Have you seen the commercial for Southwest Airlines (did you know they have a blog) where the guy at work always volunteers to take the business trip, then one day his boss comes looking for him but he is using his rewards miles to take a vacation?

That is how I often feel about business travel - I am always ready and willing to take a business trip, although I have yet to redeem any rewards for personal travel.

5 Things I Love About Business Travel

As we discussed the other day, there are certainly things to dislike about business travel but there are also plenty of things to love.

1. Traveling to new destinations.

Having an opportunity to visit new parts of the country, or world, without having to pay out of your own pocket is hard to beat. While most business travel will not allow for much time to truly explore your destination, you should be able to experience some of the attractions.

Depending on your company policies, you may even be able to extend your stay by a day or two beyond the purpose of trip. Demonstrate how much money the company can save on airfare by arriving a day or two early and you might just find yourself with some time to explore.

Lately my travel has been focused on business conferences, which means that most of my trips have been to either Orlando or Las Vegas. While those are certainly fun destinations, I’d enjoy a bit more variety - which is why I am really hoping that the need to visit my colleagues in Japan comes sooner rather than later.

2. Indulging in fine seafood.

When talking about the things that I hate about business travel, I mentioned that eating out can become a nuisance. However, I can usually get by a few days simply by indulging in some of the foods that I don’t often eat at home.

My wife and kids are quite the picky eaters, which means I rarely find myself at a nice seafood restaurant and we never have seafood at home. Therefore one of the first things that I typically do when traveling for business is seek out recommendations for a great seafood restaurant.

Hopefully your company has a generous allowance for meals as eating at some of the nicer restaurants can be quite expensive.

3. Escape from the monotony of the office.

Whether you are traveling for a conference, meeting with a client, or simply meeting with colleagues in another office, getting away from the office can do wonders for your attitude.

The day to day happenings at the office can become quite monotonous, leaving you feeling drained at the end of the day as you deal with office politics. When you are out of the office for a few days, you will come back feeling fresh and recharged. It is amazing how even a small break from the routine can leave you energized.

Even though I might not be traveling, I firmly believe that my flexible work arrangement with one day off per week has helped me in that regard.

4. Getting a break from the demands at home.

As much as I love spending time with the family, sometimes you need a break from everything. It is hard to come home from a day at work, crack open a cold beer, and plop down on the couch for awhile when the kids need help with their homework or want to play with you outside.

When you are away on business, there is nobody to answer to when the day is over. If you want to head back to the hotel and have a beer while lounging around in your underwear, there is nobody to stop you (unless you are doing that in the hotel bar). Feel like vegging out in front of the TV for awhile, no problem. Feel like going down to the pub to shoot pool, no problem.

Enjoy your time away from home, as once you get back you will need to jump right back in and give your spouse a break as well.

5. Peace and quiet.

Some people do not enjoy being alone. Personally, I love it and look forward to time when I can simply sit and enjoy the peace and quiet. No distractions, nothing but my thoughts. With two growing boys at home, there are not many opportunities for this type of peace and quiet.

When I am away on business, I like to begin and end each day by simply sitting somewhere and letting my mind wander. While visiting Miami last month, I had an amazing view of the ocean from my balcony and enjoyed the time just sitting outside, watching the waves crash in on the beach. The following week when I was in Vegas, I would wake each morning and just sit for awhile as I looked out over the mountains.

What about you?

You have learned about the things that I love about business travel as well as the things that I hate about business travel. Do any of the items above make your list of reasons that you enjoy traveling? I’d like to hear what things you love the most about business travel.

While I typically do not do a great deal of business travel, last month was anything but typical as I started with a trip to South Beach and then spent a long weekend in Vegas.

In the very near future, I will be traveling again although this time it will be with my family as we head off for a much needed vacation to Disney World. As we prepare for that adventure, I had to pause and think about the differences between traveling with my family and traveling solo for business.

5 Things I Hate About Business Travel

Initially, many people think a solo trip for business is nothing but good times. While I will admit that there are things that I love about business travel, there are also things that are not very enjoyable.

1. Missing out on family time.

One of the most important things in my life is spending time with my family. Whether it be spending an afternoon at the ballpark or something as simple as reading bedtime stories, family time is something that I truly cherish.

When there are hundreds, if not thousands, of miles between you and your family, spending time together is clearly a challenge. As noted in these 5 tips to stay in touch while traveling, there are things you can do to ease the physical separation and still share some special time. However, there really is no substitute for being with your family and doing things together.

2. Sleeping alone.

Don’t get me wrong, sleeping alone isn’t all bad as it can be nice to stretch out in a comfortable king size bed without someone elbowing you in the back or stealing all of the blankets. The first night or two might seem like complete bliss.

But then you start to miss the warmth of your spouse lying next to you in bed, rolling over and wrapping your arms around one another. Waking up in the morning and not seeing your special someone curled up in the bed leaves you feeling a little lonely.

After an extended business trip, having an arm smack you in the head or waking in the middle of the night shivering without any covers never felt so good.

3. Packing the suitcase.

Part of this is likely a result of infrequent travel, as I know that there are people out there that can pack a month of clothing into a toiletry bag, but I think that packing a suitcase is one of the most difficult things to do.

First, I always try to fit my things in one of those small, trendy suitcases that you can easily tuck away in the carry-on compartments on the airplane. Yeah, that never works. Being a big guy, I put one pair of pants, socks, and underwear in one of those suitcases and I am lucky to get the thing closed!

Resigned to using my gigantic suitcase, I am then faced with the realization that no matter how I pack my items in the suitcase, everything will be a wrinkled mess once I arrive at my destination. Packing the suitcase is something that I despise about travel, so much that I have given serious consideration to packing nothing and buying all new clothes upon arrival.

4. Flying.

Generally speaking, I really enjoy flying. However, there are a few things that turn me off about flying and one of my biggest complaints is being stuck in the middle seat on the airplane.

On some airlines you have a good shot of securing an aisle or window seat, although my preferred airline, Southwest Airlines, using an open seating policy. Unless you check-in as early as possible, chances are you might get stuck in the middle seat. If you’re lucky, the person in the window seat will only ask you to let them out a half dozen times over the course of the flight.

In addition to my aversion for the middle seat, I find that the flight always leaves me congested and miserable. My ears are plugged, I cannot breathe through my nose at all. Ugh! Now this might be a symptom of not traveling very often, as I found my recent trips were not so bad, but it is something that I do not look forward to when flying.

5. Eating out.

Neither my wife or I are gourmet cooks by any means, but we can both prepare a pretty good home-cooked meal. When traveling for business, you will be eating out at restaurants (or the hotel) for every meal. Just like sleeping alone, initially this sounds enticing but it can quickly become old as you long for burnt meatloaf and mashed potatoes.

Also, depending on the nature of your travel, you may find yourself eating your meals alone. While this isn’t really a big deal, it can feel somewhat awkward if you are not accustomed to it.

What about you?

Whether you are a regular at the local airport or only travel a couple of times per year, I’d love to hear what things you dislike the most about business travel.

Turn the other cheek.

Walk away.

Don’t stoop to their level.

The above statements are often offered as advice on how a child should deal with a bully at school.

Unfortunately, many school bullies are not thwarted by any of these actions and sometimes will continue to escalate their behavior to illicit a response from the child being bullied.

Over the last few weeks, my wife and I have experienced this first-hand as our oldest son has been dealing with a bully at school.

Our son was being pushed.

Our son was being called names and teased.

Our son was being punched in the back.

Our son was being pinched to the point that he came home with bruises.

Now our son is not a small boy. He is a pretty big kid and has learned to handle himself fairly well. Not too long ago, he achieved his purple belt in Kajukenbo and had been progressing towards his blue belt when the instructor changed and he lost interest in the program.

Basically, he can take care of himself but has an easy-going demeanor and tries to be friendly with everyone.

All along, he was being respectful of the bully and turning the other cheek while my wife and I communicated our concerns to the school. First the teacher and then the principal. Initially, we asked our son to do his best in avoiding the bully but that proved difficult since they are in the same class.

We had a meeting with the principal after our initial communications appeared to fall on deaf ears.

The school responded by preventing the bully from participating in outside recess, instead having to sit in the office.

For one day.

As you might imagine, that did nothing to curb his actions towards our son.

The school informed us that our son should write a letter to his teacher whenever the bully was bothering him. Last Wednesday he wrote his teacher a detailed letter about what the bully was doing to him.

On Thursday, our son had reached his tipping point.

He walked up to the bully and punched him in the face.

Now I have to admit that my actions and comments likely had an influence on this course of action. When my son had told me that the bully was pinching him and calling him a “bitch”, I too had had enough and informed my son that he had our blessing to defend himself.

I told him that he would not be in trouble at home and that my wife and I would deal with the school if he were to get in trouble. The point where I probably crossed the line was when I told my son that if he did have to defend himself, he should lay the bully out and say “Who is the bitch now?”

After releasing his frustration on the bully’s now bloody face, our son was sent to the principal and we received a phone call informing us that our son was going to be suspended.

As noted over at Tip Dad, our son’s school opted to punish our son for self defense while the bully that has been pinching, pushing, and punching him has received no such punishment.

The school initially told my wife and me that they would simply have our son serve the suspension in the principal’s office until it was time for him to leave school. In our eyes, he was being punished for something that we did not feel was wrong. Therefore we informed the school that he would serve his one day suspension at home and we would pick him up.

Normally, I would not condone fighting for the sake of fighting.

But our son was standing up for himself and at that moment, I could not have been more proud of him. There was no punishment awaiting him at home, as a matter of fact my wife and I took him out for lunch; although we did communicate to him that fighting is not the way to deal with problems.

After the incident at school, the principal informed us that she was disappointed that we did not trust the school to handle the matter. The point that the principal was missing was that we did trust the school to handle the matter, yet they failed that trust when they did nothing to curb the bully’s behavior.

To make matters worse, we were given a few documents by the school regarding how to deal with a bully. One of the documents indicated that sometimes kids will be bullied if they act different, dress different, or talk different and that they should try to change their behavior to fit in.

Excuse me!

Whatever happened to accepting people for who they are and not judging someone because they are different. It is absurd to see that a school system is trying to make the child being bullied feel it is their fault that they are the target of a bully.

The following day at school, my son was not sure what to expect and I told him to be cautious as the bully might want to try and punch him back. Quite the opposite occurred, as the bully now wants to be friends with my son.

When faced with a bully at school, you can do your best to avoid the situation and turn the other cheek.

However, as my son found out, sometimes you need to stand up for yourself and punch the bully square in the face.

Photo credit: Greencolander

Many of us use cameras to capture shots of our families. We may also carry around a separate video camera to record events as well.

In the last several weeks, some significant announcements have been made that affect the future of DSLRs. Both Canon and Nikon have introduced DSLR cameras that record High Definition video in addition to still images. Recording video on your camera is nothing new, but for the most part it’s been relegated to pocket digital cameras that allow you to record snippets of video at low quality. These new cameras, however, will rival the quality of most any video camera you would purchase separately at a store. I’ll tackle the biggest feature in a bit, but let’s talk briefly about the two cameras.

Nikon introduced the D90 to much fanfare. It’s a 12.9 Megapixel DSLR which can record 720p video. For Canon, the big announcement was the 5D Mark 2. It features a 21 Megapixel sensor and can record 1080p video. You can purchase the D90 now on Amazon for around $1200. The 5D Mark 2 won’t be available until November, and will run around $2600.

The biggest feature of these cameras besides the video? You get to use all of your existing lenses! So for example, if you’ve invested in a wide angle lens, or a lens with a very wide aperture (1.2 or 1.4), you can bring a look and quality to your home video productions which, until now, was very cost-prohibitive. For example, you can find plenty of HD video cameras online, but try finding 1.2 lenses for them. or a 400mm optical zoom lens. Forget about it.

Indeed, the prices of these two cameras are nothing to sneeze at. It’s a lot of money for an amateur photographer, and I would definitely have to buy some nice dinners for my wife and watch the kids more than usual to justify it for myself. But the point is that this is where photography is headed. This technology will eventually make its way down to both manufacturer’s entry-level cameras.

If you find it’s something you will be interested in, start learning about video production and lighting. Read up on lenses and how they affect the pictures you take. You can also read up dpreview.com’s excellent coverage of both the D90 and the 5D Mark 2.

Eric Doggett is a photographer in Austin, Texas. He has a site specifically forbaby photography tips at ShootTheBaby.com, as well as BoxOfficeBaby.com, a site where you can order custom birth/party announcement cards and posters - including some unique tech birth announcements. You can reach him at babydaddy -at- ShootTheBaby.com.

It’s almost the end of summer, and you probably have a great collection of images from the last few months. So now it’s probably a good time to drag you down into the mud and talk about backing up your images!

I can’t stress enough the importance of backing up, and I am sure you have either heard it or thought it several times yourself. So much of our lives is recorded digitally now, and with the great power of digital images/videos comes the great responsibility of protecting it for future generations. All it takes is one incident where you lose images and you’ll be ‘converted’!

Today, some people would simply back up to CD or DVD and be done with it. However, I recommend a different approach. Hard drives are priced incredibly low, so in addition to your CD/DVD backups, I recommend picking up one of those external drives and backing up there as well. Get a new external drive every year, and store just that year’s pictures on it. Use it only as a backup drive.

Why the multiple backups? Because every media eventually fails. This includes CDs, DVDs and hard drives. By having multiple backups, you provide additional protection for yourself.

Here’s how my folders are set up on the computer (using 2008 as an example):

2007

2008

• Events
• - Spring Break Trip 2008
• - Trevor’s First Birthday 2008
• Pets
• Kids
• Eric
• Wife
• Nature

With this system I can find all of the events for a given year, as well as other shots I’ve taken. I try to separate out events from random pictures (which would be in the Kids folder).

Use the system that works for you, but make sure you use something! Otherwise, you’ll have a big folder with a ton of images that are unorganized, and difficult to backup (because you have so many in one place). 

I also recommend using automated backup software. Since I am on a Mac, I use Super Duper, which is great. Every night it makes complete backups to an external drive.

There’s no end to the rabbit hole of backups! Since I have a background in wedding and portrait photography, I have multiple backups of everything. For every shoot, I have a working copy on my computer, a backup in the desk drawer on DVD, and another DVD along with a copy on portable hard drive in a storage unit a couple of miles away.

Now, you don’t have to get that crazy, but I would suggest keeping backups outside of your house (perhaps with a relative or a safety deposit box) of your most important images. The one time you need that backup, you’ll be happy you took the time!

So, are you a regular backer-upper? Have you come across any tips to preserve your images?

Eric Doggett is a photographer in Austin, Texas. He has a site specifically forbaby photography tips at ShootTheBaby.com, as well as BoxOfficeBaby.com, a site where you can order custom birth/party announcement cards and posters - including some unique tech birth announcements. You can reach him at babydaddy -at- ShootTheBaby.com.

Sitting here on my flight to Miami, Florida for a work conference, I thought that it would be fun to share a few random observations that I’ve had from seat 34B - the middle seat.

First, I have to comment about the middle seat.

When I booked my flight, there were no window seats available - my preference given that I never get up during a flight. Hoping that something would open up by the time the online check-in became available, I jumped online 24 hours before my departure and realized that I was doomed to endure the middle seat. Unfortunately, my trip has not lived up to the Penthouse forum stories you read about being between two gorgeous ladies; instead I am sitting between two guys.

Smells like someone just farted…not pleasant at all. I’m thinking it was the guy that has already made three trips to the bathroom, although it could just as easily be the elderly woman in the next aisle who is sound asleep.

Now the guy to my left - he has been gone for over an hour. It seems his headphone case, Bose headphones as everyone within three aisles learned, slid back a few aisles during the take off. He was dead set on retrieving that case and when the people behind us did not act quickly enough, he decided to get up and get the case himself. Surely he has found it by now but I don’t know where he went after that; not that I really care as I am enjoying the extra leg room with the empty seat.

The guy to my right has been involved in a spirited game of bowling on his Nintendo DS. Every now and then I catch the occasional fist pump - undoubtedly after a strike or a difficult spare.

The smell of fart has dissipated, that or it burned my sense of smell so badly that I can no longer smell anything.

To the front, there is a family that must have had a long day; when I approached the ticket counter at the gate I heard the agent indicating that she was calling security due to their behavior. I later learned that they had been at the airport for over 6 hours and had numerous flights canceled, so I can imagine their frustration. Other than the fact that the woman has her seat reclined into my lap, they all seem nice enough.

Oh yeah, and why is it that the person in the window seat gets to decide whether I can look out the window or not. That just seems wrong to me, but what can you do.

The stream of people heading to the restroom is picking up now that the drink cart has passed by. You know, I’ve never used the restroom on an airplane and I don’t plan to change that anytime soon.

Another thing I don’t do - at least not often - is sleep on the airplane. As a courtesy to my fellow travelers, I only sleep when I am accompanied by someone that can elbow me in the ribs when I inevitably begin to snore. Instead, I just like to sit back and observe everyone else on the flight - much like I am doing right now.

We have entered into Florida and it won’t be too long until we touch down in Miami. The guy in 34A is still nowhere to be seen, not that I am complaining, and 34C just missed a crucial shot - or so I assume based on the fist slam to the tray table.

Ladies and gentlemen, please fasten your seat belts as the observations from seat 34B, the middle seat, have come to an end.