First Turkey Baby!

Evan was the first baby born on Thanksgiving! At least in Polk county…OK at least in Lakeland Regional…

Lagniappe

Lagniappe is a word I recently learned… I thought my vocabulary was pretty good, but obviously not good enough to know a cool word like lagniappe….It’s not that the word that is cool as much as the meaning…
Lagniappe is best described as the 13th donut in the bakers dozen… That little extra that’s unexpected (that most often makes you loyal to places) (Here’s the wiki entry on it if you’d like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagniappe )
It’s like when I go to Pasquale’s Pizza in Winter Haven (If you haven’t been there you are missing out) and order the garlic knots and they give me 7 or 8 instead of the normal 6 because they know I’m a regular… It’s going to Sonny’s BBQ on the north side and having my usual drink brought to me as soon as I sit down… unexpected (entirely welcome) surprises or extras that make that favorite place your favorite….The “Extra Mile” if you will (Chick-Fil-A is a big believer in this as well)
So there you go, a new word for you….All three of the above mentioned places get regular (and frequent) visits from me for the lagniappe that I get….
Now see what you can get in return by giving a little lagniappe yourself…Even if it is just the warm and fuzzy of making someone else smile…

Can you breathe?

With all the smoke in the air today, I thought I would check the weather www.wunderground.com to see when something would blow through and clear this crap up… I thought it was funny to see the description…. 64F Smoke…Here’s the longer version:
Today
Partly sunny. Patchy smoke early in the morning. Highs in the lower 80s. Northwest winds 10 to 15 mph.
Just wierd to see smoke in the weather forecast…

The Ledger most viewed articles yesterday

Have you ever been to www.theledger.com and scrolled to the bottom? If so, you’ve probobly seen the feature for “Most viewed articles yesterday” Most of the time, I find this to be a nice section. I find articles that I may have missed that are pretty interesting…They must be because they were the most viewed right? Well what’s up with the Gator Domi-Nation article being in the top 10 since January? Can that many people really be reading that article EVERY DAY! It’s not that I don’t like the Gators or anything…I’m just tired of seeing a 3 month old article everyday..

Nintendo Wii

If you’ve played someone’s Wii chances are you enjoyed it and want one of your own…Now finding one can get a little tricky…
Here is a site that will tell you Target’s Wii availablity (note when you see them light up green, they usually hold them at the store until Sunday morning) If you call them they usually deny having them despite the site showing them green…Just show up on Sunday with your money and they’ll be there…

And yes that is a Winter Haven Zip in the link…so if you don’t live in 33880 just change it out with your own…Good luck!

Travel Tips

One of the things that I set out to do with my blog, was to post sites/things that I learn about day to day…I’m in IT so I’m on the computer/internet about 90% of the time that i’m awake…

Enough of the intro and back to the meat…

Here are some sites that I find useful when traveling or planning to travel…For the seasoned traveler you will probably recognize these.

 SeatGuru.com - Website that shows the good and bad seats on planes..I’ve yet to take a trip that seatguru didn’t have a seatmap for.  Don’t get on a plane without going here first! Really.

Expedia.com - Good quick clean site.  I use this to find whats in an area for hotels.  Or to see what airlines run the route that i need to fly.  I usually then go directly to the site of the company I am flying/staying with (saves a few extra dollars, sorry Expedia) 

Hotwire.com - This is a great site to book hotels with.  I’ve consistently stayed in 4-5 star hotels for $100 or less a night.  Hotwire doesn’t tell you the exact hotel you are staying in…Just the star rating and the general area….If you would like a better idea of where you are staying (sometimes exactly where) you can go to Betterbidding.com. Betterbidding works with hotwire and priceline.com to let you know which hotel you are going to be staying in based on the area and amenities that hotwire is displaying.  This site works 75% of the time…And it’s free so it’s for me…

If you want to see where your loved ones plane is you could use these Flightview.com or Flightaware.com.  If you want to get fancy and plot the flight out 3d on google earth then head on down to fboweb.com. 

Of course once you’re there you might need to find your way around.  Try google maps.

Now go be you’re own travel agent and see what goes on outside of Polk county.

Joe Rogan vs Carlos Mencia

Joe Rogan (Fear Factor/UFC/Stand-up Comedian) introduces another comic and gives some background for that comic…Telling everyone that he opens for Carlos Menstealia (Carlos steals other comedians jokes)  Carlos takes the mic from the comedian and proceeds to get into it with Joe onstage.  Here is the resulting smackdown that Joe deals Carlos.. Pretty good stuff.

My Xbox 360 can blog better than I can…So can yours

Here is the link to my xbox 360s blog.  It likes to post about the games I play and it gets all winey when I don’t play it all :)  If you’d like your xbox 360 to have a voice of it’s own then go here and sign up.  It’s free and pretty entertaining..

Slacker Wakeup Call

Well I was just surfing the internet and decided to check out Empirical Polk. While there I saw a post listing all of Hyku’s Polk blogs.  I was surprised to see my name on the list since I know I haven’t posted in almost a year… Then I noticed mine was one of the ones on his list that was showing outdated…Thus my slacker wakeup call…So I’m going to try to revive this thing

Things in the Middle East

I want to say so much right now but I find myself in a completely lazy mood…and don’t know where to start….I’ll sum my feelings up with this….It’s getting nasty..Israel is gonna light some people up and rightly so….Syria Lebanon better be on alert….Pakistan too, because India has got something for them, I’m sure…I think this is gonna get worse before it gets better….And the more angles they push on Israel, the more right they have to use more force….right now they are fighting on two fronts…..if anyone increases that they should have plenty of justification for responding even more fiercely than they already have….