As some of you may recall I was asked by an Advantage Rent-A-Car employee if I would have to drive through Arizona to get to Indinapolis two weeks ago. I returned the van yesterday and upon doing so learned the following:

1. The employee had been terminated
2. She should not have rented the van to me in the first place because they don’t cover the states I was driving in
3. I should have been charged an extra day for bringing the car back so late, but she had said it was OK for me to do so
4. Bill, the manager at this branch of Advantage was kind and waved all sorts of things because the gal had been so blatantly unprepared to deal with customers

I’d like to thank Bill for his kind dealings with me since the company could have been firmer on policies (they had my signature on a contract – even if it was a screwy contract) and made me pay out the wazoo. If I’m heading west some time and need a car, I will probably rent with them again because of his great handling of this situation. Of course if I walk into the shop and get asked if Arizona is on the way to Washington then I’m probably going to turn right back around 🙂

Direct From God is a site dedicated to milking people for money whilst they mourn a lost one who died in “The war against terror.” I love God’s grammar, His lack of power and His tone.

I think I’m going to start a competition site called, “Direct From Allah” to help terrorist families who have lost loved ones feel better, of course there’ll be fees and currency conversion charges not to mention complete records in case the FBI ever raids my ‘service.’ NOT!

[Thanks to Robin for the link]

Well, in minutes I’ll be working on things for Alt-N and other clients as I get back to the abnormal routines of consultancy. It’s good to be back home and back in action after a trip, it feels ‘normal.’

Congradulations Ben and Dorine Linn on your new arrival: David Daniel Linn [link to pictures on Ben’s post]! Glad that after all of your sojourning that things got delivered 😉

Well, Yesterday morning my alarm didn’t go off as planned, which set the tone for the day. However, the drive wasn’t too bad. We passed the following:

1. St. Louis traffic [25 minute delay]… possibly from Cardinal’s game
2. An Elvis is Still Alive Evidence Museum
3. A cow loping down a hill out of control
4. Several camels
5. What seemed like millions of cars [Abby lost count after 0]
6. People who got pulled over to alert me to the fact I needed to slow down
7. More Semi’s than you could shake your fist at
8. Zero Starbuck’s in the entire state of Kansas
9. A Kelp farm [not really]
10. Cloverdale and Boonviller [two towns on the way to my grandparents’ in Mendocino – only in the Mid-West this time]
11. A lot of fluids through our mouths and on through our bodies trying to stay awake

And in the end we got home at 12:45. This means that I drove or was ‘on the road’ for 18 hours and 45 minutes. I listened to approximately 6 hours or Veggietales, 2 hours of Paul Simon, 2 hours of John Coltrane, 45 minutes of Crystal Lewis and 30 minutes of Audio Adrenaline. It rained for about 5 hours of our trip which slowed us down further. I also drove for hours and hours of my life through Kansas passing unnumbered museums and ‘porn towns’. Jessica and I dubbed these ‘stops’ porn towns because there was one house and one building and the house housed the loser who ran the building that housed porn.

I could tell that the financial state of America was still not great because of the number of ‘Ad Here’ billboards that were looking for clients to offer their wares via huge posters. One set of billboards that I did notice something good about (I had not noticed this before this trip) was the billboards for Cracker Barrel. Their approach seemed to always be the following:

1. Place a billboard relatively close to the upcoming Cracker Barrel restaurant, usually within 20 minutes of arrival… keeps your mind moderately fresh with the idea of ‘Country Cooking’ or ‘Comfort. Food.’
2. Always have the billboard display clear, simple directions at the bottom in easy to read lettering
3. Always have an easy to see sign in the air as you approach the town/city

This little bit of marketing and clear thinking impressed me. Our waitress there at lunch was cheerful and glad to help, she smiled and laughed several times making it easy to interact with her when needed. Clearly a good game plan for a business even if the food there is not always what I’m after. The distracted ‘store’ at the front is brilliant and probably garners Cracker Barrel multiple millions of dollars extra every year.

OK, I’m done now 🙂 I’m going to head out to church soon, which I didn’t think I’d get to do today.

This morning my alarm didn’t go off when I expected it to, so we’re getting onto the road late 🙁 I set it for 5:00 AM ROCKY MOUNTAIN TIME [We’re in Indiana]. Such is life. We’ll still get in at a reasonable hour. I’ll let you know when that happens.

Happy Birthday Karen! Sorry we’re on the road on your birthday, but maybe having your family back to yourself is a good present 🙂

Randy, Jessica and Abigator

A lot of people are starting to use or at least download StatTraq, which is cool. If you’re included in this group please email me and let me know if you’ve got any suggestions or feature requests. I’ve been on vacation for a week and when I get back next week an update will be released shortly. I’ve added a few features to the Summary page including:

1. Re-arranging the layout to allow for clearer data presentation
2. Adding the title to the page views section and making them links to the article itself
3. Added linke to Google, Yahoo! and MSN to the Search Term results to allow you to click on the search term and see what gets returned by the corresponding search engine

There’s still more to do, but I’m excited about all of the positive responses. Keep your ideas and comments rolling in.