The following is a guest post from Bill Dilworth. Bill is a former PowerPoint MVP, a VERY frequent traveler, and a great guy all the way around. In fact, Bill travels enough to be in the top class for Frequent Flyer miles for two major airlines. I hope you find his tips as useful as I did.
From Bill: This is just some stuff I picked up along the way. Don’t be offended by any of my generalizations, they are my observations and, as such, mine – not yours.
UPDATE: Bill has updated his note. I have updated the post to show the new content. Enjoy!
Booking & general —-
- Listen when someone with twice your travel time speaks – its easier than repeating their mistakes
- Never book a connection of less than an hour
- Avoid New York airspace if your travel plans permit
- Check the forecasts – bookmark a weather service on your PDA
- Bookmark the airline’s flight status pages, too
- Learn what hubs are your kryptonite
- Try to find a multi-charger to replace the 6 you carry
- Always keep your bag half packed
- A bag keeps the dirty clothes separate; a few dryer sheets keep them from stinking up the suitcase
- Always put the confirmation number in your PDA
- If you book a leg on more than one airline, don’t expect your checked bag to arrive
- If what’s in your checked bag is mission critical, consider FedEx
- Always have emergency funds available
- Always have your camera handy
Airports —-
- 1 hour early is better than 1 minute late
- Never get in line behind a families, kids, or orthodox clergy
- Check to make sure your freq. flyer number was used
- If you have to check a bag (I do) make it so you can see it on the wrong baggage claim.
- Be nice to ticket agents, TSA agents, and gate agents – they can help or hurt your plans.
- Small airports do a better job on average than the medium ones or hubs – but don’t count on it.
- Give up your seat on the shuttles, it makes people smile
- Always give up your place to a traveling military person
- Frequent flyer lines often take longer than the regular ones
- A wireless aircard is easier than bongo roulette
- Keep an eye out for free outlets
- Carry a 3-way power cube for when you do find an outlet*
- Tunes at the gate are great, until you miss an announcement
- Counting the McD’s on Final” is a difficult game to explain to non-travelers
- People-watching by destination is a great time killer at hubs
- You can NEVER be too OCD about where your Blackberry is.
- No place makes a Philly CheeseSteak like Philly.
- I don’t think Philly is best at anything else
- Double check the gate assignment before running for the connection
Flights —-
- Learn to sleep on planes – really
- Travel with a bag that can fit under the seat
- Ask if the flight is full before placing the bag in the overhead
- Always have a book to read, even if you can sleep on a plane
- Zunes are great travel tools – even if their user interface sucks
- Laptops cannot be opened if the person in front of you reclines
- Use only a few key Freq Flyer cards; don’t try to join them all
- Flight attendants get upset if you say the safety routine along with them
- Pittsburgh takes the longest to get bags to the belt, by a lot
- Sleeping with earphones is a great way to avoid talking to annoying people
- Kids should be required to sit in rows 25 and higher
- There is no way to avoid plane hair
Rental Cars —-
- Rent a car from in the terminal, especially if you might be running late on return.
- Join all the rental clubs – even if it is just for the faster counter service
- Read what they are charging you for, it often isn’t what you agreed to.
- Carry a flashlight to check over the rental car before signing for it.
- If you rent frequently, carry a GPS with you
- Save the GPS location of the rental car lot before you leave
- Adjust all the mirrors before you try to drive
- You may want to check the car’s speedometer against the GPS’s to avoid a ticket
- Pull over and take the picture, you will regret it when you don’t
- Avoid deer and carry a hard copy of your insurance forms
- Leave yourself time to find a station and fill the tank
- Sirrus radio rocks – if not available, a patch to your Zune can, too.
- GPS’s are the most frequently stolen item out of checked bags
- Always keep the gas reciept
Hotels —
- Check your hotel room before unpacking anything – it makes it easier if you need to change it.
- With your packed bags holding the door open, do a final check before leaving a hotel room*
- Carry sleeping pills – when you need them, the places that sell them are closed.
- Instant oatmeal is a great hold-me-over when checking in after room service is closed.
- Don’t use hotel glassware
- Be nice to the hotel clerks, they can be a great source for local information
- Don’t count on miniature shampoo or soap being in the rooms
- The top hotels always charge for internet – you are better off at the 3 or 4 star ones
- Ask for what room you want, they may be able to give it to you
- There are almost never enough outlets
- Never rely on the hotel’s wake-up call
* Tips Bill learned from a fellow travelers
Thanks for the great tips, Bill. They are greatly appreciated!
Tags: bill dilworth, Travel, travel tips
Just a quick post to say how much I love Techsmith’s Snagit – especially when it saves me from other software problems.
I just had yet another Facebook (FB) crash. I type too fast for FB to keep up in comments and notes. When this happens, the screen dims and I know that the error message isn’t far behind.
Tonight, it happened while I was putting in a comment on a friend’s note containing travel hints. (Which, by the way, I will be adding as a guest post when this post is done.)
Instead of panicking, I thought “Snagit”! My first attempt was a text grab, but the text was too faded. The second attempt was an image grab – that worked. When my browser re-opened, I just set the two windows side by side and re-typed the text. The image I grabbed was:
If I had been thinking, I would have dropped it into OneNote to grab the actual text. It just takes a few moments to drop the image into OneNote, copy the text from the image, paste it on the note page, edit it, and copy paste it to the note after the browser comes back. OneNote did a halfway decent job of recognizing the text, as you can see here:
Has SnagIt saved the day for you? How? Let me know!
(In the interest of full disclosure: TechSmith takes good care of those who help them beta test and discuss thier products. In my case, that good care includes a few great tchotchkes through the year and a paid account on Screencast.com. I regularly tell Betsy Weber that I would write about and talk about the products even without the extras and that they rock. If you think so, you should tell them too!)
Tags: betsy weber, facebook, onenote, SnagIt, Tchotchkes, techsmith
My team member at my new job, Kimmie Chann, was having a problem getting pictures from Flickr to embed in her WordPress blog. Since I have fought the same battles with some of my images here on VitaminCH, I thought I would share with everyone a quick solution to the problem.
The first step is to get the link for your image and decide where in your post you want the image to show. While editing the blog post, switch from the “Visual” tab to the “HTML” tab. Find the place in the post where you want your picture to appear.
Your next step is to put together the code for the picture, the link, and the caption. Start with this code:
[ caption id="Name_Of_Photo" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Caption_Text </a>" ]<a title=”Hover_Text” href=”LINK_URL”><img src=”Picture_URL” border=”10″ alt=”ALT_Text” width=”500″ height=”350″ />[/caption]
Where:
- Name_Of_Photo is the name of the photo in your graphics library
- Caption_Text is the text you want to show below the photo
- Hover_Text is the text to show on mouse over
- LINK_URL is the link to the page to go to when the picture is clicked
- Picture_URL is the Flickr (or other photo storage) URL for the picture itself
- ALT_Text is the text to show if the picture is not shown or if a screen reader is being used
Please note: In the sample code, I have added an extra space after the “[" and before the "]“. This is so that you can actually see the comment code that makes this trick work.
Let’s see a real example. This HTML:
[ caption id="attachment_31" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="DigiBordMenu" ]<a title=”Picture 1 by kimmie_chann, on Flickr” href=”http://www.symbaloo.com/public/2273/digibordmenu/”><img src=”http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4033/4347211019_2404bed17a.jpg” border=”10″ alt=”Picture 1″ width=”500″ height=”350″ /></a>[/caption]
Picture 2
[ caption id="attachment_31" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption=" lyne fichet" ]<a title=”Picture 3 by kimmie_chann, on Flickr” href=”http://www.symbaloo.com/public/5886/lyne-fichet–mes-bureaux-publics-”><img src=”http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2730/4347958686_6c161c9203.jpg” border=”10″ alt=”Picture 3″ width=”500″ height=”350″ /></a>[/caption]
Gives this result:
DigiBordMenu
Picture 2
lyne fichet
Once you have the HTML added, switch back to the “Visual” tab. You should see the pictures in your post just as they will show in the actual entry.
I hope that makes sense and that you find it useful!
Tags: blog, captions, hints, html, mini-tutorial, pictures, symbaloo, tutorial, wordpress
In just under two weeks, APCUG will be holding a regional conference and our annual meeting in Tempe AZ. I am hoping that this blog post can entice you into attending.
Logistics:
- When: February 20 and 21
- Where: UAT in Tempe AZ (same place we hold PodCampAZ every year)
- Cost: $55 if you pre-register online. $85 at the door
It’s going to be an awesome conference!
Great speakers. Great volunteers organizing and running it. Great location. (Who can resist the Valley of the Sun in late February?)
So, what’s not to work? The conference itself. That’s because we don’t have very many people coming. Less than 100 at this point. I am hoping you will help me to change that.
We’ve got content for almost everyone. Mac people, PC people, new users, IT Pros, security geeks, user group leaders, digital photographers, genealogy geeks, social media geeks.
Speakers? Yeah, we have some good ones there too. Jay Ferron will be speaking on Windows 7 as our opening keynote. Carey Holzman will be talking about free software. Karen Hart will be talking about security. Bruce Jacobs will be talking about disaster recovery.
Sponsors are doing their share too. AiSquared will be there, as will LifeLock. Serving Online Seniors will be talking, as will SoftQue. We have talks by committee members and board members on FireTrust and Roxio. We even have Darin Travis of Microsoft coming to talk about Windows Mobile.
We’ve got some prizes (though we won’t turn down more prize donations), including copies of Camtasia and SnagIt. We’ve got food. We’ve even got a couple of build events – one Saturday to learn how to install Linux on your existing machine and one Friday night to build your own PC.
Did that one get your attention? It isn’t too late to sign up for the Friday night event. Bruce will be stepping the build event participants through building their own machine. Cost for that is an extra $510, but that gets you a great machine, a copy of Windows 7 for the machine, and an understanding of what goes into building one.
The price is more than reasonable too: Register online before the conference starts and it will only cost you $55! That price includes lunches both days, by the way…
So, tell me… why haven’t more people registered? You tell me! This being a volunteer driven event, we can still add more content…. What else should we do to get people to come?
Disclosure: I have a very vested interest in this conference working out. I am the VP of APCUG and one of the original drivers of the conference.
Update: I forgot the link for the conference information http://phoenix.apcug.org/
Tags: AiSquared, APCUG, Bruce Jacobs, Camtasia, Carey Holzman, conference, Darin Travis, digital photo, FireTrust, genealogy, it pro, jay ferron, Karen Hart, LifeLock, Linux, Microsoft, Roxio, security, Serving online seniors, SnagIt, Social Media, SoftQUe, tempe az, UAT, user group, windows 7, Windows Mobile
On my recent travels, I came across this display. Can you guess the airport?
Error in the airport
Tags: airport, flight, windows error
My mother-in-law, Donna Jacobs, is known for her baking. She is the reason that @mindlessfluff cooks – she taught him and encouraged him. When we come home for visits, the place is full of good smells and better foods. That’s always the case. We are here early this year, but the smells have already started. Why? Because Saturday December 12, 2009 is the annual Cookie Walk for the Ames Farmer’s Market.
On a regular week, you can find Donna’s baked goods at the only year-round farmer’s market in Iowa. Good things like cookies, bars, pecan mini-pies, homemade bread (including tomato bread – yum), and so much more. Everything is made from scratch per her personal recipes. It’s all homemade and all amazingly great. If you have ever had her brownies or rolls, you know what I am talking about.
The market is located in the Old Depot (526 Main Street) in Ames IA. Saturday, @mindlessfluff and I stopped by to see Donna at the market. Unlike the markets we are used to in California, this market is indoors. Each seller has table or shelf space.
Like the markets we are used to, the food sold is all natural and chemical free. Besides the baked goods Donna sells, the market also sells meats, wine, coffee, biscotti, fresh veggies, take-and-bake items, and craft items. Everything is locally made by the members of the market.
This time of year, not only is Donna stocking her table at the market with her regular stuff, but she is also baking cookies. Dozens and dozens of cookies. She has already made almost 60 dozen cookies of varying kinds for the day, and has at least that many more she wants to make. These cookies are both a labor of love and a way to survive. Why? Because the income from the cookie walk goes to support the market.
At the cookie walk, you pay $15 for a clamshell container. You then walk around the market picking up cookies and putting them in your container. Average people get 3 to 4 dozen in each container. The record appears to be 6 dozen.
If you are in the Ames or Des Moines area, stop by the Ames Farmer’s Market. It’s worth the trip. The food is good, the prices are nice, and I bet you will find the people there absolutely amazing!
I took advantage of our visit and took some pictures of the winter veggies which you can see in the video below. The video also shows shots of Donna’s cookies and other baked goods. Enjoy!
Tags: ames farmers market, ames ia, baking, cookies, donna jacobs, event, familhy, family, farmers market, iowa, scratch
If you follow me on any of networks, you know that @mindlessfluff and I spent a good part of the last week driving from Emeryville CA to Slater IA. He drove, I rode. The plan was that I would work as we went along. At the same time, I would tweet and blog about the trip. Great plan, huh? Too bad it don’t work out that way…
There is one big reason that I didn’t tweet as frequently as I planned, let alone blog the trip: Sprint’s lack of mobile and data coverage.
We have been loyal Sprint customers for MANY years – more than a decade on the mobile side alone. Usually we are quite happy with the service we get. We may not like how much it costs us for the service, but it usually just works. Last week was the exception that may cause us to change providers.
We drove across I-80 to get from the west edge of the US to the middle of the country. From Reno through the eastern side of Nebraska, we had little to no mobile coverage. While on the road, we were in roaming mode from late Tuesday morning until mid-afternoon Thursday. When we stopped overnight on Tuesday night, we did have coverage at the hotel. Wednesday night, not so much. Roaming mode at the hotel in Sidney, Wyoming on Wednesday night sucked.
Coverage here in rural Iowa is better than it was as we drove I-80 (and it isn’t great here). At least here, I can connect. My phone works most of the time, even if other phones on our account don’t always.
Sprint, in this day and age, this isn’t acceptable. If there is an interstate, I should have coverage. No ifs, ands or buts. I shouldn’t have to go two full days of driving to get out of the roaming zone. I shouldn’t have to totally disconnect just because you haven’t gotten around to building a tower.
That’s just my two cents.
Tags: cell, I-80, internet, mobile coverage, sprint
A few weeks ago, @betsyweber took a tour of the Jiffy factory in Michigan. Being the cool dudette that she is, she sent @mindlessfluff and I a box of Jiffy goodness after her tour. Some day, I will get more recipes posted on OutdoorCook.com based off what she sent, but for now this will have to do.
PS: We haven’t tested this recipe in a Dutch Oven yet. If you make it outdoors in a Dutch Oven, let me know how it works.
Ingredients
3/4 pound hamburger
1 tsp rooster sauce (Siracha)
3 tbs brown sugar
1 tbs prepared mustard
1/4 cup catsup
1 head of garlic plus one tablespoon olive oil
5 oz. sliced mushrooms
2 Pkg Jiffy Corn muffin Mix (plus egg and milk to prepare)
Preparation
Cook the garlic. Our two favorite ways to do this are to brown it on the stovetop or to cook it in the microwave. If you have the time to do it on the stovetop, peel the cloves and put them and the olive oil in a fry pan. Cook until garlic is soft. If you don’t have the time to do it that way, put the head in microwave safe bowl and sprinkle with the olive oil. Cook for 30 to 40 seconds. The skins will come right off.
Now that the kitchen smells good, you are ready to really cook. Prepare your oven by preheating it to 375 degrees F.
Brown the hamburger in a large fry pan. As it browns, add the garlic. When it is close to done, add the rooster sauce, mustard, ketchup, and mushrooms. Let cook until everything is melded together, stirring infrequently.
In a clean bowl, mix up the corn muffin mix according to the box. This step is where the eggs and milk come in.
Oil a 10 inch round baking pan. This recipe works best if the pan is at least 2 inches deep.
Now you need to make a choice: Do you want the meat on the bottom or the top? Both work equally well.
If you want the meat on the top, pour the corn bread mixture in the pan and smooth to edges. When the meat mixture is ready, pour it over the corn muffin mix. Top with grated cheese if desired.
If you want the corn bread on the top, pour the meat mixture in the pan when it is ready. Top it with the grated cheese as desired. Pour the corn bread mixture over the whole thing and spread to the edge.
When the oven is preheated, put the pan in the oven on the middle rack. If your pan is not a full 2 inches tall, put a cookie sheet or foil on the rack below the pan to catch the drips.
Bake for 30 minutes. When done, the cornbread will be browned and the smell will drive you crazy.
To serve, cut pie shaped pieces and plate.
Tags: cooking, cornbread, dutch oven, garlic, hamburger, hamburger pie, jiffy corn bread, outdoor cook, recipe
Where are your comments?
I don’t get many comments on this blog. That isn’t to say I don’t get many comments on the content, I just don’t get the feedback here.
I get responses on Twitter when I first publish. I get LOTS of comments on some topics on Facebook. In fact, I have some people who only comment on my content via Facebook. I will occasionally get a comment sent to me via email.
I have been asked why should one comment on the blog. From the writer’s perspective, I like comments posted on the blog because it is a visible sign that what I wrote connected with someone. But if they comment on Facebook, I see that too. So, why do I expect comments on the blog itself?
I think my desire to see comments on the blog is from an outdated sense that the blog itself is where my audience is. Ironic, isn’t that? I know that much more of my community is on Twitter and Facebook. I didn’t connect that fact with the location of the feedback.
Something on Facebook seems to cause people to not only connect with the content, but also with each other. I linked my blog to my notes today. Immediately, a conversation started on the “Guess the airport!” post. I don’t know if it was the timing of the information or if it was the location of the content. I am guessing that the people who commented felt more comfortable in the Facebook environment. I haven’t yet figured out why, but am hoping they all tell me. (And I don’t care where they tell me!)
I find myself wondering… Where do people comment on your content? Are you looking for the comments actively? Are you finding them all?
Tags: blogtwitter, comments, community, facebook, feedback