Bird Flu Protection

On mattresses Los Angeles

2012-01-21T18:12:00.000-08:00

Another thing I didn't like about Deception Point was Brown using Special Forces troops as the main bad guy muscle or killers. I have to question whether such soldiers put on an unorthodox (in the extreme) mission would have carried out their orders from someone of nonmilitary authority. I wonder if the bad guy in the book would have been able to get three men assigned to him from the military. Maybe. But if so, having them kill civilians -- even American civilians who are not endangering the country in any obvious way -- is going pretty far. I can believe mattresses los angeles, but not that they'd take out ordinary people just because they're ordered. Maybe I'm wrong, but I hope not. Not without some idea the people were terrorists or something, but these guys knew they weren't.

On briefcases for men

2011-12-30T20:27:00.000-08:00

This is sort of weird. A man in Massachusetts has become the first human case of rabies in the state for the last 75 years. His house has bats, and they believe he was bitten by one but didn't know because their teeth are small. Just how was he bitten without knowing? In his sleep? That's gross to think you can be asleep and a bat just happens to jump on you and bite you without any cause, because if you're asleep you're not threatening them. He wasn't carrying any briefcases for men. I wonder if bats get it from biting each other. Since he wasn't found with it until he got sick, they say there's no treatment, so I guess he's going to die. Getting the shots is bad enough, dying without the shots is worse.

On Display Banner Stands

2011-12-23T21:43:00.000-08:00

Two other frustrating things about Youtube, though I realize I'm being overly critical, I do appreciate the service of having so much music available for free, is that on some Beatles albums, there is a lot gap between songs. I don't know why that is. Also, though there are playlists, they don't usually go from song to song automatically, and if they do, they soon stop by encountering a video whose uploader does not allow them to be included in such playlists. So why are they in the playlist in the first place? I don't know. Maybe it's up to Display Banner Stands. It'd be great to be able to somehow program Youtube to play a long list of videos, then just let it rip. But I guess most people have their iPods or other mp3 players and don't need to use Youtube as I do.

On clawfoot tub

2011-12-17T20:12:00.000-08:00

I bought a Kindle only because I'm traveling and don't want to pay the horrendous shipping costs of having a paper book mailed, and I'd have to wait I don't know how many weeks, and may not get them at all. One problem is buying books by mainstream publishers. To attempt to discourage people from buying Kindle books, they keep their book prices high. Many are from 10 to 20, which means they actually lose money on each sale, because they get only 35% royalty, but from 3 to 9.99 they get 70%. That also means they're cheating the authors, who get a percentage of the royalties the publisher collects, so they can't buy a clawfoot tub. So I for one don't buy many new books, only ones I really think I need to get some information out of.

On North Face jacket

2011-12-03T18:15:00.000-08:00

I read van Lustbader because I'm a fan of Asia, so I'm hoping to learn and experience parts of the continent that I don't know. Plus, I'm a fan of thrillers and suspense novels. So I like the idea of thrillers set in Asia. Unfortunately, I can't think of any I've read that satisfied me. I'm beginning to think Lustbader totally makes up his stuff, pulling phony mysticism out of his ass. He certainly created a false Vietnam. He also has an American soldier go into the hills of the Shan states of Burma and become the top druglord. Before him, however, a Vietnamese general does away with all the Chinese generals who fled there in 1949 following the communist takeover of China. How credible is that? Not. How credible is it that this American soldier could then takeover from the Vietnamese commie general? Not very. Then how credible is it that it sets up a nuclear facility in the middle of communist Vietnam? With a Soviet scientist he just happened to rescue. About as credible as him wearing a North Face jacket. Not very at all.

On redfeather snowshoes

2011-11-20T18:43:00.000-08:00

Last night I saw a fragment of a movie which kind of reminded me of Without Remorse. A CIA or other general government agent has a young daughter who convinces him to let her go to Paris with a friend, though of course he's worried for her safety out there in the real world he knows is not as safe as the United States. So of course as soon as she and her friend land in Paris they're approached by a young man who they do not realize is a scout for a criminal gang looking for women to kidnap to be prostitutes in Eastern Europe. I'm skeptical of this whole human trafficking theme, myself, because the world is full of poor women who want to be prostitutes so long as they get to keep money for themselves. They don't need to be kidnapped. So they break into the girls' hotel room and the agent is listening on cell phone as his daughter is taken. So he puts on his redfeather snowshoes and gets the next plane for Orly, though first gets some information through his organizational resources.

On auto body estimating software

2011-11-20T18:33:00.001-08:00

Revenge in literature in an age-old theme, and a popular one. We can all understand why someone who's had loved ones killed wants to get revenge on their killer. Most of us have never had it done to us, but we may think we'd want revenge if it did. Considering how many Vietnam vets returned to the United States with similar skills to those of John Kelly, if not quite such super-heroes, it's apparently not many lost loved ones to criminals or perhaps we'd have seen some sprees as he carried out in this book. It's also on a variation of the Charles Bronson Death Wish movies. Only, because he didn't know and couldn't find, the killers of his wife and daughter, he becomes a general vigilante. It takes more than auto body estimating software to stop him from going after every hoodlum in New York City, which there were a lot of at that time.

On gamestop coupons at dropdowndeals

2011-11-05T21:50:00.000-07:00

I have to wonder - did some editor actually try to edit Stephen King in the 1990s and actually succeed? Or did King just forget that part or what? So much is made of how the writer "died" while in South Vietnam, and the picture of him with another writer and David Halberstam who in real life did write a book about the war. It's just not like King to lead up to some crucial personal story, and then not write it up. One part of me thinks it may be just as well. King was not in Vietnam, and so any story he would tell would be something from his head, which is fine, but he admittedly does not always stick with the facts on stuff he's not personally familiar with, which he's not with Vietnam. So he'd be likely to make up some horrific massacre or something else to make American soldiers rather than the Viet Cong, look bad. Better to write about gamestop coupons at dropdowndeals at that point.

On Steel Pendants

2011-10-29T20:10:00.000-07:00

So I was kind of afraid when I started reading Stephen King's Desperation, especially after it seemed to be the one right after Gerald's Game. Until recently I've been pleasantly surprised. The set up was vintage King, with an assortment of people thrown into jail by a psychotic cop in the middle of Nevada. Except for the people he casually killed -- including, most horrifically, a young girl. And he seems to be grappling explicitly with religion to an extent he rarely does, unless to make believers maniacs such as Carrie's mother. Or hypocritical power mongers as he does in The Dome. One of the characters is an 11 year old boy who "got religion" after God answered his prayer to save the life of his best friend close to dying from a car accident. No steel pendants in sight, though.

On Transportation Attendant Jobs

2011-10-01T21:38:00.000-07:00

Good news. The doctor who owns the building where I looked at an office last weekend now says I don't have to be out by five o'clock. He said that last week, and it was a deal killer because I need to work later than that. Now he says I can stay until midnight. There is a call center in the building that works around the clock. I guess they're calling North America which is twelve to fifteen hours behind us, depending on the time zone. Or not so long if Alaska and Hawaii. Now I've already got a new desk, chair, and floor rug. It also has a small bathroom with a shower if I want to take a shower there. I don't have to hold my urine for three to five hours as I do here at the mall. Now I don't have to take any Transportation Attendant Jobs.

On www.wholesaleinsurance.net

2011-09-17T22:16:00.000-07:00

Another polyglot named Michael Campbell is now studying all the native languages on the island of Taiwan, planning to learn enough to pass the government's proficiency exams in all 18 of them in just four months. Good luck with that, especially considering he said one of them has about 50 kinds of pronouns and another one the words average 15 to 20 letters in length. But he likes to repeat sentences into a recorder, then listen to them. Learn 10,000 to 20,000 conversational sentences and you'll also absorb a lot of vocabulary and grammar. I think he writes a lot of them out too. I do wonder how he makes sure his pronounciation is correct. What if he's just reinforcing incorrect pronounciation? You don't have to go to www.wholesaleinsurance.net to understand that it's risky to tell the world on Youtube you're going to learn 18 languages in 4 months.

On Clic EyeWear

2011-09-10T19:44:00.000-07:00

It's important to wear good eyeglasses, for the health and safety of your eyes, such as Clic EyeWear. Last night one of my sisters in law told me that I looked very tired,, because of my eyes. My eyes have looked tired and baggy for many years because I'm very nearsighted, even though I try to go without my glasses as much as possible. Unfortunately, most of the day I'm working in front of this computer and need the glasses to see. Well, I can lean close to the screen but that's not very efficient and is even more tiring.

On funny t shirts

2011-08-28T00:32:00.000-07:00

I was kind of skeptical, but the doctor said it worked for him, and had lots of testimonials in the book (in fact, the book is more like an expanded article, with photos and x-rays and CAT scans to make it seem longer than it is), so I decided to try it. But the only place I can find with a bar to hang from is at the old playground in my neighborhood. The equipment is not in good condition. I've seen children play there only a few times, the grass is allowed to grow up, and it's just plain ugly. But the swingset's top bar is at the right height so I can grab and put as much of my weight as I can stand. It's not high enough to hold all my weight unless I lift my feet, and I can't manage that yet. I hang for twenty seconds, rest for a minute, and repeat for 10 to 15 minutes or so. And the first times it always hurts like hell, but later my shoulder feels a lot better. Nothing to wear any funny t shirts about, but I'm glad the pain has gone down a lot.

On MegaMeeting Enterprise Software

2011-08-28T00:28:00.000-07:00

So I went looking online for a solution, and went to Amazon for books on exercises on how to cure the pain in your shoulder. At first I tried shoulder exercises as described by Pete Egoscue in his book on how to use a PC without having any pain. They seemed to help, but also took a lot of time. I have his other two books in paper copies in storage in America, but the one I wanted didn't have a Kindle edition, and that's what I need to buy an Amazon book these days, but the PC one did. But I still wasn't satisfied, so I went back and found one by a doctor who says the best way to help such shoulder problems is to hang by your hands. That sounds too simple, it's not MegaMeeting Enterprise Software, but just hanging allows gravity to pull your acrominal arch away from where it's pinching your rotator cuff.

On swing sets

2011-08-28T00:24:00.000-07:00

It may sound funny, but almost every morning, except when it's raining, you can find out early around the local park and swing sets. That's because my right shoulder started hurting early this year. At first I thought it would just go away, but finally it didn't so I did enough research to make me learn I probably have a torn rotator cuff, which I thought I couldn't get because I don't lift weights. I may have gotten it doing regular pushups or Hindu pushups. However, it's most likely from sleeping on my side, especially because what I slept on at my mother's house was a pull out bed that folded out from a small sofa. I had no idea you could get a torn rotator cuff just from sleeping on your side.

On nursing uniforms

2011-08-07T00:20:00.000-07:00

The weather here continues to be very rainy. Today has so far been one of the driest of the weeks, and it's overcast and threatening. Maybe it'll be raining when I get out of here, or maybe not. I have several times left my umbrella here in the Internet cafe, but always found it again when I came back, thank goodness. It's a foldup kind, so it fits well in my bag when I'm not using it. I think that if I had to buy a new one, it'd be the standard length that would be a hassle to carry around with me when not raining. Yet I have to have it on me all the time, because I don't know when it is going to rain. My kids at home now have their Boy and Girl scout uniforms and clothes for PE on Friday. Apparently they stay inside the other days of the week. I'm not clear on these details. At least they don't need me to buy them nursing uniforms. Yet.

On Shari's Birthday Selection

2011-07-10T20:44:00.000-07:00

Today is July 11 and as I write for sharis birthday selection, of course today is also the anniversary of the birthdays of some famous people, starting with John Quincy Adams, one of the founding fathers of the United States of America. And E.B.White was a writer for THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE in its heydey in the 1920s and 1930s along with James Thurber. He co-authored a famous book for writers, but is probably most known for the children's book CHARLOTTE'S WEB. Leon Spinks the boxer is another one. And let's not forget Tab Hunter, a teen star from the 1950s or early 1960s. Then there's Suzanne Vega, whose songs I believe I've heard on the radio. Then some people I've never heard of, so I guess they're famous only recently.

On motorhome insurance

2011-07-10T20:36:00.000-07:00

Well, here's a good news story for a change. An eleven year old boy went swimming with a neighbor, a thirty-four year old man at the man's house. Why he was there isn't reported in the news. But the man cannot swim, so well he slipped into the seven foot deep end he was in trouble. But the boy threw him a rope and pulled him to safety. That shows it is a good idea to have ropes and poles around even for small pools in the backyard. It's as important as having motorhome insurance. When I took lifesaving classes a million years ago I was taught to always use a tool such as a rope or pole or even a towel instead of jumping in after the person, if at all possibly, and in a pool situation (not ocean) it is.

On laminate floor

2011-07-10T20:25:00.000-07:00

Can you bill your doctor for long waits? It's frustrating to make an appointment, show up on time and then be forced to walk a laminate floor enough to wear a path in it before you're seen. Many doctors charge people who make appointments and then fail to show up without calling to cancel. To me it kind of depends. Many doctors see people in the hospital early in the morning. They may encounter an emergency. They may have lots of people needing care. Or they may just overbook and squeeze as many people in as they can. We all want to spend plenty of time with the doctor, but they want to see as many people as possible to book as much money as possible. And is it chronic. If you know you're going to wait two hours until you're called then I can see the point. You want to be on time, just in case, so your time is wasted.

On top 10 bookshelf speakers

2011-07-10T20:04:00.000-07:00

Meanwhile, in Montana, the sponsors of an ultramarathon race, which is 100 miles, have cancelled it due to snow. Yes, now in July. The snow is deep enough that it covers up the markings to parts of the trail, so they decided that it would be too dangerous to hold the race, which is probably a smart idea. It'd be just like too many people today to go ahead and do something stupid and then wonder why runners got lost and die of exposure or something. And they can't postpone the race because the days are getting longer and there's increased danger from grizzly bears. Yet ultramarathoners are not people to value their top 10 bookshelf speakers, obviously they're action oriented, so I bet some would have come for the race. Last year less than half of the field actually finished.

On beads jewelry

2011-07-10T20:00:00.000-07:00

I talk about once a month to my sister in Boston and my aunt in the St Louis area. According to them, it's been a pretty miserable summer so far in the United States. And that does mater what I read in the news about storms and floods all over the place. So I guess I was lucky last year to live through a summer that was really great in terms of weather. It was not so great in terms of my mother being sick, but at least she was able to enjoy many afternoons on her back porch. She stayed cool, but had sunshine. She even went to her local swimming pool a few times though that really wasn't good for her. But she'd always enjoyed it and I guess it didn't make any difference in the end, so I'm glad she did. Turns out she had lots of costume jewelry, not beads jewelry, or we probably couldn't have sold that off as easily afterward.

On Uncle Mike's

2011-06-25T20:01:00.001-07:00

And it's shocking to me how readers don't seem to notice or comment on how the section in Japan is so anti-American. Trevanian pulls no punches with what he perceives as American atrocities. Nicholas's benefactor's daughter and baby boy and killed in the fire bombing of Tokyo and his first girlfriend is killed at Hiroshima. But the words "Pearl Harbor" don't appear in the book at all. In fact, one section gives the impression that it wasn't Japan started the war, but all the barbarian countries ganging up on poor little Japan. What bullies! Some of the details are good. I was touched by how the Japanese people bowed to wounded soldiers to show their appreciation. It wasn't like they took it for granted and then went on to uncle mikes.

On HGH supplements

2011-05-21T20:52:00.000-07:00

There is some good news, though, strange as it may seem. For two mornings in a row I got up in time to take a walk for an hour before heading out to the shopping center to go to work. That felt good. I didn't quite make it this morning, though. I like to get regular exercise. I enjoy walking nearly every day for at least an hour and miss not doing it. But my excuse this morning was that the sky was cloudy so it's still rainy. It rained last evening. And once I'm back to walking regularly, I want to run again, but wearing flipflops instead of thick running shoes, since I'm not convinced it's better to go the barefoot route. Not really barefoot, of course, because of rocks and broken glass, but minimal running shoes. I didn't buy Vibram 5 Fingers, but simple flipflops should do once I've gotten my lower legs and feet muscles in better shape just from walking. You don't need hgh supplements if you do intense regular exercise.

On Social Security disability

2011-05-14T20:04:00.000-07:00

I guess it's a sign of the hard economic times that so many people are trying to get social security disability checks. When people can't get a job they hope to profit from any medical problems they have even though they'd rather be working, which means they will probably be denied because Social Security is not a form of unemployment, although a few classes of medical problems (deafness, paraplegia) can treat it that way. That is, they can get checks whenever they want if they're not working. And yet they can work as well. And I was told that a large corporation that got bought out had kept on a large number of disabled people, but they lost their jobs when the company was bought out by a competitor.

On custom plantation shutters

2011-05-14T19:59:00.000-07:00

It's interesting to see how houses are different here. For one thing, there is very little concept of a lawn. Many houses fully occupy their lots, with no open space between the house and the street, or there's some space, but it's paved, sort of out doors because it's not enclosed, but not open land either. None of the houses have custom plantation shutters that I've noticed. The house across the street does have a sort of enclosed yard, with a nipa hut in the middle and some rocks inset to form a sort of walkway, and a lot of growing plants, and some grass but not a lot.

On systemes GPS

2011-05-08T21:54:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's amazing how many similarities there are between The Digital Fortress by Dan Brown and his later art and occult secret type books such as Angels and Demons, The DaVinci Code and the latest one set in Washington DC. And I have to admire his research, though I'm not sure how much of what he wrote about the NSA is accurate. Finding a good book on codes and code-breaking with computers in the modern era would have been enough for some of it. But he wrote about the NSA having a secret computer to break all encrypted files and emails. That's more complicated than back then even systèmes GPS were, before they were as common as they are now. And it's hard to say whether he's in favor of online privacy or believes the NSA really is protecting us, especially given the book was written before September 11.

On term life insurance

2011-05-08T21:48:00.000-07:00

One thing about Dan Brown's earlier thriller The Digital Fortress, if you've read the later Angels and Demons, the first one about the DaVinci Code guy, you'll know right away who the ultimate villain is going to be. Well, not right away but pretty close, as soon as the hero reports to her job at the NSA that Saturday, and the co-workers are described, you'll know. You'll know that he should not be taking out term life insurance because eventually his villainy will come to light, although it's really not presented as villainy. He has great intentions, and is shown as somebody who simply went too far in his zealousness. And I have to wonder if the NSA by the mid-1990s really did have the capacity to break every privacy code.

On adult acne

2011-05-01T00:19:00.001-07:00

Anyway, what's interesting is this other book by Dan Brown Digital Fortress also starts out with somebody somebody being killed, and obviously that's going to provide a lot of clues. It's very short. We get his name, that he's in a public square in Spain, and he's trying to get people to look at his hand, as though that will mean anything to them. He is swearing a gold ring with some characters on it. We're not told what they are, but I have a feeling I'm going to learn before I finish the book. However, it's a lot more credible than they guy in The Da Vinci Code who comes up with really complex clues in the short time before he dies. It was a lot more dramatic than adult acne, but it's hard to believe anybody could think so deeply so quickly while dying.

On masonic jewelry

2011-05-01T00:14:00.000-07:00

I've just started reading a book by Dan Brown, Digital Fortress. It's not in the same series as the Da Vinci Code. It stars a woman who works for the NSA as a code breaker. So it's also not in the same set as the more recent book which may have helped sell some masonic jewelry, or at least bring more interest to the hidden history of Washington DC. I didn't know all that stuff any more than anybody else, and also wonder just how much is factual and how much he made up. Like so many of his books for that matter. He is good at interweaving all those historical facts and legends with conspiracies even of science to make for fast moving fiction that's fun to read.

On wooden swing sets

2011-04-24T19:03:00.000-07:00

Right now I'm in a nice neighborhood, but it's not set up much for kids. There is a playground that may be left over from before this became a relatively upscale neighborhood, because the stuff is old and rusty, and the ground is overgrown with grass and weeds. It's not kept up at all, which is too bad, because mine are not the only kids in the area and they need to be outside running around, if just using a wooden swing set as well as other playground equipment. I've heard of kids who grew up in major urban areas in high rise apartment buildings and it sounds very odd to me, because I had a nice back and front yards, and a neighborhood where I could safely run around. I'd have hated my only outdoors time to be of a supervised visit to a city park.

On Cowboy Hat

2011-04-02T21:13:00.001-07:00

One thing that is interesting to me as an American, especially a boy who grew up when the Western motif was still common on TV and in movies, was that we romanticized the idea of the cowboy wearing the Cowboy Hat and broadened the meaning. Technically, cowboys were the men who actually followed and took care of herds of cattle out west, eventually herding them to market to be sold and slaughtered. I guess they maybe fought Indians at times, but that wasn't their defining action. And maybe some of them fought gun fights, but true gunfighters weren't really cowboys. They made their living in other ways, as portrayed in the movie The Magnificent Seven. And the calvary who rode to the rescue weren't cowboys either. Nor were the farmers who put up the barbed wire to rein in the open prairies.

On how to get rid of whiteheads

2011-03-26T22:10:00.000-07:00

I was just looking at Alfred Hitchcock's filmography and I'm amazed at how many movies he made in the 1920s, which I must assume were silent movies. One movie I thought was very early -- Jamaica Inn -- was actually made in 1939, the last of his made in England films. Of course, none of his movies are about how to get rid of whiteheads. They're about crime, murder, horror and espionage. It's been said probably fairly that he created the modern genre of espionage stories. Not entirely, but certainly helped to popularize it. It's hard to tell what his early movies were about. One is about boxing and a love triangle.

On plasma TV mounts

2011-03-26T21:51:00.000-07:00

One Alfred Hitchcock movie I know I have seen was his final film, The Torn Curtain, starring Paul Newman. It had a Cold War spy plot which I don't remember much of. What is really remarkable is a scene where Newman has to kill the East German security officer assigned to watch over him, and it's truly harrowing to watch, because the security officer just won't die. The whole point is that it's harder to kill people than we usually realize, so it's response to so many mysteries where people die just from falling down stairs or something. There are no plasma tv mounts in the movie, since they haven't been invented yet. It's not considered Hitchcock's best, but all his stuff is worth watching.

On electronic cigarette wholesale

2011-03-26T21:45:00.000-07:00

I've been watching a lot of Alfred Hitchcock movies lately, including Jamaica Inn, Saboteur, 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes, The Birds, Rear Window, Notorious, Dial M for Murder, and Foreign Correspondent. He's well worth watching and re-watching. He says nothing about electronic cigarette wholesale, but a lot about murder and mayhem, about spying and spies. He may be the originator of the term "mugaffin" as the thing that all the people in a story or movie are chasing. It actually wasn't important to him, except as a way to tell the story of his characters. In Notorious though he had uranium before the explosion of the first atomic bomb.

On soccer goals

2011-03-05T18:46:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid, the sports available were pretty conventional. Little League baseball was the most organized outside of schools, though I spent a lot more time on my swim team, summer and winter. I never scored any soccer goals. I vaguely remember playing it a few times in elementary school, but that's all. There were no soccer leagues as there were now, so my mother was never a soccer mom. Swimming mom, yes, but not a soccer mom. I know my niece and nephew played soccer when they were kids, though I don't have any reason to believe it was important to them. That's sort of how I feel about Little League baseball, except the one time I caught a very long fly ball while in the outfield. I don't even recall whether we usually won or not.

On sales jobs

2011-03-05T18:42:00.000-08:00

If only I were starting over. I know that where I'd look is for sales jobs. It can be hard to get the top jobs, but in the lower levels there is normally a lot of turnover, even in bad economic times, so jobs can be had though maybe on an irregular basis. That's partly because sales people can be unstable, but it's also because it's tough to take a lot of rejection day after day, so many drop out. Yet it's possible to make a good income even in lower level sales jobs. I never made a lot in telemarketing, but some reps did. I did make decent money when I was in door to door cable TV sales. I'm not sure what that would be like now, though. I got in at a good time. And for some people, retail sales is very good.

On Personalized Valentine's Gifts

2011-02-27T16:18:00.000-08:00

Valentine's Day is one that most guys hate - not because they're just ornery guys with no sense of love or romance, but because they know they have to come up with the perfect gift, or their wife or girlfriend or fiance is going to give them a hard time for months to come. One way to make sure that the woman in their life will appreciate the gift they give is to get personalized valentines day gifts. That will make it look as though they forgot about the holiday until late February 13 and ran out and just bought the first thing they could find. That makes it look as though they planned ahead, and gave a lot of thought into the gift, and made it especially for her, to show their relationship is special. Sometimes it takes more than buying something expensive -- though that usually works well too.

On cabin beds

2011-02-27T16:07:00.000-08:00

I recently an interesting book Debunkery by Ken Fisher, on various myths about investing. He takes various tidbits and devotes a small chapter to each one. Sometimes I agreed with him, however, and other times I didn't. He claimed that investing for income was "easily" disproven, but did no such thing so far as I'm concerned. He said he gave himself dividends by selling shares of stocks. Ah, but then you no longer have them. That's the key. They're not cabin beds to buy and sell easily. You can buy and sell them easily through your broker, but it's better and cheaper to hold forever and receive income forever.

On food delivery

2011-02-20T10:25:00.000-08:00

I heard recently that some guy lived in his house entirely for thirty days, just to prove that it's possible. Of course he had to get food delivery, which is not something that's really new. Delivering groceries to home bound widows is a service that small time grocery stores have provided for many years, though they had to had telephones. Actually, before that, they may have been able to ask neighborhood children to deliver the message, back in the days when children did things like that, at least when asked. So this guy ordered his groceries by computer online instead of a telephone. Big deal. Who wants to stay inside your house for a full month? I want to get outside and see the sun. Okay, for all I know, he got out into his yard. But I still want to move around and go places and do things - and I'm socially backward compared to most people, and I wouldn't want that confine ment.

On natural acne treatment

2011-02-20T10:20:00.000-08:00

A movie I watched recently blew me away, and I'm surprised I'd never heard of it before, because it's right up my alley. It's called Night of the Hunter and was the only movie ever directed by actor Peter Laughton. It's a thriller, but also a weird dark horror movie of spiritual darkness and light, with the two forces fighting for the lives of two young children, still too young to need natural acne treatment. It starts out with their father, Peter Graves, getting to their yard and hiding $10,000 from a holdup where only the children know and nobody else can find - though the police don't even look for it. He's obviously a bungler, so how he ever got in charge of Mission Impossible is a mystery. Anyway, although he wanted it to help his children later in life, by stealing it and killing two others for it, he curses his children, and his widow is killed for it.

On anti aging product that works

2011-02-20T10:15:00.000-08:00

One of the things that the book Language is Music mentioned is the Tomatis method to improving your hearing, so you can hear the sounds of other languages and therefore reproduce them better than most of us do. Tomatis was a French scientist who died about ten years ago, but he produced an electronic device to train our hears to hear sounds they routinely ignore. However, the company that now owns his work is apparently no longer selling the Tomatis ear. Several companies have licenses to use the Tomatis method, but nobody online is selling a Tomatis ear. However, the next best thing is apparently to listen to classical music, especially Mozart and Gregorian chants, to help train your ear. Mozart especially used a broad range of tones. Supposedly getting Tomatis training is an anti aging product that works in so far as using our ears well helps improve our overall health and fitness.

On is hoodia effective

2011-02-20T10:09:00.000-08:00

One thing I didn't get about Mano Po 4 is how it compares to Mano Po 3. I haven't seen any others in the series. But Mano Po 3 stars The Philippines biggest female star, Vilma Santos, who has a reputation as a terrific actress, and that movie shows it. Though it's too serious for me. Its character agonize on and on over their love and not having each other. But Mano Po 4 is a joke, and not a good one. It doesn't take itself or anything seriously. The man in it is the same actor who played Vilma Santos' husband in Mano Po 3. Now it's his turn to have another lover. And he winds up in a wheelchair instead of with a bullet through his forehead, so he's better off. He even seems to accept his son being dead, at the end. And many of his girlfriends need to be asking is hoodia effective, because they're too overweight to be worth the trouble and expense they put him through.

On fat burner

2011-02-20T10:04:00.000-08:00

Friday night I watched a Filipino movie called Mano Po 4 Ako Legal Wife. The last means I am the legal wife. I'm not sure about the mano po part. Po is a particle used when addressing someone respectively - like using vous in French. And mano refers to the custom of children showing respect to their elders by putting the fingers of the elders against their foreheads. But I'm not sure if that's the meaning of the movie, because the series is about romance in the Chinese Filipino (Chinoy) community. So I'm not at all sure of the connection, any more than if the title referred to a fat burner. Anyway, this one is about a wife who learns her husband has a long time mistress, and then he has another one, and then more girlfriends. They compete with each other for him and his attention, and it's all very silly. Meanwhile, he doesn't know his own son is gay, and so arranges for the boy to marry the daughter of a business associate.

On best acne treatments

2011-02-20T09:58:00.000-08:00

I finally broke down and bought a Kindle this week. I wouldn't have, except I'm leaving in a month or so to go live outside the United States, and I don't want to pay huge amounts of postage to ship books from the US to that country. Lots of used book sellers probably don't want to ship outside the United States. I understand that, especially if it's heavy, because you can wind up losing money. And then it could be who knows how many weeks before I receive it. And that's doubtful because I don't trust international mail. I've had stuff stolen before. But I'll leave in a 3G enabled area of the other country, so I believe (I won't be able to test it out until I'm there), I can buy books and download them immediately right there. I already saved $8.50 this week by buying a $12 (including postage) book for $3.50, so it's already proven useful. Plus it's easy to transport it and store it than many paper books. If I needed to, I could buy a book on the best acne treatments. I hope none of my nieces and nephews need that.

On www.estatecarinsure.com

2011-01-23T08:01:00.000-08:00

One book I've been reading is about the near future of the world, in terms of politics and economics. It's fairly interesting, since the author knows a lot of background facts to back it up. It's about globalization. He says the United States and China are going to remain the two world major economies until at least 2020 and probably long after that. He's obviously in favor of globalization and increased competition, though acknowledging that there's going to be a cost in terms of income and jobs lost for some segments of the population. But it's even worse in developed countries that try to evade the competition, which includes Europe (though the UK and Ireland are better off than the continent) and Japan. He doesn't mention Canada and Australia much. Nor does he mention the website www.estatecarinsure.com, but he does point out that terrorism and radical Islam are a sort of wild card that could throw off some of his predictions.

On apidexin reviews

2011-01-15T12:06:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow I won't have time to read any apidexin reviews. Our realtor is having an open hour from two to three thirty in the afternoon, so first of all I will have to clean it up as best I can, and straighten things up for people to come in and look at it. Then I will have to leave, because it's better not to have the owner here - just the real estate agent showing it, and their own agent if they have one already. So maybe I will go somewhere and sit and read, or maybe I will take that time to walk around the block, which I enjoy doing, especially on Sundays, so the timing works out well. This is a nice, in demand neighborhood, but there are houses that have been sitting unsold for months, so I can only hope ours sells soon. But it may not. Who knows?

On thermogenic fat burner

2011-01-15T12:02:00.000-08:00

I wish the weather would warm up so we could get this roof replaced. It can't be done in cold weather, or of course not when it's snowing or raining. For the last week it's been cold, and we've had snow. There's still snow on part of the roof. We've been luckier than most of the country. We haven't gotten much snow and although cold the temperature has not gone down to really low levels, which to me is around zero degrees Fahrenheit. But it's still too cold for roofing work to get done. We weren't happy to learn that it had to be done. We could have been told months ago, but we weren't, so we wasted some money and lots of time. Going on a thermogenic fat burner won't warm up the weather but might help me lose some weight, which I also need to do.

On appetite suppressants that work

2011-01-15T11:55:00.000-08:00

It seems to me that along with taking appetite suppressants that work, somebody who wants to lose weight must learn selective blindness. They must just ignore the signs they see on the streets and highways for McDonalds, Taco Bell, Burger King, Dominos, KFC, and all the other fast food joints. Plus they should always pay at the pump when they buy gasoline, so they're not tempted to go inside and smell all the food there. My old QT was full of hotdogs and sandwiches cooking, and had a big fountain for sodas, and later machines for coffee drinks, along with many rows of sweet and salty snack foods. Plus a microwave machine so you could buy a cold sandwich or giant burrito and then heat it up to take it home with you to eat.

On non skid

2011-01-09T07:44:00.000-08:00

But it may be that what protein cycling accomplishes can also be done by what's called Intermittent Fasting, where you go without any food whatsoever periodically. This can be as simply as skipping a meal, or an entire day, or every other day. Mark Sisson of The Primal Blueprint seems to like it, though he stops short of making it a full fledged part of the program. He just seems to like the idea of not being chained to a particular schedule. He seems to resent Dr. Barry Sears of the Zone for suggesting a schedule of meals and snacks, including the times to eat them. I think Sears was simply giving a plan that fit the Zone and most ordinary American's schedule. I felt free to adapt it to my own very atypical work schedule, and so did not react as though Sears was my father trying to tell me how to run my life. But it is also true he does advise eating every 4 to 6 hours, and maybe there is value to skipping meals and days, both to reduce caloric intake and to allow for the autophagy cell clean up promoted by the protein cycling guy, all deriving from times before humanity had non skid tires, or even tires.

On kitchen faucet

2011-01-09T07:37:00.000-08:00

Then there's protein cycling, which doesn't prescribe food on the basis of the primitive diet, but which does say that because of how we've evolved, our body's cells clean themselves up when we go through a period of getting less than 5% of our calories from protein. The idea is that primitive people sometimes encountered poor hunting areas. They could still gather roots and berries, but didn't eat meat for long periods, and it was better for our body's cells to get nourishment by going after excess protein within themselves, so they in essence eat the weaker or less healthy parts of themselves. Without this, certain junk builds up in cells, and this is the basis for certain neurological disorders, principly Alzheimer's Disease. But that undergoing a day or so of eating little protein can be healthy in general. This can even be not eating after eating dinner, so your body gets at least twelve hours without food, and if you don't eat protein for breakfast, the time without protein is extended. This may match what primitive people who didn't have a kitchen faucet let alone a refrigerator to store snack food in, did because they had nothing to do besides sleep all night anyway.

On buy gold online

2010-12-31T12:13:00.001-08:00

This has been an economically troubled year, though not so much as 2008-2009, and so it's easy to understand why people want to buy gold online. There hasn't been such popular interest in gold -- or such a price rise -- since the 1970s, which ended with gold skyrocketing to over $800 in just about four months. Silver also made tremendous price gains in that same approximate time. Right now, people seem to think the stock market is about to take off again. It's ahead for the year 2010, and the general outlook seems to be optimistic. Of course, sometimes that's the most bearish sign. It could be that as the dollar declines due to expanded supply, some of that cash will go into the stock market, inflating prices.

On cheap car insurance

2010-12-12T15:59:00.000-08:00

I finished reading Mister Slaughter by Robert MacCammon, and I wish I could say it's great, but it's far too disjointed and disorganized. Characters come and go. The final death of Mister Slaughter is almost an anticlimax. It's interesting in being a close look at how people lived in colonial times, when we were still a part of the English Empire, and were a vigorous, energetic pioneer area, building a new area. But the Indian who's insane because he has dreams of what we reader can see is the future, and screams every night at the horrible sight, is just too PC. It's a world without any cheap car insurance, because people use horses and wagons. And also the final scene where the slave given his freedom jumps into the river to swim back home, as though he didn't realize it was far too far for him to swim.

On kitchen faucets

2010-12-04T15:52:00.001-08:00

I didn't sell the fire alarm systems very long. The original guys were based in Columbia and didn't see enough money to keep driving to St Louis, so they sold out. And I didn't get many referrals. I did sell a system to my mother. Of course she was trying help me out, but she did get a great system. For the past twenty-five years I've thought the units would keep working. Now that we're vacating her house, I wondered what to do about the heat detectors. I took two in my car and set them off while driving down the interstate in a rural area. They're still loud, but not as loud as I remember, and one lasted nine minutes and the other only five minutes. So the coil of metal is no longer as tight as it was twenty-five years ago. They're not kitchen faucets. Now I know what to do with them, but I still wouldn't want to set them off in the neighborhood. I wore ear plugs when I was driving with the alarms on.

On Briggs Stratton

2010-12-04T15:48:00.000-08:00

So the system I sold also included a much more accurate and sophisticated smoke detector. It did need a battery, because it had a laser flash into the outside air about once every 8 seconds to detect the thickness of particles in the air. If it reached a certain density, indicating too much smoke, it sounded at 90 decibels for a long time. That's not quite as loud as the heat detectors, but it should be loud enough to wake you up, and is a second layer or protection - in case the fire gives off more smoke than heat, so the smoke increases before the heat accumulates to set off the heat detectors. These units were not made by briggs stratton, but they were some of the best available at the time.

On diet pills

2010-12-04T15:42:00.000-08:00

Anyway, the fire detection system I signed up to sell was really high class. You put a heat detector is every room with a separate ceiling (many ceilings are at the same level, and so don't need separate heat detectors. These heat detectors have wound up metal springs of some kind, held in place by a component which would melt at 117 degrees Fahrenheit. So if there was a fire, the hot air rises and accumulates just below your ceiling fire. If enough builds up to melt that 117 degree fuse, the heat detector goes off, waking up you and half your neighborhood, giving you and your family time to get out of the house and hopefully making somebody call 911. You don't need any diet pills. And by the way, this heat can accumulate without making enough smoke to set off a smoke detector, although these systems also included a sophisticated smoke detector.

On shampoo for thinning hair

2010-11-28T07:57:00.000-08:00

Another Chinese martial arts costume drama I watched recently disappointed me, though I can't say why. It starts out with an interesting premise. A poor little girl is taking food from soldiers dead in a recent battle. She's caught by a little soldier boy, then breaks her promise to be his slave, and then a goddess plays a trick on her, promising she can have anything she wants in life except she'll lose the men she loves. Not caring about men or love at that point, she accepts. Next she's a beautiful princess embroiled in a lot of screwy conspiracies with interference from the goddess, and the little boy has grown up into a super sadistic young man, and we're introduced to a special people who live in the Land of the Snow and can run super fast, but despite that are caught and slaughtered by the young man. How were they caught? We're not told that. Maybe they are a part of Chinese legend, but not evocative to me for some reason. Like a shampoo for thinning hair, it just lacked emotional appeal. The initial battle scene was good, I will say, but the interplay between the king and the woman and the two men from the land of the snow and the sociopathic prince just didn't work, not for me.

On acsonix

2010-11-28T07:50:00.000-08:00

I recently watched an interesting contemporary Hong Kong action movie which was a heavy duty anti-drug movie, about a cop who goes undercover to penetrate the organization of the biggest drug dealer in Hong Kong. Along the way he learns the woman in the apartment next door is an addict, and helps her and her little daughter. It gives a detailed, close up look at the drug trade. They even send the dealer to into Burma on an elephant to meet with the warlord who controls fields of poppies in the Golden Triangle. However, what's odd is that these character complain how the drug trade is changing. The governments of the area are closing in on the growers and opium processors. The users are switching over to ecstasy and speed (powder and crack cocaine are strangely neglected in this movie - are they not popular in Asia?), and we see how law enforcement is catching up with the dealers, who is shown not thinking about his product, just selling it as though it were acsonix, something buyers want and he supplies because he's a businessman. Like somebody selling tobacco even though they don't smoke.

On herpes simplex

2010-11-14T10:30:00.000-08:00

One other thing I've been doing recently is getting myself checked out medically. I've gotten tired of being in hospitals and doctor offices. I went through that a lot during my mother's illness, and now I'm doing it for myself. I got my first check up in many years. I got my blood tested but nobody has called with any results, so I hope that's a good sign. I went to the dentist and got my teeth cleaned for the first time in years. I went to the eye doctor and learned I have some degeneration of optic nerve but no retina problems, which I was afraid of, and got a prescription for new glasses, because my old ones were fifteen years old. And I saw a skin doctor for my itching, and soon I'll have a colonoscopy, and I certainly hope that checks out okay. I do not have herpes simplex or any symptoms related to that, which I'm happy for.

On fat burner supplements

2010-11-14T10:25:00.000-08:00

It's frustrating getting any work done on a house around here. So far, the plumbers are the only ones who've come through totally as they said they would. One contractor totally forgot about us, though the work now is in progress, because I called them up and reminded them. The roofers couldn't squeeze us in until a Sunday morning, but that at least is done. Both of them forgot about the work in the garage and the kitchen, so I got a friend/relative by marriage to do that. He started Thursday and was supposed to finish yesterday, but called up and said he's sick and going to hospital ER, so of course I told him don't come back until he's well though he assured me he would come in the afternoon. He didn't, which I'm glad, because I don't want to be exposed to horrible throat infections. I don't want to get sick now. I may not be taking fat burner supplements to counteract my relatively poor diet now, but I don't want to deal with illness either.

On how do you smoke a cigar

2010-11-14T10:19:00.000-08:00

Another Japanese movie I saw that I enjoyed was Yojimbo by Akiro Kurosawa and starring Mifune -- I can't remember how to spell his name but he was the iconic Japanese sword fighter in those older movies. This one takes place in a rural Japanese town in 1860 and it's no wonder than it was remade as a Clint Eastwood western, because it does have the feel of an American western, except we never saw villains keeping a brothel with so many young women. You just had to imagine that dance hall girls did that for spare money. And in small oldtime western towns there probably were a few brothels with just a few ugly older women. Anyway, Yojimbo plots against the two warring sides and does a good job of cleaning up the town, though gets caught himself near the end. It's a dusty, ragged looking town, Except for the clothes and some Japanese characters on signs and architectural features, and the absence of horses, it could be a western town in the US. And although the bad guys are called gamblers, we see very little of it - no people sitting around tables in the local saloon drinking whiskey, playing poker and demonstrating how do you smoke a cigar, while ordinary people go about their business outside and a bartender wipes glasses.

On best fat burners

2010-11-01T12:00:00.000-07:00

I'm re-reading SWAN SONG, which is sort of an interesting fantasy disguised as science fiction. I'd forgotten the ring which Sister finds in the ruins of a jewelry store in Manhattan. It's like hard glass where many jewels were embedded by the nuclear blast. When she holds it, it lights up in time to her heartbeat, and she and other people have paranormal visions. She sees images related to Swan, whom she has not yet met at that point in the book. Sees the dome of dirt that was Paw Paw's store where Swan and Josh are able to go into a fallout shelter, sees Josh's hand break through the ground, and the Tarot cards of the psychic that Swan and Josh meet later (whom I'd forgotten entirely). And Roland and Colonel Macklin prey on people just outside Salt Lake City, now finding a young woman with a big stash of drugs. They're not interested in them, just in the sex. By then, nobody in the world is interested in finding the best fat burners.

On overshoes

2010-10-25T10:26:00.000-07:00

One thing I find irritating me in the series novels I'm reading, is that I'm asked to care about people I don't know yet. In the book Private by James Patterson and one of the many co-authors who now do the real writing, there are three main separate cases a detective bureau is investigating, plus the main character is haunted by war time trauma plus he's sleeping with his secretary but suffering ridiculous guilt and angst because he won't marry her, and another agent who used to be his girlfriend is sleeping with the local District Attorney and then he dumps her to try to get his wife back to run for governor, but when the wife finds out about the girlfriend, we're supposed to believe she'd be so shocked and hurt she wouldn't want to be the governor's wife and dumps him. Yeah, right. Get real. The detective bureau may be interesting, so it's a lot more high tech than old style detectives out on the street wearing overshoes, but it's more soap opera than mystery thriller.

On hgh supplement

2010-10-25T10:22:00.001-07:00

James Patterson is another writer who seems to have put his best days and best work behind him. He seems to have taken the collaboration technique to new levels. Many readers on Amazon say they think the co-authors listed on so many of his recent books write the novels and he just puts his name on. I'm not so sure it's that simple. They have many elements of real Patterson novels, though yes not as good. It could be that Patterson just enjoys coming up with more ideas for novels than he has time to write himself, so he comes up with the ideas and perhaps a full outline -- because they're structured like Patterson novels with short, choppy chapters -- and then his agent finds a suitable co-author who actually writes the book based on his idea. If the co-authors have the idea and write them, where does Patterson even come in? I'm not sure, but he is coming out with so many books that he would need something stronger than an hgh supplement to write them all himself.

On face moisterurizers

2010-10-25T10:17:00.000-07:00

Yet Eric Ambler's novels also seem still relevant today. In going beyond the standard Cold War thrillers of the period, he took on other subjects. I just read A Kind of Anger from the early 1960s that is about Iraq. A woman saw her Iraqi political refugee husband murdered, and is now trying to sell his secrets to the highest bidders. Yes, that's plural. She has no ethics about selling the same secrets to competing parties. In fact, that was the plan from her Iraqi lover, who's just as scheming as anybody. He was killed by Kurds, who probably weren't well-known 50 years ago, though we've heard a lot more about them recently. So Kurdish Independence was an issue back then just as it is now, though not so prominent. Anyway, this is a woman interested in more in life than face moisturizers, though her own cynical outlook is changed when she meets the reporter who falls in love with her despite his own gloom (he recently tried to kill himself).

On weight loss pill that works

2010-10-25T10:13:00.000-07:00

I've been reading a lot of Eric Ambler recently. He's probably the creator of the modern international thriller, starting his career in the 1930s. He wrote about the dangers of fascism then, had his career interrupted to serve in the military of Great Britain during World War 2, then resumed his writing but wrote mainly for motion pictures, but also produced a fair number of interesting novels, none of which are about a weight loss pill that works. Some of his works are Hitchcockian in the sense they're about ordinary people who get caught up in events they know nothing about -- a big contrast to the James Bond school of Ian Fleming. And many of his later works are quite cynical. Everyone is corrupt. Nobody can be trusted. If you don't understand that, you're considered an idiot.

On weight loss supplements

2010-10-16T17:40:00.000-07:00

Last night I watched part of a video selling weight loss supplements related to acai berry. The guy in the video looks around thirty, and in very good shape, though not super muscular like a bodybuilder. However, few of us who are in the neighborhood of fifty years old, which he claimed to be, look anything as good as he does. However, I'm sure that his good health is related to a lot of things, not just the one acai drink he was promoting. And he was also selling related books and videos, so the entire packages were very expensive. And I don't know whether the drink itself was particularly better than many other vitamin supplement superfood drinks on the market. I can get some in my health food store for roughly $30 for a quart, which lasts a month. I suspect I could get some online for cheaper than that, if I looked.

On body acne products

2010-10-02T08:51:00.000-07:00

My itching problems seems to be under control, but it still comes and goes more than I'd like. I still get new red little bumps or welts that seem to continue for a long time despite putting on a 1% hydrocortisone cream. I have some general itchiness I usually ignore or put an aloe gel on, and that seems to help moisturize it. The raised bumps like poison ivy on my hands have all gone down. I still take 5 Loxin to control the leukotriences -- the excess of biochemicals that may be the cause. I probably should take more of the 5 Loxin, but I'm trying to watch my budget. Thank goodness I don't need body acne products -- this itchiness is bad enough. I've never had anything like it before except poison ivy, which goes away in a week or so.

On acne scar cream

2010-09-19T22:18:00.000-07:00

There's news that some in the European Union want to regulate hedge funds and private equity firms. As someone who believes in capitalism, I think they should be allowed a lot of freedom. But as someone who believes the markets are unpredictable, I think it's extremely dangerous for people to trust hedge funds with their money. Think Bernie Madoff here. I'm not sure how these proposed regulations in the EU compare to United States regulation. We're not talking about acne scar cream here, but rather how billions of dollars are invested. People that wealthy take large risks to get large returns, but eventually will lose some money. I guess it's nature's way of spreading the wealth around. If I had that money, I'd keep it in the public stock market and bonds.

On best way to lose belly fat

2010-09-19T22:05:00.000-07:00

I see that police in California went after a cult leader due to fears that all twelve of them would commit mass suicide. Unfortunately, cults do have a history of doing things to themselves that are more than just looking for the best way to lose belly fat. The Jonestown Massacre was incredible - nearly 900 people deliberately drinking poison Koolaid, even giving it to their kids. And then there was the saucer cult a few years who thought they would meet somebody behind Haley's Comet, and the men castrated themselves, and then they all killed themselves. I have to admit there are ethical problems here. People so crazy could kill themselves anyway, but the children should be protected.

On colon cleanser

2010-09-19T22:00:00.000-07:00

And I find it amazing that, as he claims in his letter to a newspaper, the real estate executive talking about the wealthy leaving the United States, says he has no retirement funds except Social Security. I have to wonder what he's spending his money on if he can't save anything out of the over $250K he's making. I actually do think his point is valid. I don't think the wealthy should be unfairly taxed. On the other hand, it's hard for them to make others believe they're really suffering as much as we are. Maybe he needs colon cleanser. He mentions paying off school loans for his three children. That's nice, but it's not an obligation. Many people have to let their children pay off those loans. It's just a burden they have to suffer. If he's not under a 401k plan, he certainly should put $5k a year into an IRA. And I bet his house is five times as big as any house I ever owned.

On Lipofuze

2010-09-19T21:49:00.000-07:00

In a recent letter to a newspaper, a real estate executive protested that people who make over $250,000 a year may start leaving the United States. I'm not sure this made the news right now, since it's not exactly Lipofuze, except that on January 1 the tax rate for Americans making over $250K goes up. And there are practical problems. He doesn't seem to realize that if he made that much in another country, he would still have to pay taxes to the US government so long as he's a citizen. Even if he renounces citizenship, he owes taxes for the next 10 years, which is ridiculous, I agree. And I doubt he could make that much money in another country. Possibly some European countries pay their real estate executives that much, but he'd be starting over, and wouldn't know about local conditions.

On car insurance company

2010-09-11T20:51:00.000-07:00

An interesting book I just finished reading is The Genius of the Beast by Howard Bloom, supposedly a radical revision of capitalism. He wrote about a lot of other things and didn't quite succeed in communicating his vision in an organized way, but it was fascinating to read his various examples from history and natural history, and his anecdotes from his days of promoting music stars. He put a lot of things into a larger perspective than the narrow profit and loss statements that we generally think of as the most important thing about running businesses, even if you're a car insurance company. No, Bloom wants your heart and soul as well, and for you to tune your intuition into the inner feelings of your customers, for that is advancing life and humanity.

On Royal Caribbean

2010-09-04T09:01:00.000-07:00

My mother has taken many cruises in her life, though I can't say for sure whether or not she's ever gone on the Royal Caribbean. She took me and my sister and her family on a Hawaiian cruise back in 1996, and that was a good time. I'd never been to Hawaii and probably will never go back, so that was my chance to see the American tropical paradise. It was a jolt to go so quickly from rain forest to 7-11, and to be at all those beautiful beaches with palm trees without people trying to sell me a lot of stuff. There were some people selling trinkets, but it's nothing like I see around beach resorts in the developing world. So I see the real appeal of Hawaii. Beauty and beaches and great ocean swimming with the familiar comfort of the United States. Of course it's a lot more expensive than going to a less developed tropical paradise, though.

On LCD HDTV

2010-09-04T08:55:00.000-07:00

I've also started reading an interesting book on investing, EVEN BUFFETT ISN'T PERFECT, which for a change is about his mistakes rather than his successful techniques. However, I'm not at all sure I agree with the author's viewpoint. He seems to have a more short-term mentality than Buffett, so it's comparing apples to oranges. Plus, some of the book disagrees with his more political viewpoints, such as that the government should tax away the estates of wealthy people so every generation has to start over again. I agree with the author that's a bad thing, and Buffett's viewpoint is incorrect, but it's got nothing to do with his investing. At least leave your children enough money to buy an LCD HDTV. And what is the point of working so hard all your life (as Buffett himself has), if you know the government is going to grab it all when you die? What if you have disabled children? You have to give a fortune to the government so it can pay your disabled child SSI? That's ridiculous.

On snow boots

2010-08-28T09:50:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been spending time on You Tube learning more about the Marcos/Aquino struggle, even though The Philippines is a country where nobody ever needs to wear snow boots. I knew the general story, but there were a lot of things I didn't realize. For example, I didn't realize Ninoy had people with him on his final flight into Manila Airport (now named Ninoy Aquino International Airport or NAIA in his honor), so that every part of his death was filmed except the actual gunshot, because plain clothes security officers blocked the guy with the video camera from the exit until after he was dead. I also didn't realize that the People Power revolt was triggered Gringo staging a military revolt. I knew he had done that to Cory when she was president, but not that he helped put her into office. I can't understand why he smeared his name in history that way.

On best eye cream

2010-08-28T09:42:00.000-07:00

Yes, I am somehow disappointed by The End of Wall Street. I'm not finished yet, but close enough to judge the book. It's as hard to judge as the best eye cream, but somehow it seems to me to be insufficiently critical of Wall Street firms for getting themselves into the mess, and not very sympathetic to Congressional criticisms of Wall Street pay. But, really, they don't want government intervention when they're making money. But when they are losing it, they do. I understand the entire system was at risk, so shouldn't they share some of the pain. Some lost their jobs and no doubt has lost a few millions, but it's their own fault. They remained rich despite getting bailed out by taxpayers, few of whom will ever make that kind of big money. And given that some of their activities bordered on fraud and certainly were negligent, I'm not sympathetic to their plights.

On Outer Banks vacation rentals

2010-08-22T08:35:00.000-07:00

For taking a break from work or just your ordinary world if you're retired, it's hard to imagine anything nice than Outer Banks vacation rentals from Carolina Designs -- Soundside. You can rent a large, comfy and charming house for a week, whether it's the middle of winter -- escape the snow and ice of January and February -- or in the heat of the summer to enjoy the beach. With six beds and a futon, it'd be a great place to hold a family reunion. They're TVs and VCRs and Xbox to keep everyone occupied. Not to mention volleyball courts, private swimming pool and a game room with sports bar.

Late at night you can relax in the hot tub. You may never want to leave, but if you do, Duck Village is close at hand. They're even seven parking places to accommodate many family cars.

Or you could get friends together and go. It'd be great if you have kids of similar ages. They could play on the beach while you relax. You could stay for a week or two yourself, but have friends down for a weekend party. It's one of those places you'll feel immediately at home in, and will have a great time.

On LED Christmas lights

2010-08-14T08:24:00.000-07:00

So from reading Trick or Treatment about alternative medicine, it's like one light bulb going off after another, like a string of led xmas lights. Although I never cared about their main targets, or some of what I consider fringe stuff that they list in the appendix. I always focused on alternative medicine as supplements, including herbs. They do examine herbs somewhat closely, enough to make me think twice and investigate before taking them. I can believe that some herbs from China and India contain heavy metals and contaminants. It's even worse to discover that some of them are dosed with conventional prescription drugs, so people taking them are taking prescription drugs without even knowing it. Of course, that's not really a judgment on the value of the herbs by themselves. But it would pay to be more careful with them.

On document management

2010-07-31T07:05:00.000-07:00

I finally finished UNDER THE DOME by Stephen King. Although I never got totally wrapped up in it, at least he tried to tell a whopper of a story. Last time I was reading his stuff, from early 1990s, he was walking away from endings or glorifying obnoxious people or just being boring. So I'm not familiar with his latest stuff. This one had some irritating stuff in it. But it didn't just lead up to a horrible finale, it delivered it. I never found the conspiracy of high level officials and hellfire preacher operating the biggest meth manufacturing plant in North America credible, but I'll admit he at least delivered a suitable end to it all. In the end it was about the propane, not document management, and having someone in charge who used up too much of the product.

On Christian Louboutin shoes

2010-07-24T08:38:00.000-07:00

I don't know why, I guess it's because I have so many terrible problems on my mind, but I'm increasingly annoyed this summer by all the people talking about how hot it is and how you should stay inside, out of the sun, wear Christian Louboutin shoes instead of thongs blah blah blah. Come on, folks, this is the St Louis area in July. It's going to get into the nineties every day, unless it's an unusually cool summer like last year's was. Big deal. You want cool, move to Iceland. And it's going to be humid. You want dry, move to Las Vegas, though there the temperature goes even higher. It was around 115 when I went there in 2005. And don't tell me not to walk or run. I do drink plenty of fluids -- even in the winter -- and so I'm not going to pass out. And for the record I like hot weather and think it's healthy for people to be out in it, though I do agree you should drink plenty of water. And stop complaining, or move to the Yukon during this time of year.

On top diet pills

2010-07-10T10:06:00.000-07:00

I believe the top diet pills of the future will be the Zone diet effects in a capsule form. That is, they will keep your insulin and other hormone levels in the proper healthy range no matter what you eat. To do that now, you have to eat in the Zone pretty consistently. So that's a problem for many people, even some of us with pretty good self-control (most of the time). When I lived by myself I did very well on the Zone, and I still do except I have to eat dinner with my mother and that's not Zone, and now I've fallen into eating cookies late at night. So if I had enough time and money and freedom, I'd stay pretty much on the Zone diet and in the Zone, but I don't, so I've noticed I've gained a little weight around the waist.

On diet pill review

2010-07-10T10:02:00.000-07:00

Today I went to Wal-Mart and bought another ten boxes of 6 Balance bars in each, all the cookie dough flavor. I wish Wal-Mart would carry the chocolate flavor as well, but they only order cookie dough. I guess they've found the other flavors don't sell as much, though I have seen the peanut yogurt and just plain peanut flavors as well, but I don't particularly care for those, so I don't buy them. Some people go for a diet pill review, but I just eat Balance bars all day every day. Unfortunately, since I've been staying here with my mother to help her I've also started eating nonZone dinners with her and even snacking at night. And I justify it that I'm saving the cost of eating a salad at Subway, and that's true, and not inconsiderable if I'd still do it every day as I used to.

On acne treatments

2010-07-10T09:35:00.000-07:00

The AFGE council covering my old Social Security field office apparently hasn't gotten the message that I'm not a union member any longer (since I retired), and so I still get the little newsletter they put out every so often. I should just throw them away, but in a way it's good to remember how lucky I am not to be working there any longer. The agency is still horribly understaffed, deluged with baby boomer retirement claims, disability claims from people out of work due to the recession (who maybe just need acne treatments), and it's struggling, even though Central Office foresaw these problems twenty years ago. It was around 1992 or so they sent two people to our office to ask our opinion about how to prepare for this time. Yet they failed to hire the necessary staff in time.

On lose weight quickly

2010-07-03T09:40:00.000-07:00

These days, everybody wants to lose weight quickly. Of course, we want to take a lot of time to put it on. And we want to lose it fast so we can go back to eating the unhealthy diet that put it on to begin with. Yesterday I checked four books on Pilates out from the library. I believe that system of exercises is a good way to improve your health, your strength, your flexibility, your balance and your posture, and just plain make you look and feel better, and no doubt to lose weight as well. I don't know if it's the best weightloss exercise program, since it's not as active as running or swimming, but it does develop your body in a wholistic way, and it does help build your muscles, and I've seen videos of people doing very active and obviously strenuous exercises, so it's probably very tiring to do a full length workout.

On Clinicalliex reviews

2010-07-03T09:34:00.000-07:00

This seems to be a promising weight loss supplement, so I can see why people are looking for clinicalliex review. I'm not entirely sure of the weight loss function of Compound 1, Guarana, Yerba Mate, and Damiana, except the site says they seem to delay the emptying of the stomach without decreasing the quality of digestion, so I guess that would make you feel physically fuller for longer. Rather than feeling like you want to eat again just a hour after a big meal. Glucomannan is some kind of fiber, so that must also give you a full feeling so you don't eat as much. Garcinia Cambogia, Gymnema Sylvestre, and Chromium have to do with how your body processes sugar foods and deals with insulin, and should help with insulin resistance, which is all healthy for you.

On ipods

2010-06-19T08:19:00.000-07:00

I continue to be amazed at the popularity of ipods and ipads too, for that matter. I just don't like the idea of going around with music blaring through little bitty buds in my ears. But then I never walked around with a walkman either. I run and walk, but would not take a player and wear those headphones I see other runners wearing. I think it's ridiculous, especially when I went walking and running in the nice park. I want to get away from noise, not bring it along with me. And how can you stop from walking or running to the pace of the music, and not what your body needs? And I wonder how many runners have been hit by cars they didn't hear because they were listening to more noise in their ears? I do listen to music or talk radio while driving, but I'm in an enclosed environment and still pay attention to my surroundings.

On lingerie

2010-06-12T14:54:00.000-07:00

I'm in the middle of reading an interesting book -- McMafia by Misha Glenny, a writer who has roots in both Great Britain and Eastern Europe. She details how in the wake of the fall of Communism and the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall, organized crime took up the slack of the police and KGB. In fact, oftentimes the criminals were former police and KGB. Sometimes she seems to favor more government participation in the economy than as an American I can agree with. However, it's also true that those countries have been going through a historically unprecedented collapse of law and order. I don't anybody expected that the former law enforcement would so totally turn to the other direction, selling everything except the lingerie.

On natural acne treatment

2010-05-29T11:51:00.000-07:00

I've started reading SPHERE by Michael Crichton, and I'm again impressed by how well he takes a traditional science fiction theme (using black holes to travel through time) and creates suspenseful novels set in a contemporary world we can believe in, so it's really more a commentary on our times than speculation. However, he feels free to explain the scientific background in a lot more detail than the average science fiction editor would accept. Readers won't sit still for that stuff, everybody claims. But when Crichton does it, the result is a bestseller. The characters have their various personality issues, though all are old enough to be beyond looking for a natural acne treatment, and we know there's going to be a terrific ending, though so far I have no idea what it will be about. The storm could be part of it, but it must also involve the space ship from the future.

On best acne treatments

2010-05-29T11:47:00.000-07:00

A lot of people are searching for the best acne treatments. I wish I could help them. I now have a much greater concern for skin problems than I did several months ago, thanks to some rash or eczema that is bugging me. Sometimes it seems to recede, then it spreads somewhere else. I don't know what else to do. I'm taking lots of fish oil Omega 3 supplements to hopefully quiet down the inflamed leukotrienes which cause such skin problems, I've read. The results so far are mixed. I've just started trying emu oil. I don't know what to think about that yet. I believe it is also supposed to help with acne, but it's expensive. I've heard that acne will clear up if you eat more protein and less carbohydrates, and that too makes sense to me.

On Hansgrohe faucet

2010-05-29T11:43:00.000-07:00

My friend's house in The Philippines -- which I consider my house -- is not fancy. It doesn't have a Hansgrohe faucet. The toilet has no water holding tank -- you have to dump in a bucket of water to flush it. However, it's comfortable, and large enough to accommodate the family. However, my friend is renting it and she wants to buy a house, but that means buying a lot and buying a brand new house. I'm all for it if we get a good location and when I have enough money. That's the basic issue. And location. I want by a beach, but that location would be more expensive.

On prototype 37-c reviews

2010-05-29T11:39:00.000-07:00

However, I am interested in remaining healthy and young for many years, and do want to appear as young and healthy as I feel. So I would consider reading over prototype 37-c reviews to find out if it would help me get rid of the bags under my eyes, to make me look better and younger. I'm not aging as much as some people my age, but I would like to get rid of some of the aged appearance I do have. Sometimes I look in the mirror and wonder who's looking back at me. I wonder what happened to change me. I do still look and feel healthy. I'm a little heavier, but that shouldn't affect my face or the appearance of my skin and eyes, should it? Like many baby boomers, I don't accept aging gracefully.

On eye creams

2010-05-29T11:35:00.000-07:00

For several months I've been plagued with rashes and red bumps making my skin extremely sensitive, prickly and itchy. It's like poison ivy in slow motion. It's not as intense as poison ivy, but it also didn't go away in a week or so, as poison ivy does. I don't know what's causing it. It's driving me crazy. I soak my skin with moisturizers, which helps for a time, but nothing seems to work permanently. It's given me a new appreciation toward the tendency of women to apply moisturizers and eye creams. I always ignored stuff like that in the past, figuring my skin was all right as it was so long as I bathed regularly with soap and water. I hope sooner or later I develop a resistance to whatever is causing this.

On all natural vitamin

2010-05-29T11:30:00.000-07:00

I've been around the alternative health issue since sometime in the mid-1970s, back when the biggest author was Adele Davis. We know now that although she made her books hard to read by footnoting every reference, she misquoted and misrepresented the findings of those scientific findings. We now have a better understanding of nutrition and the body. But although she was wrong on specific issues, her general thesis that we need a lot more nutrition than we were eating is still true. Now we do recognize that an all natural vitamin is preferable to the synthetic version which most scientific studies use. If I could go back, I'd buy a lot fewer vitamin pills and a lot more green supplements, which were around then.

On log furniture

2010-05-29T11:19:00.000-07:00

As time goes by, I continue to miss my family in The Philippines. I wish I could be back there, even if I have to sit on log furniture. Unfortunately, everything costs money which I don't (yet) have. I'm working hard on that aspect of the problem. My friend wants to buy a house, and that's a great idea. But if she buys a house where she wants to, which is close to where she's living, we'll be in the same general city area as someone whom we don't want to run into, so I don't want to stay there unless that unpleasant person has moved to another location, which is possible by. Plus, I'd rather live on the beach. I'm sure there must be some good locations still available.

On buy memory

2010-05-15T09:40:00.000-07:00

It's nice to have such a modern computer that I don't have to worry now about should I buy memory or not -- or can I? My last computer was modern and high speed when I bought it, and I maxed out its RAM, but it still often had some trouble with graphics and video online, especially in later years before I got this one. This one, and with high speed access, has no trouble showing videos and downloading heavy files and storing them. I do think about cleaning up my files sometimes to free up more room on the hard drive, but it really is not crowded yet. I still have a lot of room. And I don't really need to speed up performance. I don't know about a high end graphic program, but Gimp works fine for me.

On weight loss products that work

2010-05-08T10:00:00.000-07:00

I'm reading TRANSCEND, the latest book by two guys who wrote THE FANTASTIC VOYAGE in 2004, about how we're close to learning how to live forever. If you can just avoid dying in the next ten years or so, you'll have medical care that will extend your life to a time when we have even more sophisticated medical care that will mean we practically live forever. One of their recommendations is, of course, to lose weight, and so they recommend various ways to do that such as diet and exercise, or weight loss products that work. Of course they also advise you to stop smoking and all illegal drugs and drinking in excess. If you're a man under 65 you can have 2 drinks daily. If you're a woman or a man over 65, you get only one drink per day. Some studies show this is healthier than not drinking at all.

On foods that burn fat

2010-05-08T09:56:00.000-07:00

The ideal for people who want to lose weight is to eat foods that burn fat. Then you get to eat, and lose weight just from eating. I've heard that grapefruit is one such food - that it takes more calories to digest than it holds. I don't know if that's true or not. Too bad grapefruit is the one fruit I don't like to eat. I know some people eat it and get over its acid taste by adding sugar, but of course if you do that you're not going to lose weight, so that destroys the point. I know that food digestion does take up a lot of the body's energy and oxygen and enzymes. Yes of course it's necessary. It's important, that's why the body devotes lots of resources to it. And that's why some people say fasts are healthy. They free up those resources to devote them to healing and rejuvenation.

On appetite suppressants

2010-05-08T09:53:00.000-07:00

What many people don't know is that your health is affected not only by what you eat, but by how much. The only known method to extend lifespan is caloric restriction. Experiments with many kinds of animals have proven that giving them adequate but lower than desired calories lets them live longer on average than the same kinds of animals allowed to eat as much as they desire. Therefore, appetite suppressants can help people. Because it's true that these experiments haven't really been done on people, because it would take many decades -- really a 100 years or so -- and people won't allow you to restrict their calories. And in the next 100 years medical technology will advance enormously anyway.

On patio furniture cushions

2010-05-08T09:45:00.000-07:00

This is the time of year for people to get out their patio furniture cushions and outfit their patios so they can sit outside and enjoy the sunny warm weather and the breeze and the scents of the May flowers. I'm in a typical suburban American neighborhood. Every day is a racket of lawnmowers and other machines whining. Every time I drive or walk up and down the streets I have to swerve the small trucks hauling flatbeds with a lawn mower and other equipment on it. It amazes me how many of these services use a riding mower to cut the lawn of a normal-sized front lawn. There're so slow, it would drive me crazy. I'd rather push than ride them. It'd be different if we were talking about really big yards, but I mean normal house lawns.

On ATV

2010-05-08T09:19:00.000-07:00

These days, an atv is like an old cowboy's horse - about to go over rugged ground where there are no roads, and especially good for the west, though it's not so wild any more. It's still not completed tamed, though it's not like the old days when Indians ran wild. I guess there are still mountain lions and bears, though not as many as before. Personally, my favorite western is The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence with John Wayne and Jimmie Stewart. I believe that's a great movie about the meaning of America, how to balance our ideal of freedom with individual liberty which can go overboard into anarchy.