afternoon malaise is setting in, so I am online shoes window shopping:

grabby hands, want

[link]

[link]

[link]

Related to shopping, do you people have opinions about the best way to use credit card/bank points? I feel like most rewards are about the same value per point, except for occasional sales. Mostly right now I'm trying to decide between cashing in the medium amount of points I have for a Lands' End (or similar) gift certificate (money I would probably spend anyway, at some point), or save it until it's enough for a plane ticket (also probably money I would spend anyway).

Strategies?? I have both Citi Thank You and Discover rewards.

there were decades of agitating for the end of slavery before it actually happened

How would that affect my answer? How would it affect the commitment with which I as an ally would agitate for right now? Trying to talk someone into equality later is a sucker's bet.

I just got thrown under the bus by the incompetent developer and had everyone in management drill home that we're lowering expectations even further, so please stop driving improvements to completion, the developers don't like it, and management is confused.

Hearing that from boss and manager at the same time, all the while manager doesn't explain she was part of the meetings whose conclusions were being questioned...depressing as fuck. I'm curious about what I'll actually say in my one on one with her tomorrow.

Jesse,

At some point several years ago, I tried to get a sense of rewards cards and my spending, etc. I had an airlines rewards card at the time.

I was getting XXX points on the rewards cards with every purchase toward a plane ticket, but if I had used a cash back card, I would have gotten all of that in cash. The rewards cards was inconvenient in terms of when I could book travel (and IF) and in my analysis, it seemed better to go with cash because then I could spend it however I saw foot.

All of my cards now are cash cards - the other thing is the airlines cards were a fee per year that I didn't think at the time was worth it.

Discover has extra 5% cashback deals that rotate every 3 months, but not every merchant uses them.

Not sure if this is what you were looking for...

How would that affect my answer? How would it affect the commitment with which I as an ally would agitate for right now? Trying to talk someone into equality later is a sucker's bet.

Oh, of course -- I'm just saying it happened all at once, but only after a long time of organizing and agitating.

All of my cards now are cash cards - the other thing is the airlines cards were a fee per year that I didn't think at the time was worth it.

Yeah, I wouldn't pay an annual fee -- not worth it to me. The rewards are "cash" I guess, but there are so many ways to cash them out! (And gift cards get you more $$ than actual cash.)

Last week the other SoCal analyst had a meltdown at our boss, and he aimed some heavy language both at him and our manager. My umbrage right now is lesser, but in a time where we're told to try and exceed by the voices outside our department, it's frustrating when you're the interface and your internal directive feels like "do less, more slowly".

(And gift cards get you more $$ than actual cash.)

To me, this is a good argument in favor of the gift certificate/card. Spend $20, get $25 in purchasing power -- I like that idea.

Yeah, as long as you'll actually use the gift card--at one point I used up a bunch of "ThankYou Points" by getting gift certs for my mom and sister for Christmas--and sometimes they put them on "sale" so you can get them even cheaper than usual. But I don't use that as my main card--just put a few random things on it every month since its free and I've had it forever.

Paging ita, these shoes scream you: [link] , especially the second pair.

Timelies all!

Meh. Just meh.(No reason)