I’m Done with Walmart!! D-O-N-E! DONE!
I have never really liked Walmart. If you work for Walmart I am sorry but it is the worst store ever!! Sunday I went there because they are the only store that sells the refrigerated raw tortillas that we like. All you have to do is put them on the griddle and get tortillas that taste darn near close to homemade. So because of this I had to succumb to doing my grocery shopping there. When I was done I wheeled my cart to the front to find that with like 20 registers they only had 5 people working to check people out. The lines were 10 people deep and that is not an exaggeration, I counted! Most had carts full of groceries. I only had a few items (maybe 25 things) so I went to the self checkout because otherwise I would have walked right out of there without getting anything. But I decided I would have wasted all that shopping time. I am a self proclaimed pro on the self checkout machine...EXCEPT at Walmart! I scanned my items very fast but when I tried scanning my coupons (yes I use coupons, God forbid I use coupons!) they would not take. I have scanned coupons at other places with no problems. If I would have been at Kroger or Albertsons I would have them scanned in 30 seconds and been on my way. But no...Walmart cannot have the same great technology as the other stores (even though they make billions a year)!! I had to have a worker come and tell me I wasn't folding the coupon in order for it to scan. Since when are you supposed to fold a coupon for the scanner to read it?! Then she proceeds to tell me since I am a coupon user I should go to the regular line....oh by then I was fuming!! Because if you are going to tell me that then A) walmart should not accept coupons at all at the self checkout!! and B) they should get a NORMAL amount of staff to work on Sundays so that the "regular" lines are not a 30 minute wait to check out!! I came home and told Eric never again will I go to Walmart. If we need something that only they sell then he is going to have to go. I am BANNING them!! I cannot tell you how much I LOVE my SuperTarget now. I will definitely be going there from now on because not only do they have competent people who work there they have enough to cover the registers. I can't tell you how many times I have gone to the front of Target to checkout and they have someone just waiting for me. "Are you ready to checkout? I can help you right here." Music to my ears! Thank you Target! You are top shelf in my book!
Finishing it up
Yeah so Eric pretty much left you hanging on his Vancouver "series" blog. He didn't quite get you to Day Three, did he? Slacker!! I will finish it up for him...
So on the third and final full day we were there we decided to go bicycling through Stanley Park. This is a huge park. It took 1 hour to ride all the way around it. We rented the bikes from a place right across the street from the park. There were some awesome views of the Pacific Ocean. The weather was perfect...not too cool but not hot at all and we didn't really even break a sweat. If you ever go to Vancouver I highly recommend at least seeing Stanley Park and enjoying the beautiful natural setting. After the ride we were pretty dang tired seeing as how we walked all the way there (several blocks!) rode bicycles for an hour and walked back to the hotel. So we rested up and headed to the Gastown district for some tasty beverages. Yes, Eric had to go back to the Black Frog. After that it was time for dinner so we headed back to the hotel to freshen up and I had made reservations at an Italian restaurant in Gastown called Al Porte Ristorante. It was very nice, not too extremely fancy. We had both been on a low carb diet since June so we decided to go for it. ALL IN! We both had Fettucine Alfredo. It was not the best we have ever had but after not having pasta for so long we devoured it. I had a melon martini there that was totally worth the $9 I paid for it. I mean it was heaven in a glass!! I read all the ingredients they put into it but I am not sure what ratios so I am going to have to experiment to get that perfect concoction. I am sure it is not healthy...well for one, its alcohol...and I am sure there is a lot of sugar in that melon liquor. But I don't care as long as I don't have it but every now and again. After that we went to "The White Spot" which was a restaurant/bar close to the hotel and we had some more drinks and went ahead and had a piece of chocolate cake. It was our 5 year anniversary trip...we deserved it!! We stuck together this long, we were due a huge sugar infested piece of cake. Of course, Eric only had a few bites as he is not big on sweets but he said it was good, which coming from him means something since he is a skeptic on anything chocolate. Then we knew we had to get up early and head to the airport so we just crashed for the night. It was a great trip and we had a lot of fun. Everyone should visit Canada at least once in their lifetime. Very nice people and very beautiful landscapes!
So if that wasn't enough, I am headed to Vegas next Saturday. Yes, Vegas again! Eric is staying behind with Marin since he just started his new job and cannot go. My parents go every October and invited me out there since a family friend's son is getting married while they are there. It is a cheap trip since I will stay in the same room with the parents and I had a credit with Southwest Airlines for the airfare.
So Saturday is mine and Eric's official 5 year anniversary, Oct. 3. We discussed what we wanted to do seeing as how my mom will be in town for her retirement seminar and can babysit that night for us. We already had our dinner date when we were in Vancouver so we wanted to do something a little more fun. So we decided to hang out with our friends at a bar and watch the Sooner vs Miami game. Eric is trying to get into football now...maybe not with my Sooners but he has been watching the Cowboys games. He is getting all the terminology down. He knew what "intentional grounding" was! He is a sports fan in the making!!
Vancouver: Day Two
On the second day, Monday, we decided to rent a car and see a few more sites that were not easily accessible via Vancouver’s public transportation. We made the reservation online the night before for a Toyota Camry Hybrid. What did we end up getting? A 2010 Ford Mustang GT convertible…sorry Kelli. The day started out very overcast, so Budget was really slashing prices on the convertibles. It cost us a little less than $15 more. I was still sticking with the hybrid, but they then mentioned that the Mustang was ready to go, but the Camry was getting cleaned up and would be a little bit of a wait…I give the rep props for being a grade A salesman. I also got the portable navigation unit for $12, but that was actually my idea from the beginning.
Nothing like getting in a car you have never driven and pulling out into downtown Vancouver Monday morning traffic! I suppose I did okay. The kicker is all of the pedestrians. We ended up making 3 rights turn to equivalate 1 left turn several times throughout the day.
Our first stop was the Capilano Suspension Bridge. It was only about a 15 minute drive from downtown. On there way there we crossed over the Lions Gate Bridge (pictured above).
I guess it worked out that we rented a car from Budget because they gave us a free admission ticket for the Capilano Suspension Bridge. This was nice since tickets were $30 each! We hung out there for a couple of hours. It wasn’t too crowded being a Monday morning I suppose.
Next we hopped back in the car and drove on up to Grouse Mountain, which was only a few more miles up the road. You park at the base, then ride a lift about half a mile up. While we were paying for parking, we heard the announcement that the next lift up was leaving in 5 minutes…so ran on up and paid the $36 each for admission. The warned us before paying that we wouldn’t be able to see much due to the weather. The day before was nice! We decided to check it out anyways. On the 8 minute ride up the mountain, I realized that I forgot my jacket. There was about a 20 degree difference between the 70ish temperature at the base and the top of the lift. They were not kidding about not seeing much either. We stayed up Grouse Mountain for a couple of hours before I was getting pretty chilly.
After Grouse, we drove down Highway 99 a few miles before seeing a “scenic route” exit. So I took that which ended up heading up a mountain which is next to Grouse. About half way up we stopped at a scenic overlook. We continued up until it road dead ended. There was quite a bit of construction going on preparing for the 2010 Olympics. We then headed back down. It’s a little weird to go from 50 degrees and drizzle to 70 and sunny in just a few minutes. We stopped at the scenic overlook again on the way down, but this time it was so I could pop the top on the convertible. It was about 2 PM at this point and we were hungry. We headed to a Red Robin that we found via the Garmin GPS unit.
It was turning into a sunny day at this point, so we wanted to get some use of the convertible. We drove more around downtown and Stanley Park, which is downtown as well. Around 7 PM, it started getting dark. We turned in the car that night instead paying $30 for overnight parking.
Later that night we went back over to Black Frog for a night cap.
Day three to come…
Vancouver: Day One
Actually, we arrived in Vancouver on Saturday night around 7:30 PM. With a little help from Darren, we got a row to ourselves on the plane trip there, which only turned out to be a little over three and a half hours in the air. From the airport, we took the Canada Line train to downtown Vancouver and walked two blocks from the City Center Station to L’Hermitage, our hotel. After getting settled into the room, we walked down Robson and found a bar called Fogg ‘N Suds. We had some quesadillas and a few cold Coors Lights. Coors Light is apparently brewed in Canada as well because it is considered a domestic beer. I could tell a difference in the taste; however, Angela could not…the Coors Light that is…the quesadillas, awful. They tasted much different than the true Tex-Mex we were used to.
The next morning we got up and decided to walk to the closest casino which was about five blocks away. There was a car show in front of the casino that was about to start. I took a couple of pictures, but we didn’t actually go to the show. The casino, Edgewater Casino, was quite small in comparison to casinos we typically visit. It was two floors. The first floor were a few table games and slot machines and the second floor were just table games. I blew $20 on a slot machine. Angela turned her $20 into $55 on the machine next to me. So that made up for my loss.
Next we walked back to the hotel. On the way there we passed by what appeared to be a production set for a commercial.
That afternoon we walked around downtown Vancouver a bit more. We ended up walking over to Yaletown, a “trendy” area of downtown. We had two $15 burgers and $6 beers for lunch. On the walk back from the restaurant we passed a liquor/beer store. I was getting a little tired of paying top $ for drinks, so I figured I could pickup something for the hotel room. I decided against it when I saw the prices. A 12 pack of Coors Light was $25 (remember that it is considered a domestic beer)! I then looked at getting some Bacardi rum instead. A 750 ml bottle was $30, in Dallas I pay about $12-$14 for the same! At this point I accepted the fact that we would be paying out the nose for alcohol while in Canada.
Later that evening we decided to try out another casino (River Rock Casino) that was a little larger. We took the Canada Line train there. This casino was much larger in comparison to Edgewater; but it was no Vegas casino. We had the $20 buffet and played a little roulette. Angela lost her $20, but I turned mine into $40. I lost at roulette too, but turned my remaining $8 into $40 on a Wheel of Fortune slot machine (got the wheel spin). Technically, Angela won the $40 since she had pressed the button when we got the spin.
On the way back from the River Rock casino, we took the Canada Line train all the way to the Waterfront Station which is the last stop, it is only one more stop past our hotel. We walked around down there and stumbled across a bar called Black Frog. I liked it there since I could get rum and diet’s for $5, which was an awesome deal considering. BC’s talls in BC! After an hour or so, we left and heading back to the hotel. We pasted the steam clock which is right in front of Black Frog.
The link below are to some other photos from the trip. I’ll post day two tomorrow.
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| Vancouver |
Countdown to Vancouver
4 DAYS...We leave for Vancouver on Saturday. I am super duper excited. I have never been to Canada. Not quite sure what we are going to do yet. I just want to enjoy the scenery first and then find the Edgewater Casino. I want to be able to say I gambled in Canada! I am sure we'll experience Yaletown. I'd like to go whale watching but the tours I have seen online to do that are very expensive. I also want to try and see if I can get over my fear of heights so we can try out the Capilano Suspension Bridge. I'll be sure to take lots of pics to post when we get back.
I Am Loving WordPress More And More
Alright!
Okay, so it has been a couple of weeks with WordPress. WordPress is a blogging engine, the underlying "meat and potatoes" of this blog and many others. There is no charge for WordPress nor its required components (PHP and MySQL) and it is VERY configurable. You could easily use it as a foundation for a small business web site. If I were a bit better with graphic design and creativity I would create a business out of creating web sites for small businesses and use WordPress as the engine. I would choose WordPress over Joomla everytime. Joomla is a similar engine that is popular with small to mid-size companies...even larger sometimes. It is highly configurable as well. In a computer comparison, Joomla would be a PC and WordPress would be a Mac (although in reality they run on Linux). I am a little bias when it comes to Joomla. A company I previously worked for had their site built with Joomla as the core and there was always something wrong with it or getting hacked. Maybe WordPress has similar security issues, but I haven't personally heard of any yet.
Here is why I like WordPress:
Free Software
As I mentioned, WordPress is free as well as its requirements. This means that hosting will be much cheaper than something requiring ASP or .NET.
Tons of plug-ins
There is a huge growing list of plug-ins available to do just about anything you might want. Although this is kind of the reason I hate Linux servers...add-ons. If you wanted to get a Linux server up and running, you had to first install one of many versions of Linux. Then you had to install Apache (web server), then MySQL (database), then PHP (script language), phpMyAdmin, Squirrelmail, Perl/CGI, etc. OR you could install Windows Server and SQL then go out for some beers.
Easy to add plug-ins
My biggest complaint to plug-ins is their complexity to add. WordPress has done a great job of making it a few mouse clicks. It's not just WordPress that has easy to install plug-ins, but it's still a plus.
Clean database structure
Compare a Joomla back-end (database) to a WordPress and see what you find. You would find that Joomla is equivalent to Kim Kardashian in the comparison. Although neither compare to the last software application I worked on which consisted of 367 tables, 513 views, and 3200 stored procedures! Talk about junk in your trunk!
Image Storage - Done right in my book
You should store DATA in databases and FILES in your filesystem (disk). And don't try to argue that images/files are data...I'm familiar, and that's not my point.
Up For Auction
I finally got around to selling my old phone, or at least posting it on eBay. We'll see if it gets any bidders.
Marin is loving her new bed. I will have to put her old one on craiglist, maybe next week.
I applied for a particular job a while back. They just now are getting to the professional reference check and background check...slow application process I suppose. They notified me of a flag that popped up under the Crimlink + National Sex Offender Registry and it was their policy to bring it to my attention. Turns out there is someone in Missouri with the same first name, middle initial, and last name as me. Luckily, our name was the only thing we had in common! I used to occasionally get a letter about owing someone money. I would always call the number and they would ask if my last 4 digits of my social were XXXX. I would say no, and they would take me off the list. I suppose I have a fairly common name, or at least when it comes to certain types of folk. I have yet to receive a check in the mail and it was meant for a different Eric Bridges! Good news is everything else checked out on my background check...I graduated from SFA in 2001, no criminal records, credit report good, and I am still alive according to the Social Security Administration!
So I got that going for me...which is nice!
...So I got THAT going for me...which is nice.
Bill Murray, Caddyshack
Marin’s New Bed
Angela found a new bed for Marin last week. She found it off of craigslist and I was the lucky one that got to pick it up. Turns out a twin size bed will fit in an MDX with the rear seats down and the front seats moved up a bit. The lady kept it in great condition and with all of the pieces! I have put together several furniture items throughout the years and you can definitely tell a quality difference between them. This is a pretty solid bed, so it should last her for 4 or 5 years…at least that is the plan. Here are some picks, I gave myself a pat on the back since I had to put it together without any instructions and only a faint memory of a picture from the craigslist listing from a week prior.
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We are still sticking with the Tinkerbell theme. |
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 She LOVES the slide! |
 She had a routine of pouring herself a cup of tea, climbing up the ladder to the bed, sliding down the slide, and repeat. |
 And soon it was bedtime. She did very well the first night (last night). We asked her this morning if she liked her new bed and she responded with, “I like it.” |
Job Hunt
I am still going strong with the job hunt. I had 3 interviews this week, so it was a better week than most. One was a very brief interview with a head hunter/recruiter that was looking for a .NET developer position for a friend. I don’t think she typically handles technical jobs, so she really didn’t know what to ask me. She just kept saying, “Oh, I think you are perfect for what he is looking for.” So we will see what happens with that one. Another interview was with a small growing company needing mostly a programmer, but also someone that can get their infrastructure in order (as far as IT). We will see how that goes, but I am a little uneasy with the size of the company. He had 15 employees at the end of last year. He is “restructuring” and is now hiring employee number 4. (I was employee #4 at Marketplace Software and we see where that got me.) The last interview, which was actually the first of the week, was with a large company that contracts out technical services to other companies. I applied for a .NET Developer position. The interview was a technical interview which consisted of 2 guys taking turns asking questions about object oriented programming, .NET and SQL. Specifically about polymorphism, abstract classes, inheritance, implementation, .NET controls, stored procedures and SQL functions. And yes, finally someone that doesn’t care if you natively use VB or C# (pronounced “C Sharp”)! For those of you not familiar with the difference between VB and C#, I will give you an example. The difference is mostly syntax (meaning how items are written out). The two code snippets below do the exact same thing.
| for (int i = 1; i <= 10; i++) { WriteLine(i); } |
For i As Integer = 1 To 10 WriteLine(i) Next |
C# |
VB |
Can you tell what the program writes out? Doesn’t one of examples seem to make better “sense”? I think so, and I think it’s VB (Visual Basic). Yet 3 out of 4 companies will want a C# guy. Turns out 95% of C# programmers only have about 1 year experience right now (I was told this by a recruiter after they went through 150+ resumes looking for 3-5 years, not my statistics).
Here is another tip I have found while looking for work…craigslist! Two of the three interviews this week were from a posting on craigslist. Plus, I have found a couple of contract opportunities as well. I just finished one small project for a guy I ran across on craigslist. He was very happy with the work and has already given me another small project. And guess what language…you got it, C#…gotta do what you gotta do!
Changing It Up A Bit
I have finally got around to changing the site…again. The previous site used BlogEngine.net which was a quick and simple solution that served its purpose. However, the old site did not have many built in options not to mention I never got the email working correctly. The new site uses WordPress as the engine, which is very popular and mainstream. Most, if not all, of my friends use WordPress as a blog engine. Luckily when I signed up for hosting I chose a provider that offered IIS 7 because PHP (the technology that WordPress uses) is included in the new IIS. So I can not only host sites that I have created in Microsoft .NET (Wish List and My Resume), but I can also host site created in PHP like this one. NOTE: There will be some broken links to some of the images in the post until I can finish moving them over.
As Angela had mentioned in a previous post, I am no longer employed with Marketplace Software. The work itself was fun and the job wasn’t too bad either (working from home with flexible hours). The company was growing/expanding and doing well. Unfortunately, things caught up too quickly. When a payroll check was withdrawn from our account a week after receiving it, the downward spiral started. As of now, the owner of the company is working frantically alone to finish the next version of the software and has become unresponsive to employees and customers.
On a better note, Marin is doing wonderful! Although, she is getting to the stage where she says “No”…ohhhh booooyyyy. We had a Sunday Fun-Day at Lake Lavon yesterday. We swam, cooked out, and relaxed on blankets under a shade tree. We will have to do it again soon.
Fun Mini Vacation
I had a mini vacation at the beginning of the week. I was off work on Monday and Tuesday which was very nice and a much needed time away from work. On Monday my mom, Marin and I ventured out to the Dallas Arboretum and walked through the gardens and had lunch at the small cafe there. It was nice and we enjoyed it. They had a few structures they built for their Storybook Exhibit and Marin had a lot of fun playing in that area. On Tuesday I dragged Eric to go see Harry Potter 6 with me at the movie theater. I really liked it a lot better than the previous one but I think Goblet of Fire (4th one) was the best so far. I can't wait until the last one because it will be the most action and the most dramatic. I hope it will be the best of them all.
As many of you who read this blog already know Eric lost his job recently. It has been tough for him looking for something else but he has a positive attitude about it. We booked a trip to Vancouver a few months ago and we are supposed to go in September. With our current situation I am not sure if I should cancel the trip and be out $100 in cancellation fees or if we should just go ahead and go anyway. Hmm...I am the worst at making these kinds of decisions.
