Tag Archives: texas

Travel Texas – State of Texas Travel Guide

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 Tired of hanging around the house?  Need to explore our great state?  The State of Texas provides a free 272 page full color guide to help you plan your vacation.  The guide offers information on 400 texas cities and attractions.  It also has a special section on lakes and state parks.  You can get the guide at http://www.traveltex.com/travelguide/

TravelTex also offers:

If you are considering traveling to Texas or are a Texas native who wants to see more of your home state go to www.traveltex.com  

Austin Downtown Photo Shoot–Got any Ideas?

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The staff of AroundAustin.com is going to go downtown Friday evening to do a photoshoot.   We’re going to photograph the Austin Energy Building, the Pedestrian bridge and then just wander downtown looking for cool spots to shoot.

Any ideas for a great spot for a picture?  Add it as a comment.  Get specific.  If we get a decent shot we’ll send a print to the person that suggested it.

eLearning Symposium 2008, Austin, Texas

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I spend my days trying to figure out how to improve the productivity of the most valuable part of any organization–it’s people.  I’m excited that we’re having a conference for like minded folks in Austin–usually I get to get on a plane and travel to these conferences.  The elearning Symposium 2008 is on April 23, 2008 at the Doubletree Hotel in Austin.  Speakers include Debby Kalk, Hiram Kuykendall, Hank Jones (yeah he’s a lawyer but he’s also a heckuva musician and a great speaker), and Chris Justice.

The symposium will focus on helping you create cost-effective e-learning programs that help make your folks more productive.  So if you’re an instructional designer, trainer, or just someone your boss is bugging about implementing learning programs go to www.elearningsymposium.com to sign up.  You can save $100 if you do it by April 9th.

CampLIFE! A camp for Gold Star Families

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CampLife! is a charity whose mission is to help families that have lost a parent to the Iraq war.  Today we are interviewing John Gillis, Jr..  He is the the founder and president of CampLIFE!

John, How did charity start?

I enjoyed attending summer camp as a child, and believes that these activities contribute to self-confidence, relationship skills and overall health.  I founded CampLIFE! to provide the camping experience to those who would not normally have that opportunity.

More than 10 million children attend camp annually, from recreational opportunities to the more complex theme camps that serve various groups of children with special needs.  Any child can benefit from the summer camp experience, with children who share some profound loss benefiting even more.  Unfortunately, with fees beginning at $200-$400/week, residential camps are unaffordable for many of the children that could benefit the most.

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Knife Sharpest – Get those Knives Sharp and Safe

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Want to make life more pleasant and a whole lot safer in the kitchen?  Make sure your knives are sharp.  Graham Stuckey of Knife Sharpest has been sharpening knives for over 15 years and he will get you fixed up for a reasonable price  (often while you wait).   I took three kitchen knives in for sharpening on Christmas Eve, after the official closing time, and they were sharpened perfectly in just a few minutes.

Look around while you’re waiting the store offers everything from kitchen knives to fantasy knives–even swords.  If you really get ambitious ask Graham about knife throwing lessons. 

One thing, this is a small business that often has one person minding the store.  It’s not an ultra-clean yuppified store.  Cool stuff, cool service. 

Knife Sharpest, 4703 Burnet Rd., Austin, TX 78756, Phone: (512) 791-9673

Interview with Susan Rankin, Executive Director of Town Lake Trail Foundation

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In December, AroundAustin is focusing on the many charities that make Austin great.  To get more information about charities and how you can help them we are interviewing the people most involved with their charities.  First up, Susan Rankin, Executive Director of the Town Lake Trail Foundation.

Listen to Interview with Susan Rankin,

Listen to an interview with Susan Rankin, Executive Director of the Town Lake Trail Foundation

2008 Consider the Town Lake Trail Foundation Calendar for your X’mas Giving

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The Town Lake Trail Foundation Calendar  is finally here .  A couple of the pictures that you have seen in the AroundAustin galleries made it into the calendar.  I was asked to enter photos for this calendar mid-year by a friend.   The rules were that it had to be a picture of the trail (not the lake, bridges, etc.) and not have any recognizable people in the photos.  Sounded easy enough so I said sure.  A couple of weeks later she informed me that there were two National Geographic photographers shooting as well as pro photographers from other magazines and newspapers.  Well it was too late to back out so I dragged down to the trail and started snapping pictures–all in all I think we managed to walk that trail six times.  Well what do you know, despite the stiff competition

I managed to get two pictures into the calendar.  The one on the left was taken because the foundation built the wall and planted various native plants; the one on the right (which is my favorite) was because we were walking home and a shooting buddy said why don’t you take a shot of the gazebo….it was late I was tired…I groaned but set up the tripod and did it.  At any rate, the calendars are on heavy stock paper and beautifully printed.  100% of the money goes to the Town Lake Trail Foundation.  You can buy the calendar at http://www.townlaketrail.org/storelistitem.cfm?itemnumber=1

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Justice Pest Services

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A critter had crawled into one of our vent pipes in the house and died.  Yuck!  The smell was horrible.  I couldn’t quite get to it…and my wife wanted it out now.  We called a number of services to get rid of it.  Have you considered signing up for our Platinum program….How’s next Monday…we’ll send someone out to give you an estimate tomorrow….An estimate?  I wanted, well much more importantly my wife wanted … that critter out now so the house was usable.  We weren’t in the mood to be upsold and frankly an estimate was just not that important.

A friend recommended Justice Pest Services.  We got Mr. Justice on the phone, and he was apologetic that it would take him till that afternoon to get there to help us.  He had a some appointments that he had to take care of but he’d swing by our house on the way home.  Mr. Justice called me about 30 minutes before he needed someone at the house (none of the I’ll be there sometime between noon  and 5:00.  He was there on time, got rid of the dead critter and the house smelled better.  After solving our problem he offered to help us put screens up on the vents so it didn’t happen again.

Simple customer service from a local Austin business, what a wonderful way to win customers.  I’ve already got Mr. Justice on speed dial for our pest control needs. 

Justice Pest Services, (512) 261-2465, http://www.justicepestservices.com