Gribblenation

Yesterday, I invited over Doug Kerr, CC Slater, and Chris Jordan for the first WEBSITE SUNDAY. basically, yesterday was all of us in my computer room/office working on websties, doing research, and having a good time. We spent about 10 hours on different things. Website Sunday or weekend has been something Doug and I had been talking about since I moved to New York in February. And with the slow and dead witner months, what a better way to be productive. Doug was able to work on Connecticut Ends, Complete the debut of Massachusetts Ends, and do some Rhode Island page work. Slater worked on another page of his and Doug's trip to Philadelphia last month, and I, while in the midst of doing laundry and making lunch and dinner for everyone, started on South Carolina but suffered writers block and decided to do some adds to the Georgia, Missouri, and Tennessee galleries . CJ left early since he was feeling ill. It was definitely a productive day (more after the update info) as we t...

How I go about updating the website is very simple, I do a state at a time and between the states a gallery or a feature update. It turns out to be about a state a month. Which is fine as hobby time is mainly set to weekends and some evenings when I am on a roll. The order is simple: SC-NC-VA-WV-PA and start again. In between, those states is when I usually do a gallery update or add vacation photos etc. It's been how I have done updates for about, I think 2-3 years now. The amount varies as sometimes you get flooded with items from a state other times you don't. It is very streaky. An example is for a while I was getting a lot of Alabama and Georgia gallery shots, so it seemed every few weeks there was another eight photos in Georgia and four for Alabama in between state updates. If it is a lean material update in photos (since it is a photo driven site), it does give me more time to add to existing pages or do something more research specific. I may reorganize a page, add map...

What's next? I officially announced the completion of PA State Route Ends today. After almost five years and who knows how many photos, announced updates, and contributors, the project is finished, for now. Of course, there will be some new designation added Monday and I'll have a missing route. But seriously, I'm very proud that the project is done, and very thankful to all those who have help make it a success and very popular. I started PA Ends two months after I introduced North Carolina Ends. I had thought that NC Ends would be finished much quicker than PA and that I would be lucky to really get contributions living so far away, and that it would take a lot of time to get anything outside of SWPA where I grew up. That changed when the Bees started to send multitudes of ends. Many of times I would check my e-mail after I got home from work, and get about 20 e-mails of ends from them. It was amazing, andthey really are the ones who kicked started the whole project. By ...

Was working the weekend on a term paper for school, "Rhetoric in Homer's Odyssey ." This literature class has been something I wanted to take at my alma mater for a few years, and it has been a good test to see how willing I am to go forward with an MBA in the future. Anyways, I wasn't able to go anywhere or work on much this weekend, so here are a few quick links of other road blogger's for your enjoyment. The Georgia Roadgeek - Steve Williams' notes on the highways and doings in Georgia serves as the model for my own. Filpus Roadgeek - Dave Filpus' road trip blog was the first road blog I came across over a year and a half ago. His road notes serves as the template for my road trip reports. I'll have more later in the week, I promise!

One of the fortunate things about being a buyer is that you get to travel for work, whether to visit locations, trade shows, plant tours etc. In 2005, besides moving from North Carolina to New York to assist in the start-up of our new district purchasing office, I've been fortuante to go on two work trips, Louisville, KY in June and Orlando, FL in early November. Sometimes during these trips you are able to do/see/experience things you normally wouldn't be able to do, whether by means of affordibility, vacation time, or distance. In Lousiville, I was able to go to Churchill Downs and the Louisville Slugger Museum. In Orlando, I was able to take the ' Rookie Course ' of the Richard Petty Driving Experience . Disney has its own special track that is exclusive for the experience...so it's a minor downfall as all the other 'Experience' locations are on tracks where racing occurs. The track is a one and a half mile tri-oval. The experience begins with a few quest...