Tag Archives | internet

The Lone Star State Will Soon Meet: THE LONE RANGER

Written by on March 8, 2011
Filed Under Travelogues

For the first time ever (I’ve been saying that a lot lately, but anyhoo…), this lone ranger will soon be rangering it up in the grandest state of them all: TEXAS!

I have been anticipating this trip literally since last August when I registered early to attend SXSW, which takes place every year in Austin, Texas. SXSW is short for South by Southwest, a multi-faceted festival and conference that focuses on film, music and interactive media. The trade show alone will hold over 500 booths, and many events, seminars and parties will be taking place for the duration of the conference. In my case, I’ll be attending the interactive media portion, which according to Wikipedia, has continually “attracted a strong following among web creators and entrepreneurs. Its focus on emerging technology has earned the festival a reputation as a breeding ground for new ideas and creative technologies.”

It’s where hi-tech entrepreneurs tend to go to announce new technology as a prelude to taking it mainstream, and in fact, that’s actually how Twitter got started too.

I was cajoled into going by the only friend I have left in the universe, who believes it would be an awesome opportunity for me to rub shoulders with some of the Internet’s elite entrepreneurs and network with them, which could lead to opportunities down the road that could help take my blog to the next level.

Cuz you know, that worked out SO well when I attended BlogWorld.

In fact, I don’t expect to accomplish anything of that nature while I’m down there. Because of my hearing loss and the sheer noise levels experienced at these types of conferences, any hope of conversation and dialogue is going to be a non-starter for me. Coupled with the fact that I am already anti-social to begin with, I simply don’t have the skillset needed to charm my way to success. If I was a hot looking babe, then maybe, but I have yet to successfully pass myself off as a ravishing looking brunette who can open doors simply by batting her pretty little eyes.

Just ask the only friend I have left in the world, he’ll tell you.

At least there will be seminars taking place that I might beneficial, including seminars on how to improve my writing skills, develop content for publication, how to evolve from a blogger to a marketer, and so on. Still, I don’t expect much.

So why am I going then? For one, my SXSW ticket is nonrefundable, so I kind of have no choice. I’ve also always wanted to visit Texas too, so this was as good an opportunity as any to finally visit the state, and I figured while I was down there, I could hang out for a few days longer so I could visit Dallas as well before returning home. I shall visit then, and I shall eat. And eat, and eat, and eat, and eat. BBQ, Tex-Mex, you name it, I’m eating it. I shall get myself utterly and stupidly meat-drunk, and I will enjoy every solid minute of it.

So, as my itinerary stands now, I’ll be in Austin for SXSW from March 10th to the 16th. After that I check out, rent a car, and lazily make my way to Dallas for another 3 days before returning home on the 19th. Yes, that does in fact mean I will be passing through Waco on the way. I wonder if I can start a cult of my own while I’m down there? Who knows, maybe instead of one wife, I’ll end up having 30. :-D But I hereby denounce myself.

It’s going to be another crazy adventure, and probably my last one for a long while. I hope it’s worth it.

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Justice Prevails: Scammers Finally Get Their Comeuppance

Written by on March 22, 2010
Filed Under Exposes

About 2 and a half years ago, I wrote a post exposing a series of e-book scams that were plaguing the Internet. These scams all had the same claim, that a few mere grocery items would help cure various diseases. That led to a series of followup posts and email from people expressing their thanks for exposing the scam and offering info to help nail down who was behind it. Because the scam was using an address in Washington State, I also reported what I knew to the Attorney General office there. Since then I’ve noticed visitors from that office had come to my blog several times, probably to read what I had written about the scams.

And now, lo and behold: “Washington Attorney General reels in refunds for consumers hooked by Aussies’ quack medicine Web sites.”

I like to think I had a small hand in this, but I’ll let the AG office take all the credit here. As Bugs Bunny would say, no use changing the history books just for little old me.

I have to admit news like this was very encouraging to me. Usually when I write exposes to expose criminal behavior I always feel like I’m just a failed loser spitting in the wind, and there’s simply no way a rant on a blog nobody reads was ever going to make a difference.

Maybe I should stop thinking like that now.

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Life is just a series of random events… or is it?

Written by on December 1, 2009
Filed Under Personal Reflections

“Not all those who wander are lost.” – J.R.R. Tolkien

One of the things that I got sucked into believing about dating was that it would be far easier for me to meet likeminded people online than in real life, because life was simply too random and chaotic for me to easily find the kind of people I could relate to and hang out with (especially hot looking wimmins.) I mean seriously, am I really gonna run into an avid fan of Sarah Palin (who also happens to look just like Jessica Alba) at the local supermarket, in NEW YORK? The odds simply don’t work like that in my favor.

Or does it?

One thing about pursuing this new hobby of geocaching, it’s definitely taken me to some interesting places. Last weekend I climbed to the top of a lighthouse, then drove to a Target and found a space right next to the door, shopped around and went to an empty checkout, all this only a day after Black Friday too. Then I ran into a tea party that was having a demonstration inside a Lowe’s parking lot of all places. It was amazing. I simply did not expect to see any Tea Party dudes in New York, but there they were, protesting against Obamacare and the corruption of Albany, with Derringer’s “I am a Real American” blasting in the background. It was a wild scene. :-D And I never would have found them either had I not been out geocaching.

The day after that, each cache I hunted took me on a trip down memory lane, one at a park where I used to be a camp counselor, which also happened to be the same park where my grandfather used to maintain the grounds. Another took me to my old college, where I also took the LSAT exam that would start me on my failed journey to law school, and still another took me right past the house I was once evicted from so many years ago. So many memories, most of them painful too. And yet when I revisited all these places from my past, it was like I had never really been there. It all seemed only vaguely familiar to me now, like trying to remember an old dream, the faded memories of a distant life best left forgotten.

After I had wrapped up my cache hunting, I drove off and stopped by a 7-11 nearby for a drink. It was past midnight, yet even then I saw a cute girl behind me coming in as well. I held the door open for her and though she ignored me, I wondered: if I simply did this long enough and often enough, eventually the pieces would all fall together, and someday I’d be holding the door open for the girl of my dreams, and she certainly won’t ignore me then. Or maybe I would meet her at the top of a lighthouse. Or at a Target. Or at a tea party. The geocaching hunts that I’ve been doing all weekend were randomly put together, and yet they didn’t seem very random at all. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s that the true value of things is often found in the journey itself, rather than the destination. I’ve been avoiding the journey too long, trying to live it out instead on the Internet. But I’m beginning to realize it should have been the other way around.

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Lessons learned from vacationing with an iPod

Written by on October 17, 2009
Filed Under Travelogues

I’m on the last leg of my vacation trip, and finally have some time to sit down and reflect on my experiences so far, especially when it comes to blogging about it all.

Rather than use an iPhone (which are not hearing aid compatible and relies on the crappy AT&T network), I went with the next best thing, an iPod Touch that I tether to my PDA Phone using Verizon’s Broadband Connect. This way I have the advantage of using a faux iPhone on the Verizon network, as well as access to the Internet wherever I had a signal. I didn’t have to worry about motels or restaurants not offering wifi for my laptop either, since I could tether my laptop to my phone instead.

As far as connections go, Verizon gets an A here. There were times when I completely lost the signal, but I was so far high up in the mountains that it was to be expected. If I had to guess, I’d say I had a signal and access to the Internet virtually 99 percent of the time. Total WIN there. It makes liveblogging or livetweeting my experiences as they happen as easy as pie. Mmmmmm, pie…

Many of the apps on my iPod relies on geolocation to work ideally, especially Google Maps, and as long as I was in New York this wasn’t a problem. It was amazingly accurate in pegging my location, despite the fact that the iPod had no GPS chip.

That is, until I wound up in Massachusetts. Then the iPod went from thinking I was in Martha’s Vineyard, to thinking I was in Seattle.

Despite being unable to track me, I could still use Google Maps manually instead of having to rely on paper maps, except that it incessantly flashed popups telling me it could not locate me, even though I was not using the geolocation feature, and I couldn’t find any way to disable it either. I already know you can’t locate me, there’s no need to tell me that a hundred times a minute. Yeesh.

The net result of all this was a ton of wrong turns, missed exits, and complete absurdity when I came across a street in Google maps that simply did not exist in real life. FAIL

So it looks like I will have to supplement my iPod with a bonafide GPS device now. The TomTom is working on an iPod dock for the future, though I don’t know how reliable it will be, and I hear Garmin is better for the USA. A speakerphone would also be a bonus, as it would negate the need to get a headset (I’ve been thinking about getting one, but the only time I would really need it is for when I’m driving.) Something to research for the future, for sure. In the meantime, if any of you use GPS devices, I could use some advice on what you think worked the best.

Other than that, the iPod was very useful for finding points of interest, though it tended to be a hit or miss thing. Some things worth checking out wouldn’t be listed, so I always had the feeling that I was missing something right under my nose. As far as locating highly rated hotels in the area, the Simultravel app I was using for that gets an F for EPIC FAIL. It only listed a fraction of the hotels within the area I was in, making the effort of locating a good place to stay for the night on the fly a monumentally hair tearing experience. I ended up going back and forth from using Google Local to surfing TripAdvisor all on my iPod’s Safari browser, and since TripAdvisor is a slow and bloated site to begin with, just trying to find a place to stay on the go proved to be more ridiculously frustrating than it should have been. It wasn’t until I stumbled upon Hotels.com’s tailored made site for the iPhone that finding a place to stay finally became more of a pleasure than a horror. It’s how I found Best Western in Ticonderoga, New York, easily the best hotel I’ve stayed at by far, and while chatting with a friend on Google Talk on lodging ideas and checking my email, I booked a reservation there while I was pulled off the road somewhere south of Burlington, Vermont, doing it all on my iPod. Technology can be truly beautiful sometimes.

As for finding points of interest and dining, I used a combination of Yelp!, Where to? and Google Local to find places worthy of checking out. It made such an impromptu vacation as mine all the more pleasurable and easier to manage.

Finally, I noticed when entering a dining establishment that the first thing I would check for was an electrical outlet to plug my laptop in. LOL My laptop’s battery gives out after only 40 minutes, so it certainly does create a handicap when I’m lugging it around. That MacBook with its 7 hour long battery life can’t come soon enough for me. :-D

As far as the digital/internet side of my vacation goes, I certainly learned a few things that will better prepare me for next time. Another thing I need to get a handle on is how to manage my blogging/social media time. I noticed I spent far too much time responding to tweets and comments when I should have been driving and getting to wherever I was getting. And once the day was spent, I found myself too exhausted to blog about the day’s events while it was still fresh on my mind. Ironically, when I finally had time to recap my vacation experiences so far, I ended up blogging about my third day of vacation, rather than the first day, so my chronology was all out of sorts. I was also using BrightKite to tweet/blog my latest movements, but I only used it intermittently, and there were times when it didn’t go through at all. It made for a disjointed way of getting the crux of my vacation experiences out there for all to read, but since this is all new to me, I’m sure I’ll eventually find my mojo and liveblog my experiences in a more consistent manner.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go light my fireplace.

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The most unplanned vacation, EVAH!

Written by on October 12, 2009
Filed Under Travelogues

So tomorrow I start a 4 state vacation tour (Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New York), and I did virtually nothing to plan for it except sketch a rough itinerary of where I might go. I don’t even know where I’ll be lodging either.

And hey, guess what the forecast will be the whole time I’m up there too? Why rain, rain, and oops, lookie here, even more rain!

Sigh.

I feel pretty good about it though, until about sometime yesterday when it suddenly hit me and I panicked for a minute: “ZOMG im drvng 100s of milez n i dunno were im goin or were im stayin i dnt pln anthen at all omg omg omg im gonna die di die aahhh aiiieeee!!!111111!!”

But I’m feeling much better now. :-D

It’s been three years since I’ve gone anywhere, but what makes this trip truly interesting is that it will be an opportunity to finally put my iPod Touch to the test. I have all sorts of travel apps on it to help me find hotels, points of interests, and even people within my Facebook/Twitter network who might be nearby. Since my iPod is tethered to my Verizon phone, it also puts Verizon’s network to the test as well. Will I be able to stay jacked into the Internet wherever I go, and blog/tweet about my experiences as they happen? That’s what I’m hoping for. It will be the first time that I will utterly rely on my iPod as my beacon and guide rather than paper maps and AAA tourbooks. (Although I do have an AAA app on my iPod too.)

One of the things I’ve wanted to do with this blog was to write about my experiences as I go out there and spontaneously experience life beyond the prison that is my home town. But I also wanted to be able to easily share it all with the two or three faithful people who read my blog as well, and now with these newfound digital tools at my disposal, it makes it all possible.

It’s funny, the last few times I went on vacation, the only way I could even check my email was to stop at the local library or internet cafe and use a guest account. I didn’t even have a cam phone, so if I saw something interesting, there was no way for me to instantaneously take a shot and upload it for others to enjoy. Even when I had a laptop, half the time the motel didn’t have free wifi, so there wasn’t much I could do with it either. But now with Verizon, I have access to the Internet virtually anywhere in the United States. It’s opened up a whole new world to me, and I can’t wait to explore it.

So tomorrow, it begins. I’ll be getting up at 4AM and from there will begin my trek north. If you want to keep track of what I’ve been doing and see the latest pics/video, just read my side posts (up in the top right corner), or follow me on Facebook/Twitter if you haven’t already. That should serve as my filler content until I have a chance to blog again. Hope you enjoy my writings as much as I hope to enjoy this trip. Assuming I survive that is.

Why yes, Gecko is in fact coming along for the ride.

Why yes, Gecko is in fact coming along for the ride.

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