#FollowFriday for 11/13/2009

I am sorry folks but I will not be doing my normal #FollowFriday this week, but I promise I will do them tomorrow, so stay tuned! I just have way to many things piled up on my plate today to work on my #FollowFriday blog, but I will complete tomorrow. For the time being please see these links for the past #FollowFriday mentions that I have! These are always great people to follow anytime!

Week of 11/06/2009

http://joshbiggs.wordpress.com/2009/11/06/followfriday-10-must-follows-for-1162009/

Week of 10/30/2009

http://joshbiggs.wordpress.com/2009/10/30/weekly-top-ten-to-follow-on-twitter-103009-2/

Week of 10/23/2009

http://joshbiggs.wordpress.com/2009/10/23/my-first-top-10-tweeps-list-and-introduction-2/

And again stay tuned for tomorrow as I will make my mentions then! Thanks guys and sorry in advanced, but you guys are all awesome!

Sometimes You Can’t Take Things To Seriously

It has occurred to me that there are times when things are said that, although you are irritated with someone it doesn’t mean that you don’t care for the person or dislike the person at all. I have good friends that I get irritated with on a regular basis but it doesn’t mean that I dislike them. If you have known me long enough I tend to try and find humor in all situations, especially situations in where I may be irritated. I think everyone can relate to someone getting one your nerves or even being bugged by things people do.

Veteran’s Day

Tomorrow is Veteran’s Day, a day to remember and a day to honor! Although we may all have difference of opinions on wars that are fought but one thing that will stand in common is that we need to support the ones that protects our freedoms! I have discovered that Applesbee’s is giving away free dinners to our Vet’s on Veterans day, you just simply need to show proof of military and you will receive your free dinner.  http://www.applebees.com/vetsDay/default.aspx

My Absence on my Blog

I know that I have not blogged since the beginning of the month, but I have entered into a period of time at work that draws a lot of attention from me and requires me to be a bit more focused. August is also the dog days of summer as the kids get ready to return back to school and my wife starts her classes up again for her Nursing degree. August also marked the last month for me before I started classes again, but since I graduated with my degree last spring I am not preparing for my return to the books this year! This is something that I am looking forward to as I will be able to spend more time blogging and interacting with tweeps on Twitter. I am also working on Networking and will be attending several Job Fairs this winter in hopes to start planning for my new future. A future away from my current employer who I have spent 8 years with. I will also begin preparing to write my first of a few Project Management Exams to obtain my associate credentials as a Project Manager and begin my journey into the field of Project Management.

Just Ranting

So recently I had the lovely experience of going up to the car dealership and enjoy the pleasure of car shopping! Gosh I really love car shopping, its just an experience that I don’t think I could really live without! Well the reason that I had to go up to the dealership in the first place is because our millage was up on the lease. This is not to be confused with the lease being up by the way… Yeah, that’s right, we drove the car too much and the last time this happened it ended up costing me a ton of extra money; so to avoid that, I thought I would be smart about the millage this time and just turn the vehicle back into GM early.

Well I spent most of my afternoon looking at vehicles and haggling with the salesman over different vehicles until finally we both agreed on a car with the options and pricing that I wanted. Turns out it was the same style of car that we had leased. No big deal really, its a nice car and for a family it is roomy. The vehicle that we decided on is a Chevy Impala. The car is nice, we even decided to take it up to our cottage the next day to get the car broke in.

We’ve had the car about a week now, no complaints and it even seems like it drives better than the last one. I am just starting to think, gosh what a great deal, got out of the lease, and we are buying what I hope is the last car for a long time. Little did I know, a little envelope was waiting for me in the post. Yesterday when I went and checked the mail, there was letter from GMAC, no big deal, I thought that it was probably a thank you letter from GMAC for leasing a vehicle from them. Well I wasn’t too far off, they did thank me, but then there were charges for vehicle damage. They are charging me over $1,000 for road damage the vehicle sustained. Like I said, I thought I was doing the smart thing for turning in the car early, as they only charged me for the millage overage and no damage the last time. That bill only came to about $900 and the funny part is the car had been rear ended and there were a ton of scratches. Well I guess they figured that they were going to charge you one way or another.

It is very frustrating and the worst part is the letter stated that this may not be the final charge as they still have to sell the vehicle and because of economic conditions we may be responsible for the remaining balance of the vehicle if the vehicle sells for less than the value of the vehicle is worth. Its amazing that they include in a letter, about economic conditions as though they are the only ones feeling the pinch of the current economic condition. They should look at my 401k! I have lost thousands dollars in the past year and some of it was wrapped up in GM stock that took a beating. So who is responsible for the money that I’ve lost? I think I should be able to send a letter to all of my investments that state: “due to the current economic condition, you may be responsible for the remaining balance of my retirement in the event that I come up short of plan at retirement age!”

Movies (no spoiler)

Took the family to go see Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince, the long awaited release that all Harry Potter fans have been waiting for and to say the least I was just a little disappointed about the movie! Don’t worry I won’t spoil it for you, but I will say that if you can wait for it to come out on video, then I would suggest doing so! Save your money and take your family to dinner instead! If you’ve read the book, then you are really going to be in for a major disappointment as the book this time was much better than the movie, and even though this is the case with all of the movies, it is especially true in this case. I say this because some major action was left out of the movie that I believe should have been added to give the movie the same spunk as the previous Harry Potter movies.

If you go and see the movie and haven’t read the book, I would suggest going back and reading the book, you will be surprised by the amount of detail that was excluded in this movie! I know you are thinking that all books are better than the movie, but at least in previous Harry Potter movies, the major points were included, and though that is the case in this movie, the movie was still rather dry for the lack of action that should have been included. Hopefully for the two-part movie for book 7 will rekindle my love for the Harry Potter movies.