Welcome to BenWoods.com

Thanks to everyone who sent along condolences for my grandma. I wanted to post the eulogy I gave at the funeral to show our gratitude for her life.

For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Ben, and I am Tiny’s oldest grandson. Despite being her oldest grandson, I sort of felt sometimes that she thought of me as her son. But maybe that’s just because she frequently called me Doug or Rusty.

I've finally launched the new BenWoods.com. Yes, it looks a lot like the old one. I upgraded to Drupal 8 (from Drupal 7). I managed to go all of 2019 without writing anything on this site. I hope to write a little more, especially as I launch a new book in the upcoming months. Thanks for reading!

When we booked our Disney trip, we didn’t consider too many hotel options. Once we made the decision to stay onsite, we looked at the cheapest Value resorts - All-Star Music, All-Star Movies and All-Star Sports. We had all but settled on All-Star Music when I found the Summer Quick Service Meal Offer. At the time we were booking, this deal was available only at Pop Century, a Value resort that is priced slightly higher than others.

Before reading too far into this post, I should first let you know that if you need details about many Disney World food establishments, you will not find that here. When doing research for the trip, one of the more universal tips from bloggers regarding saving money was to bring in your own food, snacks and drinks. Outside of glass containers and alcohol, everything else is fair game to bring.

Spumoni Press is pleased to announce another new book! Brad Samuelson, author of Gnonsense and illustrator of Corporate Ties, will be debuting his latest book, Change Log: Version 1.0, at this year's Baltimore Comic-Con, Sept 28-30 at the Baltimore Convention Center. Stop by his table (A224) to check out the book, as well as original art, free sketches, stickers and copies of Corporate Ties.

If your one of those people who like to tinker with computer systems and see what sort of trouble you can cause, I have the website for you.

The HackersLab is free webspace that contains video game-type levels. The site, which began in 1999, is an alternative for hackers so instead of tearing down the Internet, they might be able to sharpen their skills for a better good.

I have two more book appearances this month, both during the last full weekend in September. I'll be at both the Baltimore Book Festival and Baltimore Comic-Con.

QUESTION

Is it ever appropriate to use profanities in an email?

LAEL: YES

It's okay by my standards to use profanities in email to people that you would normally say profantities when speaking. However, you should becareful not to tell grandma to kick @ss in tomorrow's bingo tournament ... As with all things email related, you should be careful what you write because you never know who is going to see it.

AMANDA: YES

Are you one of those people who have boxes of old business cards sitting around, hoping that someday they might be worth something on eBay? Of course not, that would be insane. Unfortunately, I'm not here to tell you today that they are worth something, because they aren't.

That is, unless you are Steve Patterson of Knoxville, Tenn., a certified cardeologist. He has almost reached the 100,000 plateau of business cards, and he's heading toward 1 million.

If there's one type of forwarded e-mail that grows old quickly, it's chain letters.