Recently I was invited, via FaceBook invitation, to a meeting one of my local friends was having to tell us all about this new business he started and how he wants to tell us about it and how its working and how he can get us going on it too … RED FLAG … if his business is so great … why does he want to get us involved too as it will likely take away from his own … unless of course he needs to use us to make money himself

So i asked him what the meeting was about, if it was a pyramid scheme, etc etc etc … all the normal questions. He said no it wasnt and thats what he was afraid of too when he first heard about it but he looked into it for a while and then had his dad look into it also and everything seemed to be legit so he started it up … RED FLAG … this isnt a business that he started, this is a business he got involved with

So when I asked him how much money he had to spend to get involved he hemmed and hawwed around for a little while and finally told me that he only had to put a few hundred dollars into it in order to get everything setup … RED FLAG … now investing money to get a business going is one thing, but investing money to “get involved” with what is appearing more and more to be a well coriegraphed large business is skeevy  at best.

What he wouldnt tell me was what the damn business was … he just kept telling me that the meeting was only going to be about 90 minutes long and all the info would be there so I should just come and learn what its about … RED FLAG … tell me what the dang business is about and THEN i’ll decide if the meeting is worth going to or not.

So now … being intregued by what all this might be about (and me being nosey and pessimisstic) I thought i might show up, sit in the back, and watch as the eyes of the ignorant in the room glaze over as they show slides of stacks of money and video clips of people who have made millions. So, I’m watching the invite on facebook to see who is going and who is not going etc and I notice that one of the people who has accepted the invite and “plans to attend” is a kid i dont know real well but I do know that he quit his regular job a few years back and opened up this online sales business. i never really questioned it more than that assuming that he may know how to write java or whatever for websites and is hosting pages or something for a local business … but now its all coming together.

So i sent him a message asking him what was REALLY going on with this meeting … first thing he says to me, “Did you talk to [other person] about it?”. So I told him that yes i had asked a few questions but wasnt getting any info. Then he says, “did i ever tell you about my business before?” so i said, not really, but you had mentioned it. His response was, “ok, well [other person] is my business partner and we dont like to step on each other’s toes” … RED FLAG … BRIGHT RED … haha. now its getting comical to me … if you’re business PARTNERS then how is it stepping on his toes?

So I’m asking questions about how all this works and again I’m getting the just come to the meeting, blah blah blah and I looked into this for over a year before i started it blah blah blah. And he kept saying really vague things like “product brokerage and Internet marketing company” and trying to impress me with facts like he is now partnered with Microsoft and Google and Best Buy, etc … so i finally got him to give me a link to his website

Well … as it turns out, its not HIS website … its a company called Market America and its their website with his username tagged onto the end of the link. Hahaha I almost busted out laughing. So I told him I’d do some research and see what i come up with. Which is when I got the immediate, “Well just be careful what you read.” Huh? “Well some people fail at this and then they go and post all kinds of bad things abotu the company,” he says. … LOL now my RED FLAG has neon lights flashing on and off. Good god.

Turns out this Market America company gets you to sign up, makes you put in X amount of money (I cant really find a specific amount) before you can start “selling” their products at thier website. But before they will ever send you a check you have to get two more people to sign up, pay the “fees” or however they get you to pay, and start selling products. ONLY THEN will they start sending you checks. And on top of that, you have to meet certain quotas each month or … No Check For You!

HELLLLLOOOOOO!! How is this NOT a pyramid? If i sign up, and then get 2 people to sign up, and they both need to get two more people, and then each of those needs two more people … does anyone else see whre I’m going? Lets draw an  ”Org Chart” for this … lol … hmm … looks like a damn triangle

I skipped the meeting.

If I’m quick enough one of these days I’ll snap a photo of it … its quite disturbing.

Clearly (god i hope anyway) they purchased the truck becuase it was no longer being used for pool water … but c’mon … a few cans of spray paint … 

Maybe one of these days i should follow it to see where it takes this yummy pool water … my damn luck, I’ll follow it down the street to the local Y.

As a group, we’ve spent an eternity of time trying to figure out how to recycle more and more. It all sounds good, but how about we heed the other two parts of that saying too.

First we need to reduce the amount of stuff we use … low flow shower heads reduce water consumption, fuel efficient cars reduce gas consumption, buying in bulk can reduce packaging supplies and trips to the store.

Then we need to reuse some of this stuff … wash out plastic containers and reuse them. rinse yogurt or cottage cheese containers and reuse them instead of buying the gladware stuff. reuse old sneakers as a pair of garden or garage shoes …

I think if you can spend some time accomplishing those two things, you’ll have a lot less garbage to figure out how to recycle.

Whenever I ask to have my tires balanced I get a question similar to, “Why, does the car vibrate at high speeds?” Well, no, it doesn’t, but just go do your job and balance my tires like i asked. I think they don’t like to do it because I’m sure its tedious. I’d do it myself if expensive equipment wasn’t involved, so … I’m stuck paying them.

Why balance if nothing seems wrong? Well, its a good preventative measure to: keep your tires lasting along time, prevent the car from getting out of alignment, waiting until the problem is so bad it cant be fixed and you have to buy new tires (oh, and by the way, they’ll usually do anything they can to convince you that you need to buy all 4 tires at the same time … if you have a 4-wheel drive vehicle, they might have a case, but for 2-wheel drivers … I say you can get away with just 2 as long as you put them both either on the front or the back. (One time I did change just 1 because I had just bought 4 brandy new tires and as soon as i got to college (8 hours away) i had a sidewall blowout. Of course no warranty so I opted to just go with the 1 new one (its not the best for the car, but i made a judgement call and decided to go with it). Everything turned out to be just fine, until I wrecked the car, but that’s a story for another time. And NO, the wreck was not due to the tires at all.

Sorry, back to Why? Smaller cars generally have smaller tires which (I maintain) become off balanced easier, and then wear quicker, then the off balance gets worse, then it wears even quicker … see where I’m going with this?

So just go do it, and who knows … maybe there is a Whub bub bub bub bub bub sound that will go away you never even noticed before.

And while you’re bringing it in for that, does it need an alignment too? Does the steering wheel pull to one side or the other? Hint: If you briefly let go of the steering wheel does the car tend to drift quickly to another lane? (keeping in mind that most roads have a “crown” engineered into them so water rolls off to the side and this “crown” will usually cause a slight drift to the right side). Pulling to one side or the other is usually a sign of alignment problems. Its more expensive than balancing but usually cheap compared to new tires. I like to try to get my alignments done in the spring after the harsh winter road conditions … then I’m usually sailing smooth all summer and longer.

1. Walk up to machine and scan your first item. (Some machines may require you to press “English” first or whatever, but I haven’t found one yet that doesnt just start right up when you scan the first thing.
2. IMMEDIATELY place the item in the designated bagging area. This is the most important part that all of you screw up. The computer is programmed with the items weight and when you scan your item, the computer waits to make sure you put the proper item in the bagging area (tricky, I know).
3. Scan your next item.

Its very important to do all of this very precicesly or the computer gets confused and then you get frustrated. Most of the time you cannot remove an item from the bagging area or the computer will stop everyhting and … “Please wait for assistance.” At one of my local big-box stores I’ve found that after the computer has recognized my most recent item I can remove the entire bag if I have enough items to make that necessary. But again, this is tricky! Think about what happens if you scan a greeting card and add it to the checkout area with 2 gallons of milk and a sac of potatoes … it may recognise it … or it may tell you to get lost.

DO NOT go into the self-checkout line if you’re buying anything of a strong chemical nature. Items include: Paint (including spray paint), automotive products like brake cleaner, or dry gas, or any other strong chemical substance that could be used by a youngster to “get high”. Most stores now require some type of age verification to purchase these products so save all of us the time and just go to a regular maned checkout line.

Also don’t go into the self-checkout line if you are purchasing items like loose nuts and bolts, or rope/wire by-the-foot at a store like Lowes as these items usually need to be entered by a cashier anyway.

Clearly don’t get in this line if you have a whole cart full of groceries. The people behind you will probably stare a hole through your head because you’re making them so mad.

If you’re unsure about how the whole thing works, pick a time when not too many people are in the store and you only have 1 of a few items (and you have a few extra minutes) and go for it. But don’t be nervous; computers are like dogs — they can smell fear.

If you’re not using any kind of money management software yet (or even if you are) head on over to www.mint.com and checkout what they’ve been building. Its a free site/service that links to all of your online financial accounts (credit cards, savings/checking accounts, investments, loans, etc). It might not have all the advanced features that packages like Microsoft Money and/or Quicken have, but it feature-base is growing fast and will likely surpass all others within a few more revisions.  The one that bugs me the most so far is not being able to itemize cash flow like I can on MSMoney, but the rest that had been missing have been taken care of recently. Features that have been added since I first signed up include (but are not limited to): overall support for loan and investment accounts, cash flow analysis (credit vs. debit comparisons, Net Income / Net Worth calculations), advanced transaction category tools, budget tracking, advanced charts and graphs to compare what you spend to others in your state or the country, and (perhaps their most notable feature) a free analyzer that recommends specific credit card offers that will save you money each year depending on what you spend your $$ on.

I have a total of 25 accounts already setup to be monitored through Mint (which includes a PayPal account, online savings bank accounts, my small hometown bank checking account, my mortgage account, my work-related investment accounts, and even my peer-to-peer lending service account) and I’m hooked. I used to use Money exclusively to track every dime spent on this, that, and the other thing but Mint is so much easier. I can use it from anywhere instead of just the computer where my Money file is located, it updates itself in seconds, and it even sends me emails when it thinks something is wrong (like when a credit card company tries to sneak in an extra fee of some kind — kudos for that). Oh and its Free! I’ll just call it a “no-brainer”. 

If you’re not using anything now, setup a few accounts on Mint and you’re likely to setup the rest soon after.

Note: Their security is very high so be sure to have ALL your bank’s login information available … including security questions (you’ll need to know the questions too) so you might want to search around on your bank’s website for a while first to find that info.

Mostly inspired by a friend of mine who comes over and looks in my fridge for no apparent reason other than I’m clearly not keeping him entertained, here are a few tips to make YOUR OWN fridge slurp a few less kilowatts:

1. Probably the most obvious is to keep the door shut. Though it may not save as much energy as you would initially think because the air that flows out of the fridge doesn’t actually contain that much heat. Its all about the amount of heat different objects can hold — their “heat capacity”. Basically the energy required to cool the warm air that enters when the door is open is next to nothing compared to say … putting warm food in there (food “holds” more heat than air does — water and other liquids generally hold even more. Think about picking a Ping-Pong ball and a similarly sized steel ball out of a freezer. Which one will stay colder longer? That’s because the steel ball needs to absorb more heat in order to warm up.) … which leads to my next tip:
2. Don’t put warm food in the fridge … wait till it cools to room temperature. The fridge works by “moving” heat from the inside to the outside (of itself). The warmer the food or drink you put in the fridge, the more heat it has to move back out. The more heat the fridge has to move, the more energy it uses.
3. Along the same lines as #2, when you take something out of the fridge, say milk, the longer it remains outside the fridge, the more heat it absorbs from the surrounding air (heat always flows from warm to cold … making the colder object warmer). By putting the  milk back into the fridge ASAP you minimize the amount of heat the milk can absorb and thus again minimize the amount of heat the fridge has to move back out to the surrounding air.
4. Make sure your fridge is in the proper environments. Most refrigerators are designed to operate at typical room temperature (comfortable inside temperatures like around 70ºF). This includes your kitchen, and not usually the garage, the porch, the attic, etc. These areas might seem like a perfect spot particularly in the cooler months but the theory proving it wrong is a little counter-intuitive. In the warmer months it should be pretty obvious why you don’t want to put the fridge outside. However, when a fridge is in a cold atmosphere the main problems arise because of the mechanics of the operation. First (in laymen’s terms) it screws up the sensors. The freezer may not get a proper signal to freeze while the fridge may get too cold and freeze your food instead of just cooling it. Second, there is oil in the compressor (the machine that moves that fluid that collects heat from inside the fridge and moves it to the surrounding air) uses a lubricating oil to keep it from destroying itself. The colder the oil, the thicker it gets. The compressor can overwork itself and actually burn up and stop working. At the very least, the thick oil makes the compressor work harder using extra electricity. If you are serious about putting a fridge or freezer in a cooler area make sure you purchase a unit that is designed to operate in colder climates. Some are designed just that way.
5. Clean behind your refridgeerator. There is a metal “coil” on the back side of the fridge that allows the heat to escape from the interior. If this coil is blanketed in dust and spider webs it has a harder time letting that heat escape (its insulated by the dust). If the heat doesnt escape from these coils it is pumped back into the fridge essentially creating an endless loop of heat being removed from the fridge, then being put back into it. 
6. Along the same lines as #5, make sure there is proper clearance around your fridge for air to move and get in behind the fridge so cooler air can reach the coils. The cooler the air, the faster the heat transfer (not too cool though). So if the heated air can rise and escape, and cooler air can flow in from underneath and around the sides, then your good. Most units are designed for at least an inch on all sides and usually a few to several inches on the top for proper ventilation. SOME units are specifically designed for zero clearance so unsightly gaps are avoided. these units generally have internal fans that force the warm air out through a vent in the front. 

Got more? Comment!

Also, Disclaimer: I want to provide accurate information. Sometimes I have a hard time explaining and describing things. Sometimes my grammer gets the better of me (the farther i get from grade school, the worse it gets). SO, please feel free to make friendly comments correcting any of the above, asking questions about parts that are unclear or that you believe may be incorrect or misleading.

Save the flashers for when you are stopped and/or blocking the road or when you are driving slow under normal conditions (ie on the shoulder because of a breakdown or creeping along with an awkward load).

Also, to the guy who i was following on my way home today: Just because its snowing doesnt mean you can drive anywhere on the road you want, you were almost killed several times by oncoming vehicles because you were in their lane. Not just a little bit, you were ALL THE WAY in their lane. What were you thinking??? … oh, and turn off your darn flashers. I nearly rear ended you because your brake lights dont work when your hazards are flashing (on some cars, yours included, the brake lights are used as the flashers).

When the person if front of me puts their brakes on and slows down in the middle of the road for no known reason … and THEN they put their blinker on. COME ON! Blinker first, brakes second.

When the person in front of me making a turn (especially a left turn) hugs the right side of the lane making it IMPOSSIBLE to sneak around them. MOVE OVER! If you’re turning left get all the way to the left side of the lane, if you’re turning right … move your butt to the right.