Sears Compensates Their Reservists That Are Called To Duty

Time to rethink shopping at Sears. I was once an avid shopper at Sears. Since their acquisition by K-Mart I've been reluctant to give them much of my retail business. In recent days I've received several emails praising Sears for compensating their employees that are called up to active duty in the Guard or Reserves. Knowing how tall email tails can grow I decided to check the validity of the claim. So off to Snopes.com I went and sure enough it is true. They compensate the difference between the employees military pay and his/her Sears pay. Additionally, they leave all benefits in place.
Many other companies also do this, but it 's good to see Sears doing it. I think it would be a nice gesture if everyone would make a point of buying at least 1 Christmas gift from Sears this year.

Black Friday

Black Friday, the insane world of shopping. Is getting up in the middle of the night to stand in line for a store bargain really a bargain? Maybe, if you don't put a value on your time. These door buster specials are such a scam on the consumer. Standing in line for a super buy on some item thats available in an extremely limited quantity is such an advertising scam. Yes they do sell the item to the limited amount of buyers, but what about all the rest of the people that spend 10 or 12 hours standing in line only to find out they are too late.
Let's assume the bargain you are looking to buy is that electronic gadget that is priced $100 lower than anywhere else. Also assume that you value your time at a minimum wage of $7 an hour. You stand in line for 12 hours and are rewarded with the chance to purchase that item that you save $100 on. It just cost you $84 in your labor to do it. Your a gross savings is $14! Value your time at more than $7 an hour and you made even less. Or worse yet, your labor can exceed the savings on the item. It's your choice.

Internet Radio has some time to survive

From the RAIN Newsletter (Nov20,2007): "The briefs of the various webcasting groups who appealed are due on February 25. The brief for the CRB (represented by the Department of Justice) is due on April 25, and that of SoundExchange (the 'Intervenor') will be filed on May 15. Reply briefs are due on June 12, and oral arguments are yet to be scheduled. As the Court usually takes a summer break in July and August, the argument is likely to be held in the Fall of 2008, and a decision would likely not come until very late in the year or, more likely, in 2009.
So it looks like those of us that are web casting will have until early 2009 to learn our fate. This might be one incident of the slow motion of the legal system being a good thing.

USTREAM.TV IS WAY COOL !

I have my ustream TV station going. It is great giving listeners to our radio station a video feed of the studio. We're currently working on an automated system to have the radio stream plating 24/7. Once it's all in place, the video feed will also go 24/7. If I'm not in the studio I will have either a recorded video or a slide show going.
Feel free to check it out.

Check out #1 In Music

The War Ges On

The war goes on, news at six! Don’t believe it. You won’t see the real news on any of the networks. They tell us what’s going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. The real and tragic news is right here in the United States.

Families mourning the loss of a young GI, doesn’t get a whole lot of coverage. War veterans laying in over crowded VA hospitals trying to adapt to life with out a limb or scarred for life gets even less coverage. Homeless war vets on the streets is on the increase, another news story that doesn’t get the coverage it should.

Perhaps if the press would focus more on these tragic issues, the American people would be more supportive of getting us the hell out of this war. Yes over this past weekend, the news mills cranked out what I would call the “human interest” stories, but only because it was Veterans Day. What about the other 364 days of the year?

The Internet Gets A Bad Rap

The Internet gets a bad rap. It frustrates me every day to turn on the news and see the internet getting a bad rap. How? We see news stories on everything from terrorism to school shootings to drug incidents and the press always manages to get a side line in how the internet was used in some form or another. I don’t doubt their use of the internet. It is a massive communications tool and the bad guys are aware of it as we are.
What frustrates me is the fact that the press makes such a big thing of the internet side of the story. I’m quite sure most of this crime will happen with or without the internet. So why emphasize it so much? If anything, it makes those in fringe groups with illegal intentions think about utilizing it even more. Why help them become more efficient at their undesirable activities?
While all this is going on, we don’t hear or see any stories about all the good them comes from the internet ie: raising money for a child that need surgery, promotion of community service activities, health and welfare sites for our troops at war etc.
Please, put everything in perspective. Yes the bad guys use the internet, but it’s far overshadowed by all of the good things happening.

Just Say No to Chinese Toys

In light of recent news on yet more dangerous toys coming out of China, I'm reposting an earlier post. A day doesn't go by without something on the news about this. IT is time to just say no!!!!



Do you want your kids playing with unsafe toys? If not, JUST SAY NO to toys manufactured in China! They aren't concerned about safety or quality. China has a booming economy thanks to us Americans buying their sub-standard products.

We should demand our government totally close our border to Chinese toys until the Chinese government can demonstrate that safe guards are in place to ensure both quality and safety. The only way this can be safely accomplished would be to have an American panel of experts payed for by the by the American toy industry oversee the entire Chinese manufacturing process. any efforts less than this to ensure quality and safety would be questionable.


The term Just Say No came about to teach our kids to stay away from drugs. Now we as parents have to Just Say No to protect our kids from toys!


Don't wait for government to fix this problem. The best fix is to not buy these products!

Thoughts On Retirement

Thoughts on Retirement We work all of our life thinking about one day retiring and reaping the benefits of our labor. Mass amounts of information exist both in print and online related to retirement. Unfortunately one of the biggest things I’ve noticed is that this materiel is written by people/companies that are trying to sell insurance, investments or other financial packages. I find most of what they write to be geared to making their ‘product” look attractive. While much of this information can be extremely useful for planning your retirement, I think your best source of information will come from people that have already retired.

First off, don’t count on Social Security to be the foundation of your retirement. Treat it as added income. The future of Social Security surviving is constantly in question. Let it be extra income, not something you count on to survive.

A key factor to keep in mind is your retirement income isn’t going to be anything like the income you have from working! Accordingly a key to retirement is having less debt. Big or multiple mortgages or car payments might have been easy to handle while working but will be totally unmanageable on a retirement income. Reducing your monthly debt is more critical and easier to do than trying to increase your income. Things to consider:

1. Your mortgage is likely your biggest monthly expense. Downsizing your home might result in a lower mortgage. Very few people retire without a mortgage these days.

2. We all love our nice cars, but consider selling what you have and getting into a car without a payment or at least a lower payment.

3. Credit cards afford us the opportunity to do things now and pay later. They also eat up a bunch of your retirement income. Pay them off, keep one card for emergencies with the goal of not keeping a balance on it.

I’ll write more on this topic in future postings. Input from readers is solicited.

Ford - UAW contract Settled

It's not the car industry we once knew. I'm glad to see the contract settled between Ford and the UAW without a strike. Nothing would have been gained by a strike. The UAW sucked all they could out of Ford. Being in the weakest financial state of the big 3 auto makers, Ford is doing good to keep plants running and being productive. I remember a few years ago the analysts saying the biggest thing Ford had going is their large cash reserves. Not the case today, I recently read that they've acquired such extensive debt that even the world famous "Blue Oval" logo is in hock now.

I worry about how secure the trust fund for UAW retiree health care will be. In theory it's a good plan, but I've also seen other union managed programs end up in corruption and financial crises.

For those that opted to ride out the storm with Ford, good luck to you. My only advise is don't put all your eggs in one basket. Save money for emergencies. Acquire new marketable skills in case your job goes down the tubes.

Ten months ago I took a buy out retirement which involved giving up my Ford health care benefit. I was fortunate to have health care from another source that allowed me to do it. I have no regrets. I miss the people I worked with, but not the rat race at the plant.

Managing Digital Pictures

Digital pictures, what a boom to photography. With the reduced costs of digital cameras, taking pictures has grown by leaps and bounds. We take far more pictures knowing they are digital and don't require the processing expense of days gone by. The biggest obstacle we have now is managing and storing them.

Creating folders and sorting your pictures is a personal thing, Some people like devoting folders to an individual while others prefer sorting them by topic or event. Whatever way you do it, foremost in your mind would be security of your pictures, I'm not talking in security as in they may be stolen, but rather securing that you have them in event of catastrophic failure of your computer or hard drive. A hard drive failure, the need for a Windows re-install or any number of things can make your treasured pictures get lost forever. There are a couple simple options to ensure the safety of your picture and video files.

1. Burn your videos and pictures to CD's or DVD's. A bit time consuming, but worth it.
2. Add another hard drive to your computer just to store your audio, video and photo files. no matter what happens to your primary drive, your files will be on the secondary drive.
3. Save your files on an external hard drive. Once an expensive option, USB hard drives are now quite reasonable. A 300GB external drive can be had for less than $100. An advantage to this is being able to plug it into any computer and have your files available.
4. Save your pictures at an online storage sites such as Flickr, box.net etc. While all of these free online storage sites have size limitations, you can still safely store your files there. One can always create multiple accounts to increase storage capacity. You can access your files from any computer. Another fun feature is being able to make your photo/video files public to share with friends and family.

The most important thing is find a place to back up your files. Don't depend on your hard drive to protect your photo/video work.