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Your big 3/4 ton pick up might have an AC power plug built into it somewhere, but where is the one in my Lanos? (it’s a Daewoo….) The Civic? Camry?

iPods and MP3 Players sent a huge demand through the auto industry for built in 3.5mm inputs. Those devices need power though dag-nab-it.

I think it should be easy to prove that with the huge increase in sales for power inverters, the demand is there.

Even if you don’t own an AC power adapter/inverter yet, if you had a plug built into your car you would use it for sure. For a laptop, charging station for phones and iPods, you could take your toaster with you too. (pop tart heated in 3 seconds… ding-bang! Food on the go, even faster. Eat that Brian Regan.)

Bueller? BUELLER? Come on auto-indsutry . . . . we need this, stop slacking off. I don’t need 5 new $3,000,000 concept cars each year that will never get built. I need more functionality from the cars that do get built. I need to get all this crap in my front-wheel drive 700 lb. car, and I want you to help me.

List: Car Companies Who Are Slacking Off

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If you are merely interested in the programs themselves, I would just scroll past this next stuff.

I finally approached the one year mark of owning my first Apple computer. I have a 2.0 GHz Intel Core Duo Macbook with 2 GB of RAM. I am not quite sure I really knew how much I would eventually appreciate this little laptop. I had a pretty decent list of reasons why I wanted to get an Apple computer, and just figured I would probably still have a Windows machine as well (or use Boot Camp/Parallels to boot windows on it if I had to). From my family’s basic use of the computer’s we had (they actually did get into computers pretty early in the 90’s), my schools, jobs, and the friends who all had PC’s, there was a pretty high level of calls to tech support companies, and lots of replacements. Actually, I think there still may be a dedicated area in my parents’ house for the pile of their old PC’s. I really just kind of hated computers growing up, and the stress’s caused to everyone around me trying to get them to work right didn’t help.

Sure, there may be some people, that could make assumptions and generalizations on my exposure to PC’s to date; “Your family probably is just computer illiterate, or were bad consumers”, “your school sucked obviously and had old hardware” etc. etc. Nope. I was the typical and average person (still am you say?), I fitted in the majority demographic for PC/Windows exposure. Thats the point. Any time a Window’s lover tries to slam Apple, or prove they are “superior” (though we are naively comparing ‘apple’s to rotten oranges’ really) they just fail to admit that in an average situation, where a Window’s based machine was being used by an average person, the process was too much of a struggle. Only higher than average computer |\|3®Ð$ (nerds) were seemingly without worry or stress.

Everyone in my family were all average computer users, my friends and jobs were average in technological advancement, and I attended an average high school. I was in the 4 year engineering program my high school had which was given the most advanced computers on campus. When a computer craps out, something goes wrong, Windows error messages pop up in the thousands; I know as well as the next guy, that many of the problems were hardware more than they were software (which even now gets chalked up to %100 user error by the previously mentioned Windows lovers). My uncle was in charge of moving forward Salt Lake Cities technology in the mid 90’s, and research was conclusively showing that it takes 1/5 as many full time employee’s to support Apple’s over PC’s. managing a full school district’s comprehensive computer system, and the computers cost less and lasted longer.

If it’s user error, then the point is still-> Windows software and machines weren’t made for the average user, they were made to take advantage of them. If it’s hardware problems, PC’s were made cheap and likely designed to wear out and be out dated in a few months contributing the disposable society. The average computer consumer doesn’t seem to buy into the ‘you get what you pay for’ concept. If you want a long lasting computer with $2000 of hardware, what do you think it’s gonna cost? Comparing the mere hardware on my computer and it’s cost when I bought it, it was the same price to get an equal PC. Actually, when I bought this computer, it was named the most advanced computer that could run Windows XP under $1800. Yeah- if you can’t figure where this is all going yet, you are better off on your disposable PC.

I love my Mac- it’s opened a ton of doors that PC’s couldn’t approach out of the box, and not because I can’t do the same things on a PC, cause most of the time a person can, but I can do them with quite a large selection of free software that came on my computer. My Apple computer doesn’t get viruses, no built in out-of-the-box spamming software (shame on you dell, compaq and all the others), isn’t susceptible to bad/spam software being installed with out my knowledge, and everything is just plain full of good looking software, and equally attractive form factors. Click the ensuing link in the sentence to find a better Mac VS PC argument.

So.. here it is. The list of my favorite software for Mac OS X Tiger.

Mac OS X Applications: Get your Apple the hook-up.

For an Apple owner, I am still just an average user I suppose. There is so much freeware out there for Mac’s, that can do just about anything and everything, there are probably some really good lists much better than mine for you to look through. There are newer machines out, but mine isn’t outdated or disposable really. It’s faster than it was before and I know how to use it more.

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Gamers; Warcraft fans; P.S.A.

I once was lame, and though that the South Park meets World Of Warcraft episode was the highest this game could reach. Maybe a custom themed W.O.W chess game for Christmas and that’s good to go. Oh no.. not at all. Did you assume the movie they announced for 2009 was all… that would be it?

Blizzard has big, big plans for the future of this series. All these years, we have all have been raised to love Blizzard Entertainment and the games they have provided. You know the shortcut to build a farm, you memorized the maps and know what gold mines to send your mass arm of Peon’s too first, and you definitely know what the Warcraft Cheat Code “There Can Only Be One” does. Some of you twisted gamers probably have a few female Warcraft game characters you prefer over what you could find at a local pool-hall, mall, or pub. I know, rejection can be harsh. Blizzard sympathizes, since the majority of World Of Warcraft players fall into that category, they want to meet half way.

In the first movie to ever attempt to cast a shadow of a dwarf and an elf over The Lord Of the Rings trilogy, Blizzard Entertainment is going to make a high budget, epic trilogy based on the extremely popular gaming series of Warcraft and W.O.W. (aka World Of Warcraft). It will be filmed in the great mountains of New Zealand, and will be directed by none other than the acclaimed Peter Jackson. The World Of Warcraft Movie, trilogy.

Yep, this is the real deal. Your dreams have come true. You can go spread the word on all your World Of Warcraft forums, you can dream of what a female elf will look like, what characters you hope they incorporate, ponder if they will graphically represent an Undead Abomination as well as they developed The Lord Of the Rings Characters for the movie and so on. Will they move through the stories like the games did? Is Blizzard budgeting and planning this, or is Alec Baldwin a closet Warcraft addict? The story line details? I have all the answers.

No I don’t. Seriously I really don’t. I haven’t gotten that far in my web of lies and deceit. Sorry for the waste of time.

I have good news though, I just saved a ton on . . . . . nope, that would be a lie to if I finished where it was headed. Go back to gaming, leave a comment.

:)

Warcraft Movie Suggestions

In all seriousness though. Maybe this is the real P.S.A. Shouldn’t the movie be a huge epic trilogy? Shouldn’t it have a huge budget to afford great graphics, good writers, and a great director? Here is a small snippet of what I think the movie should include.

Have your own? Leave ‘em in a comment for others to read, you have probably been getting bored of the forums and chats.

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I have a few friends that work for Sherwin Williams. Paint the world. The product, is actually really good stuff. I like the company too. They seem very deserving of my business if a need calls for it. Looking to the retail paint world, I may not be in the position to ever buy paint more than once every few years, but I am impressed with the stores in Utah that I have had exposure too.

Unfortunately, outside of Sherwin corporate control they occasionally might have an employee who could possible make one mistake. Not that this should really ever reflect on the company as a whole, but sometime you just get a sour-duck who might not be up to par for a few minutes when making a judgment call. With my recent State Farm Insurance Review I know, and admit that it is somewhat of a rare case.

When State Farm got wind of my review, and found that is was on the negative side, they contacted me. Apologized for the bad service, asked for feed back, discussed the whole ordeal one more time. I may feel that they have failed in fixing the issue and have shown a lack of interest in actually doing anything to get me back to where I was before my wreck, but they did show some integrity and strength in calling me.

Companies can find out who is talking about them online through a variety of avenues. Google alerts is a popular way to know who is discussing a topic you want to follow. No doubt, every major corporation either has an internal department to pay attention to their online image (like State Farm does) or they can hire risk management companies to help out with the public relations side of things.

Apparently, when someone who’s I.P. registered at a Sherwin Williams corporate office got a notification of a friends post about car dealerships in Utah who merely briefly mentions Sherwin Williams as a point of reference where he was traveling, he came to the site to check it out. Publicly his display name is ‘ED’ and after obviously seeing that my friend’s post was harmless and had nothing to do with Sherwin, he decided to stay (slightly anonymously) criticize the blog because it somehow really cut him deep that there is someone out there who thinks differently than he does. Instead of doing damage control, he kind of did the opposite since his action and opinion weren’t actually anonymous. My apologies to my friends that work at Sherwin, but whoever is actually the user ‘ED’, is retarded and should go trolling the web on his own time under a different e-mail address and IP. His generic banter was pointless.

Now personally, I guess I really don’t care that much. So I don’t need to hear one of my friends disagreeing with me or trying to make some random point about how I am wrong or shouldn’t have written this. (hehe.. though just saying that I expect my comments may fill up). I think from an SEO perspective. Actually, most of my posts as of yet have really been to only serve an SEO purpose. Admittedly, I am a troll, hypocrite, and just a dumb search engine optimizer.

Sherwin Williams Paint

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I will try to keep this short and to the point.

Utah: You breed bad driving.

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Sam from Gthing.net and our buddy Brikon introduced me and my other roommate to Skurfing. Wake-Skate surfing on a canal. We go to a canal in near the mouth of the Spanish Fork Canyon, tie a rope to a cross-beam thing across the canal, and hop on to a wake-skate type board and ride the waves.

The reason this canal is ideal, is a small drop in the cement lined canal, which shoots the water down in a fast and streamlined manner as seen in the video and the pictures. Brikon made the wood board we used, and the video is one Sam took on his first time going. No broken necks, and no injuries (that we will tell you about).

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State Farm Review

Like a good neighbor, State Farm will screw you over .

I normally try not to whine too much on my blog, but some events surrounding a car accident I was in has lead me to detest State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company. My experience was bad enough that I not only left them likely forever, but I also pro actively prevent people from using their services and will use my blog to share my story with others. After writing and re-writing this a few times, I realized it’s hard to comprehensively explain the problems that happened in a short summary, so my apologies for the long post.

The Wreck

I thought about going into major details here, but basically the wreck wasn’t small. My car flipped around and almost slammed into a store front, pretty bad neck and back damage. An ambulance came, Provo police gave the other guy a few tickets since it was clearly his fault and he broke laws designed to prevent accidents. I was hauled off to the ER for X-rays of my neck and back since both hurt quite bad. The police got the other man’s insurance info and grabbed some of my personal effects out of the car. My family has been with State Farm for as long as I can remember, and we have never had any major wrecks, so no major claims to really test their service until this.

The car was hauled to a holding lot in Provo, and at State Farm’s recommendation we have it later moved to a lot in Springville, UT nearby where I live, to be close during the repair, or assessment of total loss process. I already knew for a fact that the car was totaled. It was likely destroyed enough to be totaled and I am sure every insurance company probably would have agreed. Luckily I had Comprehensive coverage from State Farm. Luckily right?

Insurance Mess

They (State Farm Insurance) A.K.A. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company arrange for a rental car, and since I know for a fact my car is totaled, they said the rental will be covered until a few days after they make an offer/settlement on my totaled car. At this point, with the 5 minute conversation to make the claim, and arrange the rental I felt comfortable with State Farm handling it. I asked them what processes I should follow, who I should contact for what, etc.

I missed work, started physical therapy on my back and neck, State Farm agreed to cover everything and said they would “take care of me” and all the bills from the wreck, with which they said they would pay upfront and then later get the money for everything from Nationwide Mutual, the company who covered the driver who was at fault. I thought this was a good idea because I didn’t want to have to deal with both companies, and have some bills go through one and some through another.

The first major problem anyone might encounter with State Farm and the way their claim service is set up, is that you will rarely talk to the same person twice unless you have a super nice dedicated agent that wants to be the middle man between everyone. They have a “team” of people (call center style), and as they started collecting statements and gathering info about my car, the wreck, and my bills, made an offer for my car, etc, no one communicated very well with anyone else and everything is based off of “notes on your account” which never said anything to help me. I had to deal with Nationwide Insurance for the medical bills once State Farm actually came forward and said they wouldn’t pay for them anymore. At Nationwide, there was one person over my entire claim who remembered me very well every time I called in.

State Farm stopped paying the medical bills after about 3 weeks, and since I still needed therapy I had to pay it out of pocket (send it to my crappy personal insurance I was paying for) and then try to get Nationwide to pay back the bills. After a few weeks of having a rental car, State Farm came to me and said that they wouldn’t pay for the past week, and nothing further. This was stressful because I still had a loan out on my Galant, they hadn’t made an offer yet for my totaled car, and I was broke from not being able to work. The rental was 30$ a day, so close to $300 in the last few days of driving, and how ever much longer I might need it until I find a replacement car. I needed a rental until I could finally get an offer, accept it, and buy a new car. I was forced into a situation where State Farm eventually changed their opinion after a few heated conversations and said they would cover the rental, but might bill me later. They reversed their stand on the rental car issue with every person that I talked to. I got uneasy and was kind of forced into buying a super cheap Daewoo to hold me over.

I left my stereo system and after market rims and other stuff on the car because there was a chance State Farm might give a fair value for them ( this I did at the recommendation of one of the State Farm employees I talked to). If they wouldn’t pay fair market value, then I would pull everything off/out of the car and put the stock ones back on. I still owned the Galant, and had not received payment for it, nor gave permission for anything to be touched. State Farm called me and said they wouldn’t consider those parts in the value of the car so I could go get them, I verified the car was still at the local lot/repair shop it was supposes to be at and literally just 5 minutes later I go over to the lot to get them off and the repair shop said the car was moved by State Farm Insurance a week or 2 previous. State Farm moved the car I still owned to a wrecking/auction yard way up in Northern UT, despite me never giving permission to do so.

My car was stolen by my own insurance company with (Read the article)

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This is a tutorial on how to remove those brown spots, chrome rust stuff as well as small/light scratches from your motorcycle exhaust. Chrome is also found on car exhaust, tire rims, and other parts of cars and bikes. This same technique can pretty much be used on it all.

I own a 2007 Honda VTX 1300 Motorcycle which you can see by viewing this wallpaper. Aside from random kids deciding that my bike is nothing more than a play ground, I have also received damage from girls shoes (getting on and off the passenger seat), those pesky little brown spots that start growing on chrome, scratches from me trying to get the pesky brown chrome spots off, and even me accidentally being stupid enough to have something on the key chain aside from the bike key.

Anyone who buys something slightly pricey, should consider whether this is something that they want to take care of and keep nice, or just let normal wear happen as it happens. These scratches aren’t the ‘life or death’ kind of wear and tear, but it sure would have been nice to try and avoid them a little bit. Especially since I don’t plan on keeping this motorcycle forever (though if I took care of it, it would be an awesome graduation present if I ever have a kid). So for the time that I do have it, I think taking care of it is financially smart to keep the resell value up, and it also just plain sucks to have an impeccable machine with one nasty little area of scratches on it.

My friend Jake has quite a bit of knowledge on taking care of chrome. Things he learned from working cars and especially things he learned from owning a sweet v-four Honda Magna. Which happens to have 4 massive chrome exhausts on it. He taught me the basics of getting rid of these scratches, and caring for the chrome on my bike. Something which I figure many people who have chrome on their bike or car should know as well.

Things You Need To Buy

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Pretty recently I wrote a post about how to do infrared photography, how it works, and why everything looks the way it does. This is another batch of pictures I have taken recently that still include the “outdoor” theme from the first batch. I have gone out and taken pictures of other things, and may post those at a later time. This batch of Infrared Pictures come from Provo Canyon.

This picture below was taken of just a tree with a blue sky. I chose to leave the blue/purple colors that Infrared pictures actually produce, since I have to convert them to a black and white gradient to get the look of the other pictures. I did do some minor editing on this one to bring the dark lines out of the tree a little.

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Devious Office Prank #1: Bookmarks

Most people in an office situation have a very tedious and routine work-flow. Pranks that disrupt this work-flow are, well just plain funny at times. This prank doesn’t require any special software, just spend some time changing some website URL’s in all of their bookmarks. Usually a co-worker has a fairly organized and structured set of bookmarks in their web browser of choice. Hopefully it is Firefox, but we won’t judge them if they use something else.

Accessing their bookmarks, change all of your co-workers URL destinations for each bookmark to remove just one letter of the .com in each URL. Make it a ‘.cm’ or ‘om’, etc. Every time they attempt to follow a bookmarked link, it will come up as “server not found”, or “error in ‘/’ application” or whatever. You can even just add stuff the to URL that shouldn’t be there such as an extra ‘t’ in the ‘http’ part of the URL.

You can take this prank a little further by switching the URL’s in their bookmarks. So that they still get to an actual website with out any errors, just the wrong website.

Machiavellian Office Prank #2: Saran-Wrapped Toilet

The toilet: feared by janitors, abused by men. When it comes to office pranks, this one isn’t just dirty in the sense that it’s a mean prank, it’s dirty as in, it makes a mess. Take a wide strip of Saran-wrap or generic brand cellophane and put a single layer around the bowl of the toilet. Lift the lid and the seat up all the way before wrapping, then put them both down. Nothing gets out, and nothing gets in. Result: An extremely ‘pissed off’ and smelly co-worker.

Aneurysm Creating Office Prank #3: Screen shot of Desktop

Hit ‘Print screen” on your co-workers computer, save the image as the desktop background. After you do this, create a folder and drag every icon on the desktop to this folder, then hide the folder however you choose. This gives the appearance that the desktop looks the exact same as normal, except the icon’s they keep trying to click on are actually just part of the background image. The start menu will keep working, so confusion can be minimal if they are a smart cookie, but choose the office ‘blond’ and hopefully after a few help-desk calls you will have had your giggles.

The Evil Office Prank #4: White on White text/links/background

I had this one pulled on my by one sneaky co-worker. When you look at your computer desktop, your tool bar has a color, background has a color, and the text for everything is contrasted so you can easily read it. If that contrast changes to something like, white on white, it’s impossible to find difference between text, background icons, etc. etc.

The dirtiest part of this prank, is how nearly impossible it might be to reverse the effect. Your coworker will have a completely white screen but it will be filled with icons, folders, and every program you decided to leave running when you did this, so their frustration is going to be really high. My coworker left the ‘display settings’ folder open in the top right hand corner so it would be easy to change back. Well, it was supposed to be easy to change back. I got flustered enough that I just started clicking and dragging and moved everything. Luckily he was smart enough to find a way to change things back, let’s hope you are too.

The OCD Killer OfficePrank #5: Calendar Events

This may not be the most destructive prank in the world, but it has its place in office pranks. Many people live at their desk from 8-5. They might have a scheduling routine or work-flow that they depend on so much, you might consider if they are O.C.D. If they are O.C.D., then making these changes will be even funnier. Change their scheduled calendar events. On either the desktop calendar, wall calender, or Outlook Calendar. Add important meetings with high-ranking people in the company or just add worthless teasing reminders. Go crazy with the reminders, or make just a few so as to make the few they have seem that much more believable.

Throw off their routine just a little with lunch break 20 minutes early, or if you suspect they have odd secrets, call them out on it by posting a calendar event to ‘Pay off pimp at 4th and Main St.’ It is like moving their tediously placed pencils or tilting a picture on the wall. Go through a stack of papers and lightly tear the whole stack in just a corner.

Work Disturbing Office Prank #6: Muscle Memory Retraining and Keyboard Tweaking

The keyboard is something that most people don’t need to look at anymore to type, but they do anyway. How weird would it be to not see “QWERTY” in the top left anymore, but actually have a message from the prank puller; “ZESTY”, “GOATBUM”, or whatever you can think of. Surprisingly most keyboards only require just a little bit of pressure to pop off a few keys. Arrange them however you like. Possibly just switch two commonly used ones like “A” and “E”. Spend a few minutes to think of something that would really get to the keyboard user.

Got a favorite office prank?

Leave a comment with your favorite office prank, or suggestions of a joke you are too chicken to pull yourself.

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