Ricky Says

Question: I traveled a lot in 2009 and am wondering if my rewards miles and hotel points will carry over into 2010?

Answer: Yes and No - Redeemable miles roll over but miles that were accrued towards elite status do NOT roll over.

The miles you accrued for redeeming flight rewards will carry over into the next year, and your elite/preferred status will also be retained through 2010. So you'll be able to redeem miles for free tickets and will enjoy your flight status benefits throughout 2010.

However, you must earn enough elite qualifying miles on the program in 2010 to retain your preferred status into 2011 - and your elite point account balance will be reset to zero at the start of each new year.

So if you don't fly as much this year in 2010, then you'll lose your elite/preferred status for 2011.

Last year I racked up some decent frequent flier miles on the United Star Alliance program and also with Alaska Airlines (which includes Delta, and Northwest Airlines).

The elite qualifying miles I earned towards on United's mileage plan in 2009 were reset to zero miles on Jan 1st, 2010. Meaning I'll need to fly a full 50,000 miles to retain my Premier Executive status into 2011.

The same thing happened for Alaska, although it took a couple of weeks for the reset to happen (so initially I thought they were going to roll over the miles). That turned out to NOT be the case however, as you can see from the screen shot of my account balance showing that I'll need to fly a full 20,000 miles to retain my MVP status into 2011.

I've built up a respectible arsenal of gadgets and devices while logging almost 200,000 miles in frequent flier miles this year.

Some are necessities, and some are just for fun. Some are just to keep my sanity on longer trips like the one I'm taking this week to Cologne, Germany.

My geeked out road warrior survival pack includes everything from a lithium-ion battery pack that gives my iphone 2 extra charges, to a sleek pair of noise canceling Bose headphones that block out the majority of jet airplane engine noises.

It also makes a great Christmas shopping list for the business traveler or technology addict in your life ;-)

Here's my Letterman's countdown of top ten must-have gadgets when traveling for business or pleasure:

10. Starbuck's Via 3-pack. Technology aside... Let's face it - hotel room coffee tastes horrible no matter what brand they use.

I really need a good cup of coffee to start the day off right (especially for east coast trips where it feels like I'm getting up at 4 a.m.) and these instant coffee packs from Starbucks are just as good as the real thing. You can get hot water from just about anywhere, including an in-room coffee maker without the coffee grounds.

9. iPod nano with armband. Yes, I have an iPhone too (see #1 below) but a small ipod is more convenient for working out, and also provides more hours of music for helping long flights go by faster.

8. Camera. I bring my Nikon D50 DSLR camera along with a 300mm zoom lens when I want to be sure and capture the city views in high quality (and I usually have some time after business hours for touring the city).

I'm enroute to Dallas, TX right now and it's a wifi flight with American Airlines. I'm typing... I mean tapping this post on my iPhone 3GS, after paying a nominal $7.95 fee.

The Internet speed on the in-flight wifi connection is plenty fast to download a music album from iTunes while updating 4 apps, browsing the web and checkng email, without any noticeable slow down.

GPS looks a little confused though - it thinks I'm still at the airport even though we've been traveling for a couple hours, probably because that's where the signal is coming from:

SMS also doesn't work, so don't plan on texting on these flights. You also can't share a connection between a laptop and mobile device - you have to pay an additional connection for a laptop or mobile device (iPhone, Blackberry, etc).

I'd love to see wifi be free on flights, but all things considered, I felt it was still a great value since I was able to get a lot of work done (and play) instead of wasting a few hours in the air.

The iPhone 3G will be my new travel companion when I leave for Zurich, Switzerland tomorrow morning (yep, I finally upgraded from my Blackberry Curve).

The iPhone has a lot to offer the international traveler, and here are 10 ways you can use the iPhone to help you on your next trip abroad (most are applicable even if you're just traveling to another state or province).

Note: if you're looking for ways to save money on data roaming charges, scroll down to the bottom of this page.

1. Mind the Time with a World Clock:

   Keeping track of the current time is the first thing I worry about when I travel across multiple time zones, and the iPhone lets you add a clock for every imaginable city in the world. I've added a clock for my destination city, my lay-over city, and my home city.

   
2. Pack for the Right Weather:

   You can add Yahoo! weather reports for any city, just by opening the Weather app and clicking the little "i" at the bottom right of the weather screen. You can store multiple weather reports and easily flip through them to see what the weather is like in other areas of the world.

   

   Looks like it's cold in Zurich in October, so I'll be sure to pack warm clothes for my trip.

3. Manage your Monday with Currency Convertors:

   Convertor Pro is a freebie that you can download from the App Store that lets you convert any currency to another. It's updated every hour with actual current rates too.

   

   You can also click the "i" in the upper right of the screen to view a graph of the currency conversion rate over the last 5 years - handy for evaluating global economic trends.

Backups are one of those things that I keep meaning to do, and now that I'm traveling once or twice a month as an instructor, I decided recently that it was time to implement a solid backup plan.

Disaster Avoidance and Recovery

Imagine showing up to a class full of paying customers (or to your next important business client), opening your laptop and realizing that you've accidentally deleted the files you needed to use for your presentation. Or worse yet, imagine discovering the night before that your hard drive was fried and your system wouldn't start, or that it was stolen at the airport.

If I was in either of those situations, it'd be a complete disaster unless I had a way to reload my system with backup data. Even if I went out and bought a new laptop I'd still need a way to restore all my data and programs to to the way they were before I boarded the plane.

Backup Hardware

Affordability, Portability, and Reliability: My goal for a backup system was to find an affordable yet reliable combination of hardware and software to store my important data files on a portable hard drive, and be able to reload my entire system if necessary in less than an hour. My budget was $200, and in the end I came in at just under $190 with both hard drive and backup software.

My laptop's hard drive is 160GB, and most external USB hard drives are at least 250GB, so I knew size wasn't going to be an issue. I'd be able to backup my entire hard drive, in case I needed to do a full system restore. I'd also be able to backup individual files, in case I accidentally deleted certain files and needed to quickly get them back.

The Maxtor OneTouch 320GB external USB hard drive was on sale for just under $100, and came with it's own backup software (though I had been warned by my IT guys not to ever rely on any backup software that comes with a hard drive... more on that advice later, which turned out to be worth listening to).