I don’t rent any more unless I take my family to Hawaii for a leisure trip. Use Uber (or Lyft). You won’t waste time picking up and dropping off the car, finding a gas station close to the airport, and you won’t have to navigate in areas you’re not familiar with.
I use taxies only when waiting for an Uber takes too long, e.g. when arriving at my destination and the wait time exceeds 10 mins.
If you do use a cab, insist on paying with a credit card. Buckle up, cabs and cab drivers are scary!
If you absolutely need a rental car, sign up for their frequency program as well. I found that Hertz Gold was useful because it allows you to pick your car up more quickly and skip the counter.
Instead of points for the rental car program, you might want to choose the option to get airline miles instead. They’re more useful.
If you need to drive yourself, think about bringing a good, old-fashioned Garmin GPS since it allows you to be independent of your phone battery and data coverage and you can also navigate and talk at the same time.
Especially on early rides to the airport, look at Uber as soon as you get up to make sure you know what the wait times are and keep an eye on those while you get ready.
If you have trouble with your Uber, e.g. the car is in poor condition, tell Uber and rate the driver accordingly. Their customer support is very helpful, fast and you’re doing other riders a favor.
As a frequent traveler, who travels mostly for work at least once or twice a month, I have over time assembled quite a list of little tricks and “best practices” to make life on the road easier and more bearable. Hopefully you’ll find some of these useful for your own travels:
Air Travel
Whatever airline you fly, either join their frequent flyer program or use one of your existing memberships (most airlines have several partner airlines). Miles can only help and rumor has it that people who are members of a frequent flyer program are less likely to get “bumped”.
Try to stick to one (or two) airlines and their partners, so you don’t spread your miles around too much. (If your miles are in a lot of different programs, check out points.com).
Keep an eye on expiring miles. If you approach expiration, use “dine for miles” or magazine subscriptions in exchange for miles to generate activity on your account to keep it active.
Whatever your primary airline is, seriously consider getting their rewards credit card. Usually signing up is rewarded by a healthy chunk of extra miles, early boarding privileges, free checked luggage, etc.
Let me start with: I like Apple, the company and its products. As a developer, I like the MacOS App Store and I appreciate Apple reviewing apps to ensure high quality as well as security. Hence I’m cool with app sandboxing even though that makes developing utilities pretty challenging. I get all that. But my experience with the reviewers has been “varied” – to say the least. One particulay case makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up:
In 2014, I created a utility app that required a certain level of file access. I went through several rounds of submit / reject / re-submit / re-reject / etc. At one point, I actually got a phone call from a friendly Apple App Store reviewer. He wasn’t allowed to provide me with a solution, but he did strongly “hint” at what I was to do to make it through the review process. I did exactly that – and got rejected again. So I gave up.
Just now, 1.5 years later, I said “what the hell” and rewrote the very same app in Swift – just for fun – simplifying some of the functionality while adding a simple Downloads folder entitlement. And I got rejected again with somewhat cryptic (and to some extent nonsensical) comments, which reminded me of my first experience. When I replied and asked for clarification, they responsponded and suggested I approach it just like I had done in my first rejected Objective C version. Fine, so I basically implemented the exact functionalty of the old version, almost line by line. The resulting app did everything exactly like the old app, same logic, same flow, same UI, same approach to sandboxing. I re-submitted – and it got approved!!!
What am I supposed to make of that?! I know the Apple reviewers are human and make mistakes or at least have different views. Either way, it’s pretty ironic that the very same app that was repeatedly rejected now got approved. Are the guidelines that much open to interpretation?! Again, I’m all good with Apple reviewing submitted apps and everyting, but please don’t make it SO hard, Apple! Don’t make your developers waste so much of their lives trying to make it through the review process…!
For two and half months I have been equipped with a Fitbit (the Fitbit One, to be specific, which is is a clip-on device). It started with a series of step competitions with people from work. Previously, I had not carried or worn any kind of fitness tracker. I guess I was and still am holding out for the 2nd iteration of the Apple Watch, but this was a chance to experiment and learn ahead of the mystical Apple device appearing on the market.
The “One” keeps track of a number of metrics, including steps taken, number of flights of stairs climbed, “active minutes”, sleep duration & quality, etc. I wore the tracker 24 hours a day, even if that meant wearing a wrist sleeve at night that the tracker slips into.
The suggested/default goal is to take 10,000 steps per day, which I initially didn’t have a good sense for. Is this a lot – or not? Some interesting thoughts on that goal can be found in this article, so I’m not going to repeat it here.
These last few months have been enlightening. Here’s what I’ve taken away from this experience:
The “datafication” of the body is natural for me – a numbers guy. It certainly raises awareness and surfaces new information and helps validate/invalidate assumptions everyone is making about themselves.
10,000 steps is actually quite a bit. Even though I work out 7 days a week, I practically never reached that mark without specific extra effort. Even with additional effort to take walks etc., 10,000 remained challenging on most days.
That means I’m really not moving all that much thanks to an office job that mostly glues me to my desk and phone. Even during fairly active weekends, this turned out to be a stretch goal. It certainly doesn’t hurt to be aware of this and make an effort to walk more.
My biggest learning is this, well, it’s more of a theory: quantity is not quality. I think this is where the whole concept is a little off. Even people who do take 10,000 steps a day may not get enough exercise. And that’s where people get it wrong: It’s not just a matter of getting the steps in, it’s about getting your heart rate up for an extended period of time to somewhere close to your target range and keeping it there. That means you’ll have to actually sweat, feel the pain and huff and puff a little. Just taking steps via casual walking isn’t going to do it. Even the folks that beat me consistently with way more steps (from walking) every day I don’t think get that good a workout and aren’t as fit as me. I don’t think there’s a replacement for working hard and exercising beyond purely walking. When it comes down to it, I rather work out hard for 30 mins than walk for 60 mins. High intensity doesn’t always give you that many steps and that’s okay. 45 mins of Tae Kwon Do, which can be quite intense, netted only a modest amount of steps, but anybody who’s done it will tell you what an intense workout it is.
Even the venerable CDC recognizes that as it recommends “Adults need at least 2:30 hrs of moderate-intensity aerobic activity every week and muscle-strengthening activities on 2 or more days a week that work all major muscle groups (legs, hips, back, abdomen, chest, shoulders, and arms).” (1 of several variations of exercise they propose).
Not surprisingly, things like cycling, stretching or weight lifting basically don’t net any steps at all, but we all know that these are very valid forms of exercise.
I don’t sleep as much as I thought I did. On average 6:45 hours a day. Still, not bad. And I have confirmation that I fall asleep very quickly and sleep peacefully like a baby, without tossing and turning. They call it high sleep efficiency. 🙂
All in all, I’ve learned from this experience. Maybe similar to when I carefully tracked all my food intake and exercise through MyFitnessPal (see my diet journey), measuring this part of your life will create useful insight and dispel misconceptions. That said, always having he Fitbit One clip on 24 hours a day got old and I stopped, at least for now. But the knowledge it generated will certainly influence me going forward. Number of steps aside, I will certainly continue to focus on the quality and intensity of my exercise beyond just the number of steps.
In 2014, I created a utility app that required a certain level of file access. I went through several rounds of submit / reject / re-submit / re-reject / etc. At one point, I actually got a phone call from a friendly Apple App Store reviewer. He wasn’t allowed to provide me with a solution, but he did strongly “hint” at what I was to do to make it through the review process. I did exactly that – and got rejected again. So I gave up.
sense for. Is this a lot – or not? Some interesting thoughts on that goal can be found