Ole Bull State Park

My family in the past has always gone camping. Whether at a small camp ground called oil creek or my favorite location to go camping Ole Bull.

Since I was about 8 years old, my family on my mom side are the ones who would plan our camping trips. We would go for about a week during the summer. My favorite part was being in the cabin that the park has available. Its pretty huge it has about three rooms and most rooms have bunk beds. The cabin can fit about 10 to 16 people pretty good.

One camping trip me and my cousin camped out in a tent instead of the cabin. I love camping here because its so quite and there are so many trees around. Also I love how its a big family gathering. We haven't gone back to Ole Bull since 2007. The cabin has to be reserved up to a year. I hope possibly we can go back in 2016 if possible. There some pretty good hiking and there's a creek that's pretty darn cold, but me and my cousins would still swim in it. Some people might now really enjoy going, because at the park, there's no cell phone reception at all. To get some you have to go to the nearest city which is a good half hour a way, so no twitter or Facebook is possible. But I've always gone there so young and when I was 16 the last time we visited, I never really was dependent of my cell phone and wasn't really using social media, it was probably MySpace, back than. Of course that could all have changed, there could very well be cell phone towers near the park depending on the phone carrier. It has been 7 years since I last been there.

It would be pretty awesome if I could get my family to go back. We could try next year, we would have to call in June or July, to see if the cabin is even still available. But it would definitely be pretty cool to be able to see all my family, its been years since we all been together in one place.

March Madness. March Mayhem.

March Madness. March Mayhem.

So looks like both Kentucky and Louisville made it to the Sweet 16 and they are playing each other. We now have another battle of the bluegrass. This city is going to be dead, except for the bars on Bardstown Rd and other bars location. Also any restaurants that have Televisions, pretty much everybody is going to be in a bar, restaurant, at the game or at home. 

I can be honest, this is the only time when I actually watch games. I try to watch some games during the regular season but most of the time it doesn't happen. Its because I am a bandwagon fan, because I've been a Kentucky fan ever since I've moved here. Its just I've so busy, but never too busy for March Madness because its awesome and it only happens once a year.

Its so weird being a Wildcat fan and going to UofL. But I don't care, I'm going to school with my blue on. On Friday its going to be interesting to see how many people have on Blue and who has on Red. On social media its already blown up, ever since Kentucky won against Wichita State, people have posted things about Kentucky and their are people posting things about Louisville. I can say their are some funny posts where fans are dissing each other.

Friday during the game is definitely going to be interesting to watch on social media. Especially Facebook and twitter, I can see hashtags becoming a worldwide trend and people wondering what is going on in Kentucky. Also the visual content that is going to be posted, not only on Facebook and Twitter but on Instagram too. I can see us breaking Twitter with all the content going on. Also it will probably be going on until the next day because whoever wins gets bragging rights.

I am super excited for the game in general but I will definitely going to pay attention to the feed on Twitter and Facebook. 

Though I hope people do realize that no matter how much one argues about who is better, its pretty much a never ending battle.

Dedicated to My Cat: Blue

Spring break was a great break from school. I did absolutely nothing related to school. I did go on vacation. I went to Florida. Spent time on the beach and did some shopping. Luckily my grandparents live down there so we had free boarding. Even though Florida was awesome coming home wasn't so great.

My past blog I did one on my pets. My dog, Elvis we brought him with us to Florida. But my three cats we had a cat-sitter come over and check on them, basically to make sure they had clean litter boxes, water and food. The oldest cat blue, when we got home from our week vacation, wasn't looking too good. Now blue is usually pretty alert and jumps around on the furniture. This time he just to me looked really weird. I said something to my parents about him and said he looks really bloated. Well we had to unload our van because of the snow storm and the car top carrier which was frozen shut. After we got every thing we needed to do done. We decided that taking Blue over to the vet would be a good idea. Unfortunately I didn't think he was going to make it. I think my parents though he just had something blocking his bladder. But it was more serious than that the vet mention it could be kidney failure or even cancer. I wasn't with them at the vet but they decide to put him down. Spring break was awesome but coming back was pretty depressing and having to put down one of the family pets is so sad. Of course Blue is in a better place because the poor thing looked like he was in pain and he was so old, putting him though any tests would have been unfair to him specially it being kidney failure or cancer.

I do miss him. He was a great cat. Blue had so many different quirks. We he was younger he didn't like moist food. I don't know why he was against eating it. Than one day he decide that I want some moist food and starting eating it. Another quirk was as a young cat he didn't like strangers he would always hide but I guess as he got older he didn't care. He would start coming out more and more.

We determine that Blue must be about 20 years old. That is pretty old for a cat. I remember getting from my aunt because she couldn't take care of him and his sister Angel, who is also still alive. He lived with us when we were in Ohio and when we moved here. So Blue has been a part of our family for about 16 or so years.

It was a depressing thing to come home to and I wish he didn't pass away so soon from coming home to spring break. It is definitely weird being at home and not hearing him trying to jump to the other side of the counter.

The grey and white cat is his buddy Sammy (Captain Chaos)

     

HootSuite Part 2: I'm Certified

Now that we are back from spring break, its time to get back in the groove of things. I can be honest its taken me about the whole school week to get back into school mode. I also gotta get back into the blogging mode.

Before spring break I got HootSuite certified. I finally announced being certified on twitter today. I do think Hootsuite is a good tool for business. The only thing about getting Hootsuite certified is the test was difficult if you didn't pay attention to the videos. The videos I felt sometimes were interesting than boring, I think this is because the video showed more towards a business side than personal use.

I really like Hootsuite, I do think its a program that I could use in the future for businesses. I also like it for personal use and being able to keep track of both my Facebook and twitter accounts. I can also keep track other accounts that I get more involved in like Google+ as of right now I don't really use Google+.

The process of getting the certification was actually pretty simple. All you had to do is watch several videos and than take an exam. This was pretty easy because the exam allows you to take it as many times as you want. It only took me about two times to take the exam and pass it to get certified.

        

Dream Vacation: Italy

Ever since I can remember I've always wanted to go to Italy. I've already been out of the country once to Australia, but that trip was pretty much planned out. Going to Italy is one of my items on my bucket list. Hopefully in the next's several years I will be able to afford a trip there.

I would love to stay for a month and just explore all the tourist locations. I also would love to find those "secret" locations that every destination would have. The main spots I want to see is the Trevi fountain and the Colosseum in Rome. Another place would be the leading tower of Pisa. Then I would love to visit Vatican City, Florance and Sicily. I would also love to sample the food in Italy.

 I don't really know why I was so obsessed with Italy. When I was younger I would get certain presents for my birthday and Christmas that would revolve around Italy. One year I got a calender, with certain tourist spots. The place always fascinated me, all the rich history and how buildings are really old; older than any place here in the US. The landscape too, was another thing that I loved, I thought that it was really pretty in postcards. I always wondered what it would look like in real life and actual be able to visit Italy. 

Another aspect I would love to see is not only the old buildings or history but the architecture. It's so different than any other place especially here in the States. Its even different than in Australia.

I can't wait until I have the money and the time to be able to go to Italy.

   

Social Media Monitoring

Its always good to track who is visiting sites. Its always good to know what is being said about a company. There are a lot of interesting programs to help monitor your social media.

Another good thing about social media monitoring is the fact you can look at all your social media on one platform. Like Hootsuite, this is a good tool to use when you want to monitor a number of social media accounts. This tool saves you time and helps keep you organized when you have to run multiple accounts at once.

Now comes the why. The main reasons is understanding who your audience is. Also being able to determine what content works and what may not work on certain sites. Also you can measure your reputation and your perception from others.

Three important things to remember about social media monitoring is to remember to listening is important, another is measurement, and the other is engage.

You can get certain benefits back one being insights into audiences. You also can get real-time feedback and engagement from different consumers. Also another important benefit is providing actual number data to upper management about the power of social media.

Here's an article about social media monitoring in real time - http://bit.ly/OIay5K

There are certain challenges that is involved with social media monitoring but if you can cut though them all, the benefits can out weigh the challenges. Some challenges are having a lot of data, also with that information overload. Also it can be a challenge to determine what is of value in a particular tweet or like. Also a new service can come pop up. Than there are the issues with privacy and ethics, lack of education and training the software that is used.

Going West

Last blog I posted about going to Australia. This time I decided to scale it back but keep with the traveling theme. When  mean scaling it back I mean staying in the US. My favorite trip I took, was going out west. I was 15 years old and we went over a three week period, during the summer. I went with my parents and my grandparents Brittany, also came along (we known each other since 2nd or 3rd grade, and been best friends for pretty much forever) because I'm an only child and it always boring not to have someone your own age.

The thing I remember about the trip is when we first took off we traveled to Illinois to drop off our dog to my other grandparents. We were traveling from Louisville to Anna, Illinois and ran into a really bad storm. The storm was so bad that we got stuck in Indiana and we weren't sure if we were going to make it. The sky actually looked green and there was at least golf ball sized half. We got stuck under the over pass, and had to ride out the storm. From Kentucky to Illinois it only takes four hours but it took a lot longer.

On our way out west the vehicle we took was jam backed we everybody's stuff. On the way back some of the bigger pieces and other things we didn't need, had to be ups back. It was always fun getting in and out of the van, I felt like a clown coming out of the clown car. We were specifically traveling out west for my moms forth birthday. She wanted to go to the Grand Canyon, but we also went to Vegas and stopped in other states. We went though Missouri, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and Arizona. 

The Grand Canyon was really amazing to view. I would love to go back. We went to both the North rim and the South Rim, Talk about a difference. The North rim, is more woodsy and a lot cooler. Also the squirrels there were very friendly probably because they wanted food. The South Rim wasn't as vegetated and was a lot hotter. At the south rim we went down a trail called the bright angel trail, I can't remember how long the trail actually is but i know when people did the trail it took them a few days. I would actually love to do the trail, its on my bucket list.   

The one experience that I don't want to remember is getting sick. This is we went to Vegas. This where I got a pretty nasty stomach bug and my parents were worried that I would become dehydrated. I ended up going the hospital in Vegas. That wasn't fun, I waited for hours in the waiting room and they ended up checking for food poisoning, lucky it wasn't and they determined it was just a bug. Lucky me. After that though I felt like crap for a few days, and this was while I was in Vegas. Luckily I was only 15 so I couldn't really do much while I was there in the casino (we stayed at Circus Circus).        

Overall, even though I got sick the trip was awesome and we did so much over the three weeks. I would love to go back west again in the future.