I just booked plane tickets to Fort Lauderdale, Florida today and I'm being sent there for a conference for work on October 8th - 10th. This will be my first time navigating airports on my own and flying on a plane on my own. The only other time I've done the whole "airline thing" was when my parents and I went to Mexico when I was younger. It will definitely be an adventure much like going to Chicago was earlier this year.
One of the cool things about going to Florida is the location. The hotel I'm staying at is right on the beach, and I could have swore I've drove by my hotel in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City or at least something very similar to it. I've posted a few links below for all to see my exact location. The street view one gives a really interesting picture of the place:
Despite the scenery there are a few drawbacks to this trip:
- I'm going alone, without Emily and I've learned from my Chicago trip that traveling alone is boring and lonely. It would be fun to go with Emily.
- I'm going to a location that has an active hurricane season during October and I'm 100 yards from the ocean.
- According to Wikipedia Fort Lauderdale has the second highest AIDS rate in America.
- According to Wikipedia Fort Lauderdale was voted "America's top gay resort area"...lol.
Okay, call me closed minded, or whatever you want, but at the end of the day, I'm still a gun toting redneck hillbilly from Wisconsin so I'm allowed to find 3 & 4 somewhat amusing. Personally #2 worries me the most since there seems to be an endless stream of hurricanes in the past few years and I'm yards away from the ocean. On the other hand I should be able to snap a few nice photos of the sun rising over the ocean (blasted west coast and their ability to take sunset photos rather than sunrise). Despite some of the negative things I'm still excited to go!
In other news my website was rocking and rolling yesterday. I reached a new high for visits in one day with 184 visits mainly because I was linked to from a German web designer on an article I wrote called CSS Hacks. I haven't even bothered writing any new tech articles lately because the CSS Hacks article has really been bringing in the traffic.
In site news I've updated my wallpapers page because it was taking forever to load. I was at a family friends house this weekend and took some really awesome photos so make sure you click through that section of my website.
In house/puppy/etc. news unpacking is pretty close to finished. I still don't completely feel like I live here though. Our puppy Blondie is also doing a wonderful job at destroying things in our house. Since we got her I've felt a bit more stressed out than normal partially because of all her accidents and having to wake up numerous times to take her out and it has caused some tension between Emily and I.
Also Emily and I bought a cheap desk to use for a computer in our upstairs living room only to find out once we had it assembled and everything that my stupid secondary computer is dead. The darn thing won't even power on! I've tried different power supplies on it and I've checked all the cables to make sure they're in all the way. My conclusion is that the motherboard is dead which sucks because it's probably not worth replacing a motherboard on a 2 year old $200 eMachine. I currently have my junker 7 year old Gateway standing in for the eMachine but it won't be the same. So much for the computer desk...
Fin.
