May 2007

Natalee Holloway News

I knew that a couple of weeks ago the police had searched the Van Der Sloot’s (sp? too lazy to look it up) home and property again, but apparently they also searched the home of the Kalpoe’s as well. No other news has been forthcoming since then, but Deepak and Satish Kalpoe objected to the investigation (as would I) and had to be escorted from the property by the police. The news report that I read said that nothing from the home had been seized and no other details had been disclosed.

What I am wondering is if the authorities had found something else of value or if they were finally looking at the evidence again in a closer light.


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The Far East?

Some other places that I would really like to go since I am blogging about expensive places is the Far East. Japan, Malaysia, Bangkok for instance. Yeah, I know this may be getting old but I have had a pretty cool time posting pictures and reading about some of the countries that I will end up visiting sooner or later.

When I used to commute 75 miles each day to work I listened to a lot of Talk Radio. One of the shows I would listen to on the way home in the afternoon was the Clark Howard show. Each year he takes his staff on a really cool vacation and one year they took flights to Japan. I was really jealous. I darn sure don’t see my boss taking me to Japan any time soon.

This is a picture of Mt. Fuji, the highest point in Japan, with Sakura and the Bullet Train in the front.

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Since I was already starting down the road I figured I would do some reading on the other places as well and price flights to Malaysia. Malaysia is a confederation of thirteen states located in Southeast Asia. It’s a pretty diverse place and actually takes up two geographic regions. Malaysia gained independence from the UK in 1957.

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This is A Famosa, which was built by the Portuguese in the 1500’s.

This next one is the Ubudiah Mosque.

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The last “window shopping” I did was to price flights to Bangkok, although in the past I generally took the train on more than one occasion if you know what I mean. I haven’t done that in quite some time though.

Bangkok is the Capitol of Thailand, right near the Gulf of Thailand. It’s also the 22nd most populous city in the world right now.

This is pretty cool. It is the Vimanmek Royal Mansion, which is the world’s largest building made of teak wood.

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Anyway, that is probably all of the virtual sightseeing I will do tonight, although you never know.

Enough of the Damned Politics…

…as I have to get ready for work anyway. Hopefully today will go smoothly.

I am still planning on hitting the Renaissance Festival the Saturday after Memorial day for anyone that might want to meet us there although it may be late. I still don’t know what day I am going to have off although I am going to try and make sure all my managers are in place that weekend.

I would take the whole weekend off, but the Boy is leaving for boot camp on June 18th, so we are going to have a party on Saturday the 16th and I am planning on taking that entire weekend off. All and sundry bloggers are invited to this as well.

Time to go to work, maybe I will be back online later today if I am lucky enough to make it home before dark.

Vacations…

Yeah, this has been an extremely long hard week. All I am thinking about is vacation time. I have had to bump mine from the scheduled week in the middle of June to just after Independence Day. I don’t remember the last time that I actually took a vacation in July. It’s been quite a while though.

Any time that I start looking for a vacation spot I get online and the first thing I do is look at the places I know I can’t afford. Stupid, huh? I have actually found some pretty good deals this way, some of them I CAN actually afford. Before the end of the year the wife and I will have up to date passports, as with the new job I will be able to travel a bit. The trick is to get the extra time off, but with the addition of one ten day vacation each year that pretty much solves the time-off issue as well.

A friend of ours from that we met back in September of last year in Helen lives in Canada. There are always pretty cheap flights to Canada to be found, particularly in the fall and winter. I tend to try and visit places in the non-touristy season because rates are always the best then. There are also some really good rates on flights to Caribbean areas right now as well, even though it’s still pretty busy down there in the summer.

I would really like to get down to the Caribbean at some point, or if not, then at least Key West or the surrounding areas. What would be really cool is to have a blogmeet down there. Get some of the Jawja bloggers down there as well as some of the others that I know from overseas. It would be a blast. They should be able to get decent flights to USA airports at a good rate right now too.

The Peter Principle…AKA…

…shit rises to the top. I am very familiar with the Peter Principle as just about anyone that is in any kind of management position is as well. Ron has a quick post up about the Peter Principle that I can completely relate to.

Holidays in the USA

Of course since I live here I am a bit biased, but there are so many things to do in the United States on holiday. One of the places that have been to that I think any visitor to the United States should go see is New York. Right now you can get a flight to New York at a pretty decent price. Whether it is something as complicated as a two week vacation or simply a series of New York weekend breaks there is something right for you.

New York is the largest city in the entire United States. Just the city itself has a population of over 8 million people and that doesn’t count the metro and surrounding urban areas.

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This is a picture taken in Central Park in New York City courtesy of Wiki and is in the public domain. It is a picture of a Gothic arch bridge spanning the bridle path south of the tennis courts. When I was in New York back in 1986 I was able to do a bit of site-seeing but the closest I go to Central Park was the Plaza Hotel.

One of the things that amazed me while I was there was the eclectic mix of architecture. That same mix is also shown in the inhabitants of New York, the true melting pot of United States society.

If you are coming to the U.S. but don’t want to deal with the hassle of the big city there is always the option of getting a cheap flight to Orlando and going to Disney or one of the other big area attractions, or maybe just nap during the day and lie out by the pool in the evenings for a pretty relaxing time.

Five Phone Calls = Three Hours of Sleep

People are so damn stupid. Perhaps I will wait until about 11AM today and call everyone on third shift that decided to call me last night just to make sure they are doing OK and getting plenty of sleep. Considering that I was THERE until 10PM they could have asked some of the questions then.

“Why are there three waitresses working tonight?”

It’s Friday night!. One of my three managers actually called at 11:47PM to ask that.

“We dropped most of the money in the safe and don’t have any fives or tens.”

This is the store that sits in the middle of a shopping center, which includes a 24 hour Wal-Mart. I suggested (very nicely) that someone make a trip to Wally World.

I don’t remember what the other three calls were at all. My head is pounding and I almost didn’t get out of bed this morning when the alarm went off.

Full Tilt Poker

This review is sponsored by Poker-strategy.org.

This is the second Poker site I have reviewed in the last month or two and I found it pretty interesting. It is the highest rakeback that I have seen so far for Full Tilt Poker at 27%. Full Tilt Poker is still accepting players from the United States and they are the most popular poker room that has a rakeback plan in place. Since most sites have blocked players from the United States (or at least their accounts) due to our oppressive laws Full Tilt Poker has become the number one choice for American players.

All you have to do is visit them and download the software, create an account and complete the registration process. It might ask you for a bonus code when you are registering, that is available at the Full Tilt Poker Rakeback page. Once you have gotten all set up and are ready to go, email them with your Full Tilt Poker user name and they will enter you into the Full Tilt Poker Rakeback program and give you the ability to track your daily totals. Do it before you make any kind of a deposit so that you can verify that you are hooked into a real money account.

What’s nice is that the software used was programmed and reviewed by poker players and is very professional and smooth. The color code the rooms so that you know the difference between real money and play money rooms and have professional celebrity players online as well quite often. During Prime Time you can find up to 15,000 players online, which makes Full Tilt one of the largest independent online poker rooms. If you are going to play online you might as well go where the pros do and get a decent Full Tilt Poker Rakeback at the same time.

Damned if you do…

I managed to get home from my meetings about 8:30 last night. Pretty long day. Rather than sitting up late as I do sometimes, I hit the sack by ten so that I could get at least a few hours of sleep. All was well until about one this morning when they called me. The police were at my store because the two waitresses had been fighting.

…so much for sleep.

America NOT Founded Upon Christianity…

I found this at DRC’s site, who in turn got it from Tammy and she is right in that it does need to be repeated and often.

In a recent Journal & Courier article, an attendee of a local gathering in observance of the National Day of Prayer alleged, “Our nation was founded on biblical principles.”

To the extent that our Founding Fathers had any religious affiliation at all, it was a tepid embracing of the philosophy of deism, a popular system of thought at the time. Jefferson, Franklin, Paine, among many others, held deist, rather than Christian, religious beliefs.

The two documents upon which our country was actually founded — i.e., the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States — contain not a word about Christianity, Christian principles, the Bible or Jesus Christ. Neither is there any mention of the Ten Commandments, heaven, prayer or being saved.

In 1797, the Treaty of Tripoli, negotiated by none other than George Washington, declared that “the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” Congress unanimously approved the text of this treaty, and John Adams signed it.

Mandatory church affiliation, among other factors, led to the establishment of the term a “wall of separation between church and state,” allowing, at each citizen’s discretion, freedom of religion or freedom from religion.

The phrase “under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, and our national motto became “In God We Trust” in 1956 in response to USSRs’ so-called “godless Communists.” It is historically incorrect to claim that America was founded upon Christianity.

Indeed, it was quite the opposite.

Randall S. Smith

Rossville