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Pick the right pair of black denim jeans

blogger — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 14:04:01 +0000

Figured something I’ve known for awhile and that’s how to pick black denim jeans that won’t fade that bad and how to wash them so they won’t fade as fast. When you wash them, put them inside out, wash in cold water and don’t put them in the dryer. When you buy a pair of jeans don’t get the solid black ones, because they seem to fade much faster than the black jeans with a small bit of white stitching showing up. If you buy Levi’s, then they are often called Black Diamond, Dusted Black, or Tumbled Black.

Here are 3 pictures to give you an idea of what I mean by the white stitching.

And here is a picture of the solid black jeans to avoid.

Litterbugs

blogger — Mon, 24 May 2010 19:31:28 +0000

I’m sure I’m not the only one that has noticed that more and more people seem to use the road as a dumpster. I was behind a car awhile back in a residential neighborhood and saw someone set down a empty 44 oz Big Gulp in the middle of the road while they were at the stop sign. They then closed their door and drove off. Is it that hard to keep the trash in your car until you reach your destination? It’s not like their aren’t any trashcans at gas stations, places of business or at your house. And do people really need to drop a dirty diaper into the middle of the road? Come on that is disgusting. Take a little pride in where you live or at least keeping your neighborhood clean. Even if you don’t like that place or city you are in, you can still take some pride in being clean and keeping things neat. To me this is really trashy. I’ve seen people throw a trash bag on the ground rather than walk another 10 or 20 feet to another dumpster that isn’t full. What makes it worse is when the trash bag isn’t tied up and then the wind blows the trash all over the neighborhood.

Citi Card Extra Cash Program

blogger — Sat, 08 May 2010 17:05:41 +0000

If you have a Citi Card you might be familiar with their Extra Cash program. However, its really anything but cash. The way it works is that you get $1 of extra cash for every $10 spend, similar in some ways to rewards cards or points you can get for other credit cards out there. It sounds good, however, in order to use the “extra cash” you have to spend more money. When you first sign up for a card they will give you $100 of “extra cash” and as you can imagine it builds up fast if you use your credit card to pay all your bills. Which is what I do and then I pay it all off at the end of the month, so I write less checks and get out of the checkout lines faster.

Citi Extra Cash Gift Cards

For instance you can get gift cards with extra cash, but the extra cash only gives you a discount on the gift cards, meaning you will have to spend the rest. For instance they give you $5 off $50 gift cards, $10 off $100 gift cards and $50 off $500 dollar gift cards. Now this is good if you know you are going to go on a shopping spree, but the stores they offer the gift cards for are ones you probably won’t use very often. They have gift cards for Old Navy, Gap, Land’s End/Sears/K-mart and several others but you won’t find any for Target or Wal-Mart.

You can also use your extra cash for discounts on car rentals, local stores, airline tickets, etc but don’t expect to save more than a few dollars and the selection of outlets is kind of limited. The extra cash program also has deals on selected merchandise (clothes, electronics, etc) that you can get discounts on. Most of the discounts aren’t very good and the items they feature usually cost too much anyway, but it’s really there so you think you are saving money and spending the extra cash you earned, but its just their way of getting you to spend more money.

Citi Extra Cash Offer for iPod and Walmart

They have a deal of the day every day at 1pm EST, where they offer a higher discount on certain items and sometimes the item is rather good, but the quantity is very low. So you have to login for that 1 day its offered right away and hope you get one of them. Probably the most popular offer they do every month or so is a $50 Wal-Mart gift card for $25, assuming you have another $25 in extra cash, but its very limited, so expect it to be gone in 10 minutes or less.

So basically the extra cash you have will keep building up and up and you probably won’t be able to use it all. But this is on purpose, they really don’t want you to use it, they want you to feel as though you need to keep your credit card with them, because you have earned so much. They had to offer some kind of rewards card, because their competition is doing so. And they could argue they do offer good deals, but they are so limited they are making their customers fight over that small quantity.

Don’t be fooled, even if you have had this credit card for awhile, you need to shop around again to get better deals. And sure most reward cards out there really don’t give you much money back or decent items for whatever points you earn. But there are some out there will at least give you something more usable, without having to spend more money on top of what you have already spent.

Men’s Shorts Are Too Long and Too Baggy

blogger — Sat, 08 May 2010 16:27:12 +0000

Seriously is it still the 1990s? Or has basketball fashion influenced men’s shorts? It seems this year’s fashion are cargo shorts which seem bulkier and slightly heavier. And why do men’s shorts have to go down to the knees or mid-way behind them? Shorts today are too long, they feel like capri pants that shrunk. I’m not looking for the 1980s too short shorts or skinny shorts, but ones that go a little above the knees and are slightly tapered. I have been able to find a few pair, but they go for like $20-$35 a pair. And why do we need shorts that are straight leg (baggy on the leg holes)? They should be slightly tapered at the end.

Believe or not these images are from 2010, not 1995.

Okapi – Related to the Giraffe

blogger — Sat, 01 May 2010 23:04:37 +0000

Saw this animal, the Okapi for the first time at a zoo. Its coat is a deep brown, almost purplish. I also was shown the skull of this animal compared to a giraffe and you can see the similarity, although its not as huge, nor does it have as long a neck; However, the small horns are very similar.

The okapi is native to the Ituri Rainforest in central Africa. I has stripes on its rear similar to the zebra, but its closest living relative to the giraffe. It’s the last major mammal discovered by humans (discovered in 1901).

E-matic 2GB MP3 Video Player Review

blogger — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 14:32:45 +0000

I few months ago I decided to get a digital MP3 player, rather than relying on my old Rio Volt SP150 CD Player/MP3 Player. Yes, I’m a late adopter to these devices, but I finally figured I’d get one. However I didn’t feel like paying too much for one so the iPod was not one of my options. I came across the E-matic 2GB MP3 Video Player (EM102VID) on Wal-Mart’s web site and there was only a few reviews at the time. It was being sold for about $27 and I figured I would take a chance and order it. I used their Site to Store feature which lets you get your item shipped to a local store for free and you get an email when it arrives to pick it up. They told me it would take about 2-3 weeks, but I got mine in about 8 days.

Ematic EM102VID 2GB MP3 Video Player

Anyway, I’ve had this device for a few months now and it’s held up. Since then many reviews of this device have had people say that there is no way to browse music except by pressing next and forward. This is not true, what you have to do is press the Power button once (you have to hold Power for a few seconds to turn the device off) and the menu will come up. From the Menu you can pick: Repeat, 6-Band Equalizer (you can use presets or tweak it manually), 3d (I think it attempts to add some dimension to the music), Play Rate (how fast the music plays) and File. Using the File option you can browse through the music in a text based folder layout, it’s not the most elegant way, but it works good enough. You can put files on the device either by MSC or MTP mode which is activated by pressing the Play button while its connected via USB to your PC. I wasn’t able to play music on the device while charging, except by browsing to the files on my PC and playing them in an music player (WinAmp or Windows Media Player).

To get back to the other sections (main menu) in the Player you have to hold the Play button for about 2 seconds, then you are greeted with the sections one by one: Music, Photo, Movie, Voice, FM Radio, Mic. Record, E-Book, Settings, Delete and About. I really didn’t mess with the Photo or Movie options much, it comes with some sample music, photos and a video when you first get the player. I did convert a few videos just to see how they turned out and they were ok, the device comes with a CD with some program you have to use to convert your videos to MTV format. MTV files will be larger than AVI or other video formats and from what I know it’s basically just a huge collection of images that it plays to simulate the video while the audio plays. But I didn’t really get this device for photos or video. The FM Radio can automatically create preset stations for you by scanning through. The E-Book feature will remember the last file you opened and has an option to automatically go to the next screen after a few seconds. However I didn’t find it all that useful, the screen is way too small to read on and long words are broken without any hyphenation to let you know it did so, but it’s there if you want to try it out. You can change the Microphone Recorder’s quality in the Settings Menu incase you want smaller files. Audio quality sounded good to me, but you might want some better quality headphones, the ones it comes with aren’t that great. It will remember what music file it played last and where in the file it stopped (how many minutes and seconds into the audio file). It also has a button shared with the Microphone record button that lets you loop a song by setting a start and end point.

The buttons on the outside: Back, Forward, Play/Pause, Volume Up, Volume Down, Hold (you can lock the device so no accidental pushes on the buttons change anything), Power and Microphone Record. There is also a headphone jack, reset hole, Mini-USB connection and it looks like it might be possible to put some kind of loop or chain on the device at the top. The buttons are raised up so its easy to find them, even if you aren’t looking at the device. The battery I would say lasts about 7 hours. All and all for $27 this is a good deal, I just wish they offered a 16gb or 32gb model.

1.5″ Color Display
2GB MP3 Video Player
Holds over 8 Hours of Music, 3 hours of Video or 2,000 Pictures
Built-In Rechargeable Li-Polymer battery
Includes In-ear type earphones
ID3 Tagging and Lyrics synchronization during music playback
Windows 1998/2000/XP Compatible/Vista Ready
MAC Compatible
High Speed USB 2.0
E-Book function allows you to browse ,TXT files
Skip-Free Video and Music Playback
Supports Video Playback of AVI, MP4, MPG, WMV using the included conversion CD
Supports Playback of MP3, WMA, WAV, MTV, BMP, Jpeg, and DRM Protected WMA Music files
Multi-Language User Interface including English, Spanish, and many more
Voice Recording (Built-In MIC)
Flash Storage capabilities
Extended Battery Life
Available in Blue (EM102VIDB), Green (EM102VIDG), Red (EM102VIDR) and Pink (EM102VIDP) (Although their website shows Black (EM102VIDBL), Orange (EM102VIDO), Yellow (EM102VIDY) and Gray (EM102VIDGY) also available)

Never Give Up

blogger — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:41:46 +0000

I saw this picture of a Morelet’s Treefrog trying to fight off a Cat-eyed Snake that was trying to eat him.

This picture “Deadlock” was taken in the rainforest of Belize by David Maitland who was named 2008 Wildlife Photographer of the Year.

Irish Spring Body Wash Moisture Blast

blogger — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 23:20:36 +0000

I recently a bottle of Irish Spring Body Wash Moisture Blast for a road trip, because I didn’t want to deal with bringing bar soap and with having it remain all wet in a container. I believe body washes are made for those that don’t use washcloths. If you try to lather this in a washcloth it simply won’t work without using a ton of it. Not only that it leaves you all slimy afterwards. Perhaps its because it has a 8 hr scent system. Next time I’ll stick with bar soap. I think commercials like to show people not using washcloths, so they end up wasting more of the soap and to show it off better in their ads.

Paper Mate Write Bros. Ballpoint Pens

blogger — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 16:01:10 +0000

Is it me or are these the best ballpoint pens ever made?

Paper Mate ballpoint pens have been pretty much what I’ve used since late highschool. Unlike Bic pens they don’t dry out or leak. They also work until they are out of ink, which I can’t say for Bic pens either. Plus they are very inexpensive. Perhaps it’s because Paper Mate is in mostly just the pen, pencil and eraser business, whereas Bic makes pens, shaving blades and lighters; thus, Bic is used to making stuff that is just disposable and only gets a few uses. Whereas, Paper Mate knows how to make a pen that lasts. The only change they’ve made to this model of pen is the coloring. Instead of being white with the cap and tip colored the same as the ink, the full plastic casing is now the color of the ink.

Politicians Trusted More than Businesses

blogger — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 04:51:33 +0000

I saw a poll regarding the fact that politicians are trusted more than business leaders on the economy. And the pollsters were surprised of this fact. Really? Politicians are supposed to be accountable to their constituents and serve a bigger purpose of our government; Whereas, business leaders are only accountable to their own company and profit margins. Somewhere a snowy owl is going “Oh, really?”.