My Various Random Ramblings

Parkhopping (verb): The insane act of trying to stuff more things into your day than possible. Pushed by Disney because…?
Today was my first actual attempt at professional park hopping. Before I had just done the amateur switch at closing to somewhere else. Today was my first time visiting 3 parks in less than 6 hours. Parked at Epcot, monorailed over to Magic Kingdom, monorailed back, walked to my car, went back in the park, walked back out to my car, drove to MGM, walked in, walked, walked, walked, finally found the prop shop, realized it was closed, and headed back to guest services. Why? To collect as many free passholder lithographs in one day as possible. (The coupons expire next week, and mine arrived this week) What I do not understand is the actual point of park hopping. Did Disney create it to start marketing to ADD prone Americans? Is it meant to appeal to people with no time so they can do more? The whole irony of park hopping is that less is done. A park hop takes at least 20 minutes, involving waiting and riding two trams, and drive time. From my experience, buses are even slower. Instead, more could be done staying in one park. If you are on a multiday vacation, relax. There is no need to get all the major attractions done in one day. Even if you are on a one day vacation, make the most of it. Don’t waste your time jumping around and doing extra walking. With the way Disney parks are designed, there is always a bit of a main street to walk down in every park. There is distance to help seperate you from the rest of the world, and when you hop, you have to travel this distance. And the worst crime: Hopping to/from Magic Kingdom. Because of the 7 Seas Lagoon, you lose even more time. If you are hopping midday, there are also less monorails running, upping your travel time once more. Ignore the Disney marketing, save money on your park tickets, and have a better vacation. Don’t park hop.

Today I had my first experience with Disney customer service. It was not positive, but they did fix the problem.

I called (407)560-PASS to attempt to figure out why I have never received the Mickey Monitor and the corresponding lithograph coupons. First off, there is no menu option for existing passholders to contact guest relations, so I punched 0. After at least 5 transfers, I finally got to the right person. They checked my information and for some reason I had not been marked to receive Mickey Monitor. They said they fixed it and I should receive the appropriate issue in a couple of weeks. That’s great and all except that the coupons expire next week. I ask what he can do to get me the coupons by Saturday or if I can pick them up. Nothing. I ask to speak to a supervisor with more power, and he says he is out. Now I called again, punched 0, and am currently on hold waiting for them to fix it. Ok, now they said the best thing I could do was fill out the contact form on the website. I asked for a supervisor, and he is being much more helpful. Mr. Supervisor said he is putting one in the mail for me today, and I should receive it before Saturday.

For anyone else’s future reference, call and ask for guest services. If needed, request a supervisor.

So I wanted to get the proper format for the psych IA. While not having a 100% guarantee, this should work and should make the table of contents easier (just put anything you want in the table of contents as “Heading 1″ and make sure to update the field by right clicking on it, hit “update field” and select “update entire field”). Of course, you need to put your own candidate number and title page.

IA Template

I decided to start a collection of random status messages people have set on their IM:

• Oh to be alone.
  Them: it’d be nice not to have to deal with people for a while
  Them: people, hw, no sleep, other people’s opinions always trumping mine, etc.
  Them: i’m sooooooooo living alone asap
  Them: as soon as i can pay the rent by myself, by myself will i be
• defending the nifty
• Happy
• trevor get the file
• I love you!!!
• Kenneth? Who me?
• Confound the Law of Expanding Homework!This accursed law which declares that an assignment will, under all circumstances, take exactly the amount of time one has to complete it. Can we have no peace of mind? What type of world do we live in when procrastinators are rewarded with less work? Curse IB!
• brb.
• taking a survey on clothes and getting paid for it!
• nhs form thing

• Necesito practicar….
               ___
     ________/ / Piano
  /________\__\
  |____________| ____
  || || || | |
  y mi espanol.

• Food

• House

• W.W.B.D.
  What would Bach do?
  He’d go practice Partita No.2 in D minor, 1st mvt.

• When I’m alone in my room sometimes I stare at the wall/ and in the back of my mind I hear my conscience call/ Telling me I need a girl who’s as sweet as a dove/ for the first time in my life, I see I need love/ There I was giggling about the games…

And then you have the people with old away messages that applied last week:

• study for calc

Have any guesses on the personalities of the people with these statuses? Or at least their gender?

Even though I hate MySpace, I am making an attempt at using it. This blog has now been setup to automatically post a copy to my MySpace profile in an attempt to show people what a real blog looks like. And this way, I never even have to see the MySpace interface! Also if anyone knows of a WordPress plugin that will allow me to crosspost to another WP blog, tell me about it!