Does this look like 18K to you?

Haha!

I stumbled upon this "deal" at Overstock. and literally laughed out loud at the notion of anyone paying 18THOU for a time piece as compared to 24K and then getting it shipped for $1.00. How comforting is it knowing that your 18Grand is going through the USPS, FedEx or Brown like every other piece of crap being sent for $1.00?

18,000 for a stupid watch?! Freaking amazing....

An almost 5hour Blow Job...

We're talking home improvement here you gutter-minded sea donkeys! :p Cellulose Insulation in my attic is what was blown, to be exact. What I had planned to take 2-2.5 hrs was double that and man did it suck....or actually, it really blew.

They changed out the machines at the Home Depot near me and this "new&improved" version was not that great.

This took place on Friday night. My bro-in-law helped me out since you do need two people to do this. I was in the attic with the 80ft of tubing to spray the insulation and my bro-in-law was in the garage feeding the machine (aka hopper) each of the 60 bags of this stuff. Correct, I said 60 bags! Each bag covered 40square feet. What can I say, I was going for a high R Value and I was able to achieve that based on my measurements and a guide they gave us at Home Depot. If you have one roll of traditional insulation (the pink ish that makes you itch and you actually roll it out), then you have approximately R19. I wanted to achieve R50. I actually ended up with about R40 because the machine we rented from HD was slow and as you added the additional 40ft of tubing to be at 80ft to reach the corners of the house, the power was further compromised and that is what actually made the job take longer than it needed to; I actually said F it and was left with 10bags that we just brought back since I still made a drastic improvement in my insulation anyway. THAT is the part that pissed me off. My attic is unfinished, so I was basically Spider-Man up there walking on joists and repositioning a powerful light so I could see what was going on. Had to wear a mask, safety glasses, hat and long sleeves. The inside of the mask was jet black and filled with all kinds of nastiness. If it were summer, I would have had a heat stroke, indeed, but the fall temps helped immensely.

Anyway, thank God that crap is over and I hope to save some cash on my utilities with this action over time.

Reason 2,478 why I like APPLE

Today, Steve Jobs mentioned that the iPhone will be open to developers. Is that big news, you ask? H-U-G-E NEWS indeed! It was the right thing to do. It was somewhat of a change in direction by Apple based on a recent update that basically "bricked" people's phones who unlocked them for other carriers since AT&T is the primary carrier at the moment for service. In the microwave society we exist in, not allowing people to use your technology for purposes outside of your simple intentions is very bad. It may please shareholders, but you alienate your consumer. Alienation is bad. This will do nothing but move more iPhones for Apple and REALLY cause Motorola, Nokia and Sony to step up their game in terms of hardware and cause rewriting of lots-o-business plans out there.

I saw another report that has Apple #3 in terms of market share behind Dell and HP for Q3; that is a sidenote because this post is more about one hardware component that Apple has put out.

I expect hundreds of apps to be built within the next few weeks.

I'm waiting for 1-2more price drops before I actually get one, but I can see an eventual purchase of the iPod Touch although I would have to get more apps on it because I don't necessarily care about absolutely getting an iPhone and it being an all-in-one super device for me. I am just not a big fan of all-in-one devices as a whole. We'll see what happens, but Apple continues to innovate and get more people to pay attention.

Carbon Footprints

The other day, I was looking at some propaganda literature from one of my utility companies and it had a small postcard mentioning a new program customers could join that would "offset carbon emissions" and help the environment; reduce your carbon footprint, in other words.

Well, I am all for helping the environment and Carbon Offsetting is the rage right now. Just ask big Al who just picked up a Nobel peace prize for some of his work and attention to environmental issues. Not only are utility companies trying to push consumers over the edge by appealing to their emotions, but airlines are now on board and asking for X amount of dollars to offset your flight and save the earth.

Again, I am all for tangible and concrete actions on reducing waste and truly minimizing emissions and guys like Al do a good service to the planet when they shift people's thinking.....to a point. Don't try and scare me into action or try and pull my heart strings to get me to open my purse strings.

I have an issue when no hard science exists to truly quantify carbon emissions and the idea of my giving $50 to an airline to allegedly plant some trees to offset my plane trip is an absolute scam and consumers are blind sheep that think throwing some cash for a cause will cure the problem. What would be more likely to help the cause would be a severe reduction in SUV purchases, more local purchase of goods and services and heavy R&D into alternative energy and no dependence on oil, but since our government cannot tax the sun or the wind, you can forget those two options for taking us off the grid........People need to start thinking!

Maybe she thought he was Asian...yeah, that's it..

Oh brother.....this episode is indicative of the vast cultural awareness that is possessed by most Americans. The other day, a lady at work brings a guy over to my cube and asks me if "Mr Bla-bla-bla" (insert ethnic last name) is around and I said, "well, he is in the building, but just not around here." And she proceeds to tell me that the guy she is walking with has just arrived from India and "Mr Bla-bla-bla" could probably relate to him. Of course, I was completely aware that "Mr Bla-bla-bla" is actually from Pakistan and NOT India and was pretty sure that these two guys would be unable to communicate in their native tongue. There are hundreds of thousands of people within the country of India that cannot even communicate with each other due to dialect differences. After this foolish woman walked away, I leaned back and looked at another coworker and asked, "How is Mr Bla-bla-bla going to relate to this guy from India when the guy she is walking with speaks better English than her and does she even know that Pakistan is not located within India?"

My point is that the ignorance of Americans and geography/culture/language is pretty sickening. Ethnocentrism is everywhere in this country.

Trilingual = Three Languages
Bilingual = Two Languages
Monolingual = American

What a joke!