What A Day!!!!

John — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 00:59:11 +0000

Yesterday, my girls and I went to Six Flags, yesterday. Evidently, I promised them months ago that we would go on July 4th. I must have forgotten. No matter. I decided to do a little experiment…at least in my head. The whole purpose of my efforts to gain additional streams of income is to have enough money coming in from various sources that I don’t have to have a day job.

I decided to treat yesterday like an experiment, in that, I didn’t worry about spending money (while being practical, of course). Basically, it was an experiment in the Internet Lifestyle experience. I definitely liked what I was experiencing. No money or time worries, however, there was one thing on my mind the entire day; this blog post. I won’t spend too much time on this, but I have been experiencing instances of 444 in my life. I had another one this morning. I was up until about 6:30, getting a few things done. Yes…I did get some sleep before going to Six Flags.

The girls woke me up around 9:00am. We didn’t actually get out of the house until noon or so. It was time for lunch!!! Of course, we had to stop at my favorite “get some food quick and I don’t care what it costs or how good it is for me” place…McDonald’s. Yummm!!! At least that’s what I think. I can never tell what the girls are thinking about the food I get them.

So I haven’t shaved. It’s all art of my experiment, of course… I did shower so don’t even think about leaving any comments about endangerment of children charges.

We made it out to the park. I decided to take a picture of us with the park in the background. Once I took a look at the pic, I realized that the girls didn’t really do anything to their hair before we left the house. We decided to go to the water park first. I promise, I did NOT do that to cover up the fact that both girls had messy hair.

Here I am, BACK at the car because I forgot the tickets. Cassie won a ticket from school for doing a bunch of reading. The ticket and a $24.99 coupon from the Girl Scout Council of Eastern Missouri were both left behind. No way I’m EVER paying full price to get into this place after working here for 13 seasons (ride operator / computer programmer). Anyway, my Spending Less 101 readers would be proud of me.

On the way across the parking lot towards the front gate, we came across some guys loading some sort of futuristic vehicle onto a trailer. I’ve never seen it before, but some other people there said it was from a movie. If you can tell me what movie this car was in, please let me a comment.

We made it into the park. There were a lot of people there. Of course, something had to happen as soon as we got in. Out of the blue, this gigantic rabbit attacked the kids.

I decided to take a picture because I didn’t think anyone would believe me.

I had never been to the water park so we decided to go check it out. I thought you had to pay more to get into the water park, but evidently not. We just walked right in.

It was pretty nice. A wave pool, 8 water slides, by my count, and a lazy river is what I saw. Thee was also a place for the kids to play in the water. It was under a giant bucket.

By the way, one of my new ventures is free stock photos. I create all of the content myself. Here is one photo I took at the water park. Use it all you like. Just make sure people know you got it from johnasimpson.com.

From where we were in the water park, you could see the lift of the Batman ride. This one happens to be Cassie’s favorite ride. Alex has not ridden it because she is not tall enough yet.

The first thing they wanted to do in the water park was something called the Tornado. Pictured below, it looked pretty scary, so I was surprised that Alex wanted to do it. After riding it, I now understand WHY you are told to hold onto the handles of the inner tube. If you let go, you will be launched off the tube.

By the way, I switched from embedding the pics with the text to this format because it’s easier. I am NOT going back and fixing the previous paragraphs.

Next, the girls wanted to ride the big water slide (green one). After riding the tornado, I’d had enough of water for a little while. I wanted to get warmed up more so I let them go. Again, I was surprised that Alex wanted to do this.

Cassie said the green slide scratched her back. They both rode the red slide next. Alex hit her head when she tried to sit up inside the tube. She had a headache for a short period of time.

Next, we decided to get lunch. To make this long story short, there was so much confusion at the concession stand that we ended up not paying for our food. Too bad I had not gotten any for myself.

Alex had pizza and in addition to that, she was eating Cassie’s waffle fries. Cassie had a footlong hotdog with catsup and relish. She ate the whole thing.

On our way out of the water park, Alex decided to stop to get a picture next to a shark. Notice anything? Evidently, I didn’t, or I would have said something to her before I took the picture. Sorry Alex.

Of course, the first thing Cassie and I wanted, when we went into the regular park was…Funnel Cakes..

Sorry, I didn’t get a before pic, but it was a funnel cake, topped with ice cream and hot fudge. This is was Cassie had for desert and what I had for lunch. Alex ended up getting cotton candy.

Scooby Doo just had to get in on abducting my daughters. I stopped him, but just before I allowed him to leave, I made him take a picture with the girls. Alex kept hugging him, until I decided we should leave. You never know what kind of individual is in that suit.

I guess Superman drives a truck now. At least he parks in the Superman section of the parking lot. I took this pic on the way to take the swimming stuff back to the car.

We finally made it to the new ride. The Evel Knievel Coaster was the smoothest ride of any wooden coaster I have ever been on. It was like riding waves. It is now my favorite coaster, and as a previous employee of Six Flags, groups of us would go to parks around the country, riding coasters. I tried to get video of this, but there was no strap on my digital camera, so I didn’t want to take the chance of loosing it.

Again, if you want any of the pics, have at them. Just make sure you mention that they came from johnasimpson.com.

I want to get on to the videos so I am going to continue forward with just showing some pictures (see all of the pics in the Flickr Slideshow below). Consider this to me a montage representation of a great portion of our day.

I also shot several video clips from the days adventure. The first one is of me interviewing Alex about the water slide she went on.

This video is of the girls playing in the water. I could not figure out how to put all of the videos in on YouTube player quickly. I will eventually.

Here, we are going up the lift on the Screamin’ Eagle. I was not brave enough to hold the camera through the ride because my camera did not have a strap. It does now.

Finally, we have the fireworks pics. We found a spot in Batman Plaza to watch. They only went on for 10 minutes, but you would have thought it was hours because the girls were very restless by this point.

I’m not going to post my fireworks video. It only lasts about 2 seconds before the battery went out on the camera. Stupid me. I didn’t bring extra batteries.

We were on our way to the gate, when Cassie brought up the fact that I said something about getting ice cream on the way out of the gate. It’s a tradition. I said we missed it because of the fireworks, but when I saw an opening in the crowd, I made a turn and we went to get our ice cream. Although the park was closed, this stand was still open, by design, I’m sure. We got our ice cream and headed out.

The end of the night. What an AWESOME day.

So you are probably wondering about the results of my experiment. Let me tell you this. What people are calling “The Internet Lifestyle” is just having control of your life and being able to live it the way you want to without being beholden to a job. As I went through the day, I paid for things with my bank card and with cash. For the most part, I didn’t even think about how much. My only problem was that I didn’t have enough in cash form. Actually, that was probably a positive. If you can only spend cash, you can see it dwindling. This is not to say that I want to be able to spend a bunch of money. I am saying that I don’t want to have to worry about money. I am 41 and I have been working about money for 25 or so of those 41 years. I’ve had enough. Please leave your comments and let me know what you think.

If you enjoyed this post, please make sure you register to receive these posts via email. You can also follow me on Twitter, link to me on LinkedIn, or visit my other blog, at www.spendingless101.com.

So you decided to host an in-house SEO training bootcamp. What now?

John — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 22:50:00 +0000

If you have decided to host an in-house SEO training bootcamp, I say “Great!!!”. You may have people that don’t know much about SEO right now, but with some training, you will end up with expert SEO people who are actually dedicated to making sure the SEO efforts work; not just the bottom line and the move to the next project. Your newly-trained SEO’ers will be dedicated to SEO specific to your company.

Check out this YouTube video posted by wwwreachd:

John A Simpson » Video

What A Day!!!!

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