This is a great deal guys, I just had to share it!  JetBlue is offering you 30 days to fly anywhere they fly for $500!  Yes, there are some restrictions, like dates and taxes when flying international.  But this means that I could fly from Austin to LA, hang out for a week, then fly to Puerto Rico for a week and a half, then up to New York, then over to Seattle to visit my bro for a bit (although I think he’s in Guam at that time) and then back home for only $500!  That’s crazy awesome!  You do have to travel between Tuesday, September 7, 2010 and Wednesday, October 6, 2010, but still if you can take the time off, I say go for it!

This is for all you workoholics who’ve never been to Europe and can’t seem to find the time off. Here’s a quick 8 day trip to London and Paris for only $599. That’s right $599 for flight, hotel, and breakfast. 3 days in London and 3 in Paris. Hope you find this link useful, I know you’ll find it tempting.

http://www.travel-ticker.com/details.jsp?encId=1l90sx6hcb5uhf5n3u7g

Another year of life gone by.  Has it been a good one?  Did I do it right?  Will I look back in the future and say, “yeah, that was a good year”?  I think so.  Let’s see what happened over this year… but first!  New Years resolutions.

For 2010, I’m not resolving to do much cause I’ve already got so many other things on my list. But two additions are these:
1.) I resolve to play at least one round of golf.  Dianne and I went to a golfing range in LA and it was a lot of fun, so I’d like to try it out on the real deal.
2.) Eat one salad item ever day, every other week.  This means, the first week, I don’t have to, but the next week, I have to have a salad every day for that week.  Then the next week I don’t have to but still can if I want.  The reason I’m doing this is because the food experiment I did last year was not enough.  The affects of it lasted a few months and then I started eating less veges again.  I don’t think I eat unhealthily, but it’s always good to keep things like this in check before a problem actually arises.  So, it’s a resolution.

As for last year, I started out the year in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; not a bad place to start it out.  I had many adventures all over southeast Asia, and even got some snowboarding in when I came home in Tahoe, Park City, and others.  Saw some great bands at both Austin South by Southwest and Austin City Limits in October; not to mention the mudfest ACL became.  I journeyed to Australia to see what’s downunder and saw a croc jump up out of the water.  I met some fun people and dated some very interesting women.  I started a company called Happy Ugg Boots with one of them. I am now in what is the longest serious relationship I’ve had for quite some time: over 3 months now! with a girl named Rosario who I met a few years back at a friends party.  She’s a lot of fun to hang around.

I went to Vegas several times, twice with Rosario and saw some amazing Circ de Soleil shows.  As far as gambling goes, I think I evened out over the year, so no big money there.  I did a show on stage called Mortified: two nights the first time and once in the Alamo Ritz theater downtown, which was awesome! Even got a tv spot live on the Austin Eye.

I only worked 30 weeks out of the year for my travel job which left a lot of time open to travel for fun, hang with friends, and visit my parents which I’ve done a lot of this year; plus I got to see my grandma, aunt and uncles over Christmas which was great!  I’ll prolly have to work more in 2010 though as the paycheck for 30 weeks is not quite up to par for my bank account.  Done a lot of wakeboarding this year and learned how to switch goofy and do an air 180.

Saw some plays in the first half of the year and got to know some of the theatre crowd in Austin but not nearly well enough.  Would love to do more with them.  Had visitors come in from out of town, including Didi from Holland, and Law from LA who was here for SXSW and the documentary he worked on along with three brothers won best overall!  Which is awesome!  I donated blood for the first time EVER and will continue to do it once a quarter, but not in winter.  Found out my blood type is A+, which means I shouldn’t eat much red meat and that’s fine by me, not a steak man.

My parents are doing well in their new house and were able to sell the old one this year.  So having all that new money meant a shopping spree of new furniture and other items.  Guess who has two thumbs and gets the old furniture.  THIS GUY!  My brother and his family are also doing well.  Joshua will be around more in 2010 to see Katrina grow up (they’re poddy training right now), and Vaiva’s got a little boy in the oven.  Timer goes off in a few weeks!

I love Austin and my friends here, but still miss my LA friends.  No man knows any greater friends then those.  I always knew I had found some diamonds in the rough and am often jealous of their activities together and longing to join them… then I go rock climbing and try to be happy with where I am at, or think of ways to make trips over.

As far as status quo, both houses are holding up and retain tenants, although this next year will be a big change for the northern house as I’m going to start renting it per room.  Hope that works out, otherwise I’m hosed.  So here’s to the New Year, may it not be a year of hosing!

A traveler named Danny Cameron found a camera in Greece full of travel photos. He wondered around Mykonos looking for the owner to no avail. But upon his return home, he started a facebook group which grew exponentially until the chain finally reached the camera’s owner and the camera was returned. It’s really an amazing story of using the technologies we take for granted every day as a way to go something good. If you’re not a traveler, then perhaps you don’t know what it feels like to lose a camera with thousands of memories on it (the downfall of 4gig cards), but it’s like getting a piece of your life back; like waking up from amnesia and having those treasured memories to last you a life time.

I, with my horrible memory, especially understand. I lost a camera on a Peruvian bus once. Luckily, I had just changed the card out the day before, so I only lost 4 pictures. I have since attempted to fuse those pictures in my head, but only one lasted and all the faces are a blur but one. Sidenote: it’s kinda funny, but all I remember is the middle person, everyone else is just faded. And I was upset about that for a day but relieved that it could’ve been worse. i can only imagine what a thousand would’ve done to me. Arg, but I won’t, too painful.

Danny has since closed the group, but here’s the final description he posted. It really hits the mark:

“Congratulations everyone, the camera owner has been found .. thanks everyone for taking part … unbelievable effort. I am amazed and in awe of you all.

We can all leave the group now.. nothing more to see here … pop the champagne !!

Once again, nice work.. Cheers!

How did the story end? The good will of 200,000 people created a stir that rippled into an office in London, where a group of French people were recognised, one being the owner.

In the end it was the help of all that shrunk the world.

How did it start? On my travels in late summer (northern 2009), I found a camera that was full of someones memories, and I want to get it back to them. I tried walking around the main town of Mykonos, in the Greek Isles, the day after I found it, but I didn’t come across anyone recognisable. So this was the last shot.

When I returned to Australia, still with a lost camera in hand, I decided to try and see whether the world of online resources could track down the owner. I have seen groups on social network sites grow exponentially and thought that would be my best bet to reaching the widest audience.

I invited my friends to then invite their friends to the group, who in turn would invite their friends to the group. In theory, with six degrees of separation– the whole world can be reached, and I thought that though that thought is mind boggling, it would be interesting to see if at least the whole online community of the social networking site could be reached, or at least enough of them to find the owner of the camera.

The group started October 17 – 60 people had joined by October 18, 1200 by October 24, 18,000 by October 30, 60,000 by October 31, 120,000 by October 22, 235,000 by November 2. The group had gone “viral” and was growing exponentially.

All it really required was for people to click one button and join the group and then pass it on.

Along the way people were joining the group and really responding to the good natured honesty of the situation.

One lady wrote on the wall and said: “I wish there are more people like you in the world. My husband happened to lose his camera while we are on holiday in Hong Kong. Sometimes, people just don’t know what a camera would mean to a person.”

Another said: “Thanks so much for caring about a stranger– its inspiring to know that some people in this world are as kind as you!”

Another said: “This group put the biggest smile on my face, the world needs more people like you. Good luck!!”

This was a typical sentiment.

But it wasn’t just a random act of kindness on my behalf; everyone who joined the group was contributing. It was the team effort that caused the group to be so strong in its good intentions. And it was a massive mobilization of virtuous people. I was amazed and in awe of them all.

It was on the Australian morning of November 3 that I received word from the crew of people that were in one of the photos. They were amazed at the human chain that had been formed to track them down.

I couldn’t have done it without 235,000 other people though, and a grand and unintended outcome of it all, I believe is that I have given people encouragement that honesty still exists in the world, and so hopefully I have inspired the people on the group to be more considerate in their daily lives, because being kind is a great human trait and there are one thousand people doing one thousand nicer things than just returning a camera.

As a people and with plenty of good will, support, and encouragement we can achieve anything!

Cheers to all who joined ..”