International Festival today on the square

Hey everyone, Don't forget the International Festival today on the square in BG. Kim Mason from the Amplifier has given this her heart and soul and we should support it if we can. Swing by and give her a virtual high five at the organizational tent. Who knows, you may even be inspired to donate to the cause.

The BG International Festival grew out of the Ethnic Folk Festival and Japan Fest in the early 80s. It takes place the last Saturday each September in Fountain Square Park in Bowling Green Kentucky.

Today the festival has grown to feature three stages, in the park performances and over 70 booths which feature cultural displays, authentic foreign foods and international merchandise.

For the most up to date information visit their website at BGInternationalFest.com or their new forum board.

7-Eleven tells Chavez to go home and take your oil with you!

I'll tell you what... if 7-Eleven was in Bowling Green, I'd spend more for their gas!!!

7-Eleven Dropping Venezuela-Backed Citgo
By DAVID KOENIG
Sep 27, 2:16 PM (ET)

DALLAS (AP) - 7-Eleven Inc. is dropping Venezuela-backed Citgo as its gasoline supplier after more than 20 years as part of a previously announced plan by the convenience store operator to launch its own brand of fuel.

7-Eleven officials said Wednesday that the company's decision was partly motivated by politics.

Citgo Petroleum Corp. is a Houston-based subsidiary of Venezuela's state-run oil company and 7-Eleven is worried that anti-American comments made by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez might prompt motorists to fill-up elsewhere.

apnews.myway.com/...

I have no idea how expensive their fuel is or how it compares with the gas stations around them, I'm just saying that I would support any company who stands against those who stand against us. Hugo Chavez came to this country and insulted every single citizen and in my opinion, he doesn't deserve one red (white and blue) American cent. Frankly, I would support any business or politician who helps prevent one gallon of Venezuela's petrolium from entering this market.

That's how I feel about it. What do you think?

Ditto

At the UN General Assembly, and an earlier meeting in Cuber of so-called Non-Aligned nations, two dictators dominated. One, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, a paranoid tyrant with delusional conspiracy theories. The other, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, denies the Holocaust happened, wants to wipe Israel off the map, and insists that Iran has the right to have nukes.

Both were treated like heroes in Communist Cuber and New York City. Terror-sponsor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad held court with liberal beltway and Drive-By Media elites. Chavez was treated with giggling adoration by UN diplomats as he denounced President Bush and called for America's destruction. He received standing O's from union members and college professors at a Manhattan university, and also in Harlem, where he bestowed welfare -- uh, sorry -- 'cheap oil'.

On September 30, 2004 Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry (who served in Vietnam, by the way) was asked about waging preemptive war. He said we'd "have to do it in a way that passes the global test." He said we must "prove to the world" that we're defending ourselves "for legitimate reasons." Kerry added that we don't help ourselves when we "refuse to deal at length with the United Nations."

Well, we're taking a Global Test, a repeat exam, last taken in the 1930s. Then, as now, evil people -- armed with hatred and the stolen wealth of their nations -- united under the pretense that they were victims of Western oppression. Now, sadly, driven by their own partisan hatred, America's left is aligning on the wrong side again -- which is why they really just cannot be trusted with power, folks. Trust me.

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com

Just us and Land Between the Lakes

I took an entire day off yesterday for the first time in a long time (months). It was my wife's birthday which is more than enough reason to do so, but in this time of building my business(es), I've found every excuse to stay at my computer no matter what. It was the first whole day off in a very long time. It was good.

We went to "Land Between the Lakes."

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area is a United States National Recreation Area located in Kentucky and Tennessee between Lake Barkley and Kentucky Lake. The area was designated a national recreation area by President John F. Kennedy in 1963. The recreation area was originally managed by the Tennessee Valley Authority but jurisdiction has since been transferred to the United States Forest Service.

It was about an hour and a half from Bowling Green, KY straight down US 68/80. We passed the Jefferson Davis Historic Site stopping briefly to take some photos. An easy drive and a wonderful day.

We stopped at the visitor center, visited the Elk and Bison Prairie, twice.. having see nothing on the first pass, we nick named it the "Jurassic Park" tour. We learned later at the Nature Center that the animals came out later in the day. We returned and did catch a glimpse of some elk. The nature center was neat and we visited some of the lakes and campgrounds. We were in search of the perfect place to have lunch... we found it.

Pisgah Point! At the end of a twisting 2 mile dirt road we found our picnic area. There were just a few people there, 3 picnic tables and some grassy areas for our blanket. It was right on the water, peaceful and nice. We had grilled some Black Angus rib eye steaks the night before and brought our Coleman camping stove, some eggs and potatoes. It was perfect! We ate, walked and lounged for a couple of hours... just us! No phones, computers or outside influences. Just my wife of 23 years and the perfect surroundings.

It was a wonderful day!

On the drive home, we talked about our dreams, our plans, our hopes and desires. It was a great drive! We stopped at Dairy Queen in Hopkinsville... I forgot how great those vanilla cones where... wow.

I'm happy I took the time off for Carrie! I'm happy we had a nice day together for her birthday. I'm glad to be back at work to make more of her dreams come true as well.

My grand plan for fitness

I had published a grand plan for fitness as if I could jump right back into the 'groove' I was in three years ago. Well, I couldn't. What I did do is start walking 5 1/2 miles a few times per week for the last two weeks and I feel the groove coming on. YEA! This week, I'll start running 1.5 to 3 miles and going to the gym 3 days a week. I want to go today but we are going to Land Between the Lakes tomorrow and I don't want to be so sore that we can't enjoy ourselves.

I feel great!! 5+ miles is a long walk and it takes me a whole hour to recover, I can already see some improvement. I am happy to be getting back into some kind of routine! I was doing real good before I let it go... I'll get it back and then some. My Judo "master" has called and I am to start my training there next week too.

I know, I just posted about all the things I've got going on, how am I going to find time for this? Well I faced this issue last time I found myself "white, wide and weak" and the fact is, making (taking) time for health and fitness as well as down time for myself has always made me more productive. It helps me focus and helps me concentrate on what I need to be doing. I have never been more productive than when I was going to the gym for 2.5 hours a day. I'm not going to try to do that this time, but I am going to spend some time on myself.

No... I never got the fitness blog finished either. That is part of the programming I am doing for the travel site as well as the master content manager. Once I get it working, I will move posts like this into the right blog.

I'll take some more pictures on Monday morning to kind of document my progress. The rest of the weekend is for Carrie. It's her Birthday tomorrow and deserves some attention.

Update on CarriedAwayVacations.com

I wanted to offer a brief outline of how we came to the decision to open Carried Away Vacations affiliate website; I just spent 40 minutes writing a "brief history" of how we got to this point of creating our own website. I've decided that the details of our most recent travel business are best left alone, or at least saved for my memoirs at a much later date. Basically, Carrie and I owned a travel agency here in Bowing Green KY until we sold our half to the partners in July. Nuff said.

For our ex-partners who may find this post, rest assured that we believe our new travel business will have little, if any effect on your business. We are simply an affiliate portal for travelers who shop and book online. This is our way of staying involved in the industry we love too, and in a manner that is not intended to bring harm to "our beloved bird."

Underlying rip current that motivates this website

Since I have 11 years experience in developing, programming, building and optimizing websites, I've decided that it would be in our best interest to create a new website that will allow Carrie and I to share our love for travel and possibly create an income from advertising and affiliate links. I am confident that this will not affect our partners business as their focus is on the luxury travel in a very local market. Our audience is much more broad and we are not targeting customers who would be potential clients to our ex partners.

I have almost completed the business plan for Carried Away Vacations and Carried Away Travel, not bad for a company created on a whim last Friday. It really was a whim! Up until September 9th, Carrie and I had no intent to re-enter the travel business. Carrie hadn't even considered looking for a position with another agency. We had every intent to move on and for me to continue the development of my web development company. Fate had another plan.

It would appear that I was left owning several travel related domain names as well as the two with the namesake of our new company, which by the way is an assumed name entity of Soky.net, LLC. I was also left with a powerful passion for the travel business and the experience to leverage that passion. In less than an hour, I was able to secure resources that would allow us to offer our sincere advice and links to the vendors who would pay us for any booked travel. I spent another hour setting up the server and putting up the website. 2 hours investment into something that is exciting and could be rewarding.

According to some statistics, $1.3 Trillion is spent on travel and tourism every year and 85% of personal travel is booked online. Carrie and I both hold the opinion that people were migrating more and more to do it yourself travel. We think the potential traveler feels like they are in more control and capable of making their own decision. We would constantly hear, "well I saw online..." and this help solidify our opinion that a small travel agency with a focus on leisure and luxury travel would continue to be challenged by online booking and direct purchases with the resorts. Oh, we gave it a go, but strictly focused on leisure travel limits the potential earnings and hope for a positive cash flow.

I got to thinking, why not put a website up that can offer travel advice and opinion, links to information and recommendations based on our experience? I could find no reason not to do it and many reasons to proceed... so I did.

Within the first 72 hours we received a number of encouraging emails and even some phone calls. It would appear that people like the idea as well as the layout and our friends and family are providing a wealth of insight and encouragement.

So that's the basic motivation, what's next? I will continue to add links and information on a daily basis. I may even try an online forum. We will write articles and even publish articles by other writers. We are happy that we already have our first writer and I am programming some resources so they can publish easier. Look for an announcement in the news section next week.

There are a number of programming issues that should be addressed but I'm not going to over complicate it. Since the site is build on my proprietary "Core Site" management system, all of the time and effort I spend on this site can and will be used for the new Soky.net website as well as a few new websites to be released next week.

I will create a development area at the website as well as a new category on my own for anyone interested in the process. I'm kind of tight lipped as to how I get things to work because the custom programming is valuable and copyright, but a basic outline of new features and development issues will be offered.

When I "whimmed out" for two hours and made this come together, I thought it would be great if we sold a few vacations that could pay for our own trips. Not thinking of a whole lot of money, just enough to make this worth while. Since that time I've given it more thought and am convinced the possibilities are significant enough to invest some of my "free time" into making CarriedAwayVacations.com the place to find reasonable and accurate travel information.

I enjoy blogging, sharing and publishing. Carrie and I both love to help people, this is our way to help without having to consider an hourly wage or closing the sale for the sake of commission. Done properly, this can be our way of helping others and still make a few dollars for ourselves. That is our hope.

I will post more specific in the news and site update sections of the website as well as development information at my site/s. Thank you for reading and if you have any suggestions, please let me/us know. Thanks.

the day American flags sold out

I'm sure most of my regular readers expected a long reflection on the significance of today for each Citizen of the United States of America. I cannot put into words what is in my heart nor can I say what has already been said any better than has already been expressed.

I simply ask that you remember. Think of the emotion, the horror and yes the anger that today represents. Think of the souls that were stolen from us and also the million of lives directly and indirectly affected by the events of September 11th, 2001. Remember where you were, what you were feeling.

In short, remember the day that American flags sold out.

September 11th Patriot Day

Patriot Day, 2006
A Proclamation by the President of the United States of America
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/09/20060907-7.html

On the fifth anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001, we recall the fire and horror at the twin towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a Pennsylvania field. America will always remember the thousands of innocent lives taken by the enemies of freedom that morning.

In the face of these unspeakable attacks, we were reminded that the great strength of America is found in the hearts and souls of our citizens. We witnessed firefighters, police officers, other public safety officials, and ordinary Americans demonstrate extraordinary courage, risking their lives to save innocent victims. We saw our country united in compassion as Americans came together to provide relief and bring hope to others.

Today, America is fighting a war that is testing our Nation's resolve. We are once again answering history's call with confidence, and we know that freedom will prevail. Our brave men and women in uniform have stepped forward to fight our enemies abroad so that we do not have to face them here at home, and we are grateful for the courageous individuals bringing terrorists to justice around the world.

We are also confronting the extremists in the great ideological struggle of the 21st century. September the 11th made clear that, in the long run, the only way to secure our Nation is to advance liberty and democracy as the great alternatives to repression and radicalism. By working together with our friends and allies, we are helping spread the blessings of freedom and laying the foundations of peace for generations to come.

The events of September 11, 2001, will always be a defining moment in our history. We hold the victims and their families in our hearts, and we lift them up in our prayers.

By a joint resolution approved December 18, 2001 (Public Law 107-89), the Congress has designated September 11 of each year as "Patriot Day."

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim September 11, 2006, as Patriot Day. I call upon the Governors of the United States and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, as well as appropriate officials of all units of government, to direct that the flag be flown at half staff on Patriot Day. I also call upon the people of the United States to observe Patriot Day with appropriate ceremonies, activities, and remembrance services, to display the flag at half staff from their homes on that day, and to observe a moment of silence beginning at 8:46 a.m. eastern daylight time to honor the innocent Americans and people from around the world who lost their lives as a result of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this seventh day of September, in the year of our Lord two thousand six, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-first.

GEORGE W. BUSH

New logo for new travel agency

I've already received some encouragement from my friends. Thanks one an all. This is what I wrote to a friend of mine on his forum and I thought I'd share it here.

Thanks pal!! I can only hope. I printed a screenshot of the site for my wife and she was actually excited. I was a little concerned since I had kind of pushed her into the business before. She likes the idea of "do it yourself" with the possibility of making a few dollars.

Fact is, there are some work at home promoters suggesting that the online travel industry is the fastest growing commercial application on the Internet. They also suggest that it is a $1.3 TRILLION industry AND that 85% of all personal travel is booked online by the traveler. Now, I have no way to verify that information but I do know how much money ran across my American Express last year through the travel agency we owned.

Anyway, using an affiliate program, I'll just make a spiffy site for now. If it grows in popularity then I'll invest more time. Bottom line is this has to provide an ROI on the 6 hours invested or I'm only going to reinvest effort that directly commensurates with the earnings.

Thanks for the encouragement. I got the idea for the logo from an FBO operation in ST Croix. They kind of borrowed it from the TV show survivor... it is attractive and will look really cool on a coffee cup. The tag line I made up myself. The layout of the site was from a free template as well as the color scheme. I'm withholding enthusiasm for now... let's see what happens.

The travel business, here we go again

Thanks to a few twists of fate, my long term plans were turned into short term tasks! As most of you know, Carrie and I sold our shares in the travel agency that we helped build from scratch. The details of "why" are reserved for a more personal format. (grin) I had hopes to fan the flames from the embers of ideas I had but figured it would have to wait until next year. Well... things have changed.

As it would appear, I am left holding a number of domain names that are receiving a good amount of traffic. It's a result of some of my search engine optimization efforts for the old agency. Bottom line, I could let that traffic fall into the abyss or I could leverage it to my advantage... guess what I did? Yep.

In the span of about 2 hours, I created some 303 redirects on all 75 pages of the old site and built a new website. This site will use an affiliate relationship with some of the online big boys. Carrie and I had a strong opinion about the internet and I may write on it in the future, but the bottom line is that I would do well to leverage this online booking phenomenon. At least try don't you think?

In that same 2 hours, I was also able to create a relationship that gave me access to more than 120 vendors of travel. The idea is simple, service the online community with news and information in the hopes they click my links and pay me commission. If I can build the traffic, I will be able to capture some of the billions of advertising dollars spent on tourism and travel. Well... just a little piece.

In the end, I won't have to worry about the booking, cancellations, pissed off customers or bad trips. All I have to do is help people find the right vacation and right place to book it... simple enough eh? Well... here goes.

A HEMI Powered BBQ

It used to be that the Chrysler HEMI was used only for mundane tasks such as powering Dodge trucks, but now that power has been put to better use as a grilling furnace. Mmm, extra transmission fluid on my hot dog please!

http://www.bbqreport.com/archives/barbecue/2005/08/09/a-hemi-powered-bbq/

Changing this blog to my own software

This blog entry make #138 since I started blogging just over a year ago. Since that time, I've been writing a new blog program of my own that will allow me to manage the posts on my own terms. I've enjoyed Blogger and it has helped me see the benefits of blogging, but there are some things I would like to do differently and after reviewing the available interfaces, I've decided that my own will be the best.

Based on Microsoft Active Server Pages and SQL server, the articles will be stored on my system instead of someone else's. Also, instead of having to work around some eccentricities of hosted solutions, I'll be able to write valid source code for performance and flexibility.

My main concern was control as well as order. I want to be able to make bulk edits, internal search and replace as well as flexible category and sub category ordering of the articles. I want to be able to monitor the blog posts as well as the traffic and where people are coming from.

There will be many features and I will likely have a blog specific to the deployment and continued development. But in short, it's gonna be great!!

One of the benefits of migrating to my own blog application will be that each of the posts here and on my other blogs will be imported, reviewed and categorized. I will further cull out older topics and reorganize the 'keepers.' It's not going to be easy and will be written to easily upgrade to ASP.NET, but in the end, I think it will be worth the effort.

The ground work is done, I expect that it will be ready to go by October 1st.

Wikipedia and a grain of salt

My son called the other day and our conversation found its way to Wikipedia. My son is a student at the University of Kentucky in Lexington and he was expressing his pride that he is currently getting straight A's. I too expressed my pride.

He explained that taking his notes and retyping them helped him remember and thanked me for that advice. Then he explained that sometimes there are holes in his notes and used Wikipedia to fill in the gaps. I explained that Wikipedia articles are written by volunteers and a recent study found that they could be as much as 39% inaccurate. (I cannot recall the reference but it was a recent story about text book encyclopedias vs. Wikipedia and the error rate of each.)

I explained to my son that the authors of those articles could be anyone. It could be a 6th grade student who likes to write online, or a monk in the mountains somewhere. We talked for a long time and I made sure he understood that I wasn't suggesting that he stop using it, I just wanted him to know that some information can be flawed and he should check his text books for accuracy. (Yes, I know text books are flawed too but the assigned textbook is the source from which he will be graded.)

Then this morning, I happened upon a USAToday article that pretty well summed up my evolving opinion on Wikipedia. Written by a man who was defamed on the site in a very severe manner he writes:

"At age 78, I thought I was beyond surprise or hurt at anything negative said about me. I was wrong. One sentence in the biography was true. I was Robert Kennedy's administrative assistant in the early 1960s. I also was his pallbearer. It was mind-boggling when my son, John Seigenthaler, journalist with NBC News, phoned later to say he found the same scurrilous text on Reference.com and Answers.com."

You'll have to read the article to find out what he was accused of and how he handled it, but to my point, Wikipedia is great and a very useful source of information. It is amazing. There are some checks and balances in that the same community of volunteers hold each other accountable by challenging each others articles. They also seem to be adding more source citations which is a good thing. At the end of the day however, one must consider the grain of salt when reading the articles at Wikipedia.

Now is the time!

It's crunch time for me and my business and for this reason, I have to allow some of my blogs and profiles fall away for a time. The time I normally use to update profiles and make blog entries is going to be "reallocated" this month so I can finish a few exciting projects.

The main one of course is Soky.net however there are a few more that are as exciting. A political website, a technical support forum and a new blog interface are the three others that will be complete in the coming weeks.

I've also decided to post pone the reinstallation of my operating system on my main computer as well as the promised instructions of how to back up the small business computer network for now. I have discovered that it was stealing too much of my time and I really need things simplified.

I will list some of the changes I've made to my own computer and network soon, namely the security and software changes to help simplify and protect my client information.

I do intend to open the two new blogs I mentioned in earlier posts. One for Soky.net (web design and hosting division) and another personal one for fitness. I've started my fitness program much slower than my grand scheme, but in a way that will ensure success. Basically, I started the cardio aspect and will build upon that. The Soky.net blog will be articles and posts about website design, hosting, marketing and management of an online presence. I want to start building my article list for this important aspect of my business.

So there you have it!

White House and Frankfort news

I will be removing the news feeds from the White House and Frankfort. Both scripts take a long time to load and I will be starting a new political website soon.

Fortune: MySpace Cowboys

The September issue of Fortune Magazine sports two kids in blue jeans and un-tucked shirts who didn't seem to have the energy to even smile. These "cowboys" are the founders of MySpace, a social networking (W^ikipedia) website designed to attract teens. Their ColdFusion (W^ikipedia) web application reports more than 105 million users, most of which are teens, musicians or people who wish to be associated with either.

Yes, I created a MySpace profile. I ignored it for as long as I could but a friend of mine asked me to help customize his profile. I created the account to see how to do it, then decided to use it over time to discover any business application to the site. Yes, there are some ways to apply the network for business, but culling the clutter of porno-cam invitations and gay guys looking to hook up makes it difficult to justify logging on.

The basics of how it works. A new user creates an account and fills in the forms with some very personal information. You can search for others in your area in a number of ways but typically, users already know someone and they add them to their friends list. Once added, you can click on that friend and see their friends, then click on those friends and add them too. It's kind of a snowball. The person with the most friends that I have seen  (more than a million) will appear in Playboy soon, if that's any indication of the net result of this network of friends.

From a technical standpoint, I've found MySpace to be most frustrating. The weak code, simple form errors and issues with reliable access have amazed me. How can something this bad be worth $580 million??? It comes down to page views and advertising revenue.

A recent discussion with a friend and business associate cemented my opinion that a better space is needed. Even some of the business oriented blogs and forums I frequent have revealed the need for a real place for adults and professionals to network similarly to MySpace. I have been working on a way for businesses to network in our local area but stepping back just a little, I think I will revise the code to be scalable for a more global audience.

I won't publish the specific features, but I will reveal that this will be built on a tried and proven foundation. The Microsoft Server platform using production level MS SQL. That may mean little to most, but in my opinion MySpace fails because they chose the wrong infrastructure up to and including their data center. This will be built for community, business and individuals in mind and it will work on concert with my overall "L.A.S.O." business concept.

But first, the finishing touches on Soky.net are being made and this should be release in a few short weeks. Two new websites are to follow including one for politics and one for the web hosting community. The "SuperBlog" I've mentioned is also in the wings and the core site management system continues to evolve. Sure, I could use about 5 more programmers and 3 or 4 graphics/layout people but the revenue stream prevents it at this time.

September 1st 2006 finds me with many objectives; many dreams; many goals. I believe it is these things that inspire us and make us strive for more. I have invested in the dream with both time and money, it is becoming a reality much more slowly than I would like!!! But it does continue to become reality every day. I'm at the office nearly 16 hours a day busting my butt to bring these dreams from clouds of hope to tangible existence. One by one, they will become.