Toying with Science

My mother was talking to me on the phone when my daughters were having a long visit with her. She wanted to let me know about an incident that concerned her. My daughter was playing with a magnifying glass in the back room and set a piece of paper on fire.

I was concerned. I assured my mom that we didn't have any big magnifying glasses around our house. There was a small part of me that was pleased that my girl was experimenting with the forces of nature rather than watching TV.

I was always experimenting when I was a kid. I was never lucky enough to have actual science kits. I had gun powder for a few days until my parents found out that I had gun powder.

ScienceKits.com didn't waste time deciding on a site name. They are a site that has science kits that young people can use to have fun learning about science.

I like the idea of the water testing kits. We have two water sources at our house, a rain fed reservoir under the house, and a treated municipal water supply. My landlord offered his opinion that the reservoir was safe to drink and I have been curious to see if there was a measurable difference in quality.

My son is not that interested in Natural Sciences. He would probably enjoy this Learn to Solder Kit with Soldering Iron and Wire Cutters. He built a lighthouse at his school and he was fascinated with the basic concept of the electrical circuit.

Ambition

I think that AMBITION is a characteristic that defines Shakira.

Something that I got an inkling of recently is the fact that her ambition may not be coupled with PRIDE in the same way that it is with many other successful people. In the Roman Catholic tradition, PRIDE is a sin. There are parades celebrating it these days, but I honestly don't think it can be considered an entirely positive emotion.

Shakira is said to have terminated a number of staff members who were responsible for her appearance because she felt that she was becoming too concerned or obsessed with the way she looked.

Ambition seems to be a close relative of pride, but they are different beasts entirely.

Viva Las Vegas !!!

A few years ago, I was about to get married and we had decided against having a traditional church wedding. We thought long and hard about going to Las Vegas. In the end, time constraints made that impossible. I was just as happy to get married on a nearly deserted beach, but I am still eager to get the chance to go to Vegas someday soon. A site that I am just checking out called www.Las-Vegas-NV-online.com is loaded with information about this popular vacation destination.

The Las Vegas hotel reviews are indepth and useful. Something that caught my eye was a reader review that said that a certain hotel restaurant was popular with locals. I live in a place with a big tourist industry and I can say the best advice is to eat where the locals eat. This should hold true just about everywhere. Generally, good cheap food is not that hard to come by in Vegas because many buffets are essentially loss leaders to get you to come to the casinos.

I think my Vegas plan is going to involve a fairly lengthy stay. I even want to get out into the surrounding area for a day trip or maybe some desert camping. I think I might see if there are any slightly more sane spin-offs of Burning Man in the fall in Nevada.

Whenever, Wherever, etc.

I was going to mention that Shakira's hit song is yet another example of a popular song that uses the chord pattern of the classical piece Pachelbel's Canon in D. I ran over the chords in my head though and I think Shakira' song has fewer chords. This comedian ends his routine with a medley of songs that do use the familiar chord progression. It's ironic that this guy hates Pachelbel's Canon in D so much and yet after watching I decided to sit down and try playing it. I like it. It is nice.

1800nodrugs.com

What with the trouble lots of celebrities are having with addiction these days,
drug rehab is a pretty poular phrase on the internet. I am happy to do my part to help boost the profile of a site that doesn't just talk about it. 1800nodrugs.com talks to people who want help either for themselves or for someone they care about who is suffering a drug addiction.

I had an experience when I was a college RA that I don't ever want to relive. I was contacted by another RA and I drove to the hospital with her. A student was on suicide watch after she had been acting irratically. I won't add any more details out of respect for the person in question. She only sought help when the school gave her the two choices of detox or expulsion and returning to her parent's care and supervision. The sad truth is that she was luckier than some people who are smart and functional enough to hide their addictions for years.

Car Designing for NOOBS

Just a reminder, the SEAT car designed (style-wise) by Shakira is to be given away at the Barcelona Motor Show in June.

Remember the episode of the Simpsons when Homer was hired by his smart, long lost brother to design a car? Shakira is smarter than Homer. Here is my car design. I wasn't trying to do a good job.

The Lowest Bidder Wins ???

It is taking me some time to figure this new website out. On bid4prizes, the lowest UNIQUE bidder wins the prize in question.

These are not Booby prizes we are talking about either. Right now there is a Scion up for grabs. That's right, the COOL KID'S version of the Toyota, for as little as you can imagine paying.

If you go to the official rules, there is a list of ALL the prizes. It is a pretty impressive list. They would almost be better off listing what they aren't giving away.

I still don't quite get it. I guess it's really not an auction site in the traditional sense, it is more of a sweepstakes with a twist that involves a bit of skill.

Where is Shakira?

Unlike certain pop singers who are in the gossip news even more when they have no product in the stores and no touring plans, Sakira seems to keep a pretty low profile when she is not busy.

There hasn't been much talk about what is going on with the small Caribbean island that she purchased. It is possible that the development is in some protracted planning stage. If you have an island that does not have an international airport, I don't think you get many paparazzi.

Free Bluetooth Headset Offer

Customers can get a Free Bluetooth Headset with their new TMobile Phones. This offer is from Wirefly, the number one online source for phones.

I have been curious about the Bluetooth Headset ever since I first heard about them. So I just did a quick search for opinions on why anyone would NEED to have a Bluetooth headset.

First story, multi-tasking safely. A lady sees another mom holding her phone to her ear while ushering four young children across a busy parking lot.

Second story, looking cool in a techy way. Yes, even if you haven't figured out what everybody else is using them for, you gotta have one to look hip.

Third story, there is no third story, they are just really useful. You can use Bluetooth Headsets to communicate with a wide array of enabled devices.

Anyway, with this offer, the Bluetooth headset is the icing on the cake. You can also get some of the very best phones available from Wirefly. The RAZR is one of the most popular phones in the world with good reason. It is stylish and loaded with the best functionality.

Wirefly is the number one online dealer for most major service providers. With their site, you just punch in your ZIP code and you are taken to a page of the packages that are available in your area.

Music Notes

The post below this one features music that I composed and recorded on the spot.

My Guitar was tuned as D A D F# A D.

There are four seperate tracks recorded using Audacity. It is a bit boring and repetitive, but I like the lush jangly MIDDLE EASTERN feel. It's too bad that my microphone is a bit noisy. I had it dangling inside the soundhole of the guitar.

Come on VH1

This video is part of a grassroots campaign to encourage VH1 to pick up the reality show RockStartup that payperpost has been putting together for some time. PayPerPost helps people like me monetize their blogs. Making video content is hard work and when it is done well, it deserves widespread recognition.

I have a cool story related to watching VH1. My wife and I and our teenage son were sitting in a departure lounge of an airport and VH1 was on the bigscreen. That Coldplay video that has the dancing octagenarian lady from Florida was playing. I had never seen this before and I couldn't figure out that it was archival footage and that the band wasn't really on stage with the old lady. RockStartup makes me feel the same way sometimes. My teenage son absolutely refused to even look up at the screen, but my wife and I couldn't look away.

Soon

I am going to start putting original music on this blog soon. I have a bunch of things that I used to have hosted on Bolt.com but it has gotten really dysfunctional. I play guitar and sing and I play a little harmonica. When I was fisrt learning my neighbor told me that my singing voice reminded him of Kermit. Yeeaeaeeaahhhhh!!!!!

Finding the Best Credit Card

If you have ever sat down to do an Online Credit Card search, you know that there are entirely too many sites out there competing for your attention. Are you going to end up with the best deal on a credit card or are you going end up getting a card from the site with the best SEO?

CreditCardSearchEngine.com is so full of deals that they had to set up a search function on their site. There are traditional categories along the side as well. They feature a full range of cards from low interest cards to offers for those of us with bad credit.

If you qualify for a typical credit card account, you are pretty much stuck choosing between a fairly narrow range of interest rates. The lenders are mostly competing with each other using rewards plans and other incentives. This means that your job is to find the card that has a reward that is best suited to you. If you don't go anywhere, you don't need frequent flyer miles. If you don't even have a car, you don't need a card that saves you money on gasoline. The Discover Card has an interesting plan, you get 5% cash back on a range of retail items, and the items list changes every three months. If you are a shopper, this might be the card for you.

Gauging the Impact of a Hit

I blog about Shakira almost every day. It is hard for me to get perspective with respect to her popularity. I have had two indicators recently. A PHP coder who works two desks down from me was watching old pre-English Shakira YouTube videos all Friday afternoon. He was looking at code and just listening to the music. This isn't a very good indicator of popularity, he has random and erratic tastes.

What made me think that she is becoming ubiquitous was when I was in my local grocery store and the young women working there were singing along to 'Liar'. They have taste the I trust, ever since they told us about which ready-made pizza crusts were the best.

Big Fish Eat The Little FIsh

Any casual observer who checks out this blog will notice that there are posts that I get paid to write. The company that facilitates this is PayPerPost. Today they are asking bloggers to help drive traffic to their site by making a post that discusses an upcoming announcement about an acquisition. The funny thing is, the are not telling us what company they are buying. I am curious as to just how wild and crazy the speculation will get.

The world of business is kind of like the ocean. Big fish eat the little fish. It stands to reason that whatever business PayPerPost is investing in is a smaller company. I am pretty certain that they are not acquiring Viacom. If they are, I would ask that Ted Murphy let people start putting SouthPark videos up on YouTube with impunity again.


PayPerPost is based in Florida. If business acquisition is kind of like dating and romance, I would say that proximity is probably a big part of attraction. Since I know absolutely nothing about business, I am just going to randomly guess that they are buying a dairy, because someone told them a story about free milk and a cow, but they were not listening very carefully. It looks like a very good dairy, I hope they are happy with it.

Edit: Now they want me to talk about online ads??? Maybe they bought adsense from Google. My fish measuring stick is getting SO out of whack.

Carmen Ripoll Torrado

This post is titled in honor of Shakira's mother. I am going to tell you an insignificant fact and then I am going to try and draw some conclusions from it.

I did a Google Image search for the term Carmen Ripoll Torrado. There were seven pages of pictures and none of them were of Shakira's mum. Most of them were Shakira herself. Most of the otheres were banners and buttons that had been optimized for those three words for some inexplicable reason.

Shakira's mother must be a fairly private person. Shakira herself does very little in her life to attract attention, except when she is on stage or making a scheduled appearance.

The Wedding Planner

The first time that a young man realizes that young a woman has been planning their wedding since her tiny hands have had the dexterity to leaf through magazines is a scary experience. The scariest part of this scenario is that men are usually engaged when they find out about this fact of life.

This wedding planning is fantasy. If you could magically make every wedding into the fairy tale princess affair that swirled around in a tweenager's brain, something very bad would happen to the space time continuum.

Even the simplest ceremonies have to observe a certain amount of Wedding Etiquette. I have had one church wedding and one beach wedding so I can tell you my preference. I will do my very best not to infuse my decisions with my marriage experience. We are talking about Weddings NOT Marriage.

BEACH WEDDINGS FTW!!!

HitWeddings.com has some great tips on avoiding catastrophe with outdoor wedding plans. Our plan B, for if the weather had been awful, was to cram into our rented beach cottage. Thank goodness the weather was nice.

When you have an outdoor wedding in a beautiful outdoor setting you don't need decorations.

Some wedding photographers just plain know what they are doing. Other photographers might be artsy fartsy tyoes that need to be kept on task by someone who is given the task of ensuring that all the necessary shots are taken. HitWeddings.com has a lengthy list. I was very happy with our photographer. Part of our quickly drawn up plans included the decision to have only immediate family. That was a hard decision to make in some ways. It's funny that when you are having a big wedding and inviting almost everybody the final decisions are just as hard. Not as fraught, but pretty tricky just the same. And of course, you will forget someone. And they will be deeply offended.

No Wedding for Shakira ?

Shakira has no wedding plans. SHe has commented on this in the past:

"I have a ring... Four years engaged and no wedding plans. The reality is that it would be very difficult for me to plan a wedding at this point... Maybe some day."

Source

I searched for 'news' about Shakira's Wedding Plans. Shakira music gets played at newsworthy wedding receptions. That is not news.

Shakira has a mix of heritages, and the three main ones all are noted for fancy weddings. I don't think she could get away with eloping.

iBackUp: They've Got Your Back

These guys have an award winning system for integrated backup of your data. This Online Backup is priced to be affordable to individuals and organizations, but it is the same systems and level of service that big corporations rely on. I looked at the pricing list, they have it segmented into several different prices based on the amount of usable storage space that you require. You can also expect savings of up to 16% if you pay an annual rather than monthly rate. you can also phone them to discuss a customized account. If you need backup and you don't have it, you are one crazy person. Get yourself some backup.

online backup

Shakira Loves Idioms

I have a taken a course that qualifies me to teach student English as a second language. Shakira had to learn English as a second language. If only she had waited I could have been her teacher.

Many people who learn English as adults are very entertained by our figures of speech.

Here is a sample test that people new to the language might be faced with.