/blog {words}

I will be attending WordCamp Birmingham! I hope to meet with the others that are attending.

 I have been using wordpress for a few years now. As some of you may know, I have been blogging for about 8 years and mostly do it for myself and friends. 

I do operate a good handful of WordPress blogs, some of which are linked on my homepage johntracy.com, others are not linked for reasons of relationship, but nevertheless, I love wordpress.

I am still looking for a hotel right now, so if any of you are going and can recommend a decent hotel in the area that isn’t expensive, let me know. 

I think registration is about to close, so if you are reading this and didn’t know, or just simply forgot, go to the site, spend $25, get a conference, tee-shirt, and lunch. Not bad!

I just realized I have started every single paragraph in this post with “I”. One day I will go back and learn some diversity in the English language. Else, I will have to learn how to not talk about me.

I have been drowned in school work for the last five weeks. I haven’t done much on the updating front unless it happened to fall into the 140 characters or less realm of twitter. Those aren’t real updates. They are notifications. They are blurbs about what I am thinking, or what I have done. They have no emotion. They have no inner thought.

I look at these updates as more of a manifestation of my inner thinking, my feelings, and generally the thought I had leading up to making the large post. Sometimes, no matter how busy one may be, writing out these things comes out of the necessity to get things off their mind. This is one of those times.

I want to preface the remaining paragraphs of this post by saying I am fine. There is nothing wrong with me. No doomed sense of security. There are no LiveJournal drama cases that I wish to emo out. Call me crazy. I just wanted to write.

I had some things I wanted to share, but I don’t feel like pulling them all together right now. I might save this as a draft and put those items in this post later, but then again, maybe I will just update instead. I may never publish if I put it in a draft…

Ok, so that paragraph above, I ended up saving it as a draft, and guess what? It is three days later and I am just now picking this up to finish where I left off. I know myself a little too well. In fact, I scare myself with how lazy I can be in the update realm. It isn’t important really.

I think I meant this update to be about me. What have I been doing? Well, let’s do the 4 week catch up.

I have, of course, been swamped in school work. I occasionally come up for air and breath, see my friends, and before I get to have a ton of fun, I am back at it again. I have been generally sleeping about 4 to maybe 5 hours a night during the week. I try to do much more than that on the weekends.

Last week I went to Perdido Bay. It was a group of friends, invited to stay at one of their family’s homes. Very nice. It took place during the middle of a tropical depression, but the weather didn’t hinder out ability to have fun. Auburn won their game that night, and Alabama lost theirs. The games were a bit of a highlight for me, but cooking and hanging out with friends that I don’t normally spend that much time around was also appealing. Emily, Trey, thank you for having us down there. Bo, Lindsay, Melissa, Scott, Chris, thank you for the great time.

I came back from that trip to a lot of work I needed to finish. I had two papers and two presentations that week. The irony of all this is that was just the tip of the iceberg. As much as I would love to elaborate, I will save all of those taking their incredibly precious time and not. Plus, the less said, the more spoken. At least it sounded good at the time.

Friday I met up with Lisa. She and I are working on a presentation for a Global Trade and Finance class. We are doing on U.S. sanctions in Myanmar (Burma). I got to catch up with what she has been doing over the last 6 years. Apparently, it was quite a bit of moving around the country. Now comes the title line. “So I am in Montgomery, and I drive a Geo Prism.” Beautifully put.

This weekend was fun for the most part. Bret and Mike came over yesterday to watch the Alabama game. They lost. It wasn’t as big a disappointment for Bret as I assumed it would be. After that game, Auburn came on. It was refreshing to see a game so invigorating.  I don’t even know if that last sentence made sense. Regardless, that game was fun. The first half was amazing. The second half brought the fear of another loss. But in the end, it all worked out. Thank you Auburn for winning a game few thought you would win, including me.

After the game, Colette came over, Bret and Mike left, and Seth and Crystal came over. In that order. We ended up going to 1048 to see the Moonshine Cherry Band. Yet another good gig for them.

I had a lot of fun. Now I must complete the work for all of the classes that I have ending this week. Three of my four classes are coming to an end this week. I will be back to myself again soon. Then Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year’s will come and go, and I will be back at it again.

Click on the picture to see the set.

Next time you want to vomit after filling up your tank, remember we pay less than the rest of the world.

I may live in a time, and place where access to the Internet is not as important as other utilities. I will be one of the first to agree that Internet access is a secondary utility. Secondary in that it requires other utility to use. Electricity, for example, must be available for access to also be available. Let me give my story, and I will let you decide if I am mistaken.

This weekend I went to the Beau Rivage to watch a show and get away for the weekend with my wife. As we arrived to our room, I plugged in my laptop, connected the network to my mac and went to the Beau Rivage’s website to look up the menu for one of their restaurants. As it was loading the page, another page popped up and said it would cost $12.95 per day, per laptop to access the Internet. It gave me the option to proceed, which I refused, and then said if I agreed, it would add those charges to my room.

I was looking up information on the very place I was staying, wanting to know where I want to spend my money. I found this to be outrageous. Why should I be spending money to look up information on where I want to spend my money? On top of this, the Beau Rivage is a casino, and is by no means hurting for money.

Let me come back to what I said before about the Internet being a secondary utility. Electricity, water, gas, and to some extent, telephone I consider to be primary utilities. That is to say they are necessary to modern living. I throw the word modern in there because the only real utility that is absolutely necessary is water, the rest are so ubiquitous that living would be uncomfortable without them.

Secondary utilities would include television, Internet, and to some extent, telephone. I lean on telephone because it is in that unknown area between primary and secondary. Regardless of this, television is provided in the room for free at every hotel or motel I have ever been. Telephone is also provided for free to every room. Sometimes there is a charge, but usually this is only for placing calls outside of the local calling area. If these two secondary utilities are provided to the room for free, why shouldn’t Internet?

I understand that hotels look at this as another form of income. Instead, shouldn’t they be looking at this as another way to increase, or simply keep the number of guests staying with them? I use the Internet the way many people use the telephone or television. It is not only a source of entertainment, but also a source of information. I know from now on, if I have a choice in where I stay, I will be calling ahead to make sure access to the Internet is available, and it is free. If the price of the room is within$15 or $20, the hotel providing the access for free would seem to be the better place just because they have taken the initiative.

I am leaving now to go to Biloxi. As I wrote earlier, the wife and I are going to stay at the Beau Rivage for a couple of days and enjoy the show. I may post some while I am on the road, but no promises.

Hoping to hit the big jackpot!!! (It won’t happen though)

The java professor is going over a program we might be creating this week. It is a random number generator, but is being used as a craps game. So, two random numbers between 1 and 6. Then getting the sum of both numbers to place against a set a rules.

Because he is phrasing this as a casino game, all I can think of is gong to Biloxi this weekend. My wife got another press weekend at the Beau Rivage for a new show they have going on. This will be the first time we have been back since Hurricane Katrina.

From what I have heard an seen in the news during that time, the entire area was devastated. Road were completely gone, places where homes used to be looked as if they couldn’t possibly be usable land, much less residential. I also remember reading the beach area being pushed back several hundred yards in areas. I am sure these things have been replaced, and the beaches have been repaired, but I am still curious as to what the area looks like now.

I am also interested in seeing what they have redone to the hotel since the last time we were there. The Beau Rivage is one of the nicest casinos in the area, but given the way they operate, they can only make it nicer than before. The incentive is to prove to the area they can come back. It is an even bigger incentive for tourist areas because it shows the nation that the area is rebuilding and is ready for business.

Of course, I am also looking forward to the show, and the after show party. That is always a lot of fun. Free drinks, free food, and plenty of both. The free brunch buffet is awesome as well. I am a little torn about going this time, however, because I am doing some computer work on the side this week, and I have thought about taking that money to gamble. I know I shouldn’t, but at the same time, I really don’t ever gamble, and I thought it would be fun to do some this time a round. Maybe some craps?

This is one of the videos shown today during the launch event. Hey, at least they can laugh at themselves.

Fourty five minutes

Made it safely to Bardstown, Kentucky. I will be here for the next few days. The picture that I posted earlier was when we passed through Huntsville. I don’t know why I decided to take a picture then, or why there, but I did. I guess I just wanted to pass time by taking a picture and sending it to flickr.

[tags]bardstown, Kentucky, travel, thanksgiving[/tags]