BenSpark Family Adventures

Photo-A-Day #670 I was searching through some Posties websites and I came across a project called the toss a camera. What you do is set your camera's timer and toss it in the air and let it go off. All I seemed to do was toss the camera across the room after setting the 2 second timer and have it go off as it hit the bed, across the room, then it went off. On this one the camera bounced off the bed and then went off capturing my suitcase and a tie, I have no idea where the lights came from in the picture. The one thing that seemed to help when I tossed the camera was that it now focuses a lot faster than it had been lately. That is weird. The poor thing is on its last legs. Today I crossed the mighty Mississippi River on my way from Missouri to Illinois. It was the first time I had even gotten close to the river. Unfortunately I was on a bridge and could not stop to take any pictures. I was only in Lubbock Texas for less than 24 hours so I could not get to the Buddy Holly Museum. T...

12:38am. Yep, The travel saga continued well into the wee hours of Tuesday morning. I’ve added an update below. I’m going to bed. I have to get up tomorrow for my flight in the AM. Travel Saga 2/5-2/6 9:30am CST – I am now in Lubbock Texas. After getting 3 1/2 hours of sleep I got up and went to the airport. I hung around and waited for my flight. I charged up my cell phone as I had made many calls in the past day and I listened to the 60 Second Science Podcasts. The flight was uneventful. I landed safely.  I had to go to Hertz to get a car. I double checked the credit card that was used to reserve the rental and Found out that it was not the one I usually use so I asked the guy if he would change it. He said I could change it when I returned the car. I said, “And you can do it right now, thanks.” I’m returning my car tomorrow morning around 5:00am. No one will be at the counter to get that returned key let alone be there to change my credit card information. I am getting sick and ...

  Photo-A-Day #669 I arrived in Lubbock, TX today. I’ll be back on a plane in less then 12 hours too. My demonstration went well and after the demo I came back to the hotel and did a few posts on the blog. I also read some more of Final Target. Tonight we went as a group to Orlando’s. Orlando’s is an Italian restaurant with Tex Mex flair. We had Mafia Queso, which was awesome. I also ordered wings but got the wrong ones because they were not that good. The pizza I ordered was doughy and I only ate two pieces because of the Mafia Queso. All around the top of the wall of the building there are empty wine bottles. It is a really interesting display. They also had some great wine quotes like “Wine is the thinker’s health drink” and some other ones I cannot remember. The place was pretty cool. Here is a photo from yesterday. A water pipe burst in the airport and the weather was so cold that it turned to a thick freezing fog. I have video from my camera phone and my Sanyo Xacti C4. I rea...

Photo-A-Day #668 I am stuck in the Chicago O’Hare Airport. The flights to Dallas either have planes with mechanical problems or they are totally full. I have a seat on the 5:40 flight and am expected to get in at 10:00pm. That is a pretty long day. It has probably been the worst travel day so far in my five years of traveling. You can read the whole sorted saga on an earlier post. I will not be able to take any cool photos from Texas today because it will be dark when I arrive. So I took this picture of me in my most pleasant mood I could muster. I’ve got my internet connection and I’ve got some blogging to do so things aren’t all bad. I even made $15 through PPP today too.

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 ...