Is Shoutback ready for prime time?
It’s that time of year – Girl Scout Cookie Fundraiser!
Mmmmm love me some Thin Mints.
While Girl Scout cookies are the one fundraiser I like my daughters’ doing, I get VERY annoyed by the rest, especially fundraisers by organizations for which we pay membership. Frankly, I’d rather pay an extra $20 than sell more gift wrap and nuts.
Internet marketing has opened some new frontiers for fundraising. For instance, Shoutback has an auction system that can be used for fundraising. Unfortunately, I can’t explain much more about Shoutback because they appear to be so new that information is hard to come by. According to the terms and conditions, it appears that you can purchase products through their website, and the affiliate marketing dollars are given to the organization for which you are raising funds.
I tried registering twice using different email addresses in the hope that there would be more information inside the website, but it’s over an hour later and I haven’t received the link to my account(s).
It’s a good idea and I know organizations like the PTO at my daughters’ school would really benefit from having 1,000 parents registered and making purchases through Shoutback, but I have to wonder if Shoutback is ready yet?
Fly to Florida
I regularly write about the attractions here in Florida: Disney, Sea World, Busch Gardens, Universal Studios. Did you realize that 3 of those attractions are located within a ten minute drive of each other, with Busch Gardens and our great Florida beaches on either coast only an hour away? You can fly into Orlando and enjoy about two weeks’ worth of theme parks and “sun & fun” without traveling more than an hour on any particular day.
For our friends in the UK looking for flights to USA, dialaflight.com has cheap flights and knowledgeable travel counselors. They’ll help you find the hotels, rental cars, and destinations that are right for you and your family.
And remember, there is no place in the USA better to visit than Florida!
Did your child get their letter from Santa yet?
This is it. If you haven’t ordered your Letters From Santa for the kids, then time is running out!
These letters are customizable – of course, you can add the child’s name, but you can also add three accomplishments and three gifts from the child’s wish list. So, in addition to making the magic last another year, you also get to create a special memory for your child, grandchild, nephew, niece, or friend.
Letters From Santa also sends you a free follow-up postcard and door hanger, so the Christmas experience can be extended past Christmas Day.
Win an iPod Nano just for signing up for a travel newsletter
We’re taking the kids to Walt Disney World in Orlando this weekend. We enjoy Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Christmas Party, held various evenings through the holiday season. We usually stay overnight and do something the following day, but this year I’m stumped for ideas. After checking with the folks at Trusted Tours, I see Medieval Nights tickets are available fairly reasonably, especially considering you get a 4-course dinner and a great show. I’ve been in the past, it’s awesome, and I know the kids would love it. I hope we can squeeze it in. They also have specials for other attractions, and some REALLY good specials on hotels. I actually used the site to find a good deal on a hotel in Orlando for a business trip I took back in September, so I can recommend the site for having goo, accurate information.
Trusted Tours & Attractions is running a great promotion right now. If you sign up for the Trusted Travel eNewsletter between now and December 31, 2007, you’ll be entered to win an iPod Nano. I signed right up. I’ve won a Nintendo Wii and a Microsoft XBox Elite in separate contests the past 6 months, so I’m going for the trifecta for 2007. You can try to beat me, but I have to warn you, I’m running hot right now!
Great lodging special for Amelia Island
One of our favorite places on the planet is Amelia Island. Living in Northeast Florida, Amelia is the perfect getaway for us – just far enough away that it feels like we’re on vacation, close enough to book it back home in an emergency.
When we go for a weekend, we stay in one of the many Bed & Breakfast hotels. We have a favorite, the Ash Street Inn, because it was the first place we “went away” to for a weekend after we were engaged, but having been there so much and knowing many people in the area, we know that there’s no such thing as a bad B&B on Amelia.
We especially love the great restaurants and bars on Amelia, and we even have a print of the Palace Saloon that hung in my office for many years (The Palace is the oldest drinking establishment in Florida). My parents visit regularly from the West Coast of Florida to check out the great shops, and now that he’s retired my father’s choice of attire begins and ends with shirts purchased at a shop called “Last Flight Out”.
The Ash Street Inn and the other dozen participating properties are running a Lodging Special for Amelia Island vacationers: Book two nights, get the third night for free. Believe me, I can give a personal recommendation to Amelia Island being a great place to visit, and this deal is one of which to take advantage. The special runs through February 29, 2008, so there’s ample opportunities to schedule that long weekend getaway.
The best revenge scenes in film
Revenge is a dish best served cold, and Michael Corleone was the chef. In this scene, he tells his brother-in-law Carlo he won’t kill him as revenge for setting up Sonny because he doesn’t want to make his sister a widow, then sends him to the car where he gets garroted.
Barzini is dead. So is Phillip Tattallgia. Moe Green. Slacci. Cuneo. Today I settled all family business so don’t tell me that you’re innocent.- Michael Corleone, The Godfather, 1972
Ice, ice cold.
My other favorite revenge scenes:
- Revenge of the Nerds: I love me some pie.
- The Green Mile: Percy Wetmore, the scurvy little guard that killed Mr. Jingles, gets put into a strait-jacket and is passed the sickness the warden’s wife had via John Coffey, and winds up in a mental hospital.
- Oz: Ok, it’s not a movie, but when Beecher defacates on Schillinger, that’s pretty good. Or not. I mean, considering he was repeatedly sodomized by Schillinger, perhaps this revenge is a bit lame.
- The climax of every Chuck Norris Movie.
I love movies that end in revenge, with the bad guys getting what’s coming to them. Or, in the case of The Godfather, the badder guy, since none of them can be considered good. There’s something eminently satisfying about seeing the dirty cops being welcomed to prison or the Bond villain being eaten by a shark.
The new Sweeney Todd movie is supposed to be all about revenge. He is wrongfully imprisoned, and while he is away terrible things happen to his wife and daughter. So, of course, the answer is to kill those responsible and bake them into meat pies.
Yeah, this movie sounds like it matches my taste. Urp.
Go visit the official Sweeney Todd movie site to see an incredibly stylish promotion of the movie, or visit Sweeney Todd on MySpace.
What are your favorite revenge scenes?
New gear for Christmas
So, I talk about crime in Florida pretty regularly. Hard not to, what with drunken parents passing out in the car with kids in the backseat, or politicians being arrested for soliciting male prostitutes and what not. Florida’s got its own vibe when it comes to crime.
So, what do you get for that hard-working police officer, or cop-wannabee in the family? Head over to 511 tactical and see what they have. I see all kinds of cool stuff, especially the tactical pants. I like a lot of utility pockets, and being the fat guy that I am, I need pants that can take a beating.
Honey? You reading? I checked, and they do have the pants in fat-man sizes, too.
First Friday Artwalk in St. Augustine
This is the best time of year in St. Augustine. The weather is beautiful and the city does a great job of decorating with Night of Lights. There are also activities every single weekend, and one of the cool things to do is the St. Augustine Artwalk.
On the first Friday and Saturday every month, over 20 participating galleries offer tours that start at 5 p.m. There are complementary shuttles in the form of St. Augustine Sightseeing Trains and Old Town Trolley Tours if you’d like to ride between stops on the Artwalk. Galleries have exhibits that include local artists, including painting, photography, and music.
The schedule for the next few months is as follows:
- Dec. 7th and 8th
Jan. 4th and 5th
Feb. 1st and 2nd
March 7th and 8th
The First Friday Weekend Art Walk is another great reason to visit the city of St. Augustine. The weather this time of year is fantastic, the shops are stocked, the bed-and-breakfast inns are decorated for the holidays, and the romance levels are high. It’s no surprise that it was the weekend before Christmas that I proposed to my wife in St. Augustine.
Ok, maybe you unmarried guys might want to keep your girlfriends away…
Why I pay for car maintenance
My commute sucks, and not just because of the 45 minutes I spend on the road each way. Gas and maintenance on my car reminds me how much I need to get a job closer to home. My wife and Live on coupons, especially for car maintenance.
I checked out the coupons available with AAMCO and found I can get a transmission fluid change for $29.95, or any service for $25 off (hello, nearly free oil change!), or they’ll check out the check engine light for free. Now, I know the handy guys out there are saying, “Change it yourself!”, but there’s a reason i don’t do that… anymore.
See, I used to do all of my own maintenance and laughed and pointed at people that PAID for oil changes. I did it all myself, and was always helping out friends that knew more than me so I could learn more. One day, I was changing all of my fluids. I knew exactly what I was doing, but got a little careless with the bottles. Somehow, I managed to put power steering fluid in my master cylinder reservoir.
For those that don’t know why this is a big deal, allow me to ’splain: The master cylinder reservoir is where brake fluid gets stored. The brake system has a significant amount of rubber in the form of tubes and gaskets and such. Power steering fluid is petroleum-based. When petroleum-based fluids interact with rubber, rubber expands.
When rubber expands in a closed system, it applies pressure to the point of least resistance. In this case, the point of least resistance is the brake pads. Over the next several days, the brake pads on my truck clamped tighter and tighter. I thought I had a transmission problem and was trying to limp to the nearest mechanic when the truck just quit moving.
I consider myself lucky to have only paid $900 to fix the original problem and the resulting damage.
That’s why I now leave car maintenance to the professionals.
Got to love one-stop shopping
Man, I freaking hate looking for hotels on the internet. I want the best rate possible, so I hop on one site, do my best there, then hop on another and do the same, then another, then another… It’s enough to make an obsessive-compulsive lose his mind.
HotelsCombined.com solves that problem for me. They search all of the major hotel reservation systems and allow you to compare rates instantly. We’re going to Disney next month, but I found rates for next week as low as $33, and The Swan, on Disney property, was $42/night for 2 nights. Unbelievable!
Florida Sites- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
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