Get Budget Flights with CheapoAir!

rmiles7721October 10, 2007Travel

Although I hate flying with a passion, when I do I always try to get the cheapest flight. At one point in time that meant that I would book flights through Airtran, and the last few years I have used online booking sites such as Hotwire and some of the others to try and make sure that I get a great deal. CheapoAir is one I had never heard of until last week and they have some great deals.

cheapo I searched for several different destinations to see what kind of deals I could get and was able to find some really good ones. A flight from Atlanta to Key West in two weeks on American Airlines would run me about $172 with one plane switch. That is an amazing deal to Key West, particularly since this month starts the tourist season down there.

About half of the flying I’ve done over the last few years has been for business, and although work pays for that stuff, in the end it hits my P&L and eventually my stock. What that means is that any kind of flight that I have to take, I make sure that I am saving money. I wouldn’t throw my own money away so why would I throw away my company’s money? After all, I plan to retire eventually and every penny I save makes that a little closer. One Click or Call Does It All, Call Customer Support 24/7 at 212-478-0335. If you are REALLY interested in saving money go check these guys out at CheapoAir.

Long Evening…

rmiles7721October 10, 2007Site News

I had originally planned on being home shortly after eight but unfortunately it didn’t work out as planned. I had to finish putting up the truck that came in earlier with the weekly food delivery, do the weekly paperwork for the week, finish the paperwork that my manager had not done for three days, and then clean her darned office. I was not particularly happy with her by the time I finished. I still didn’t get everything done that I had planned on today so I ended up leaving her with a long list of stuff to take care of before she can leave tomorrow afternoon.

I’m all about getting the hell out of there as early as possible but the fact is that we aren’t supposed to leave until certain key things are done and she just doesn’t seem to care. Hopefully I can get her motivated enough to start doing things the right way pretty shortly because if not one of us is going to be gone by Christmas and it damn sure isn’t going to be me.

Now Playing: Savatage – Edge of Thorns – Skraggy’s Tomb

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rmiles7721October 10, 2007Parenting/Family

RePete wasn’t feeling very well today apparently. The wife called me at 11 and asked me if I could go pick her up from school. She seems fine to me but she normally doesn’t complain and spent most of the morning in the teacher’s lap. We have just sort of hung out today. We came home and she ate lunch and then we napped (it was worth picking her up just for that) and she’s been hanging out coloring for quite some time.

There is a down side and that is the fact that if we have to miss any work for something like this we have to make up the hours, so as soon as the wife gets home I have to go back in for a few hours. That’s OK, I have a bunch of paperwork I need to get finished anyway. I am still going to try and be home by eightish as it would be nice to see the rest of my family for a little while before they go to bed.

Cleveland Shooting

rmiles7721October 10, 2007Site News

I received a tweet from Slobokan and almost imemdiately afterward got a breaking news email from CNN about a shooting spree at a school in Cleveland, Ohio. Apparently a 14-year-old in at a Cleveland high school started shooting at teachers and students, wounding four before he was killed. According to the article at CNN it’s not known right now if he took his own life or if the police shot him. A also don’t know if that’s just some junk the CNN reporter stuck in there or if they think he may have killed himself.

cleveland The victims include two adult men, 57 and 42 and two teenage males at 14 and 17 years old.

From what I read, the school itself is an off-campus setting, mainly for kids that get kicked out of normal high school, special-ed, or troubled kids.

At some point today I should be getting video or a news article or two and I will post it here just as soon as I get it.

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Linkfest Haven, the Blogger's Oasis

Trackposted to Nuke’s, Perri Nelson’s Website, third world county, DeMediacratic Nation, Big Dog’s Weblog, Jeanette’s Celebrity Corner, The Populist, Webloggin, The Pink Flamingo, Stuck On Stupid, Leaning Straight Up, Cao’s Blog, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Wordless Wednesday

rmiles7721October 10, 2007Site News

Appropriate for Blogtoberfest 2007 here are some shots from last year. Enough with the words, let’s get with the wordless.

Buzz.jpg
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georgia blodgers 2006 050.jpg

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Atlanta…

rmiles7721October 10, 20072Blogging

We had a pretty good time last night. All of the usual suspects were there, and I got the chance to meet Blackfive as well. Guess I need to update the sidebar again but I think I shall wait until after this weekend. I will get to that shortly.

Line of the evening:

“Am I in the right fucking church?”

It’s been at least fifteen years or so since I have been in the area where we ended up last night and boy has it changed. Actually I have been to a couple of concerts prior to the Omni getting torn down but that was normally a case of riding the train in, going straight into the Omni and watching the show. It is amazing how different Marietta Street has changed since the days of the Metroplex.

I arrived a little early and took a walk around Centennial Park since I have never been there. Shot a couple of photos with my new phone mainly just to try it out. Noting worth posting, but the pictures are pretty darn good.

I finally wandered down to the Embassy Suites where we were to meet up. Elisson and Shovel Boy arrived shortly after and we went on in to Ruth’s Chris Steak House for a drink and to await the others. It wasn’t long before Blackfive arrived and we all sat around and chatted for awhile awaiting the rest of the group. Three beers later (for me anyway, I was the light-weight since I had to get up early today) and everyone else arrived.

Rather than spend a small fortune we got a cab ride a few blocks away. According to the information desk whom Blackfive had to threaten with bodily injury (maybe not) to get the information out of, there was an Indian restaurant four blocks away. It was more like eight, at least driving it. Had we walked it might have been four or five taking shortcuts.

I had some kind of shrimp dish, which was pretty good, particularly after adding a wee bit of this spicy mango stuff. Indian food looks so damned nasty, yet is pretty good. I couldn’t eat it every night as some folks can, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I enjoyed the conversation, although as usual I was pretty quiet and just took it all in. It is interesting to note that although people are slightly different than their blog personas you can usually tell who is who because their stories sound just like their blogs. The more entertaining and popular ones are usually also the entertaining and ‘popular’ conversationalists as well.

At one point in the evening we did have to steer clear of the shovel fiasco and go back to the ‘safe’ topics of religion and politics, but Eric had to make clear what had happened last October. It was nice hearing it from his side, which actually closely mirrored what I have heard from other bloggers, minus the wide-eyed fear Smile What is interesting is that he is having us back (not that I was able to make it last year). I doubt if I can get the time off and I think that may even be the weekend of Pete’s birthday party, but I will damn sure try, particularly since I may or may not end up skipping out on this weekend.

That brings me to my conundrum. I am really torn about this coming weekend. I am extremely angry with my boss and work right now, as I am on duty this weekend. I have four choices at present. Either I skip the weekend entirely and go to work while the wife and our friend attend, or I attend as planned and commute home Saturday and Sunday morning. The big problem is that I don’t particularly want to drive three and a half hours at four in the morning, particularly after a night of heavy drinking. My other choice is to go, and then drive home Friday night, go to work Saturday, drive back up there and drive back home Sunday morning. That choice entails not drinking at all because as I said before, I am a lightweight. I just don’t drive after drinking. I had three beers in all last night, and although I was nowhere even close to buzzing when we finally left the restaurant last night, I was ready to take a damned nap and those last few miles home were done with the air and radio blasting and the windows open. My last choice is just to say “fuck you” and go, take care of business over the phone and deal with being in trouble when I get home. They won’t fire me or anything, I am about 99.9% sure of that, but it doesn’t mean that they will make my life any easier. At some point between now and then I guess I will make up my mind.

Spain

rmiles7721October 10, 200757Travel

Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia and is the second most populated city in Spain at the present. It’s located on the southeastern coast of Spain, on the Mediterranean Sea. It is one of the major shipping ports in Europe as well. Although the city dates to three or four hundred years prior, it was a Roman colony around 15BC and you can still see the effects of the Romans in some of the architecture and in plenty of ruins there.

aulalia

One of the really cool things about Barcelona is that there are 68 municipal parks ranging from fairly small to pretyt large recreational areas. They cover right around 10% of the city itself, which makes it a pretty green place to visit. There are also several beaches in Barcelona, just under three miles of coastline, making it a pretty popular destination for holiday in Europe. Hotels in Barcelona or as they say there, Hoteles en Barcelona, are easy to find, and like anywhere else, the earlier you book the cheaper they are.

As with many of the older cities in Europe, Barcelona sports many theaters and halls for live music, including the world-famous Gran Teatre de Liceu opera theater. Barcelona plays host to several music festivals throughout the year and also hosts the Catalonia Symphonic Orchestra as well.

Madrid on the other hand is well inland and sits right in the middle of Spain. Fittingly, it is the capital of Spain and really the financial capital as well. You can really see the difference from Barcelona, particularly from the Muslim influence that has been there since the 9th century.

penalara

Madrid is a pretty large city and thus boats entertainment and things to do 24 hours a day. Hotels in Madrid are pretty easy to find as the population of Madrid is so great. There are quite a few museums and music halls in Madrid as well, and the night life is very active particularly on the weekends when the younger people will stay out all night dancing and leave only to go to work the next morning. That type of stuff was great for me twenty years ago but I don’t see me dancing the night away any time soon.

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Wednesday Hero

rmiles7721October 10, 20075Site News

This Weeks Hero Was Suggested By Greta, Who Is Herself A Solders’ Angel

Lance Cpl. Cory Jamieson
May Not Solder Go Unloved
Back in 2003, self-described “ordinary mother”, Patti Patton-Bader, started an organization called Solders’ Angels because her son, Sgt. Brandon Varn, wrote her a letter from Iraq in which he showed concern that some of the brave men and women there weren’t receiving any mail or support from back home. Well, she wasn’t going to allow this. She called a few friends and family asking them if they would write to some of the soldiers. They’d never met them. Didn’t know who they were, but they wrote. And in a few short months, Solders’ Angles went from an idea an “ordinary mother” had to having chapters all over the country and thousands of angels all over the world letting soldiers know that they were loved and respected by writing hundreds of thousands of letters, sending care packages, medical supplies, body armor and lending comfort and support to military families. Solder’s Angels and the people who run and support it are heroes in the truest sense.

These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero.
We Should Not Only Mourn These Men And Women Who Died, We Should Also Thank God That Such People Lived

This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. For more information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on your blog, you can go here.
This is an Open Track-Back post for Wednesday, October 10th.

Congressman Westmoreland Supports the Fairtax

rmiles7721October 9, 2007Politics

This is probably old news but I haven’t been to Representative Westmoreland’s homepage in quite some time. The last time I visited there was nothing definite at all concerning the Fairtax but now his statement on taxes is thus:

“
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The burden the federal tax system places on our families and businesses is one of the reasons why the Congressman first ran for office in Georgia, and continues to be a motivation for his service in the U.S. Congress.

The Congressman has pursued the issue of lower taxes throughout his time in the state legislature and in Congress. But despite reducing tax rates, the tax system is so complicated that most people don’t even try to do their own taxes. When it takes additional help to comply with our own laws, something is seriously wrong.

He strongly supports future reductions in the tax and regulatory burden on the people of the United States, and also support efforts at eliminating the income tax completely and replacing it with a national retail sales tax, also known as the FairTax. By implementing a consumption-based tax, we will catch elements of the underground economy that currently pay no taxes, while significantly reducing overhead costs to companies, which will result in lower prices

Most importantly, no one will have to fill out tax forms each year, or have money withheld from their paycheck each month. Eliminating the Internal Revenue Service will be a huge step forward toward a fair system, and the elimination of all of the various loopholes will guarantee uniformity across the board. We must have a tax system that everyone can understand, and that is as little burden as possible.

You’ve got my vote again dude.

I’m off…

rmiles7721October 9, 2007Blogging, Technology

I have to start getting ready to head in to Atlanta. There are a few bloggers meeting up around Centennial park someplace and I plan to be there. I am running way behind today because of my stupid cell phone dying a painful death. It’s been acting up quite a bit lately and just turns itself off, drains the battery or reboots randomly in the middle of a call. I bought a brand new battery for it yesterday and the damn thing was drained by today and wouldn’t turn back on.

I went to Verizon this morning and ended up getting a Moto Q 9m, not exactly the phone that I wanted but it is pretty cool thus far. I have 30 days I think if I want to switch so if the XV6800 comes out before then I may just have to get it instead.

The main thing I don’t like about it is that it is somewhat laggy and slow to respond. Haven’t tried it blogging yet but I did take a photo and try to send it to Flickr unsuccessfully. Maybe I will have more time to play with it later and see what the problem is.