Back in December I received an email from someone at Schmap regarding a picture we had posted on our Flickr site. Schmap makes online travel guides for a couple of hundred different locations around the globe. One of those locations is Paris, France. The email that I received said that Schmap was considering using one of our photos from Paris for their travel guide. They wanted me to approve its use. The photo they wanted to use was interesting. It was one from Disneyland Paris in Adventureland.

Long story short, I received an email this week that the photo has been included in the online travel guide! Woo hoo! Now you can see the photo in the travel guide. I think it is pretty cool that they search through Flickr to find photos to use. A great example of how the web can be used to interconnect.

Ahhh… it’s the little things in life that make me smile.

Holy cow!  I haven’t posted anything for a month!  That’s not good.  So to make up for it, I thought I’d just compose a list of a few items I noticed over the last couple of days in running around looking for Christmas presents:

• People get a little crazy, especially in parking.  Please people, do not hunt people down who are returning to their cars so you can wait for their parking space.  First, you’re holding up the cars behind you.  Second, if you follow me, I’m just going to put my stuff in the car and then turn right around and walk back into the store, just out of spite!
• Why is Carl’s Jr. so stingy with the ketchup?  Would it really kill them to just put ketchup dispensers out for people to use?
• People at the dollar store are hilarious.  I was waiting in line to checkout and someone actually budded up to the front of the line to ask the cashier if she could find out how much something costs.  Hello?  We’re at the dollar store!  I would have bet a dollar that the thing costs a dollar!
• Back to the fast food, why is Wendy’s so stingy with the drinks?  Would it really kill them to just put a drink machine out for people to get their own refills?
• Why do stores need so many register lanes?  They obviously don’t use them.  Toys R Us had two registers going out of 10 total, and there were at least eight people in each line.  Needless to say I put my items down on the shelf right next to me and walked out the door.
• Why doesn’t Wal-Mart have prices anywhere?  They’ve put out extra shelving to hold an overstock of toys.  Great idea!  Only problem is that there are no prices on the shelves, and no prices on the items.  Duh!
• Why does anyone shop at Best Buy?  The checkout line was insane, but the reality is that their prices are not that great.  I can find things online cheaper.  Lately Best Buy has just become my “touchy feely” test for things.  I look at them, check them out, then leave and buy it online.
• I love Amazon Prime.  2 day shipping on everything and Amazon’s prices are pretty good.  However, as time is passing, they seem to be out of stock of more and more items.  A little disappointing. but it still beats parking and waiting in line!

There ya go.  Just a few quick observations.  Enjoy!

Whoa! Little bit of a drought there on making blog entries. Well no more! The main reason is that I have been out on the road for work reasons. In the last 10 days I have been to Toronto, Chicago, and Richmond, VA. All for various reasons. So with that in mind, here’s a blog entry of everything wrong with travelling:

• Airport Security
  Some people just don’t get it. How long has it been since the London liquid terror thing? 9 months? I would think that people would now know that you can’t take liquids on the plane. Even if you don’t know, there are signs all over the airports and constant nagging on the PA system telling you. But I still had people in front of me at every single airport that had to have some kind of liquid confiscated.
• Body Odor
  There should be a rule. There’s a rule at the pool. “You must shower before getting in the pool”. There should be a rule for getting through security.
• Expensive Hotels
  Why is it that the hotels that have the higher rates are also the ones that nickel and dime you to death? I stay in one hotel and it is $110/night with free wireless internet, free parking, and a free continental breakfast. I stay in another hotel and it is $179/night, $15/day for parking, $10/day for internet and no breakfast. Hello?
• Push back and wait
  Why do airlines do this? We all board the plane. They begin pushing back then stop. Then the captain comes over the loudspeaker and says that the weather is bad in the destination that we are flying to so traffic control will not let them take off. So we sit in the plane for an hour on the ground. Hello? They had to have known that before we boarded the plane, why did they board us?
• TV Channel Guides
  Hotels have got to provide a “treasure map” for what TV channels are where. I spent 15 minutes surfing channels to try to find the basketball game. Argh! Just leave a list of channels in the room (an acurate list!)
• Business travel in general
  Anytime I’m out of town for work it consists of me spending the entire day doing the client’s work, then spending the entire evening and night doing the usual work that I have to get done on a daily basis. It is tiring.

That’s about it. Enough complaining right? I admit, there are benefits to travelling as well. But the bad things are more humorous

Let’s try this again.  We’ll see what happens.  Comment away!

Over the last couple of weeks I have received nearly 1200 comments being submitted — and all of them are spam.? WordPress is configured so that I have to approve all comments from people that haven’t been approved before, but 1200 to have to sort through is still a pain.

So for now, I’ve turned comments off.? I’ll look into how I can prevent these spammers from flodding things, but until I find something, they’ll have to stay off.

I haven’t posted anything for a while (about two weeks). So, just a few random thoughts to keep things going:

• Being sick is no fun (duh…). I was out flat last Tuesday. Did absolutely nothing last Sunday through Wednesday, and I’ve been trying to catch up at work ever since.
• I hate spam. I logged back into the blog this morning and there were 258 comments awaiting moderation, and all of them were spam. Thank goodness WordPress catches it, but I still have to see the filthy subjects to make sure that out of 258 messages there isn’t one meaningful one. Sheesh…
• Along those same lines, I hate junk mail. I bet we get at least one credit card or loan application everyday.
• I’m liking the new Modest Mouse music. Good stuff. And now I hear that the great Johnny Marr of Smiths fame is a permanent player. That can be nothing but good.
• Cats are dumb. They never cover up their poo and it stinks. And as I sit here and type this one of them is eating the butter that is out on the counter. Dumb.
• Monkeys are cool though — they come in handy if you need to take notes in class.

That’s about it. Ramblings from the brain at 10:30 pm…

I’m starting to get annoyed with people who use computer terms to describe interaction with people in a business environment. All of the following fall into that category:

• “Let’s take this conversation offline.”
• “Can you ping Joe on where he’s at with the report?”
• “We need to reboot the process and move in a different direction.”
• “We need to double-click on all of these items by the end of the day.”

The “double-click” one is the latest, and I’ve heard a couple of people use it in the last week. I thought maybe they just misspoke, but no, they do mean “double-click”, meaning that they want to execute/take action.

Stop it! Just stop it now! I am going to try with all my might not to get sucked into using these terms (I admit that I have used the “ping” term before). To keep me sane, everyone else should try to do the same.

We took the kids out to use their gift cards from Christmas at Toys R Us. Of course it took much longer than anticipated. The girls always choose one thing, then change their mind one minute later. But we did finally convince them on what to get - mainly with a threat that if they didn’t decide we were just going to leave.

So Maren chooses a Littlest Pet Shop set. It is so cute in the box and “she will just love it”. We get it home, and of course it is Dad’s job to help her open it up. If I must say, the people who decide how these things are packaged need to find a new outlet for their frustrations, instead of taking it out on people who are buying the product. This was by far the most tedious unpacking of a toy that I have ever had to do. Everything was either tied down, taped, or strapped in with these teeny tiny plastic straps that are unbreakable. It took forever to get all of the pieces out (and I think I left a couple of little pieces in the box and they have since been thrown away — don’t tell Maren.)

Arghh!

I’ve been a fan of the Utah Jazz for a long time. (That’s what happens when there’s only one professional sports team where you live.) I’ve always liked basketball better than any other sport. A lot more action. I was optimistic for this year. Everyone healthy, acquiring Derek Fisher, and they ended last year on a good run.

I did not expect this. 9 and 1 as of today. When they got to 4 and 1, I thought “OK, now they slow down” — but it just isn’t true, and I’m lovin’ every minute of it. I’m still uneasy, and I don’t know how long it can last, but it is fun to watch so far. I thought for sure they were going to lose to Phoenix on Saturday. Down by 16 with a little over 10 minutes left in the game. I turned it off. Little did I know they would catch back up. When I tuned back in, I thought “there’s no way Okur can make all three of those pressure free throws”. My mistake again.

Excellent chemistry so far. I love this game!

Went to the voting booths yesterday - or should I say the voting terminals. For the most part, I think Utah’s new computer voting systems worked pretty well. I know that there were a number of cases of systems not being available and some inconveniences, but I’m looking at it from a pure techno/geek/software perspective.

For me, it was quite simple to use. They gave me the card, I inserted it, touched the screen a bunch of times, and then finished. Simple and straightforward. From a software design perspective, it was quite intuitive. But I admit, I may be biased. I deal with computers day in and day out, so for me to say it was “easy to use” probably isn’t very telling. But in observing the other people in front of me, it seemed that it was going well.

So the new system gets the thumbs up from me. Welcome to twenty-first century democracy! Now as long as there aren’t any bugs in the number counting, like some Hollywood productions would like to think…