The Fun Times Guide

Free Birthday Stuff - Get Free Food, Admission & More On Your Birthday!

Once a year, we all have a special day worth celebrating.

The good news is... lots of companies and organizations want to give you free birthday stuff as their way of celebrating with you.

At the end of this article is a list of the best places to find all sorts of free stuff that you can take advantage of on your birthday.

Once you see all of the amazing things you can get for free on your birthday, I bet you find plenty of fun places to visit on your next birthday!...

Continue reading: Free Birthday Stuff!

Darius Rucker Nashville Tennessee Photos - Grand Ole Opry

Last night, Jim and I got free tickets to see Darius Rucker at the Grand Ole Opry.

I heard about this free "invitation only" event on the local evening news (Channel 2) the night before the show. They mentioned something about it being part of the Jimmy Kimmel show -- but I never caught the full report to see what the real connection was.

And to be honest, they never made it clear -- before, during, or after the show -- what the relationship between this show and the Jimmy Kimmel show was all about. Eventually, they said the first 3 songs were going to be seen on the Jimmy Kimmel show, but they didn't say why or when.

Turns out, the Darius Rucker concert footage from this particular night is going to air this Thursday, August 27th on Jimmy Kimmel Live. (Ha, guess it's not so "live" after all!)

Continue reading: Darius Rucker Nashville TN Photos

Tips For Cruising The Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway

Did you know that you can go all the way from Canada down to Key West, Florida with your boat as the only means of transportation?

The Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway is a highway of sorts for smaller boats. Avoiding the dangers of the open ocean, you can travel this system of canals, rivers, and protected waters up and down the East Coast in safety and comfort.

And if that's not far enough for you, the Intercoastal Waterway system also extends from Florida on the Gulf side all the way around to Brownsville, Texas. Authorized by Congress in 1919, the Intracoastal Waterway system is maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers.

Many portions of the system experience heavy commercial traffic (as barges move around the country), but the system also provides a safe route for pleasure boaters who are looking to avoid possible rough seas in the open Atlantic Ocean.

Continue reading: Cruising The Intercoastal Waterway

Washers Game: Rules, Scoring & Instructions For Building Your Own Hillbilly Horseshoes Game

Have you ever played horseshoes?

It's a fun backyard game. But when you think about it, horseshoes can be a pretty dangerous game -- especially when children come running through the yard without giving a thought to their personal safety. Those hefty chunks of iron are capable of causing a fairly serious injury.

There is another fun backyard game that follows the same thought as horseshoes. It's equal in skill requirements, but reduces the weight of the object being tossed to a couple ounces and completely eliminates that dangerous rod sticking out of the ground!

Washers is a family-oriented skill game that is easily portable, can be set up in a couple seconds, and is considerably safer than horseshoes.

Continue reading: Washers Game: Rules, Scoring & FAQ

A South Pacific Cruise Is A Voyage To Paradise

When the thought of an ocean cruise comes to mind, most people automatically think of ships departing from Florida headed for somewhere like the Bahamas or maybe Mexico -- all relatively close destinations for U.S. residents.

But I'm here to tell you if you have never traveled to the South Pacific, you have missed one of the most beautiful cultural and scenic areas of the world.

While in the military, I spent a couple years living on Guam and flying to other islands throughout the South Pacific. Tropical paradise is the best description for the beauty you will experience -- no matter where you go throughout the region.

In the South Pacific, you'll see endless bright blue skies, and you'll be thousands of miles away from metropolitan industrial areas. Pollution is virtually nonexistent there. The temperatures so mild, in many cases there are no windows on houses. With slats to deflect rain, the need to seal out cold just isn't there.

In my mind, to island hop through the South Pacific on a slow-paced cruise would be the ultimate vacation!...

Continue reading: South Pacific Cruises

Warning To Parents: Is Your Child's Summer Camp Safe?

Who doesn't remember summer camp? I know I do. I got to go to summer camp several times when I was a child, and I enjoyed it very much.

The truth is I'll bet that most of us have fond memories of going away to camp, and as children we never wondered how safe we were. We always just assumed that the adults who were there to keep us safe would do so.

However, sadly that is not the case today.

Did you know that not all states require kids' summer camps to have a license?

How about this?... Did you know that there are 28 states that don't require a criminal background check for camp workers?

Essentially, what this means is that your children may not be as safe as you thought they would be when you sent them to summer camp.

Here's what parents need to know about the safety of summer camps...

Continue reading: Kids' Summer Camp Dangers

Tips For Booking Passage On A Freighter Ship - It's A Different Way To Cruise!

If deck games, endless buffets, and large crowds are things you try to avoid, then the standard 7-day cruise to the Bahamas may be a painful test of your ability to endure rather then an opportunity to relax and leave your day-to-day worries behind.

Your opportunity to be alone with your thoughts will quickly vanish into the endless crowds of people aboard an ocean cruise ship.

Cargo freighters, on the other hand, are all business. Delivering manufactured goods around the world, they slip into port for only the time required to exchange one load for another, and then it's back to sea heading to their next (sometimes exotic) destination.

Here are some tips for booking your first trip on a freighter ship...

Continue reading: Cruising On A Freighter Ship

Great Lakes Cruises - A Fun Way To Travel The Fresh Water Seas

Nowhere else in the world can you travel through 5 great fresh expanses of water so large you lose sight of land for days at a time.

A Great Lakes cruise will take you along the aquatic superhighway upon which much of the country's natural resources and farm products travel to market.

You can even follow the path of early fur trappers and settlers as they headed west from the east coast into the Heartland of America.

Continue reading: Cruising The Great Lakes

Yahoo Email: The Pros & Cons Compared To Other Email Programs

I've had a Yahoo email account since 1997, and for the most part I've been very happy with it.

There are some features on the new version that I'm not as happy with, however. For example, whenever you login to your email account now, it automatically opens up a chat room tab for everyone in your Contact List who happens to be online at the moment. I have a lot of people in my contact list, and this can be really annoying, and even slow down the program.

Fortunately, Yahoo allows you keep the Yahoo Classic version if you want to. In the past you just had to accept whatever changes they had made to their newest version. But apparently, with this newer version, I wasn't the only one that wasn't as enamoured with it.

Here are the advantages and disadvantages of using Yahoo email, as I see it...

Continue reading: Yahoo Email Pros & Cons

Top 2 Twitter iPhone Apps: Twitterific Premium vs Twittelator Pro

I have a couple of different Twitter accounts, each with an entirely different audience based on very unique interests:

@FunDogs - fun dog tips for people with dogs

@FunHouseHome - helpful information for homeowners - fun home & garden tips

@FunTimesGuide - where the geek in me hangs out and I interact with people on a wide variety of topics

People who are interested in my dog-related tweets aren't necessarily interested in my geeky updates or my house & home tweets, so I needed a way to interact with each group separately.

When I'm at my computer, I use HootSuite to do that. When I'm on the go, I need an iPhone app that goes with me.

I had heard great things about both Twitterific Premium (also known as Twitterific 2.0) and Twittelator Pro (the version I downloaded was 2.2). So I purchased them both through the Apple Store and started comparing the apps for myself, side-by-side.

See which one is my favorite...

Continue reading: Twitterific Premium vs Twittelator Pro