This post is for people who haven't yet joined the miles movement--like people who clicked over from today's New York Times article. If you're already a regular reader, forward this post to all your friends who are jealous of your travel to get them involved.m

Travel is my single favorite hobby. It expands my mind, brightens my mood, and brings me in contact with new people and experiences. My love of travel comes down to novelty.

I've been in New Zealand for two days now. The first two days in Auckland were pretty uneventful. I was just getting my bearings and planning the rest of the trip. Except for that one thing...

While in Auckland, I booked Jetstar flights from Auckland to Wellington and Wellington to Queenstown. Jetstar is a low-cost subsidiary of Qantas, a member of oneworld.

Jetstar flights that are also marketed by Qantas with a Qantas flight number can be purchased with American miles and Avios.

Merry Christmas and Feliz Navidad to everyone.

Many of my favorite Christmas memories are travel related. Growing up, I could count on a ticket to the Aloha Bowl in my stocking, and we would go as a family to watch a little college football on Christmas Day. I've spent Christmas in Hawaii, Virginia, California, and Florida. And from 2007-2009, I spent three consecutive Christmases abroad.

In 2007, I flew Spirit from Washington DC to Lima, Peru (DCA-FLL-LIM) on Christmas Eve.

I created a slide show for my LAX Frequent Traveler University presentation that I promised I would share with those who attended.

My presentation was called "Three Vacations on Two Awards: Free Oneways."

The only difference between the presentation and the show below is that I deleted the videos in the original presentation, which had no audio, and replaced them with videos with audio.

I've uploaded the presentation online RIGHT HERE.

First, and most importantly, it was great to attend Frequent Traveler University hear all of the positive feedback about the blog. Scott has really created excitement over his creative oneway awards and expert routing knowlege. It's a lot of fun to part of something special like this. I just hope to contribute a small fraction to MileValue now and in the future.

As I posted early Saturday morning, I didn't really know what to expect in attending Frequent Traveler University.

I have to say, the journey to Frequent Traveler University has been a long strange one. I first “discovered” this hobby about five years ago. A small finance blog (now long defunct) casually mentioned the Starwood Preferred Guest credit card as a great addition to anyone’s wallet, and the ball rolled from there. I then accidentally tripped over FlyerTalk and was initially overwhelmed by the sheer amount of knowledge and expertise it contained.

After perusing FlyerTalk, I started following one travel blog (incidentally, the Frugal Travel Guy).

I am speaking at the Los Angeles Frequent Traveler University (LAX FTU) this weekend.

I was the original hater of the logo: "Underneath these headings is the ugliest logo in the world." The logo will be changed within two weeks, hopefully within two days.

Yesterday the site was in flux as my designer made some changes that will hopefully make the site more aesthetically pleasing and more functional! I'll walk you through the changes, so you know how to get the information you want to access. Let's start at the top:

The old MileValue had a growing list of Pages on top of every page with titles like Start Here and Meet Up.

I am excited to announce that I will be speaking at the Los Angeles Frequent Traveler University, being held November 30 - December 2 at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel LAX.

My talk will be about free oneways on awards, probably under a title like Three Vacations, Two Awards: Adding a Free Oneway to Award Tickets.

The Chicago Seminars were last Friday through Sunday just outside O'Hare at the Holiday Inn Elk Grove. I had an absolute blast, learned quite a bit, and highly recommend everyone go next year. This post is part recap, part tips for next year if you go. Interspersed are pictures of me and some of my favorite bloggers.

Daraius (Million Mile Secrets) and I are both in our signature outfits

I had volunteered to help with registration starting at 4 PM on Friday.