This has got to be the dumbest show ever imagined. Josh and I watched this show last weekend and I couldn’t help but make fun of it from start to finished. I mean, seriously, have the television producers of America simply run out of ideas and are taking suggestions from Kindergarten students? How can anyone seriously watch this show and find it remotely interesting? It’s just F*ing stupid!!! I’d rather sit in Time-Out with my nose on the chalk board!
“OMGGG!!!1one, will he make it through THE HOLE??!!!!1 I’m on the edge of my seat to see if the fat American can fit through THE HOLE IN THE WALL!!! ”
Seriously, the only thing to lure viewers (short of taking this show off the air) would be putting the host on air naked!
Dumbest show ever and it makes me embarrassed to be an American citizen.
I booked my hotel room for the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show way back in May. At that point, everything seemed to be on track for another eventful week in Las Vegas come January. But now, I am not so sure we will be making the annual trip. Here’s why.
Since being on the Dave Ramsey plan, I have come to realize how valuable money really is. In 2007, I put the entire price of our hotel on a credit card. I didn’t think twice about it then but looking back, yeah, not a good idea. And now that I refuse to use credit cards anymore, that is no longer an option. BTW, keep in mind that Vegas hotels jack the price of rooms by as much as 4x the normal rates during CES week, so it gets very expensive.
Besides that, I checked airline prices last week and discovered prices had increased over $300 from last year! I also need to budget for food which is pretty spendy as well, especially if you don’t want to eat fast food every day. Can you tell this is already getting extremely expensive?
Next I have to factor in my current situation here at home. Since I moved back in July, living expenses have increased a bit - a fair trade-off most certainly, but that means more money going out each month.
So really, it all comes down to money and trying to justify spending that much money to make it happen. Our first year was certainly well worth the money spent, as it really got my foot into the door and I met a bunch of really great people, etc. Last year, I really don’t think I accomplished too much in terms of making new contacts, meeting potential sponsors, etc. My plan for this year, however, is (was?) to connect with companies we currently do not work with yet, thus making the whole trip worthwhile in the long run.
But, all hope is not lost. I have pretty much ruled out doing the hotel thing, but it may be possible that we could stay with our friend Joe again, like we did in 2007. Joe lives about 20-30 minutes from the Vegas strip, which means we would be limited with how much time we can spend out each day covering the show and more importantly, attending press events and late-night parties. The benefit here, of course, is there are no overpriced hotel fees, which then puts the trip back into the do-able column in terms of money.
So right now, I’m unsure what I am going to do but I plan to make a decision before the end of the month.
I’ve been meaning to post up the latest addition to the Show Us Your OCIA.net Shirt for a few weeks now but I kept forgetting because I originally saved these photos on my laptop - oops!
I sent over a shirt to Monica from Monica Durazo dot com and she was nice enough to model them for me. Monica, a self-proclaimed MILF, got her start online as the host of Top Affiliate Challenge, a web-based reality show focused on affiliate marketing. During the show, she paired up with John Chow and started her own blog. Monica has since kept up with her blog and I would suggest checking it out - good stuffs
Don’t forget, I am still running my t-shirt promotion! If you purchase a shirt, take a picture of yourself wearing it and post it on your blog, I will give you a FREE link back and also send you $5 via Paypal to help cover the expenses (shirts are only $12.99 each)! So, you get a cool t-shirt and a free link back all for just $7.99 !
One of the biggest issues with working for yourself is staying focused. Since you make your own schedule and work at your own pace, it is extremely easy to veer off course and before you know it, things aren’t getting accomplished.
Before I moved back close to my home town, I had no problem getting things done. All of my friends lived an hour away or more, so it was very easy to find time to accomplish things since there were no distractions during the day. I even found myself taking on more work than usual simply to occupy time.
Now that I am back in town and closer to everyone, I am finding that I have less free time to get work done. This is not a bad thing on the surface, as I love hanging out with everyone and catching up on time missed, since I was away for about five years total. But on the business end, it can be more difficult.
There are a few things, however, to help combat this that I have been doing. Here are just a few:
- Make a schedule, set goals and stick to them. Roughly planning out your entire day is a great start and something that most everyone should do. Plan for big events and know that you will be away from the office at those times. Tell yourself that you want to work X number of hours per day and actually do it!
- Work at night. If you are a night owl like myself, you will have no problem with this one. Things usually settle down at night and friends are either asleep or at work, so there is plenty of free time to concentrate on work.
- Turn the TV off! It’s almost impossible to get anything done with the TV on in the background, because odds are, you will find something interesting on and stop working all together. Using a DVR is a great way to record shows that you do want to watch and set them aside to watch during your designated leisure time.
- If you can’t find much time at night or are too tired, do a little work here and there during the day. Take a laptop or note pad with you and get some writing done here and there, check and reply to emails or make blog posts.
- Just say no! Sometimes, work is just more important and you will have to take a rain check on hanging out, going out to a movie or to dinner with friends, etc. It’s ok - your friends won’t hate you!
Like I said, these are just a few things to help keep you on track. Remember, at the end of the day, time equals money and success… so if you aren’t where you want to be or well on your way, perhaps you need to be more focused and invest some more time to get there
Houston Nutt, that is. The new Ole Miss football coach kicked things off in style Saturday night against the local rival Memphis Tigers. I have been looking forward to the start of college football season… oh, about 8-9 months now! 2008 looks to be the year that Ole Miss turns things around with a new head coach, a new quarterback in Texas transfer Jevan Sneed as well as a fine supporting cast on both the offense and defense.
Josh and I took the hour-long trip to Oxford to check out the season opener. As anticipated, Nutt’s Ole Miss team put a hurting on the lowly Tigers, resulting in a 41-24 win for the Rebs. Below are a few photos and videos from the game.
Memphis trying to execute a trick play.
The new 6 million dollar video screen, the largest true HD screen in the SEC.
Looks even better at night!
For reference, the old screen. Talk about a major improvement!
Keith, Matt and I went out to the Memphis Motorsports Park last night. Since Matt’s visit back in March, he has added a few more upgrades and we were all curious to see how his car was going to run.
His first two runs were all-motor, with a best of 12.33 @ 111.19 MPH. On his last run, he sprayed a baby 65 shot of nitrous which made a huge difference. See the video below…
Keith and I took a trip out to meet up with my brother today to check out his new Dodge Challenger. Dodge recently released their remake of the classic Challenger from the muscle car era, and FINALLY, someone got a remake right! This car is absolutely gorgeous! With 425 HP and gobs of torque, it certainly puts you back in the seat. Below are some pics and a video that we made earlier today.
Link exchanges are a great way to get your blog noticed by new readers from other blogs and do the same for some of your friends / readers. If you would like to exchange links with my blog, just post a comment and we can do the deed
When you work online from home, it is a necessity to keep your computer system up and running at all times. Any time your system is down, it could be costing you money… and should something tragic happen, like an electrical spike or lightning strike, it could easily fry your entire computer. The last thing I want to do is lose all of my work-related data, so last night, I picked up an APC Battery Backup system.
Truth be told, I have had my eye on a battery backup for some time now, but the high price had always kept me away. A battery backup is similar to a surge protector in that it protects equipment plugged into it from surges, spikes and such, but it also has a built-in battery system, so if the power does surge or goes out completely, the system switches over to the battery, allowing you to safely shut down your components without any damage or data loss.
After recently getting a new TV (something else I want to protect), I decided it was time to go ahead and pull the trigger. The unit I went with, APC’s BX1500LCD, was originally ~$200 but happened to be on sale this week for $160 at Circuit City, and I also had a $30 gift certificate, so I paid $140 with tax and all - not too bad.
This is one of the higher end home models, with 865 watt 1500VA capacity, 8 outlets and even an LCD screen that displays more than 20 status notifications.
We hooked the unit up behind my computer workstation and purchased a 25′ extension cable for my TV so I could connect it as well. As is, I am running the computer, both of my LCD monitors and my TV on the battery backup system.
One of the coolest features of this battery backup is the real-time power consumption monitor. This will tell you exactly how much power is being used by the components plugged into the system. Josh and I experimented with this for a bit, and here are some of the numbers we found.
- With everything off, there was still about 15 watts being drawn. This is called phantom energy and is common with all electronic devices.
- My (aging) computer and monitors pull about 165 watts at idle and right about 200 watts under full load.
- My TV pulls a whopping 300 watts when watching a brightly-colored show.
- The max draw we could pull with these components was 500 watts total, still leaving me over 300 watts of headroom on the UPS.
So far, the UPS has worked great and I have no complaints. If you are like me and work from home, work with valuable data or simply have a lot of nice electronics / home theater equipment, you might want to consider protecting your investment with a quality battery backup system. A few dollars now to protect a lot of valuable equipment is money well spent, and certainly a better bet than those ripoff extended warranty offers!
A lot of people will say that you can’t train a cat to do anything; they do as they please. Not true! In the video below, you will see that I have trained my new kitten Jacinta with the word “hungry”. When I say this, she instantly knows it is time to eat! She can even be dead asleep and if I say “hungry”, she will wake up and start looking around for food.
It only took a single day for her to associate this word with food. Pretty impressive!
Another common myth is that cats don’t like water. While it is true that some cats don’t care much for water, that is not the case with Jacinta.
I had to give her a bath a few days ago because she accidentally stepped in some #2 in the litter box. I was dreading the procedure but to my surprise, she didn’t go crazy at all and even seemed to enjoy the warm water!
