Postcards From Myself

Yes, that’s right. Spring has hit here in the South Carolina Low Country. The azaleas are blooming, the birds are chirping, and the squirrels are getting frisky. Indeed, thanks to the squirrels we have a live demonstration of the circle of life going on right out there in the front yard. Who needs cable TV when you have oversexed rodents going at it in full view of your living room window?

The arrival of gorgeous weather also means that lots of events are starting to take place and with that all of the tourists are returning. Last weekend was the Flowertown Festival and the Cooper River Bridge Run. We also made our first visit of the year to the beach, although it is still too cold to go swimming. Coming up within the span of a few weeks we have the Family Circle Cup tennis tournament, the Charleston In-Water Boat Show, the season openers of our soccer team - the Charleston Battery - and our baseball team - the Riverdogs, the Folly Beach Sun and Sand Festival, and an awful lot more. This weekend my wife and I will be attending the last oyster roast of the season - a benefit for Keeper of the Wild, a great animal rescue organization.

And that is just the next week or two! As we roll farther into April and May there will be much, much more. Hopefully I will get some pictures up soon of all this. It is a beautiful time of year here. If you get a chance, come on down!

First of all I am back, so now the updates should be on a bit more regular basis. I had planned on blogging most every day while on vacation, but it just didn’t turn out that way. I got caught up in relaxing and enjoying the family. And driving and shopping and freezing and eating and taking pictures and generally doing everything else except for blogging. Oh well.

Second, I just upgraded the back-end of this site to Wordpress 2.5 this evening. I ran a through a bunch of scenarios on a test site and found no glitches with the way I am operating or my plug-ins. After that I upgraded here on the live site and it all seems to have gone very smoothly. I am having a few hangs with the auto-updating of plug-ins, but other than that I see no errors. That being said, usually it is you folks out there who catch my errors and problems not me. So if you see anything funky, please let me know.

And finally, let me apologize to all of those people on the road that I wanted to kill. I am sorry that you can’t drive without talking on your cell phone. I am also sorry that when you took Driver’s Ed that they didn’t teach you what the gas pedal or turn signals are for. Finally, I am sorry that you cannot buy a real exhaust for your car so that you don’t sound like a poorly tuned lawn mower going down the street. I am sure there are lots more, but that is about all I can come up with for the moment because my medication is kicking in . . .

Just a quick post to point out one of the places we went today - the Lane Motor Museum in Nashville, Tennessee.

If you would like to see some pictures just hit the image above or click here. This is simply a fun museum filled with unique or rare cars of mostly European heritage. There are a few Japanese and American machines, but not many. Additionally there are a good number of motorcycles, an airplane or two, and one very large military transport. Even my non-automotive wife and daughter found it at least somewhat interesting. If you are ever in the area, I would highly recommend a visit. With very affordable ticket prices, in fact kids under 18 are free, it would be hard to go wrong.

We also visited the Opry Mills Mall which is right next door to the big Opryland Hotel. Really just a big mall, but it has a Rain Forest Cafe, huge Bass Pro Shop, and lots of other touristy places. Yup, a big mall. Tomorrow we will be touring downtown Nashville and may I will get to visit the Apple Store! Crass commercialism, but I love Apple Stores, and we don’t have one in Charleston yet. At least it has stopped snowing here.

I just love a hotel with good wireless Internet! I am currently lying on my hotel bed at the SpringHill Suites in Knoxville, Tennessee. The nice thing - other than the good food and Borders Books nearby, is that I have full a full strength wireless connection. Most of the time, even in very high end hotels, I either have to sit at the cramped little desk and plug into an Ethernet connection or I have to do some strange gyration to get a wireless signal. You know those odd body positions that hearken back to the days of trying to get a signal with the old rabbit ears on the TV? One time I finally had to give up and sit in the lobby of the hotel to do my work. Another time I totally gave up and used the hotel’s public station. I really hate that for security reasons.

But the hotel I am at this evening is wonderful. Full and fast access from anywhere in the room. And yes, I even tested it in the bathroom - not that I am going to take the laptop in the tub or anything!

I really wish more hotels would come up to speed like this. I would gladly sacrifice the television with 60 channels of absolute junk for a good Internet connection. These days I think most of the business people who travel would think about the same thing. Of course with kids around the television is a necessary evil, but as they are getting older even they want a good connection in the room.

Had any good or bad experiences with trying to get an Internet connection while traveling? I would love to hear them. Did you end up in the local library or Starbucks? Does this type of thing figure into the picture when you are planning where to stay?

Yes, I am a huge parrot head. I have been going to Buffett concerts for nearly 30 years now and have been a fan of his music for even longer. Hopefully he will come closer to Charleston, but right now the closest date is in Charlotte, North Carolina. I bought my tickets today. It has been a while since I bought lawn seats, but hey, I can still hang with the lawn crowd!

And while you are at it, please check out my Parrot Head Page. Fins Up!