BenSpark Family Adventures

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02475 Today I went to NEwport and picked up my friend James. James has been on a New England cruise and had a stop in Newport so we coordinated a little meetup. I drove in and picked James up and we went over to the Coddington Brewing Company. James got a sampler flight of their beers and chowder while I had French Onion soup.  Then we drove around and chatted. We were going to go to Flo's for some fried clams but they were closed. So we continued to drive around and chat. That was pretty much what we wanted to do, catch up and that is what we did. We stopped at the beach to take this selfie but otherwise we stuck to hanging out in the car. It was nice to catch up. The last time we had any time together was 10 years ago at IZEAFest. It was at the same time of year, too.

I feel like gushing like Sally Field right now. I won a contest, yes, me. I won, I really, really won. I won the contest that Fuelmyblog.com sponsored for the best reviews about Fuelmyblog. The contest was for $200 but it came down to a tie between me and Cybergal.  Cybergal came up with the Fuelmyblog.com tagline of Great Wall of Blogs. So Kevin split the winnings between us. And that is great. I think that is the most fair thing to do. And hey that is $100.00, Sweet! Kevin you just bank rolled my Transformers purchases this coming Tuesday when I visit the Hasbro company store with my cousin’s wife Annie.  If you haven’t signed your blog up for this great site then what are you waiting for, there are still paces in the More, Business, Life and All Sorts sections. The site is getting an overhaul in the next few weeks so be on the lookout for big things to come.

A lesson I need to learn. I just got my message about my earnings from Amazon.com and as an affiliate my personal purchases do not count toward affiliate earnings. I think that is crap but it is in the terms of service and I did not read the fine print when I started buy products through Amazon and thinking I would also get the commission. So instead of having about $78 coming my way I only have $28.  Well, I have put the word out to family and friends to make purchases through this site or through The BenSpark but I can’t make out with extra savings by making my own purchases. So if you an an Amazon.com affiliate and think you can save a little extra on your own purchases, I say to you, read the Terms of Service. You are warned. That being said take a look at Amazon’s new Unbox program. And Pre-order Harry Potter 7 – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Do you remember the Office commercials from Burger King. They guy who makes up his own catchphrase? No. Well, here it is. And the reason that I am posting this is because I want to tell you about SpicyPage. I have just signed up with it and if you haven’t signed up your own blogs to SpicyPage then you should go and do that now. SpicyPage is basically a site where you add your blog and other blogger or other people in general come to the page and vote on your site, they vote thumbs up or thumbs down whether or not your site is Spicy. I have a few votes for this site and set up spicy counters on both this site and Flatwater Bookstore. So why don’t you sign up with SpicyPage (it is free) and give a spicy vote to The BenSpark and Flatwater Bookstore. Thanks, my voting widget is at the bottom of the page.

I want to tell you all about fuelmyblog. This is a site where bloggers can submit their sites to The Great Wall. The Great Wall is a page of 625 blogs in a 25 X 25 grid (it is 625 I did the math, with a calculator, just to be sure). But fuelmyblog has three other grids ones for More, Business, and Life. That brings the total to 2500 possible spots for blogs. The good thing about this is that you can only have 1 square on the wall for each of your blogs. I hate it when there is no limit like that and the first people in the know get all the spots. And the spaces are not all taken either. I can’t believe that. You can still get a spot on the main page. Go to fuelmyblog now and sign up. I am listed with fuelmyblog for both this blog and Flatwater Bookstore, my entertainment and general consumer blog. I have the two spots in the bottom right hand corner of the main page. The Tiki Drew picture is linked here and the Viking Drew South Park picture is linked to Flatwater. I have gotten many h...

I have to post about the Great Wall of Blogs. You might have noticed the new Big Blue box on the sidebar that says “My Blog is On fuelmyblog “The Great Wall”.” Well what that means is that my blog is listed on this fantastic site. I have the bottom right blocks. There is one of my with Tiki drew Face and another with my South Park Viking Drew character. Tiki Drew links to The Benspark and Viking Drew links here. What I like about fuelmyblog is Kevin. Kevin created fuelmyblog and the idea is very unique. There are 625 squares on the Great Wall front page as well as 625 spots on the More page, the Life page and the Business page. That is 2500 Squares that are available. Each square has a 40 x 40 picture and each square links to a blog. There is still space on the front page for your blog. Kevin reads each and every blog and so does his wife. She selected my blog as Blog of the Day back on the 12th of this month. And Kevin and I exchanged some emails and I’m going to be interviewed for th...

I have just signed up for SpicyPage. Have you heard of it? Well it is a site that is similar to Digg in that people go to the page and vote on how spicy your page is. Spicy in this case meaning hot and interesting. So I signed up for both this site and The BenSpark. The Benspark already has 7 votes for spiciness. I am thrilled. If you want to vote on whether you think this site is spicy or not you can do so at the bottom left side of this site. You just click the vote button. But you have to be a member of SpicyPage to do so. Sign up, it is free.

Photo-A-Day #652 01/20/07 Today I received my box of swag from PayPerPost. Included was a T-Shirt (Says Spreading Like Peanut Butter), the 13″ pen, a box of mints, the giant foam finger and $5.00 in Pingo cards. Not a bad deal. I sent them a framed picture of Allison and I for their Great Wall of Posties. Tonight Amy and Ryan and Mason came over for dinner. They lent us their video camera so I can finally get the wedding video loaded into the computer. I tried a few things and they didn’t work then Amy showed me that I was connected to the wrong port on the camera. Then things went a little better. So I let the whole first tape run all the way through. However that was too much for the computer to process so I am going to have to work with capturing individual clips. That will be the next project. I am excited to get working on this project though. I think many folks have been wanting to see it. Well that will have to wait till this week is done because I have three videos left to do f...

A while back PPP put out a call for pictures of Posties for their Great Wall of Posties. I went to my Kodak Gallery and selected a nice picture of Allison and I and had it framed and shipped to PPP. They received it yesterday. And they put up a post about it. I have been added to The Great Wall of Posties. So I am very excited. Also I am Blog of the Day on Fuel My Blog and I have been talking to Kevin, who runs the site. I may be on a radio interview with him for a radio show in France. How wild is that. UPDATE: I’ve been talking with Kevin at Fuel My Blog and here is the latest news about Fuel My Blog. “FYI I just got picked up by a UK magazine, your picture in the top spot of the JPG, it goes out to 30,000 communications directors in the UK!! Feb is the release date!”

I was selected by Fuel My Blog as their Blog of the Day. So if you are visiting via that link, welcome. Fuel My Blog is an interesting concept. Bloggers can submit their blogs to one of the squares of Fuel My Blog and that square will house a picture of that blogger (or whatever avatar they choose) and by clicking that square you go right to that blog. I have the bottom two squares on the right corner. Also when you mouse over an occupied square the blog information comes sailing in from off screen. It is a pretty cool setup. Check it out.

I didn’t win but I liked playing. I’m still confused as to who actually won the contest. I was stuck in O’Hare with intermittent Internet Connectivity so I missed out on the final thrilling moments of this game. I had this post written and all of the pieces would be put together one by one ready to go if I found all the elusive pieces and could win, but fate was against me. PayPerPost has done it again. They have made me obsess about finding little pieces of a puzzle all over the Internet. But I rose to the Challenge and found all the pieces that were out there. I scoured, traded, and generally begged borrowed and borrowed some more to find all the possible pieces for this scavenger hunt that was sponsored by HP.  The puzzle is a collage of pictures that Veronique took during her trip to Europe. They are wonderful and fun pictures and the collage is cool. Veronique should do more as the PayPerPost Poster child. She is very cool. The competition was very nice with these searches and...

At least I think it has. I haven't had Internet Access in 45 minutes. All the pieces should be out now, including a puzzle key. The competition was fun. Congrats to the winner, whoever you are.

The HP Scavenger Hunt Puzzle has been completed. Not by me mind you, (well I did complete it after the fact.) I was getting puzzle blocked by T-Mobile and The O’Hare Airport when the winning occurred. We are still not sure who won but I will updated when I find out. The puzzle was a fun thing to participate in. I hope that another one comes along in a month or so, give us time to recuperate from this one. I met some very nice Posties while doing this. We had fun.

I have been helping another Postie named Karen with some HTML questions and she was kind enough to publicly thank me on her blog Clutzy’s Clutzes and she added Photo-A-Day to her brand new blog called The Pond. I have been spending the past couple of days connecting with many Posties out there. There are a lot of great Postie Bloggers in the PayPerPost community. Karen also has a third blog called My Opinion Counts. Karen has had a lot of time to blog lately because as she told me, she is klutzy and on the couch wearing two surgical boots, ouch.

One of my newest Postie friends is Skeet. She is in Hawaii and she writes a blog called Skeet’s stuff. She is very active with PPP and also the puzzle hunt. She even called me out with the favorite movie tag game. She says that she doesn’t take good pictures like I do but I think her pictures are nice. She has a nice well wishing set of pictures for a 2006 message. I enjoy reading Skeet’s stuff because it is fun and entertaining. Skeet is also playing Hostie to my Photo-A-Day pictures. I’m very excited about that.

I got tagged by Skeet to put up my favorite movies. 5 of them. Well, here goes. Re-watchability is one of my main criteria. If I can watch a movie over and over and still enjoy it, it makes the list. These are my top 5 most re-watchable movies. Pump up the Volume – I just love this movie and have seen it about 50 times. I can watch it over and over. And I always get a little teary at the end. Talk Hard. Jurassic Park – I watched that movie and said, “Wow dinosaurs are REAL!” It was such an escape movie for me. I was also very much into Crichton’s written works. Transformers The Movie – I own about 400+ Transformers and they were my life as a kid. They really were something that I have treasured throughout time. I was stunned when they killed of Prime. Back to the Future – The first was the best but this trilogy was fantastic. I always wanted more and just loved how they tied together. And Michael J. Fox is the man. The Shawshank Redemption – This movie is always on but I always get suc...

One of my fellow Posties, Lisa, has a site called My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings. She is the newest Photo-A-Day Hostie. Lisa put up a post about my Photo-A-Day 2007 project and linked to her favorite photo from Photo-A-Day and she is also using the javascript on her sidebar to spotlight each Daily Photo. My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings is a nicely written personal blog that is humorous and fun to visit. Check out My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings in your online travels. A funny list of things that are on the blog is the list of things you should know but probably don’t.

Update: This puzzle piece was given to me as an exclusive for you to find. I had put it on my blog in plain site as first instructed but now it is on this post as well. Did you know that Veronique took these pictures with an hp camera? Okay so you know how I’ve tried to get pieces for the online scavenger hunts in the past and have not gotten them. I’ve been too slow, asleep or just not special enough. But I got one, one of the coveted pieces for the HP and PPP photo Scavenger Hunt. I have piece #2. And I am actively trying to solve this puzzle. The fun is the hunt, it really is, the thrill and excitement and the interaction between Posties. It is just so much fun. It is also one of the coolest viral advertising campaigns ever. And today the most awesome thing happened. The Tamale herself, Veronique, asked if I wanted to host an exclusive piece. Heck YEAH!!! I said. I would be thrilled to host a piece. I have to keep the piece in plain site on my blog. So the piece is here, on the blog...

The folks over at PayPerPost have put up a year in review recap and Holiday special on RockStartup. This shows their Christmas parties (think bad karaoke and many shots) as well as giving back to the community by donating toys to SadieHolmes.org. This was not a paid post. I just liked what PayPerPost has done and I am at my PayPal limit for this month. Also if you live in Orlando or you are visiting Orlando like my cousins are then you may see the PayPerPost crew and the BBM in the www.OrlandoCitrusParade.com in downtown Orlando.

You might have noticed a few new additions to the site today. I have added a quote of the day as well as a funny quote of the day. You can add these to your blog as well. It is a really easy script that you add to your blog template. If you scroll further down you can see a Today in History as well as a Today’s Birthdays feed. I added those as well so that you could have something interesting to discuss at the lunch table. I’m always thinking about enhancing the experience for my readers when they visit this site. Coming up with new and interesting content is something that I really try and work hard at doing. I could have stopped with the Photo-A-Day and just done that but I wanted this to be something more. Each time I find something of interest on the Internet I want to share it with you. If that is something that can be permanently in place here on this blog then that is good too. The technology keeps changing and I want to just keep up with it. So if you come across something that...