Well the title says it all. I haven’t travelled nearly as much as some people, but I have been in the planes and through the security enough times that I think I can share some of my experiences and maybe you can learn from them.

First thing I noticed is if you are travelling within United States, always buy your tickets online. Because it cost about 40 – 60 dollars more if you buy it via phone. Even the Delta customer service lady told me that. For the same exact flight. When buying tickets, try to find the seat closest to the exit and closest to the aisle. Well there are two reasons that I think that is a useful tip.

First reason is that if you have a connecting flight, you will be off the plane faster then people in the back therefore you should always pick a seat closest to the exit. Also less noise because if you sit in the back often times your air gets annoyed by the kitchen and the plane’s noise.

Second reason relates to sitting on the aisle seat. You don’t have to depend on anyone to move because as much as you might like window seat, when the plane stops. There are two people who gets from your seat first and the you get off, so if you have a connecting flight you are relying on these people, and if these people are like the ones that I had who would let everyone else go first. You are screwed. Also if you are almost 6 feet 5 inches tall, it helps and give you a little more leg space. There are cons to this one also. The major downside I found is that you can be disturbed. Because the passengers sitting next to you might have to go and use the restroom and you might be sleeping.

The next tip I would give you is carry two forms of IDs. Not that you will need it, but just incase they might ask you for it.

Don’t ever carry shaving cream, hair gel in large containers. I had a big shaving cream container and they didn’t let me take it. I should’ve read their guidelines. lol

As much as I know alot of people want to keep gums, don’t buy gums that have aluminum foil wrapping like Winter Fresh. Because sometimes you might forget to take it out of your pocket, and the security gate will start beeping on you. That is just embarassing especially when they start doubting on you. And they start touching you everywhere.

Try to wear a pant that doesn’t require belt. I mean I know you want to look nice and all that, but don’t buy loose pants. Otherwise you would have to hold it and look awkward.

If you are carrying a laptop, you have to take the laptop out and put it separately. Otherwise they will just tell you to do it and hold the process.

Always try to go in about 3 hours early because there wouldn’t be any rush. Not that many people so not a big line. You can use Wi-Fi on the airport, or you can just sit closest to the power outlet and not loose any battery life on the laptop and use photoshop to design templates.

Now come back to the luggage. Don’t be afraid to carry a personal item. Which means like a laptop bag and such, so basically I carried two bags. One had some of my clothes and stuff. The other one was my tech bag with all the charger cords, camera, and laptop accessories.

These are some of the most useful tips I can think of right now, but when I think of more I will make a list of it and then post it again. Although if you have any questions feel free to ask.

Well aside from the fact that I was late to the adtech, so didn’t get to see the first half hour of the keynote presentation. I couldn’t video tape the other half hour because the camera I have is a digital camera which is not a very good camcorder. Now I am waiting for some company like Cannon or someone to send me a decent camcorder, so I can make videos and thank them in each of my video post eh

The keynote was actually the Cofounder of Mercado Libre, ebay of Latin America. He wasn’t very helpful for the most part because he was trying to avoid the questions asked. I guess not everyone would share their secrets.

Well I actually made 3 videos, well one video was made by Amanda Roberts. One of the videos I had to take it out because the voice quality wasn’t as good. The guy wasn’t speaking loud enough for the camera’s microphone to hear.

I am attatching the other two in this post.

First video which is right below this, is the one which features me and Muhammad. I am excited that I got tons of goodies. Afterall this was my first conference. I was also excited about the fact that I got two USB Drives and Muhammad was jealous because he only had one. It includes both me and him.

This second video is about the group called Star Media. Basically their representative is going to tell more about them in the video. These were the people who gave me the nice clock with digital picture frame. I actually found out the value of that. $88 it said on one of the sites I looked.

Well twitter is the latest thing which is growing crazily. While I am not the first one to join Twitter, but I don’t want to be the last one to join either. I actually joined a while back, but I didn’t want to show my account when it was inactive. I went at it crazily, and I started following different people. My goal is to follow the most people anyone have on twitter, so let it be 15,000 ? or more ? eh

But in the past few days that I have started following people on my twitter, traffic to balkhis has increased. As you guys know whenever I start something like this, I do it to such an extent that other people start noticing that Balkhis exist, and then I let it carry its own flow. First it was MyBlogLog, then it was Entrecard, and now I am going into twitter.

I will update the stats and tell you how this month went with twitter, and how many followers do I have and how many people I am following. If you aren’t at twitter already, I recommend that you join it because it increases traffic to your site, and it will allow you to get to know people that you didn’t know before. Networking is what all this is about. It is a safeway of networking because you are not getting harrassed via IM because you are not sharing those and people can ask you simple questions like What are you Doing? and so on.

Do you already have a twitter? Let me know by posting your twitter page urls in the comments, and I will definately check it out and most likely follow you guys, so I know what is going in your life.

If you join twitter, don’t forget to follow me

Well as you all know that I attended Adtech Miami yesterday. I managed to get free exhibit hall pass, so initially I only spend the time and gas money for travelling a 150 mile round trip, and 3 dollars in parking. Which makes it pretty cheap for the gifts that we got. Now you are wondering who is we? Well we is a composition of Amanda Roberts of WordScrawl.com, Muhammad Karim (he is a very good programmer and working on getting some of his sites up), and yours truly myself.

Now let me share something that I really liked about this. Exhibit hall = freebies, and freebies for all 3 of us. Now my new car gives me around 32 miles per gallon on highways (thats if I drive roughly), and the gas is $3.99 / gallon. It makes the total roughly around $18 and $3 in parking making it $21 total spending. Now there were 3 of us, so it broke down into $7per person.

In exchange we all recieved tons of goodies. Now let me tell you basically what we all recieved. We got pretty much the same thing except Muhammad. He got an extra IPOD Speakers, he picked up that one, and they ran out of it. Besides I don’t have an Ipod so it would be no use for me.

Below are tons of pens that I recieved from famous companies. They are some decent pens.

This is from the same stall which gave Muhammad his IPOD speakers and stand. He also got this clock which have a digital frame. It keeps track of date and temperature also. Pretty cool eh. I believe it to worth atleast $50 in the market.

Below are the three mouse pads. The smiley face one is pretty cool because now I can make smiley faces in my emails. I have alot of extra ones also.

Below is a USB Drive that I recieved in the bag that we got when we checked in. It is a 1GB USB Drive. My bag was actually to full from the stuff, so I went back and got another bag which also had this. So I ended up with 2 one gigabyte usb drives. But my sister went honor roll in her 4th grade and got straight A’s and recieved 4 certificates for being smart. She wanted a present, so I gave her that. Dot com Life style saved me some money eh.

I will always have something to write on now and I won’t loose it lol. Who am I kidding… I always end up loosing stuff.

Below is the magic 8 ball which predicts that I will go bankrupt with Balkhis. It also thinks that I am fat, and ugly. Now I wonder how accurate this is lol.

Now we each spent $7 / person, and recieved over $150 gifts each. Plus we get to enter in the drawing for IPhone, Ipod Nano, and a Poker Table. I hope I win one of the 3.

I had fun walking around and talking to all the representatives. I have some of them in videos also which I will put up in my coming posts.

It is time for the mega wednesday. Well as you all know today I visited Adtech, so these shirts are the ones that I got from there. I got to know alot of companies that I never heard of. The company I am about to represent is a well known around the domaining industry, and I have known about them since I started being a webmaster. This company is no other but Moniker.com

They gave me multiple shirts basicall 2 of each sizes, so 6. I guess they had alot of them and today was the last day. The guy was like do you want more. I am like sure. I gave one to my mother, sister, brother and have rest for myself

They also had a drawing for poker table. A huge poker table, now if I win that all I would need is a nice set of chips and cards with Balkhis logo on it

You just drop your busienss card and win. Moniker is a bit expensive, but they have really good customer service, so they are well worth the extra dollar you pay for registration. They also have discounts for big domainers.

Well for those of you who think their advertisement goes a waste of time, It actually doesn’t because when I was coming back from seattle, I was wearing Aviva Directory’s Shirt all my trip, so everyone at the airport got to see them.

I also like to wear Market Leverage Shirts that they got me because they fit very well because I usually wear hat with all the clothes. I get to match when I wear Market Leverage.

You can also get Free Promotion at Balkhis.