New York Traveler.net

Free Ticket Exchange Website

Hmm, here’s something very interesting, a Free Ticket Exchange website. This sounds very appealing to me, because sometimes I win free tickets to something that totally disinterest me (like the Shriner’s Circus or a Mets game) but I would really love concert tickets or movie tickets. B.B. King came to Utica’s Stanley Theatre a few weeks ago, but tickets were a stunning *gulp* $50 apiece! I would have loved to have taken my husband to see B.B. (he’s a big fan– hubs is a musician), but I just couldn’t have afforded $100! However, I always am getting miscellaneous tickets to things that do not interest us. Something like the FreeTicketExchange is a cool idea! This is from their website:

FreeTicketExchange is an online social network of real fans who connect to buy, sell and trade tickets with each other for FREE, by using fanTokens. When you join, you can invite your friends to be your fans. You can find fellow fans that are like you or fans that can introduce you to something completely new. You can even start or join an exclusive group of real fans for your favorite sport, band, performer or play. FreeTicketExchange is an exclusive network that gives the fans the ability to set the price and control the ticket market place. Where fans with a shared interest meet, stay informed, and buy and sell event tickets with each other.

Buy and sell tickets with fans like you!

1. Avoid high fees
2. Choose from whom you buy or sell your ticket
3. Name your price
4. Build lasting relationships with like-minded folks

It sounds interesting, for the benefit of both parties! It doesn’t cost anything to join the community or to buy/sell tickets. I wonder, however, if some states in the U.S. have laws about reselling tickets? I don’t know if New York does. I would be willing to just swap tickets. This website uses fanTokens, so maybe that’s the best way for everyone and for every state. Sounds like a terrific idea.

If anyone has any experience with this, I’d love to hear! Please leave a comment. Thanks!

I’ve Got the Blues

I don’t know what it is with me and web hosting companies. We can just never agree on anything. I want my websites to be up and running without any problems, and they don’t, lol! I can laugh, because it better than screaming. Which is how I feel right about now. I have only been using Bluehost for about– what? — a month now? I have had constant problems: CPU quota exceeded, server crashes, MySQL data crashes… *sigh* Why oh why me? Yesterday was the worst so far– all three blogs of mine were down for over two hours. I don’t know what’s going on. Sure, everybody has technical problems sometime; but must it be every time, for me?

Friends, if you happen to notice my sites down for an extended period of time (more than 15 minutes), would you possibly take a sec to email me and let me know? If you can and if you have time, of course. Because Bluehost sure isn’t letting me know.

Frugal Hacks Alert

This is for all you Frugal Hacks out there– if you haven’t heard of Buy.com yet, you have got to check out their deals. I’m in the habit of perusing their weekly specials now. The prices are incredible! A few weeks ago I blogged about how my poor little laptop mouses (or mice or whatever they are called, I’m still not sure!) constantly die on me. They, uh, have this habit of falling to the floor. heh heh. I go through about two or three mouses a year. So I am ALWAYS looking for a good deal. I’m not very keen on paying $25 to $30 a pop for a new mouse. However, I don’t have to! Buy.com has a fabulous deal on a Targus notebook optical mouse for $10! Yes, you read that right! The Buy.com price is 74% off retail pricing. And the shipping is free! I’m going to get a couple of them, and hopefully it will last me, oh, through the summer.

Buy.com also has great specials going on for external hard drives and other computer gadgets, plus stuff like mp3 players, printers, and excellent prices on GPS systems. Check out their weekly specials page here and bookmark it.

Wordless Wednesday: Home Garden

Spring has arrived in Upstate New York!

Someday I’ve got to finish that walkway, lol. Hopefully, within a few weeks I’ll have it done.

Just Dreamin’

Sorry I haven’t blogged much. We are all in high gear trying to finish up the school year, and the gasoline prices have kept me homebound for a while. However, we do have some hopes to do some traveling this year! We have some things in the making, in particular a camping trip in the Adirondacks, and perhaps a hike up one of it’s mountains. We love the “strenuous life,” as fellow New Yorker called it (Theodore Roosevelt). We are very fond of TR, having read several of his biographies and seen many documentaries of him. We also have a neat computer game where you go on an expedition through the Amazon jungle and bump into him there, in the midst of a safari. It’s a pretty cute game and the kids love it.

TR made the African safari famous, too. Would you ever go on an African safari? I think I would! If you love safari (or love reading about it and looking at photos), check out the T. Jeffrey Safari Company website. They offer exciting Namibia safari hunting trips. My sons absolutely love the website. I’m sure they’d love for us to all go, but I can’t hit the backside of a barn anymore (I wasn’t too bad a lass with a gun, however). The gallery of photos at T. Jeffrey Safari Company are amazing. The best glimpse I ever got of Africa was Marlin Perkin’s Wild Kingdom; I’d love to see Africa for real! Imagine, roaming 200,000 acres on a family farm in central Namibia for a safari, or hunting for a week in the Kalahari Desert! Talk about the strenuous life! If you are into safaris, take a gander at the website. It’s an adventure in of itself.

Photo Hunters: My Choice!

Today’s Photo Hunters is a photo of our own choice. I have about 1,500 photos of all our travels online, so the choice was difficult to make! But I chose to post a photo of one of our most-beloved Founding Fathers and New Yorkers, Alexander Hamilton. Upstate New York is a mighty historical place. This statute stands watch over the chapel at Hamilton College in Clinton, NY. The college was founded by Reverend Samuel Kirkland, and Alexander Hamilton was appointed as a trustee. Due to its history and strong Christian missionary ties to the region, this college is near and dear to our hearts. Kirkland is buried here, as is his very close friend Skenandoah and numerous other heroes from America’s founding days.

I blogged about a wonderful new development going on with some history professors at the college; the organization is called The Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Culture. It is an earth-shaking development and their mission has repercussions for Ivy League universities and all of academia! I suppose this is why the opposition has been so fierce. You can read all about the mission here. My daughter The Historian and I attended the first annual colloquium dinner of the AHI, thanks to the very gracious Bob Pacquette (!), and heard a terrific presentation by Harvard professor John Stauffer, “Liberty and Slavery: The Civil War between Gerrit Smith and George Fitzhugh.” The video of Mr. Stauffer’s presentation and those of others is online for the public to view! The speeches are outstanding, and I recommend you watch them.

The forming of the AHI constitutes a global shift in academe. This is a group to watch, and support, if you can. If you’d like to read a little more about the history of the AHI and the massive resistance against it, read Professor Robert Pacquette’s excellent essay, “The World We Have Lost: A Parable on the Academy.”

P.S. Mr. Linky isn’t working at this writing. I apologize; I’ll try to get Mr. Linky up later. Feel free to leave your Photo Hunters link in the comments.

Update: Mr. Linky is up!

Travel Incentives!

I think one of the nicest things a company can do for its employees is offer incentives and reward them with great incentives with loyalty programs. I don’t know if you have ever heard of Bellwether Rewards, but it looks so great! I surfed their website and here’s what I found:

Bellwether Travel Rewards are ideal for corporate rewards or employee rewards and recognition programs for employee motivation and business performance improvement. These include airfare, lodging, taxes, fees and ground transportation for the reward recipient and one guest, making this one of the best travel rewards programs available today.

…We are one of the top incentive travel companies in the emerging individual incentive travel market and our travel rewards programs have helped companies such as Medtronic, Anadarko Oil & Gas, Blue Cross/ Blue Shield, First Tennessee Bank, Siemens ICN, Frito Lay and other highly successful organizations. Let us know how we can help your organization achieve its sales goals with our exciting corporate incentive programs.

That is a wonderful idea. I would LOVE it if my husband’s employers had such incentives. They’ve had other incentives (like employee of the month), but a travel incentive is THE best, bar none. Businesses can make better deals than individuals because they are more influential and have more “muscle.” Travel incentives can really do a lot for employee loyalty and morale. If you are an employer, or even an employee, check into it or ask your company about it.

The Road to Rome

I live about 35 miles from Rome. Rome, NEW YORK! Someday I’d like to see the REAL Rome- Rome, Italy. I’m a big history buff and Bible student, so a trip to Rome would be thrilling! Alack, I cannot go as yet. However, one of my favorite travel bloggers, A Singaporean in London, has visited as is writing about his visit. The posts are really great! He’s breaking up the trip throughout five posts and you won’t want to miss them. Part 1 here and Part 2 here. I’m looking forward to more.

What’s uncanny is that I just watched the DVD series by Dave Stotts called Drive Thru History, and in 3 of the DVDs (it’s a 12 DVD set), he goes to Rome. The DVDs are excellent (see here: Drive Thru History with Dave Stotts #1 - Rome if You Want To). Stotts is really hilarious and makes everything fun. I love learning about the ancient ruins, especially. In America, we don’t have any “real” ancient ruins. One of the grandest “ancient ruin” is the Utica Psychiatric Hospital of which I wrote, but that, like many of America’s old buildings, turned into a drug rehab and alcohol center before being converted to a mental health records archives. Anyway, if you love history and humor, you will love these DVDs. And if you can’t wait for the DVDs, check out Singaporean in London!