Free Domain Registration

I've been kicking around the idea of starting a blog completely devoted to fiscal discipline (i.e., being frugal) and unencumbered by my political and religious diatribes. If I do this, the blog probably won't be hosted through Blogger to allow me to own the domain name. So being the cheap bastard that I am, I did a Google search on "free domain registration", and I wasn't surprised to learn that a company is doing this. I was surprised to find out who: Microsoft!

Microsoft is only offering this promotion while they beta test some Office Live tools, but hey--free is free!

Not a very motivating or productive week

So let me help bring your productivity down as well with a game of Pac-Man! I stumbled upon Bunchball, a very cool site that gives away Flash-embedded code for innumerable games, widgets, photo sharing, chat, and more.

Kangaroos and train rides in the fall

The title sounds like it might be a children's book, but kangaroos and train rides are just two of the many unexpected things you'll discover in the peach state.

Those of you not lucky enough to live in Georgia should spend a vacation here, and I'd suggest fall as the season to visit. Last October we started a family tradition of visiting a "pick your own" pumpkin patch. While there is a pumpkin farm really close by, taking a weekend drive up to the north Georgia (Appalachian) mountains is half the fun (especially with gas prices finally falling!) and it gives you a chance to see fall foliage several weeks earlier than in Atlanta.

There are several pumpkin patches in north Georgia, but the one with the best reputation, and deservedly so, is Burt's Farm (see some great photos here) in Dawsonville. After taking the kids on a hayride, you can pick your own pumpkin, and then torture yourself fighting the urge to buy a pumpkin pie on your way out of their store.

As if Burt's Farm wasn't enough to put Dawsonville on the map, this small Georgia town is also home to the largest collection of kangaroos outside of the Austrailian Outback! The Kangaroo Conservation Center not only has over 200 kangaroos on its 87-acre wildlife sanctuary, but wallabies, kookaburras, and bettongs as well. We haven't yet visited the kangaroos, but I'm sure as my daughters get older we will.

Just an hour north is the main event of a memorable fall day--a 26-mile ride on the Blue Ridge Scenic Railway. The train leaves Blue Ridge, GA, and travels north to the shared downtown of both McCaysville, GA, and Copperhill, TN. We've got our tickets for the 10:00am train on Saturday, October 28, and I can't wait!

Keith Olbermann echoes my sentiments

Keith Olbermann echoes my sentiments on 9/11.

Why I think my west coast friends are crazy

Forbes has a new article out addressing the shift in real estate from a seller's market to a buyer's market. I didn't find the article that revealing, but it did point me to empirical proof that Atlanta offers terrific real estate value relative to the rest of the country.

With the nation sitting at a median housing price of $225,000, metro Atlanta has a median price of just $172,722 which is 23% less than the national average.

The title of today's post not only applies to many cities on the west coast, but Boston, Washington D.C., and Miami as well.

For my friends out west, the graph of San Diego reflects the norm in most west coast markets where the median price of a single family home is two to three times the national average, which is incomprehensible to me. While I think the views can be spectacular, perhaps I'm myopic, but I don't see the appeal of paying a 100-200% premium for the privilege of living there.

10k Test this Morning

We'll see if I'm up to the challenge. In less than an hour, I'll be running the U.S. 10k Classic race.

I thought it would be wise to rent a ChampionChip for this race to accurately time my results. Unfortunately, I neglected to anticipate how attractive a small, black, plastic device would be to a 2 1/2 year old, and its whereabouts are currently unknown. My wife and I did a frantic search last night to no avail, so I'm now on the hook for the $30 purchase price, get blacklisted from area races for up to 12 months, and risk not getting a t-shirt, or racing hat.

While I haven't been as disciplined as I would have liked, I should finish this race in ~ 45 minutes, despite the nature of the course--very hilly.

Two Milestones

Starting something and "sticking with it" isn't a trait people with ADHD are known for so I'm both surprised and pleased that I've now been blogging for over a year, the first milestone (and my first blog posting remains one of the most frequently-viewed pages).

The second milestone is one to really celebrate. The punchlist from my project house only has two items left: a second coat of paint on the garage doors & replacing two rails on the deck, which will take about an hour to complete. As a result, my family finally gets me back on the weekends. Today we had breakfast together and then went to the park to play T-ball and swing. In celebration of this momentous occasion, my wife and daughters presented me with two iTunes-created CDs, the first entitled, "Thank God It's Over".

Here is the playlist:

1. Burning Down the House / Talking Heads
2. Paint It Black /U2
3. Crumblin' Down / John Cougar Mellencamp
4. Sledgehammer / Peter Gabriel
5. You Wreck Me / Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
6. Finest Worksong / R.E.M.
7. Hammer and a Nail / Indigo Girls
8. Digging in the Dirt / Peter Gabriel
9. Building a Mystery / Sarah McLachlan
10. Fix You / Coldplay
11. Wonderwall / Oasis
12. Over My Head / The Fray
13. My Own Two Hands / Ben Harper & Jack Johnson
14. Who Needs Sleep? / Barenaked Ladies
15. Room Without a View / The Smithereens
16. In Your Room / The Bangles

Insane Week

It's only Thursday, and yet I've already had an exceptionally busy week complete with my daughter's first Atlanta Braves baseball game, another trip out to the smartest city in the U.S., lunch with the smartest guy I know, my first red-eye flight in years, a job interview (which was not related to the aforementioned lunch... half-way through my interview I realized, "No way would I ever want to work for this person!"), a trip to the Atlanta Toolbank (my favorite 501c3 in Atlanta), and a crummy Falcons preseason game where the first-string players didn't even play!