Whirly Dome Orlando, What an awesome place!!!

So a couple of weeks ago my 11 year old brother came to visit me in Orlando.  Of course there are tons of things to do, but it get expensive really fast!  Of course we took a visit to the Magic Kingdom one day and hit the beach on another, but I decided to look for something new and exciting.  I had heard about the Whirly Dome before, but I didn't know a whole lot about it other than it involved some sport where you drive around in bumper cars.  So I hit the internet and did a little research and I lucked out! I found out that for $25 on both Thursdays (which it was at the time) and Sundays you could get 4 hours of unlimited whirly ball and laser tag!  So we hopped right on it and were on our way 30 minutes later.  When we arrived at Whirly Dome we were immediately impressed!  There were 2 whirly ball arenas a laser tag course and a bunch of arcade games as well as pool and air hockey.  There is also 2 nice bar areas and they had a good selection of food as well as beer and liquor.  We jumped right into a game of whirly ball and fell in love instantly.  So basically you have 2 teams of up to 5 people, you're either on team red or team yellow.  You drive around in bumper cars and you have a scoop that you use to throw around a wiffle ball.  The goal is to fling the ball at the goal which is similar to a basketball goal without the actual hoop.  The game is 10 minutes long and the team that scores the most goals wins the game.  The game was an absolute blast!  racing around and smashing into opponents was very gratifying and hearing the alarm go off when you scored a goal was great! There was some frustration involved however, because sometimes if you didn't hit the goal hard enough or in the right spot the goal would not be counted!  That happened several time throughout our games, but didn't really effect how much fun that we had when it was all said and done!  With each game we got more and more comfortable and started adding more and more strategy.  My little brother loved to be the bruiser focusing on disrupting the other teams scoring by smashing into their cars, it was hilarious to watch!  All in all I would give Whirly Ball an A+ for fun factor.  We also played laser tag, air hockey, and played hot shot basketball and while fun, they are all pretty standard so I won't really go into a review of those!  I will say that we loved whirly ball so much that we came back 3 days later and had just as much fun!  If you want to go on any of the days other than Thursday or Sunday I recommend looking for a groupon! we found a deal that included 4 tickets for whirlyball/laser tag for $25 and that's almost as good as the unlimited deal when you figure out how many games you can actually fit in anyways.  With all of that being said I highly recommend checking out Whirly Dome on I-Drive for a fun new experience!!!

Cat Rant

Why do people have cats?  Seriously, I don’t get it!  I love dogs, not so much that I would dress my dog up, or talk to it in funny voices, or instagram 250 photos of it a day, but they’re cool.  Dogs can do trick, fetch stuff, and scare away intruders, what’s not to like?  Cats on the other hand, are completely worthless!  They walk around like they own the place, almost like they feel like they are entitled.  On top of that I swear that even when I’m in a room with 100 other people, some how some way cats find me! I’m the biggest cat hater of all and it’s like they love torturing me by rubbing all up on me, disgusting!  Their only redeeming quality is that they are smart enough to shit in a box!  Also, I find cats to be extremely un-loyal.  A cat will get out of the house and show back up 2 years later expecting you to care now that they have contracted who knows how many infections and diseases. That leads me to another thing! Cat’s take forever to die!  How many people do you know with cats that seem to be fricken 25 years old and are completely out of it for the last 10 years on earth.  They look all sick and mope around and crap or vomit on everything, it’s vile!  And then when they finally do kick the bucket they do it behind the couch and you don’t find em for 3 days.  There’s a reason there is so many stray cats as opposed to stray dogs, cat’s are mean and unloyal!  Cat’s suck! That is All.

It’s not Luck!

So it’s no secret that I like to have fun.  I like to travel as much as possible, going to concerts, party, going to theme parks, and generally just enjoying life.  I have been pretty successful at filling my life with excitement.  I get bored really easily so it’s almost like fun is an addiction that I absolutely just need to fill.  With that said, there’s one thing that people say to me that makes me want to break things. People say to me “you’re so lucky, I wish I could do all of those things!”  It literally drives me nuts!  I find it downright offensive when any of the things I do are called luck. Luck? No I didn’t win the lottery, I’m not a millionaire, I didn’t even find a golden ticket in my wonka bar!  All of the fun things that I do that they consider “luck” are part of decisions that I have made, often times calculated decisions.  Now with that said, I am lucky that I have flight benefits (my mom works for delta), but previous to that I did have an airline job myself for two years.  So yeah it’s nice that she works there, but if she didn’t I’d still find a way to feed my travel addiction, like get another airline job myself, or work out deals with my old work friends.  If you want something, you just have to make it happen!  One other thing people often use as an excuse not to have fun is time, they don’t have time off of work blah blah blah. Well that’s why I do what I do, as of right now I work marketing events and promotions as my main source of income (there is a link for my guide to working promotions at the top of this page).  That work is always contracted for a certain amount of time, which allows me to pick and choose what I want to work and allows me to leave nice chunks of time in my schedule (they usually pay pretty well too).  Also, I know how to find work like this all over the country, so a lot of times my trips might also involve me working as well. 

In addition to working events and promotions, I work seasonally for both Walt Disney World and Universal Studios.  Working jobs seasonally allows me to pick up hours when I’m in Florida, but also gives me a tremendous amount of flexibility that a full-time or even part-time job don’t allow.  Just this week I work at both them parks and have a promotion I’m working.  So I mean it’s pretty simple, you decide what you want and then you make decisions that allow you to do just that.  You wanna travel but you think it costs too much? Get an airline job! You like going to Disney World but you think it’s too expensive? Get a seasonal job there and work 150 hours a year and you get in free for the entire year! Need free time? Consider contract work or work a couple of seasonal jobs!  It takes a little research and a little work, but it’s not rocket science, and it most definitely is NOT LUCK!!!

The Value of Being Liked

My work experience has led me to write this little post that I'm calling, "The Value of Being Liked."  I'm talking more specifically about the value of being liked in your workplace and even more specifically than  that about the value of being liked as a leader. Over the past few years I feel like I have gotten more and more observant and critical of leaders/management at work.  I've been at some jobs where I have been put in a leadership position, and many others where I'm looking up to someone else.   What I think I've discovered is that being liked by the people that work for you is important!  I think a lot of leader think that in order to demand respect from their workers, they need to almost be feared.  They seem to almost think that the risk of punishment is the best motivator.  While I think that staying out of trouble probably does motivate a lot of people to some degree, I don't think it is necessarily the best approach.  What I have found is that if you develop good relationships with people, then they are more likely to want to do a good job for you! 

 I know from experience on both sides that this is often true.  If I'm working for someone that doesn't treat me with respect, I'm usually much more likely to just do the bare minimum amount of work to avoid getting in trouble.  Look at it from the employees perspective, would you feel worse screwing over someone that you like? or someone that you don't? I think the answer to that is pretty obvious.  I can say 100% that I'm going to work harder for someone that I like, period.  While for some that may sound wrong that's just the way it is! It's not to say I won't work hard anyways, but you can always work a little harder, and I will go "Above and Beyond," for someone that is kind and shows me proper respect.  When I've had positions in which I've lead I've found this to be very true. I've worked with a lot of people that have been deemed lazy or grumpy, but I often found that as long as I'm respectful and listen to them when they have something they want to say, that it goes a looooooooooong way.   So next time you are trying to get someone to work hard, instead of scaring them! encourage them, get to know them, every once in a while bend a little bit for them and don't be surprised if they are willing to go out of their way for you!

Nick's Top 10 Walt Disney World Attractions

Rock 'N' Roller Coaster at Disney's Hollywood Studios

I'm sitting here at Minneapolis International Airport waiting to get on a flight to Orlando.  I figured I might as well share my top 10 attractions at Walt Disney World, so here they are!!! tell me if you think I left anything off!!!!

Nick's Top 10 Walt Disney World Attractions

1. Aerosmith Rock 'N' Roller Coaster
2. Expedition Everest
3. The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror
4. Toy Story Midway Mania
5. Spalsh Mountain
6. Space Mountain
7. Soarin
8. Kilimanjaro Safaris
9. Test Track
10. Pirates of the Caribbean 

Random Vegas Trip on an hour's notice? Why not?

So I’ve been to Vegas before, but I always wanted to be out there when they hold the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES).  Every year electronics companies and industry people from all over the world descend upon sin city to show off of and check out all of the new technology that it is on the horizon.  I’m talking everything from new TVS, videogames, cars, all kinds of stuff!  All the new stuff gets demonstrated and prototypes are shown off, you get to see stuff that may be coming out next week, or in 10 years, or sometimes stuff that will never even actually be released at all.  The convention is huge, and I’ve followed it for years but never actually attempted to go.

As you may or may not know, for the past year and a half I’ve been working different events and promotions for different companies.  I pick up random work promoting different stuff, it’s pretty fun and I can find work pretty much anywhere in the U.S. for short periods of time, and for big conventions like CES there are usually a ton of opportunities.  I had already flirted with the idea of working it last year and I knew I had some friends doing it this year so I applied to a couple of things out there.  I was kinda lazy and only applied for like 2 things; of course I didn’t hear anything until after day 1 of CES was already in the books.  This was a Tuesday night and they wanted me to come down to work weds-fri, but since there were no more flights that night I had to tell them that I couldn’t do it unless I could just work thurs-fri.  And of course they didn’t hit me back up until like 830pm on weds night.  But I said what the hell? Let me check flights really quick, sure enough there was another flight at 830 that night. I told them that I had to contact my friend to see if I could crash in his hotel room, and that I’d call them back when I knew.  I told em if they find anyone else first, go ahead and hire him or her.  I successfully scrambled to make arrangements and called back 20 minutes later, unfortunately they found somebody else.  But then I thought about it for a minute, why not just go for fun and try to check out CES? I literally stuffed my backpacked with a couple changes of close, and within 10 minutes I was off to the airport.

Opening Statement

Miami Beach 2010

Today I decided to finally start a blog about my life and adventures.  I fly around a lot and I figure I might as well start documenting it in writing both for my friends and family, but also for myself.  Hopefully doing so will keep me inspired to keep my life fresh, spontaneous, and exciting!  I'm still not sure what I will and won't write about, I suppose we'll just have to see what this evolves into!!!!