Voluntaryists?

I wasn't quite sure what this term meant until I read The Voluntaryist Website I thought it was interesting, I went directly for the FAQ's and found the "Voluntaryist talking points" to be helpful. Interestingly, my dad, a conservative republican (I'm guessing, by the way he spits the word 'goddamned liberals') has spoken of these very same things.

When he spits about liberals, he says that they're taking away all of our rights in order to protect ourselves from ourselves. Do we need a "rule" for everything? Case in point- car seats (since this is a travel blog) When I was a baby there weren't any regulations on car seats. When my first daughter was born, she wasn't allowed to leave the hospital until a nurse 9a trained MEDICAL professional) verified that we did, in fact, have a car seat and that it was installed properly. The rule at that time, would have her in a car seat until she was 4 years old or 40 pounds. Today, the rule states that my kids be in some kind of car seat until they are 8 years old or 80 pounds.

Cars were heavier and sturdier back in my day, I'm not arguing that these laws protect kids, but I'm arguing that there doesn't need to be a law. Let the stupid destroy themselves, and allow me my freedom to decide to use technology at my own risk.


Anyways- as unschoolers, we're totally into non-coercive leadership and I do think the world would be a better place if everyone held fast to personal accountability and making their own decisions based upon what's best for them. Instead, we have a situation where people are "forced" to follow certain rules that were made in the interest of big companies and the government instead of being allowed to voluntarily live life with the freedom that we're supposed to have as Americans.

Anyway- check them out, what do you think? They make some interesting points that I can relate to but it's hard to picture that kind of life, it's so different from what we're living.

Web Hosting Comparison

I've been looking to find the best ecommerce hosting lately. My web presence, between this blog and all the others, as well as the other sites I write for and the ones I've built for other people, I've always got my eye open for different services and features of hosting companies. Today I found a company called Web Hosting Geeks, and what they do is compare all of the hosting companies side by side.

I wish I had seen this back when I chose Yahoo hosting. I really like the Yahoo hosting because it's easy to use, but if you have more than one domain, then it's really not worth it. I'm currently in the process of switching over to godaddy, because they'll allow me to have all of my domains on the one hosting plan, so that I can move files between domains easier.

Just to compare- it's about $9/ month for Yahoo hosting, I have seven (I think) domains, that's $63 a month basically (they bill quarterly) but with godaddy the unlimited hosting, with all of the domains on one acct, it's $13 a month. One difference is, they charge for emails, whereas Yahoo includes them.

The coolest thing, though is that I wouldn't have had to learn all of this the hard way if I had used the comparison information at webhostinggeeks.com I also wouldn't have wasted my time for 3 months at hostgator for $14 a month for NOTHING because I couldn't even figure out how to get it to work.

Their web hosting guide is really helpful

http://webhostinggeeks.com/articles/Web_Hosting_Guide.html

Getting Ready for San juan

We are heading to the San Juan islands next week. It's a 6 hour drive with the kids, and we plan to leave early in the morning. I think that if we went without them, we could probably just go straight there, but that would make them really hate this trip. I want them to have a good time, we are going to be bringing a bunch of food, and instead of snacking in the car (car mess) we will end up pulling over somewhere for a picnic. We have adjoining hotel rooms when we get there so we should sleep comfortably. We have to take a few ferries in between islands per our itinerary. I'm sure excited, I hope it all goes well.

Renting a moving truck

Man, I can't believe its only $170 for two days, I'll bet the gas will cost a fortune. If you follow my normal blog, you mgiht think we've already moved but it's really just a crazy situation that hasn't been resolved yet. It looks like it might have a fantastic turnaround, way better than anything we've been through yet. I'm excited and eager to get through this. Then we can explore the greener side of the mountains. What does this have ot do with travel? Everything, because it's about getting there, which means traveling, and padding the previous post with original content because them's the rules, OK.

Don't forget your boots

I love to go hiking. Whenever we explore a new landscape I'm always just itching to get out and soak up the scenery, I like investigating everything and checking out the plants and animals in the area. I love the fact that different areas have different colored dirt, isn't that silly? There's nothing quite as fun as hiking along the side of a cliff over the ocean. In fact, that's one thing I'm looking forward to after we move. I'll never forget the time we were vacationing in Baja Mexico and I wanted to go hiking but I didn't have any hiking boots with me so I had to wear steel toed work boots instead. What an adventure.

Next family road trip- Vancouver, WA

Yep, we're headed to Vancouver over next Memorial Day weekend, May 21-24, 2009. We'll be attending the Life is Good Conference at the Red Lion Hotel.

I'm looking at renting a beach house, because the price of a hotel for the week ends up being more than a beach house. I wasn't too crazy about staying at a different hotel than the one the conference was at this time, I did it mainly because the price was so much cheaper- $311 for hotel and flight, the flight alone was supposed to be more expensive than that.

This time, though- I'm wondering if I can get a beach house close enough to the convention. I guess I should see if they're having late night sessions, see how far we can get a house from the hotel. It would be nice if we could be right next door.

A beach house would be cool, we could share it with another family.

I don't know. I need to build a little countdown widget. I should also check out the hotel discounts, in case I decide I don't want to stay elsewhere. The point, though is that I need to get my family to one of these conferences.

Home from the trip

Did you know that United charges $15 for each bag you check, even if it's not oversized.

I didn't budget for that, I should probably have just layered all of my clothes on top of each other to wear home.

Had I factored the $30 into my budget, I would have chosen a different airline, tickets were $12 more and their bags were free.

Next time I travel, I will just bring an empty bag, buy clothes at a thrift shop when I get to my destination and then only pay to bring it home. Yeah right- I'm not really that organized.