Sean got Swimmer’s Ear, so we had to go get him some medicine from Walgreens. We took the kids bowling today. At first I wasn’t going to bowl, but after seeing a few gutterballs I decided to try and help out. Unfortunately, on my first attempt my shoe got stuck in the approach and I went flying head first into the lane (foul). Kids got a nice laugh out of this.

Next we went to Circus Circus where they had lots of games for the kids to play. Sean flipped a quarter inside this red circle and won a stuffed animal. Sean won three little bears by throwing a dart through a balloon. Joel had a little trouble with the tic-tac-toe game getting the ball to make it to the counter.

We took the kids to go do bumper cars and they had fun ramming into each other’s bumper car. In the concierge area we saw that what I called the Bonanza ranch in day 1 really was called the Ponderosa ranch and we made plans to go see it tomorrow in day 4 along with other sights in Tahoe.

Neal kept asking me when we were buying dinner to take to our room “why are you jacking the Tabasco?” He didn’t seem to get the fact that all those tabasco bottles were ok to take up to your room.

We got up at 8am. Apparently Joel, our night owl was having trouble sleeping (he was wanting to be playing the online game: Diablo). Neal went and found us ice for the trip. I unloaded some pix and from Day 1: see the one from the arcade where Neal and I were playing the Simpsons pinball machine. 

I made this journal entry.

As we were coming into Reno, Nevada, a fire had just started on the side of the road and we speculated that it had been from somebody throwing a cigarette out their window. All along on the trip we saw signs saying that the fire warning was: HIGH. Somebody must not have read the signs we saw.

We arrived in Reno, Nevada and stayed at the Peppermill. The kids enjoyed the pool as there were animatronics (a bear, lion, etc) that came out every hour or two and made sounds and moved. We were pretty tired from all our travelling. The kids enjoyed the jacuzzi in our suite, floating underneath the bubbles. We ordered room service for dinner.

Oh, and yes, we lost more $$ while the kids played for a little bit in the arcade.

We ordered the pay-per-view movie: Anger Management which I didn’t think was as bad as many of the reviews I read. It wasn’t Adam Sandler’s best work, the ending was a bit awkward, but I laughed a few times so I’d give it a B-

We left our home at 1pm and drove 370 miles to the town of Canyonville, Oregon. Along the way we stopped in Centralia to try out a new skate park the kids saw. Sean “beefed it” which means, I found out, to fall on your butt off the skateboard (see pic).We had burgers and shakes at Burgerville.

Back on the road, Kara called the Bonanza ranch the “ponderosa ranch” which gave us all a laugh.

(Update: in day 3 we see a pamphlet which indicates that the Bonanza ranch really is the Ponderosa ranch, so we were wrong. We make plans to visit there in day 4)

We went some 339 miles on a full tank of gas before the gas light came on and we started searching for a gas tank. I gave the lady a $50 bill and she tried to give me $60 worth of change. She corrected her mistake though and all was well.

Next stop Canyonville and the Seven Feathers Indian Casino. We got vid of entering our room (vid) but the lights were kind of difficult to find. We took the kids swimming (pix) and we also sat in the jacuzzi. Then we took the kids to the arcade where Neal won a stick radio (pix). Later on kara and I lost a few $$ in the casino. We got dinner around 11pm at a restaurant inside the casino and Joel spilled Sean’s pop.

We are just piling the family into the car and heading out on our 2nd official family vacation. We’re going to be recording various interesting stops along the way and taking pictures to make this blog interactive of our trip, so be sure to stop back and see what we have here. Or you can just use the RSS file and syndicate in your favorite headline viewer. Cya soon!

If I ever get to Louisiana — and my intention is to get there someday — Avery Island will be my very first stop. I will want to tour the place where they make my favorite sauce: Tabasco. I put that on everything that isn’t sweet: burgers, pizza, steak, fries, potatoes, vegetables, etc. I don’t do it on anything gross like ice cream or put it in my drinks or anything. It is not unusual for me to use one of the smallest bottles in a single setting. In the picture you’ll see me holding a Tabasco scratch card that my wife saw and just had to get me. As I was mentioning here that I think collecting is cool, I’m going to start collecting Tabasco-related items. Maybe I’ll start one of the first Tabasco blogs and update it whenever I find something Tabasco-related. I just Googled Tabasco and came up with plenty of sites to check out. I wonder who else that is stopping by has food fetishes. Click the comments link and tell me about it. Don’t forget your blog URL if you have one.

(source: web-user.co.uk ) PayPal scam/scumbag alert! A lesson to watch your email for misleading or deceptive “requests for information” — no legitimate organization would ever email you and say to visit a different website URL to enter in your registration information that is “temporarily unavailable”. This has scam written all over it. I got an email that looked pretty authentic from PayPal but the email said the system was down and when I went to PayPal all was there, also the domain was different. I did a whois check and the domain had nothing to do with the real PayPal. Be more than a little cynical with email these days.

(source: kvbc) The Paris casino in Las Vegas has started flying the French flag again. Apparently those flags were irritating some customers during the Iraq war and they were taken down. Imagine that?

While on the casino thing, I’m into collecting stuff mrchipper.com - this guy is a casino chip collector and I’ve added his blog to my blogroll. If I see an interesting blog, new, established, whatever, I will share it here. Sometimes for webmasters trying to figure out what they might blog about this can be helpful as I know seeing what other people are blogging about was helpful for me.

(source: Yahoo): Is it just me or if I’m driving along the road and strike a pedestrian and the person comes up through my windshield the first thing I’m going to do is STOP. This guy apparently drove on for a mile with this guy in his windshield. What’s wrong with these people? If you have a human stuck in your windshield, you don’t drive around town. Of course this isn’t as bad as Chante Mallard who drove home and had sex while a homeless man died stuck in her windshield. So let me just say this loud and clear for all passing motorists: STOP if you get a body stuck in your windshield. Hit that large thing at your feet called a brakepad, seek assistance immediately, and by all means don’t have sex on your mind with some person you met at a party earlier!

A recent study shows that (source: statesmanjournal) 65% of women (1,162 college students surveyed) said they were “regular” or “occasional” players of console, computer and online video games, while only 40% of men responded with the same interest. On socialization:

“Students also said video games helped them socialize on campus. One out of every five students who play games felt “moderately” or “strongly” that gaming helped them make new friends as well as improve existing friendships.”

So I guess one of the secrets to getting laid on college campus today is: “I’ll challenge you to a Quake deathmatch!”

A totally thorough review of the Star Wars Galaxies Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) by Warthog. I found some of the comments in his detailed review very entertaining and useful: 

“To heal the physical wounds, you have to go to a hospital and get healed by a medic of some kind. To heal your mental damage, you have to go to a cantina and listen to the music and watch the dancers.  No, I’m not kidding. You have to go to a bar to heal up your mental damage. Yep. THAT makes total sense. Most people have done so much mental damage to themselves at bars they will never heal. But hey, this IS a fantasy universe.”

Warthog doesn’t give the missions in Galaxies a very high score (D), comparing them to an even more scaled down version of Anarchy Online, he said the interface is pretty complex but allows for many hotkeys and the graphics are killer. Will this create GalaxiesCrack? I have long thought the idea of a Star Wars MMORPG was a good one. Do you think Sony will pull this one off?