Derek Gallo

Help Me Pay My Loans is a little experiment by Derek Bender (no it is not my alter ego and yes that is really his last name). Bender, as we like to call him, is an excellent designer but to gain his skill level he has racked up a substantial amount of debt from student loans. He has put up a little sight to see just how much money he can generate through donations from the online community.

If you have some change to spare and feel like helping him out check it out

Everyone else is posting in response to Alex’s Spirit Airlines nightmare so I figured I would too. The truth is that airlines just don’t seem to care. Its like they know you have to get where your going so they can do a crappy job and you will still be forced to use them.

Recently, I have had to travel up to the Pittsburgh Steelers stadium to install a kiosk we had developed for them. We flew U.S. Airways. They lost our baggage on the way up which happen to have our hardware to perform the install. Great, no big deal, this thing happens from time to time and luckily we were arriving a day early so we still had time to perform the install. The real problem came with the airline’s customer service in helping us retrieve our baggage.

After going into the lost baggage office and reporting our claim they discovered that our baggage didn’t make the layover. They couldn’t figure out where it ended up however. They refused to accommodate us and told us to be on our way and they would call when they located the baggage. Hours went by and no response. We called back and nobody there had any idea about our situation at all. They looked into it and it appeared our baggage was still in D.C. where our layover was. They let us know that it would be put on the next flight up to Pittsburgh and would arrive in a few hours. A few hours went by with no baggage. We called and again, they had no idea of our situation. This time it appeared that our baggage had been shipped all the way back to Orlando! Anyway, we were told they would sort it out and call us back. What do you know, no callback. We called back again and what do you know, THEY HAD NO IDEA OF OUR SITUATION! Now the customer service people were getting frustrated with us and just trying to get us off of the phone. At one point we called and got immediately sent to the hold queue. We had another person call while we were on hold and they immediately got through, what the hell. After a day and a half of getting a different answer as to where our baggage was every time we called, we finally received our baggage. U.S. Airways would not do anything to accommodate our misfortunes. Sterling even had to reschedule return his return flight to stay late and finish the install because they delayed us starting and they continued to be difficult even while charging ridiculous fees to switch flights.

Cory, Chris and I attended the monthly Likeminds Orlando meetup for July. Overall it went well, although we couldn’t stay the whole time. Damn those work from home guys not having to be into the office at 9:00am. Topics ranged from college stories to industry news to even hunting. There were some cool new faces and returning visitors as well. Its always great to get out and meet others in the community and I am looking forward to next month. Thanks to Alex for organizing the event. Maybe next month we can switch up the location to a Starbucks? I like their coffee better hehe. Also, if anyone has a contact list of everyone at the meetup I would much appreciate it.

Hat tip to DYNAMIC BREAKS. I found this online radio station on shoutcast. They play breaks and electro. The website lacks much to do but the design is really nice. Its all about the radio station though. It is rare that I find an online electronic music station that pretty much every song I like but this one does it. I have been out of the electronic/dance music scene for a while and forgot just how good the music can be till I came across this station. I will surely be tuning in more. If you like breaks and/or electro check it out.

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Originally uploaded by drdgucf.

New years this year was a bit of a change for me. This is the first new years in 7 years I actually stayed in town. Thats not to say it wasn’t a great time however.

We started off at Alex and Kathryn’s new condo downtown. Congratulations to the both of them on their recent engagement and beautiful place to live. The night followed to dinner and drinks at Wallstreet with many old friends and some new. New years never ceases to amaze me with how everyone loosens up so much including myself. Thanks to everyone who was out for a pretty drama free night, office afterparty not withstanding

So I am finally back from Barcelona where we went on business. After resting from 26 hours of travel and catching the Flu pretty bad I look back on the trip. We were there providing and supporting our MeetingsConnect NQuest Browser for ACTE at their European conference. Overall, the conference went great. Attendees were very happy with the programming and education at the conference and it seemed to be the least stressfull out of the 3 that I have been to. The NQuest Browser performed well and we recieved many compliments by the many users. This year the International Bussiness Lounge was sponsered by Iberia Airlines and they were especially pleased with our product. Our product is centered around sponsorship branding and they recieved tremendous exposure through it. We still need to crunch the data that we logged but I am sure that the numbers will prove Iberia’s investment to be worthy. We only came across very isolated problems with a couple of attendees’ webmail systems but gethered the info we need to fix them. We also gethered many ideas for additional features and improvments we hope to rollout by the next conference which is in six months in Miami.

Outside from the conference, Barcelona proved to be a very beautiful city. The architecture in that city is like none I have seen before. Hardly any of the buildings take a traditional shape. Barcelona is also home to one of the greatest yet primarily unknown architects, Atoni Gaudi. I was able to experience several of his works first hand. La Casa Batllo is what looks like another apartment building in the middle of the city. The outside architecture stands out however with curvy lines instead of straight and balconies that are shaped as skulls. The next that we saw and probably most amazing was the Templo de Segrada Familia. This is a beautiful cathedral that is still under construction (the only one in the world that still is). The design is amazing and hard to explain. They are currently finishing the main central tower that will stand over 500 feet high with a huge cross on top of it. The last place we saw was the Park Guell. This is a large park designed by Gaudi. One rarely makes a connection between a park and an architect but after visiting this spot you will believe that much design can go into an outdoor park. The feeling you get here is such tranquility and peace and after hiking up the side of the mountain you get the most amazing view of the city and the sea.

We had a lot of fun in Barcelona and some good beer stories have come out of it. There were 2 things I did not like about the city though. It always seem to have bad smell. A smell like stagnant water. You would get gusts of it here and there and it was pretty strong. The other thing was the food. Almost everything there was tapes(many small plates of different finger foods) and seafood. I liked very few of the spanish meals. I can’t remember the last time I was so happy to eat at McDonalds. All in all though the trip was very good and one I will remeber for a long time. I am definatly glad to be home though and resting.

Being that Wallstreet used to be a client they gave us some free tickets to Rumfest as a “parting” gift so to say. Sterling, Darla and I met up with a bunch of friends down there after haggling down the Toyota dealer for Darla’s new car. All in all Rumfest was fun but I was not that impressed. It was kinda like any other night at Wallstreet except there were tents where you could get different rum drinks. It was definatly cheaper than a normal Wallstreet night though!

Correct me if I am wrong but isn’t the purpose of a fest to be able to try different brands of the drink and determine what you like or dislike? The problem with Rumfest is that they give all kind of fruity mixed drinks that are weak and you can barely taste the rum. I think I only confirmed that a lot of sweet drinks just give you an upset stomach. I can’t wait till their next beerfest though. I always have a great time at that and you actually get to figure out which beers you like.

Sterling, Darla and I skipped out on the UCF game on tuesday to go to a concert instead. Hinder, Three Days Grace and Staind were playing at the Hard Rock. The show was really good and one of the better concerts I have been to. Well it had one of the best lineups anyway as far as favorite bands of mine. Hinder, Three Days Grace and Staind all rank up there on my charts. We really wanted to see Hinder and Three Days Grace more though because we have each seen Staind plenty of times. All three bands put on good shows I thought. The only negative I found was that each set was pretty short. Each band only played about 5-6 songs but we enjoyed ourselves until the end of the show when it turned around for me.

Being at that show made me realize how out of shape I really am. I was jumping around alot and after the show we tried to hurry out to beat the crowd. Thats when it hit me. I started having one of the worst asthma attacks I have ever had. I was completely out of breathe and felt like I was breathing through a tiny straw. We had to keep stopping on the way back to the car so I could try to catch my breathe but it wasn’t happening. I was very close to telling Sterling to drive me to the hospital on the way home. Anyone who really knows me knows that I rarely go to the doctor unless it is serious. It had been 3 years since the last time something like that had happened and the time before that I must have been around 10 or 11 years old. I have been trying to get myself back into shape and lets just say that this will be a major catalyst.