DavidGervino.com

Bell's Amusement Park Closes

A friend of mine from Tulsa sent me an email telling me that Bell's was closing.  It's sad to see such a prominent landmark go away.  The first time I ever rode a roller coaster was at Bell's.  I spent a lot of weekends during middle school and high school there. 

From a business standpoint, I always liked that the park was family-owned and operated.  I have nothing against Six Flags or Disney or any of the other corporate-run theme parks.  It's just cool to see someone run a successful business who isn't part of some huge corporation.  For being a locally-owned facility, they had some pretty cool rides.  Their prices were a lot lower than the other, bigger parks, too.  You could get a season pass to Bell's for about the same price it would cost to go to Six Flags for just one day. 

They are planning to re-build at a new facility sometime in the near future.  I wish them luck at their new location.

Last weekend

One of my brothers came to Chicago last weekend and we went and saw the Chicago Rush Arena Football Team take on the Kansas City Brigade.  It was the first arena football game I've ever been to.  I guess I would compare the difference between "regular" and arena football to the difference between outdoor and indoor soccer.  The thing I liked about the game was that no matter what seat you had, you were relatively close to the action.  At outdoor football games, some of the seats seem so far away you can barely tell what's going on.

Another thing that impressed me was how "fan-friendly" the league seems to be.  After every game, the players come back out and sit at tables and sign autographs.  Since this was the last regular game of their season, they showed clips of several of the players thanking their fans for being supportive.  So often in pro sports the players seem to forget that if it weren't for their fans, they wouldn't have anything.  It's kind of like the way so many businesses forget that they are in business for their customers.  Taking care of the customer should be the top priority, with profits being a by-product of that -- not the other way around.

In addition to going to the game, we also packed a lot of other cool stuff into our short time together.  We went to Al Capone's Hideaway, which is my favorite restaurant.  As usual, the food and service were phenomenal.  And, as usual, I got lost both going to and coming from the place (Hence the term "Hideaway").  We also walked around Rush Street, North Michigan Avenue and hung out at Navy Pier. 

Sprint Mobile Broadband Card

I won a 60-day free trial of Sprint's mobile broadband service.  I was given the choice of several different cards.  I opted for the Merlin S720 by Novatel Wireless.  Interestingly enough, the cards range in price from free to just over $200.  As long as you get a card that supports the "EV-DO Rev A" speed, you won't really notice much difference.  The card that I got is GPS enabled but it doesn't help with point-to-point directions.  The GPS can only be used to find the nearest hotels, restaurants, etc.

I was pleasantly surprised to see how great this technology works.  I think I was skeptical because my only experience with wireless data from a cell phone company had been when I used to hook up my laptop to my cell phone.  Using a cell phone as a modem was painfully slow; even slower than dial-up.  This wireless card is awesome! I've used it on the train, at restaurants that don't have Wi-Fi and, most recently, I used it a few times at one of our satellite offices when our network went down.  It was nice to be able to just pop the card in and continue working whereas everyone else had to sit and wait until the network came back on-line.

$50 per month for the service isn't too bad, especially since you can cancel your home ISP.  The speeds I'm getting with the Sprint card are fast enough that I don't think I'd miss my 6mbps cable modem.

I should also point out how impressed I have been so far with Sprint.  In the post below, I discussed how after my Nextel phone was stolen, I switched to Sprint.  I haven't had a problem with dropped calls or no signal since I switched.  What really impresses me though is their customer service.  Though Sprint and Nextel have combined, they are still on separate networks and they have different technical support groups.  The people I talk to at Sprint seem to really know what's going on and they've taken great care of me.  I even sent an email to them with a technical question and the guy who responded gave me his direct email address in case I had further issues.  That kind of personalized service and accountability is something I don't see too much these days.