Save the Planet use a Wok

Well while reading some of my favorite RSS feeds this morning, I came across an article that just makes me smile. I love technology and I love people that can see past the stigma that technology is for only a select group of people. The article was about a New Zealand man named Ken Jones who thought, quote “Why pay $20,000 for a commercial link to run your television station when a $10 kitchen wok from the Warehouse is just as effective?” That’s right Ken built his own TV station antenna from a common household Wok that you can find at any local Bed, Bath, and Beyond. As you can see from the picture here a little ingenuity and a good imagination can solve many problems and save you a ton of money.

Please take the time to go read the full article.

You want to learn to make your own TV satellite? Well you better look at FCC rules and regulations. After you wake up and realized that you will never be allowed to own a TV station go out on the internet and look up Build your own TV station.

Once you have started your new Pirate Broadcast station please let me know. I want do standup comedy.

Spring is in the Air

Well it is getting to be that time of year again. You know what I am talking about don’t you? Spring!!! And with it comes all the things you love and hate about the warming weather. I thought I would type up a few things that I am ready for and few things I can do without.

Loves:

1. Warm Weather: That’s right now that spring is right around the corner the temperature is just right. At night it is nice and cool about 50 degrees and during the day it get to about 80 degrees
2. Activities: With warm weather come more activities to do outside. Things like running, sports, hiking, and fishing all can be done with minimal influence because of temperature.
3. Fewer cloths: With warmer day you can get rid of all those thick long sleeve shirts and corduroy pants. Put un a comfortable pair of sandals and some shorts.
4. Longer Days: With spring here and summer on it’s way our daylight hours are getting longer. More time for us to do what ever it is that we want to do.
5. Flowers Blooming: This might sound like a girly thing, but
   Tallahassee in the spring is a beautiful place to live. Just drive down
   Applachee Parkway

   and look at all the flowers blooming. There are so many different colors and types to see that is really amazing that we are city with this much foliage around us everyday.

Dislikes:

1. Rain: Unfortunately living here we get a lot of rain. During the spring, summer, and fall seasons
   Tallahassee is notorious for afternoon showers.
2. Allergies: Although I said that I love the flower here in
   Tallahassee, the flowers come with a price and that price is pollen. There is so much pollen in the air around this time that it will literally cover your car with residue.
3. Sun Burn: Living in
   Florida and being one shade away from an albino, I constantly have to apply obscene quantities of sun screen.
4. Personal Refection: Well a Sad fact for me is when I emerge from my winter cloths I have to face the sad reality that I need to lose a few pounds. It is so easy to not notice your wait while wearing winter cloths. I walk by a mirror and go dang I need to go on a diet.
5. Cleaning: One of the things my wife and I disagree on is she thinks that spring is means clean. To me it is just another season. Spring cleaning is a very horrendous idea that the first thing you should do when the weather warms up is clean the house and yard from head-to-toe.
6. Yard Sales: Lastly I can not stand yard sells!! Why would I want to buy someone else’s junk that they are trying to get rid of themselves??

Credit Card Signatures are a joke

So I decided to do an experiment 2 weeks ago to find out do stores really pay attentions to what is written on the back of a credit card. I received a new credit card and thought it would be fun to write something eye catching on the signature area on the back of the card. Below you can see that I have written that I stole this credit card on the back.

I thought that when I wrote this on my card that I would see more times when people would asked to see my photo ID. Over the course 2 weeks I used my card 20 times for $173.24.

I used the card at all types of places everywhere from Starbucks, gas stations, Walmart, and AMC movies. Out of the 20 times I used my card I was only asked to see my ID twice!!!! I am not sure what to think about this idea now that it over. I will tell you that I was very sad after the 2 days of this experiment, because I could see the writing on the wall. The first week was when I received my two ID checks and none the second week. I was checked at the Starbucks on Thomasville Rd. and the other at the AMC movies located in the Tallahassee mall. The funny thing about the AMC was that I was not checked when I bought the tickets to the movie, but when I was in the theater and purchased popcorn at the concession stand.

It is amazing to me the utter lack of responsibility or lack of training that we see in today’s market places. I am not saying that it is totally the responsibility of the merchant to catch people who could be using stolen credit cards, but I would like to think that there would be a little more that 2 people out of 20 that would think to look at the back of a card and see that I have written, “I stole this card check ID!!”.

I believe that this go to show why ID theft is such an easy thing to get away with in America today. I never carry cash on me so I totally rely on my credit card. If it was to go missing I would realize it very soon. There are people who are not as reliant as me on the plastic and I think that they are the ones who should feel more outraged by this experiment. If by some chance their card was to get stolen how long do you think it would take to have someone questions them about. Well if you like math then about 5% of the time.

I am a betting man and I would never bet on a 5% chance.

Protect your rights

Just a quick reminder, be glad that you live in a country that were our Free Speech is protected by law. Not everyone is so lucky and the consequences can be prison. I recently read a story about an Egyptian blogger, Abdel Kareem Nabil, who was arrested last year for speaking out against Islamic religion, the Prophet Muhammad and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Yesterday the 22 year old was sentenced to 4 years in jail. You can read more about this story here at Technewsworld.com.  

Also, please take time to reflect on the great system we have in place. As Americans should be grateful that we have so many freedoms ands the ability to change or make laws that ensure those freedoms. I will never say that our system is the best. I see atrocities in the news everyday that make me realize that we are not perfect. I also see the miracle of freedom ever morning when I drive into work and there are no armed guard checkpoints, women clothed from head-to-toe, children soldiers caring AK-47’s, or any other nightmare that I see on the nightly world news.

Veoh

I constantly think about what I should post on this blog. Since this is my personal blog I have come to the decision that VerticalGambit will be a mix bag of tricks. One of the things that I would really enjoy is tech. That might be why I am in my current job.

 

 

 

Recently I have been using a cool service called Veoh. It is pretty much like YouTube. You can watch user generated or professional production content from an embedded player in your browser. The thing I like the most about Veoh is the downloadable P2P player you can get. Once you download the player and sign up for a free account on Veoh, you can then search for content through the website and chose to download it directly to your computer’s Veoh player instead of watching it through the browser. I love this because I download the content to my laptop then I can watch it when ever I get a chance. The best part is a lot of the content is full length high quality video. The player download speed is great. I not sure what technology they are using, but I notice that I can fill up about a gigabit of hard drive space in less than hour and I do not feel any slowness in my internet connection while surf at the same time. I have currently been watching a series called Code Geass. If your into Japanese animation this is a very good site.

 

Phobias

Recently I have found that I am deathly afraid of squirrels. Well maybe not deathly, but I don’t like them! They run around all over my yard eating and pooping and eating some more. I wake up in the morning and they are taunting me barking from the trees at my bed room window. Their little beady eyes staring at my window judging me………….

Ok, so back on topic. Phobias, there are all kinds of phobias that plague people everyday. I know that my dislike for the squirrels is not as horrendous as other real phobias. The word itself is of Greek origin and means fear. I will be honest I do not fear squirrels I dislike them immensely. Know that I think about it I do have a true phobia of snakes. A quick hop over to Phobialist.com tells me that the name for fear of snakes is called snakephobia (how original). Do you know what the treatment is for phobias? To face it the fear head on. NNOO SSIIRR!!!!!!!! Like my daddy said a dead snake is a good snake. There is only a 3 scenarios that are going to happen if I am in the same room with a snake two of them have a bloody ending or the third is I past out.

Now that I think about it my dad use to take me squirrel hunting! That explains a lot.

Cell Phone Issues

Back in October I went to my wife sister’s wedding in Washington D.C.. It was kind of a crazy trip because I drove up with my wife from Tallahassee, but I few back to Jacksonville and rented a car to drive home to Tallahassee. All of this just so save some money. On the plane trip home I lost my cell phone on the plane. After realizing that my cell was gone it was too late to retrieve it from the plane because the plane had already left the airport to travel to it’s next destination. When I got home I called every airport that the plane landed and reported my phone was missing. After a couple of weeks I got a return call from South West Airlines and they informed me that they were not able to find my phone. So I decide to buy a phone on E-Bay.

The first thing I noticed was the prices were much higher on e-bay than they were only two months before when I bought my wife’s cell phone. I assumed that because it was getting close to Christmas that the companies that sell on E-Bay were making a little more profit buy raising their prices. I waited to until after Christmas to purchase my phone. This is where it gets frustrating. I have already been without a phone for over 2 months. I order a fairly cheap unlocked phone that ran me about $90 after shipping and handling. I received the phone a week later only to find out that the charger port on the phone does not work. I call the company and talk with Joe Shmoe that tells me to send the phone back and put a note in the box stating that the charger port is broken. I box the phone back up and send it to seller. Two weeks later I have not received my phone back. I call the company and after 30 mins on hold I talk to some lady that asks me my name and information. After giving this to her I go back on hold for another 15 min. She come back on the line and recites my address and asks me to confirm that it is correct. I tell her that it is my address and she then tell me that the phone will be ship out today. That was a 1 ½ weeks ago and still I have not received my phone. It has been over 4 months since I have had a cell phone of my own.

Bestsexever.org

Bestsexever.org

 

Sound like one of those advertisements that would find in the back of a Maxim magazine. The reality is that is a Christian campaign gear towards youth and sex. Local Genesis Christian church started the campaign to start about sex from God’s point of view. Recently there was some controversy with Leon County High school principle Rocky Hanna who asked the Genesis to take the billboards advertising the campaign down or they would not be allow to use the schools facility’s (currently Genesis is renting space to hold services at Leon County High school). For More information on this article please look at the links below.

 

http://www.tallahassee.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007702170331

 

National Action Against Obesity Boycotts Girl Scout Cookies

Recently I heard a story about how the National Action Against Obesity or the N.A.A.O. are boycotting Girl Scout cookies. First thought is this has got to be a joke. There is no one in there right minds that can honest blame obesity on Girl Scouts. After being assured that the story was true I quickly came to the realization if someone can sue McDonalds for coffee being too hot then in not only possible it mostly likely probable. After being enrage by the fact that someone or Organization would purposely be trying to stop Girl Scouts from selling cookies I thought I would investigate further. A quick Google search lead me to the culprits web page where the first thing I see is the picture shown below.

While on the website I noticed that it appears to be a fairly simple presentation a mission statement, In the News, Blog, and video clips of the president of the organization. The top article from the “In the News” section said, “NAAO Boycotts Girl Scout Cookies. I click on the story and I am taken to a press release. After reading the press release I find myself befuddled staring blankly into my monitor.

One Quote from within the article states,

“Girl Scout Cookies are high-calorie, high-sugar, high in saturated fat and nearly devoid of nutrition. Using young girls as a front to push millions of cookies onto an already bloated population further exacerbates an alarming crisis, no matter how cute the uniforms are,” said NAAO President MeMe Roth. “The Girl Scouts sell up to 200 million boxes yearly — that’s about one box for every overweight American.”

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Sorry, had to count to ten, so I would not lose my temper at the utter nonsense I just read. Anyone who can say the things that this woman (Meme Roth) said in the press release is either looking for publicity, sadly misinformed, or outright insane. I personally think it is all three.

 

For Meme Roth to have the audacity to think that the Girls Scouts are, “using young girls as a front to push millions of cookies” make her sound like a conspiracy theorist. Someone please tell Ms. Roth that she has successfully found out the Girl Scouts master plan for world domination by pimp enough cookies to the Obese American public, so that they can not put up a fight when the green sashes come marching. With this imaginary plot foiled she can go back to picketing school cafeterias because the lunch lady has been using lard instead vegetable oil to fry the tater tots.

 

Look I do not want to sound like a Girl Scouts Fanboi nor do I want to belittle obesity within our nation. I do want it to be known that the Girl Scouts just like the Boy Scouts provide valuable community service to our country and are not defined by their cookies. They are more than Thin Mints. Girl Scouts have been helping girls grow stronger for 95 years. Everyday that we have organizations try to unify our country’s children and not segregate them is one more day that we can walk with our chins up. Selling cookies is not a sinister plot to eventually change the colors of the flag to Green and Brown. Selling cookies is a legitimate way to raise money, teach responsibility and promote good will.

 

This is what Girl Scouts is about

 

Quote from the Girl Scouts website

 

“Girl Scouts of the USA is the world’s preeminent organization dedicated solely to girls—all girls—where, in an accepting and nurturing environment, girls build character and skills for success in the real world. In partnership with committed adult volunteers, girls develop qualities that will serve them all their lives, like leadership, strong values, social conscience, and conviction about their own potential and self-worth.”

 

That is all I have to say about that!

 

Rain Rain Go away!

Thinking about the future and what it has in store for me I started pondering the meaning of life. Yeah that’s rights it’s 3:00 in Florida and storming outside. So I have nothing to do but to sit and think about things that I really do not care to think about. I was watching office space the other day and want to know if Michael Bolton like that movie or if he just could not get over the fact that they made fun of him? I also, thought about this odd guy who mumbles a lot that is in the next room to me and wonder is the type that might snap one day because some took his stapler?