or to the toservefan.com site but Google has locked onto my generalgeneral.com site for pictures for DragonCon – search on “DragonCon pics” – one of them is mine, so it would be insane to break that link!)

Convergence 2010
As usual, more costumes than typical cons, so that’s always a good thing. Party rooms were great. A lot of them ran out of food and drinks, but that’s a good thing – people had fun. And, for the people who threw parties, less to carry home… (No, really, I threw parties and if there is stuff left, I give it away, like to late night parties, etc. – no point in bringing it home – but that’s me …)

[June 18-20, 2010] I thought Florida Super Con 2010 was basically a pro/media con with generic science fiction types roaming the hall but no. As predicted there were no party rooms – which was expected, not to be redundant, but I wasn’t expecting any. Really. I didn’t…

The media stars were all there behind booths so you could walk up and talk any of them. No one was really hounded, so you could just walk up and say hi. The only pic I took was of Dawn Wells (Mary Ann in “Gilligan’s Island”)… Just click on the pic below andyou will go to my pic site on generalgeneral.com:

CosPlayers at Florida SuperCon

But, the whole place was taken over by CosPlayers which was totally unexpected, especially from the web page description of the event. But apparently, it’s the annual CosPlay gathering there. Okay, so now I know. I took pictures, of course.

Singles Cruise June 10-14 , 2010

This was a four day long weekend cruise with singlescruise.com. As usual, there was a day before party at a designated hotel (Bahia Mar Resort – sorry, no pictures from there). A few dozen showed up at the hotel. (The whole group on the cruise was a little over 70.) The group was more or less cohesive throughout the cruise so it was more fun than my previous experience (where everyone just splits up into mini-groups and do their own thing). This is the most massive number of pictures I have taken, so I hope you have a good internet connection! 347 pictures!!! The pictures are on my generalgeneral.com site:

Royal Caribbean
Grandeur of the Seas

Catch-up Post #7 Arizona – Grand Canyon, Sedona, etc. Apr 09 – Apr 16, 2010

My cousin Yuki flew in from Japan to visit my dad so I took a week off and went to visit them. Visited my mon’s grave site… That was the saddest part. Anyway, went to, as in drove from Oracle, AZ (north of Tucson) to the Grand Canyon. Stayed overnight then on the way back visited Sedona. Went to the Sonora Desert Museum on another day. And a few other places. Well, here are the pictures (it will take you to my pic site at generalgeneral.com)…

Cousin Yuki from Japan and Dad at the Grand Canyon

As for the pic above, don’t worry, there is another level behind the wall. It just looks treacherous, but it’s not.

Catch-up Post #6 Oranjestad, Aruba, Feb 04 – Feb 08, 2010

Went to Aruba for the heck of it. And it snowed in Washington DC so I was “stuck” in Aruba one extra day. Here are some pics from Aruba (the pictures are on my generalgeneral.com site):

Aruba pictures

So I few all the way down to Aruba. Equatorial, so the sun is intense! DO NOT go outside without SPF1000000 slathered all over your body! I took a five minute walk in the sun and I could feel my skin cooking. Oops. Luckily I dived into building shadows.

I went on a sunset cruise and had SPF 50 on and I had to reapply the gook on my face every ten minutes or so.

I saw people who were more red than the brightest red lobster walking on the beaches. Skin cancer candidates! I wanted to scream at them to get in now! They will be in massive massive pain the next day. Hopefully that’s all that will happen to them. And, hopefully their family members will inspect their skin every couple of months for about a year. (Bob Marley, the Reggae artist, died of skin cancer – on his foot. Yep, so watch out for any lumps anywhere on your skin!)

Aruba is a desert island, so there is nothing to see there other than man made structures there. Plus it’s equatorial, so the sun burns you every time you are out. I don’t think I’ll be back there any time soon (except if it’s a cruise ship stop on a cruise I take in the future AND SPF1000000)…

Catch-up Post #5 Key West, FL, US Jan 28 – Jan 31, 2010

Went to Key West, FL, US to go to the First Annual Food and Wine Festival. It was pretty good. Pictures below (the pictures are on my generalgeneral.com site):

Key West, FL, US pictures

Next year’s Second Annual Key West Food and Wine Festival ought to be bigger and better.

If you know the legend of Captain Tony, I met one of his daughters – she was working at the concierge desk at the Key West Marriott. That was cool. I also made friends with the Barefoot Winery reps. After the wine and food tasting event in the tent was over, they gave me a few bottles…

Yet another catch-up post…

Catch-up Post #4 Bermuda Jan 15 – Jan 21, 2010

Went to Bermuda. Great island. Stayed at the Fairmont Southampton for one night, Fairmont Princess two nights, then back to Fairmont Southampton.

Bermuda pictures
Went all over. Most photos are annotated at the bottom of each photo. Click on the pic above to go to my pic site. Have fun! If you decide to visit Bermuda, you’ll need more than a few days to cover all of the cool places to see…

First in a series. Stupid hotels. Hilton Lisle, 3003 Corporate West Drive, Lisle, Illinois, USA, 60532 is a scumbag hotel.

My friend like to stay in suites. No, not an upgrade, he always get the most expensive suite in every hotel he stays at. Here is what happened in his own words:

“Three weeks ago we had three rooms at the Lisle Hilton (you can only get HHonors credit for two), and they gave me credit for the $300 stay instead of the $2500 stay (which was against their own rules since I was IN the room that cost more).

So, we didn’t stay there this last week (costing them about $1500 in business). Hilton has now fixed the problem, and we now have about 50,000 more points.

However, when I was on strike from Hilton, we tried the Lombard Westin, and we like the hotel far far more. So, for future Naperville stays, we will be at the Westin.   Total loss to the Hilton, probably in the 5-6K range.  And it is all because they tried to get cute with 50,000 points…”

So, there you have it.  We need to teach hotels to shape up.  If you are in the Naperville/Lisle area, skip the Hilton Lisle.  They are not worthy of receiving your money.

NOTE:  My friend pointed out that it may not be the hotels fault but it could be the HHonors computer that hosed up the points.  However, if that’s the case, the entire HHonors point system allocation would be in question due to the software program – that of course is worse becuase it can happen at all hotels then…

After going nomad in December 2009, I took a boatload of pictures at all the places I traveled too; however, due to the massive number of photos, I didn’t get around to post them. So, here they are:

Catch-up Post #3 Washington DC Storm Feb 08 – Feb 12, 2010

I was going to fly that weekend to go to LAX but… a snow storm happened, so I was stuck in DC for the weekend. Everything shut down. The only thing that was open was a Starbucks the first day…

Washington DC Storm pictures

First day was great. Second day it rained and got waaay cold. But no problem, I got my pictures on the good day. (The last three in the series are from the rainy day.)