BenSpark Family Adventures

Oh I am traveling today and there are many people I’d like to thank. I’d like to thank the gate agent. Your ineptitude at doing your job is legendary. Thanks for screwing up the paperwork. Thanks to the FAA and their ridiculously ineffective rules. Why is there paperwork anyway. We are in a computer age, shouldn’t the flight manifest go to the cockpit electronically? Why are we still using paper from dot matrix printers. Thank you to the airline industry for your utter contempt for your customers. You work really hard on it and it shows. Thank you to the loud talking jackass in seat 6B. Learn to read you self entitled pompous idiot. Thank you to the big guy sitting next to me who is picking his teeth and hogging the whole armrest. Stop reading over my shoulder. So this morning I get to PVD around 5:45am. I head over to the security line and wait for Old Jack to shout, “Form 2 Lines, there are 2 lines people.” Old Jack must say that about 250 times an hour. I don’t know what his real ...

  Photo-A-Day #662 First I would like to say that today is my Mom’s birthday so Happy Birthday Mom! I’m looking forward to going out to dinner with Mom Dad and Allison on Thursday night to celebrate. Also please keep a dear friend of our family in your prayers. I just found out from Allison last night that my sister’s good friend Jack is in a coma. Jack as you may remember ran the Cape Cod Marathon this past year in his best time ever. Please keep Jack in your prayers. Tonight I am still in Maryland and the demonstrations went well. We had a bit of a connection glitch but it worked out well. The day was long and I was pretty tired but I was able to do all my demonstrations. I got a lot of practice on the new scripts too. When the demo day was over I went back to the hotel and caught up on Best Week Ever Videos on my iPod. I also realized that I can start another month of PPP blogging and try to get as close to $500 without going over. I end up front loading on posts the beginning o...

  Photo-A-Day #661 Today’s photo is of Ryan and Susanne. They are here in Maryland demonstrating too. We went out tonight, along with Kate, for dinner at a place in downtown Annapolis. The restaurant was a nice little Italian place called Maria’s. The food was excellent. They had fantastic bread and oil for dipping. It was a very nice place. While there I found out that Kate’s relatives are my neighbors. Small world keeps getting smaller. I told Ryan about taking a photo a day and while we were at the font desk of the hotel their was this plate of cookies. I took a picture of the cookies and he said, “Why don’t you take a picture of us instead. I don’t want the cookies to win over us.” Well most of the time people aren’t thrilled with me taking their picture and having it be the photo of the day. My friend who have been putting up with me for the past two years have come to expect it but most of the time it is too much to explain the project. So I thank Ryan and Susanne for steppin...

Photo-A-Day #660 Today I was up at 4:45am and headed down to Maryland. I have two days of demos ahead of me down here. The same demo 4 times in two days plus two hours of lab demos each day as well. Travel was fine today. I was put in First class on the flight from PVD to PHL. So I guess going into PHL wasn’t that bad. On my flight from PHL to BWI the landing was a little strange and now that I think about it rather scary. We were on target to land and what seemed like the last minute we were diverted to another runway. We basically turned and landed at the same time, as we turned I could see another plane on the runway that we were supposed to land on. I know that we were supposed to land there because there was a pilot and his friend sitting in front of me and the pilot said something to his friend and his friend crossed himself. Just another day in the air. Tonight I went with the sales person and another Marketing person to Buddy’s Crabs & Ribs for dinner. They had the hugest p...

Photo-A-Day #655 01/23/07 Spent much of the day doing videos. So I took today’s photo of me working on editing the videos and my setup for the video editing. I am really enjoying using Adobe Premiere Elements. I am looking forward to upgrading to the next version. For the most part I am happy to be doing these videos but it gets a bit tedious. The edits the rendering and just basically the repetition. I didn’t get to the gym today. I’m going to start going to the gym in the mornings. I’ve got to get there much more often than I do now. Just been so busy.

Photo-A-Day #641 Peter would be proud of me. I saw a sign for the Iowa’s Largest Frying Pan on my way back from Waverly, IA. I had to stop. I got off the highway and made my way up to the Frying Pan. I was wondering if it was in a building and how I would see it. Well, no problem finding it. Sign said Frying Pan straight ahead and yes, it was straight ahead. It was cold so I took this picture from the car. Then I decided to take my trusty tiny tripod and rig it up to get a picture of me with the frying pan. It was windy if you couldn’t tell from ym tie. I’m 5’9 and the round part of the pan is 9′ to the handle is 14′. You can learn more about Iowa’s Largest Frying Pan. It is a fairly new thing too, only constructed in 2004. I got back to the hotel, changed and headed to Buffalo Wild Wings to get some lunch. Got some medium wings (not going for fire today going for a nice taste.), had a Mello Yellow (I love Mello Yellow) and some popcorn shrimp. Then headed to find the local target and ...

Photo-A-Day #640 This is my new traveling companion. And I must tell you that I am in no way ungrateful that my parents' gave me this to take with me on my trips. You see they saw this story on the news and I got a Carbon Monoxide Detector to take with me on my trips. It is important to have carbon monoxide detectors in your home. The issue I have with this thing is that it is huge, I have to remember to take the batteries out when I leave my hotel room and before I go to the airport. This thing makes the most ungodly loud noise, which of course is what it is supposed to do. I would hate to be going through security with my suitcase and have this thing go off. I’d get the full body search for sure. But I appreciate that they gave this to me. I may need to check on something more travel friendly. And now my airport rant. You know how those things end up happening. Why don't airports have FREE Internet access? I am so frustrated today. I have been participating in a contest spons...

Photo-A-Day #637 01/05/07 This happens more often than not when I take out my camera. I think people are sick of seeing it. Today at work we had a Pot-Luck luncheon. I like to get pictures of group activities. You never know when you are going to get a good shot of someone. I like my division at work, we have a good time and we also work hard. The people I work with are wonderful and I wouldn’t want to go anywhere else. My subject today is Dave, he’s in my group. I think he was just messing with me but I am not sure. Either way he made it onto Photo-A-Day history. There were many great things to eat at the potluck. One of the best dishes was a Buffalo Chicken Dip. I’ve linked to the recipe because I am going to make this for a future event. It was so good. I think the right recipe is linked. I was told this was from food network but I could not find it there. I’ll send a note to Bill, he made the dip. Here are some other variations of the recipe. Buffalo Chicken Dip – Cooks.com Buffalo...

Photo-A-Day #623 12/22/06 Today was the annual company Christmas party. My company throws this great Christmas bash for everyone 2000+ employees complete with a huge shrimp boat and huge tree and music and lots of good food. The also have ice sculptures each year. This year the sculpture was a nutcracker. I took a couple pictures of the sculpture for today’s photo. also while I stepped away from my computer and hard monitoring of the Rockstartup $1,000 Puzzle Hunt. Colleen was able to pull out a win. She smoked everyone, that is why she is the PPP Poster Child. We only live in her world. Here is the second picture.

Photo-A-Day #622 12/21/06 Today we held a secret Santa/Hanukkah Armadillo exchange at work. I gave my Secret Santa person, Bill, a bag from a conference, a remote control mouse for his computer, two video games, an Atari keychain video game that works on the TV and about 100+ pens. Yes, I said pens. You see I have this habit of taking the pens in every hotel room I go into. It is a sickness. I cannot stop taking the pens. Sometimes they have come in handy while on site and someone else does not have a pen (I carry two very nice stylish pens of my own in my bag). I always have a couple of pens in my bag to help out anyone who is without one. So yesterday while I was ‘wrapping’ my gift, and by wrapping I mean putting all the stuff into the conference bag and labeling it with a yellow sticky note. I am a great wrapper. Anyway I was looking in my desk drawer and though, hey it would be funny to give Bill about 50 pens. Well, 50 just didn’t fill the bag enough. I went all out and gave him m...

Today my company gave out the annual Turkeys, Kosher Turkeys, Hams, and Vegetable Lasagnas. This is my 5th year working here and each year I am amazed by the sheer number of holiday meats available. It is very nice of the company to do this for us. The hams are always very tasty and my family loves them. I’m not sure which house the ham is going to this year, maybe even ours. But who knows. A woman that works here got in a car accident last year that sent her holiday ham flying out into the highway. She was more distraught about losing the ‘holiday meat’ (that’s what she called it) that she kept asking the police officers to make sure that her ‘holiday meat. was okay. One year a former employee went downstairs and got his turkey and put it into his desk drawer. He then forgot to take it home and was gone for two weeks. It took about that long to figure out where the smell was coming from. The next year this guy got a call from the president of the company ‘reminding’ him to take home h...

Photo-A-Day #616 12/15/06 The spirit of Christmas alive and well in the Chicago O’Hare airport. My flights today went very well. They were early so I was on flights that weren’t totally full. That was a good deal. I did get peeved however, don’t I always. Here is my latest pet peeve. The Bathrooms at airports. When did the bathroom become the cell phone zone at an airport? I was in the men’s room and could hear a full on business conversation going on from one of the stalls. “Yeah I’d like to dump 12,000 shares of Nuevelo stock, and speaking of dump bob…” It is nasty and I am very annoyed at it. Now couple that with the number of people who do not wash their hands after they use the bathroom. I count about 2.5 people average who simply walk out of the bathroom and do not wash their hands. I want to scream at them that just because the sign says employees MUST wash hands that it wouldn’t hurt for them to use a little good hygiene either. And most of the people I have seen in my years ...

Photo-A-Day #615 12/14/06 I am in Erlanger Kentucky today. I gave a demonstration this morning. Also this morning my new electric razor ran out of power. No problem, I’ll just plug it in. Nope, I didn’t bring the power cord for it and I don’t think I charged it since the first time I had charged it upon purchase. Yeah, the razor cut out at the exact midpoint of my shaving. I had half a face shaved and half all scruffy. Luckily I just shut the razor off for a minute, turned it back on and used it furiously till it shut off again. I was able to do this enough times to get my whole face smooth. That could have been very inconvenient. Let’s see, I found out that One of my stocks dropped 15 points in one day the other day because they failed on a clinical trial. This stock has been nothing but misery since I bought it. Well, now I can sell it and take the loss as a tax deduction. The stock is called NUVELO INC. Here is the story about the drug failure. Today’s photo is is of how awesome the...

Photo-A-Day #614 12/13/06 Today I am in Erlanger, KY. I flew out this morning from Madison, WI at 6:00am. That meant a 4:00am wake up call. I had the hotel alarm clock and the alarm on my phone. I was up in time, I got very little sleep because I just couldn’t fall asleep. I ended up sleeping for a while on the plane and still managed to read quite a bit of the Ada Blackjack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic book. The story is fascinating. I still have a good chunk to finish but I should be done before the weekend. When I got to Erlanger I was able to check into my hotel early, so that was cool. I checked the blog, my e-mail and all the web comics I enjoy reading. Then I headed out for lunch. I went to Max and Erma’s. If you have never been there then you should go just for the fresh baked cookies and a tall glass of milk. Ever since Allison made a delicious batch of “Better than Sex” cookies I have been craving cookies and ice cold milk. For some reason milk tastes infinitely be...