Monthly Archives: August 2008

The Atlanta Airport

Posted on August 23, 2008 | 1 comment

This was the easiest layover I think I’ve ever had. I needed to go to gate E29 and when I got off the plane I was at E31, right next door! Usually I have to traipse all over the place but I still figured I’d have a long ways to go to get food and convienently there was a great food court around E25-ish. So there was no rushing no running it’s was great. I managed to get McBreakfast, pick up a cold sandwich for the flight and there was free WiFi to do a quick check of my mail.

And the flight? I have a whole row to myself. Actually, if everyone spread out I think every one could have their own row (out of the back 9 rows there are only 5 of us). The pilot thought it was a little bumpy for a while because of the tropical storm so it was a while before they passed out snacks but I thought it was fine.

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Stargate Atlantis – The Shrine (S05E06) – Warning! Spoilers…

Posted on August 23, 2008 | 1 comment

Wow! What a great episode! I watched it for something entertaining and energetic and that wasn’t what I got at all, it was a really really emotional episode. Rodney, the main (very arrogant) genius scientist, had a debilitating disease that that was affecting his mind and they showed the progress of the disease through a series of recordings of what was happening. It was so sad and emotional (not at all what I had planned for) but I thought the acting and the story was great. There were some hysterical parts also so it was just all sad parts.

It really showed a different side of everyone as they knew their friend was deteriorating and dying. It also let Jewel Staite, who plays the Doctor, have a bigger part in the show. Definitely not a shoot-em-up episode…

The other twist in the plot was with the emotionless Ronin who knew of a shrine that would allow someone to regain their facilities for a day before they died. He’s just such a tough guy and to see him talk about how it was when he was a kid and took his grandfather there was a completely different side of him.

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Security and the Detroit Airport

Posted on August 23, 2008 | Leave a comment

I’m always trying to loosen up my shoes when I travel so I decided to wear sandals for this trip. Then I got to security it and remembered why I never where sandals, because you have to take your shoes off (yuk!). Plus, I kept forgetting stuff in my pockets (and then my belt) so I had to go in and out through the scanner a few times stretching the experience out. At least there wasn’t anyone behind me so I wasn’t holding people up.

The flight to Atlanta wasn’t very full, it looked really full on-line when reserving seats and the staff seemed to think it was going to be full so maybe a connecting flight didn’t make it. I moved seats and I’ve had more than enough space. My connecting flight looks really really empty so I’m hoping for 3 empty seats for a nap, I did not get near enough sleep last night.

Curbside check-in: They were really pushing for you to just check in at the curb when I confirmed my flight. But they were so slow and it was really humid out so I decided to go inside. As I was heading in I saw a sign that said it was $3 a bag, I thought that was pretty lame to charge us if it’s helping decongest their floor traffic inside, but I guess if the line inside was long and you were running late it’d be worth it.

Everything has been really smooth so far…

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Touring the Nicoya Peninsula

Posted on August 19, 2008 | 2 comments

Normally when I travel I like to stay put for a few days (at least a few days) and not keep repacking and moving to another place. I personally don’t find that very relaxing and that’s generally the point of vacationing, IMHO.

This past spring when we went to Costa Rica we (my friend Mark was with me) didn’t sit still. We moved hotels almost every night and probably saw an additional town or two each day while we traveled. Not exactly my preferred way to travel but that’s because we had a mission for this trip…

I love the small town Montezuma, located at the south end of the Nicoya Peninsula (just above Cabuya on the map to the right), but the mission was to find some other towns that I might like. I wanted someday to spend a few months in Costa Rica, my concern was that I’d rent a place for a few months and then realize that I liked the next town over since I hadn’t done much exploring from that perspective.

So we drove around like cRaZy checking out towns and staying different places and checking out different areas to see if there was anything I liked better. Montezuma was still my favorite but it’s definitely more isolated than some of the other towns. Tamarindo was a large town but a lot busier than I was hoping for but it pretty much had everything you need. Samara was a medium to small town that I didn’t get to explore enough. But comparatively Montezuma was a tiny town, but for some reason seems to fit me just right…

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Posted in Costa Rica 2008, The Costa Rica Plan

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Universal Buy-In – The Michigan School Retirement System

Posted on August 19, 2008 | Leave a comment

So the school system in the State of Michigan has an option as part of it’s retirement plan. You can actually “purchase” up to five years of work (called Universal Buy-In) and then then when you have twenty-five years of work into the system it actually counts as thirty so you can retire five years early. Now it’s a convoluted formula based on your age, your maximum salary and how many years you have in the system; so the younger you are and the least you make they cheaper it is. Plus, they’ll take the money out of your check pre-tax dollars so you can get into this deal for as about $35 less every two-weeks (that’s $50 pre-tax). When I got in on the deal the plan was better, now they charge you interest on what you owe, so now you’re better off paying it off fast, before you had to spread it out. (Warning: if you’re bored now, the post really doesn’t get much more interesting. The part in bold near the bottom is the slightly/semi-interesting part that caused me to write this post.)

Ors logoI recommend this plan* to people who are in the Michigan retirement system and I always mention it to the new teachers at school. The younger you are when you start the cheaper this will be; I don’t want to hear you say you can’t afford it, you can start this at about $17 a week, that’s not that much and it should really pay off in the long run.

In my case, I didn’t hear about it until I had been in the system for a few years so it wasn’t cheap but since I knew I’d get five extra years of retirement payments so it seemed like a deal to me. I had it spread out evenly over the years I had left so it’s been getting paid down slowly. Continue reading →

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Posted in me + myself + i, The Costa Rica Plan

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Another MobileMe Credit! 60 more days free!

Posted on August 19, 2008 | Leave a comment

So in addition to the 30 Day MobileMe credit from a month ago, they are giving another 60 days of free MobileMe credit.

My problems have not been too bad during this transition (I don’t use their mail) so I’m getting 90 days total!! Plus they’ve doubled my space (back during the transition) which makes it 20 times the storage what it was a year ago.

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The Tico Times

Posted on August 17, 2008 | Leave a comment

The Tico Times is the english weekly paper from Costa Rica. For the last eight months I’ve been subscribing to the paper edition of The Tico Times. I’ve mentioned my Tico Times delivery issues before, it usually takes a while to get to Michigan but it’s much easier to read on paper than on the screen (they also offer a PDF subscription).

I’ve wanted to see what’s going on in the country when I’m not visiting. I’ve been paying attention to opinion pages, letters to the editor, classifieds and more local ads. Of the five times I’ve been there it’s all been in April or between the end of November and beginning of January (and really only covering half-a-dozen different weeks) so I’ve really only seen a portion of the year while there. So I’ve been paying more attention to the non-tourist type articles; when I’m there traveling I’m generally looking more for what’s going on there at that time.

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How I’m doing on my 101 in 1001 list…

Posted on August 17, 2008 | 1 comment

I’m about 17 days from needing to complete my 101 in 1001 list, I haven’t been working on it much so it’s time to revisit and cross a few things off. I’ve only completed 52 of my items. Looks like I’ll complete about 6 more. As resolutions go I’m still above average as I’ll have done more than 18 items a year :)

So I love my 101 list but some things just didn’t get done. I thought I’d have done better. Things I could have done to ensure I accomplished more:

  • Don’t pick bands to make an effort to go see if they might not actually tour.
  • Don’t pick a location to travel to when your interests might change (instead say “visit a country overseas that you haven’t been to before”)
  • Don’t pick something to go to (like SXSW or Burning Man) that doesn’t ever fit the schedule of the job you have.
  • Some items should really be two or three items.
  • Don’t have too many items dependent on other items.
  • Don’t make them too much work and not fun (I think I created some to just fill the list)
  • Don’t pick so many vacation items, you might want to go somewhere else (especially when you consider I’ve gone to Costa Rica 4 times in the same period).
  • Don’t pick such complicated items (do ______ once a year) that should have been separate items

    If I would avoided the above I probably could have easily accomplished anther 20. Some were just are impossible to do based on the items I picked.

    A few items I’ve just recently finally crossed off (but I might have actually done them months ago)
    Take Mom to England
    Get something for my car to integrate my iPod better
    Move somewhere else local?
    Go one week without using any cash
    Change all exterior bulbs in my car

    I’ve got a few that I did make some progress in the right direction so I’ll credit myself a few points. But I’ve got a bunch that didn’t get touched.

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