Category Archives: general

Just regular kinds of stuff that happened (that doesn’t fit in other categories).

TequilaCon 2008

I really hope I can make it to TequilaCon 2009….

I’m sad I couldn’t go (again).

While I’m just home relaxing this weekend, last week was cRaZy, next week will be semi-crazy and I just went on vacation and I go again in June.

TQ08 Schwag‘ uploaded by Blogography

I’m SO happy it’s the weekend!

I think this is my first Seesmic embed, so if it doesn’t work for you (or even if it does) leave me a comment. If the embed doesn’t work properly, try the direct link.

It’s kinda boring just looking at my head, I’ll have to work on visuals or scenery.

If you try the direct link you can see what the 10 video replies are (I haven’t even seen them all yet); they’re blog style start and the bottom and work your way up. You used to have to log in to see these and now it doesn’t look like you have too…

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It’s the little things like this that brighten my day :)

That and the fact it’s still running

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88888‘ uploaded by garylapointe

Insomnia Cookies

Unfortunately, they were closed. But I thought it was a funny name. This location isin East Lansing, Michigan.

They’re on-line at InsomniaCookies.com

 

Insomnia Cookies‘ uploaded by garylapointe

Dinner was never so tricky

Traveled for almost 6 hours today, just to stay at a hotel near the airport for the flight out tomorrow. I’ll still keep posting Costa Rica tidbits over the next few weeks, I’ve got lots of photos and stories.

But trying to find a restaurant near the hotel is tricky, the roads are kinda bizarre around the airport (once we got on the road I remembered). The resturant across from the hotel is a Denny’s and it’s the anchor restaurant for the casino attached to it (how strange is that?) and we didn’t want to eat there.

So we drove and “tried” to get off the expressway and eventually at local little bar. And the airport we got back to was a different one. You’d think foreigners asking the gate guard where the other aeropuerto was wouldn’t be so tricky (even without understanding Spanish). Once he understood, we got understandable Spanish directions.

Plus, at the restaurant I dropped my keys and when I bent down I hit my forehead on the back of the chair next to me (it was really dark), I’m sure it’s gonna leave a mark (it even bled a bit). So when you ask about the bruise and I say “I got it at the bar”, you’ll know what I mean…

North of Samara

So all the little towns north of Samara aren’t really my kind of vacation spot, not much of a “downtown”, it’s all spread out. Generally not as spread out as Santa Teresa but no real central location. Now, we didn’t drive down every street so we might have missed something. But that seems to be more of the norm around here. Garza was a little town right off the ocean, there was a big Fut Bol (soccer) game going on, but it wasn’t a tourist place at all.

We did get to cross a pretty wide river in our little 4×4, I would have been a little hesitant but the littler BoGo 4×4 in front of us made it so we knew we could. Although we’re pretty confident the woman in the passenger seat wasn’t sure they’d make it (and they waited to make sure we made it). In hindsight we should have taken a picture of the river.

I thought Nosara would be a place I really liked but it was spread out a bit, but there seemed to be a lot there, a lot of “side streets”, a lot of isolated hotels (some really fancy looking ones). It was off the main “highway” so that was really nice this town might require some more exploring.

But the cruise “up the coast” really wasn’t the case, it was a lot of side roads that you had to take down to the water so you never know what might be down there: public access, a home, a hotel, a farm so that was a little tricky.

Found a nice little restaurant north of Nosara, in the town called Oxtional, just called “Tony Resturante”. I think the ocean is just behind here but you can’t see it. Nicely shaded, celling fans and just overall clean and nice (especially since they aren’t far off a semi-dusty road). I had a delicious “Arroz con Camarones” (rice & shrimp) and Mark had some kind of Thai-ish Chicken entree (Pollo Tailandes) that he loved. And they have Coca-Cola and Fresca is glass bottles (that were mucho frio). They do have a translated semi-English menu if you ask (we couldn’t translate Tailandes).

It’s not dusty where we are eating, but we’ve passed a but of “health / dust warning” 20 KPH signs in various towns along here. Overall it hasn’t been too dusty today, I think the rain helped.

Photo Times

So when you take digital pictures, it records the date and the time with the picture. I’m a little slightly obsessive compulsive about the settings on the date and time and when my two cameras are both set for different time zones and neither of those are the correct time zone it tends to annoy me.

So from now on I’m keeping my camera’s set to GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) so it’ll always be consistent. If you don’t know, this is the time zone where the clocks are set at “0”, for example when you set you clocks to EST (Eastern Standard) it sometimes says “-5” hours, that’s 5 hours off from GMT. I’m not sure how this will work for me in the long run but for now it seems like it will be consistent for me.

The biggest problem I see for now it is that other devices like my camera phone will till record in the current time zone. But since its a phone, the time on that should always be correct, unless of course I’m traveling in a country where I don’t have reception and the clock would be wrong…

Working from home

I could work from home all the time, except for when broken stuff needs repair. We’ve got construction at work (and it’s a skeleton holiday staff) so there are carpeting (glue) and painting (paint) so many of us are working from home.

I could really handle this all the time. But I think I’d need something to track what I’m doing so at the end of the week I know if I’m working too much or not enough (I think it’d be the former). Obviously meeting rooms would need to be setup for video conferencing and a day a two a week would definitely be on site.

Pros (for my imaginary job):

  • I don’t have a specific time to be there, just times to be available. Similar to college professors, but more hours (and I’d actually be there).
  • It’d make others plan ahead and be more self-sufficient. No last minute stuff since I wouldn’t be there to swoop in and set up (what I probably shouldn’t be spending time on anyways).
  • When I’ve got a block on something, I can do something else (like laundry). Or solve some personal concern that might actually be distracting me from working efficiently.
  • I’d save gas and time on the road. If I just stayed home 3 days a week, I’d probably save 2 hours on the road and 4 gallons of gas. And less gas/money on going out to lunch.

    Cons:

  • I might not get out of the house at all. Unless I found some good restaurants/cafes/bars with decent internet access (and good lighting).
  • Not enough human interaction.
  • I’d need to buy more pajamas.
  • Ummm….