Anything But Coffee

The film Edge of Darkness is out in the theaters now and as usual actor-director Mel Gibson is out promoting his new movie.
Unfortunately for him, during one interview, the reporter seemed to be more interested in Mel’s past performances then his current one.

 

Mel did a pretty decent job for the most part, side stepping the questions and trying to steer the reporter back onto the subject of the real interview but reporter Dean Richards just seemed hell bent on bringing up the past.

I’m not trying to justify his actions but the truth is, Mel Gibson did what he did and said what he said almost 4 years ago. He paid his legal price to society and even more so then most people in the public’s eye usually have to. Hell, all he did was say some drunken remarks, Chris Brown beat the crap out of Rhianna and society has already forgiven him.

As far as for the “A-hole” comment at the end of the interview, maybe Mr. Gibson could have waited to make sure the camera was off, or maybe he was just doing what every human’s reaction would be when broadsided with an interview from a reporter with ulterior motives.

Randy Home Dean Richards, Edge of Darkness, Mel Gibson

Tonight I’m watching a show on the History channel called “After Armageddon” and it got me thinking; how would I survive if society failed in the wave of a pandemic.

Our society has become so dependent on technology and organized city structures, most people do not have the necessary survival skills that we once had just as little as 100 years ago.

Do you know how to hunt? Do you know how to farm? Do you know how to make shelter or do you know how to tell the difference between wild growing berries and plants that are safe to eat or deadly to you? Can you purify water to make it safe for drinking? Remember the human body can survive 30 days without food but only 7 days without water. Do you know what to do? Read more…

Randy Home disease, pandemic, society, survival, survival lessons

Most women never wish to have breast cancer but one Texas woman went out of her way to fake having breast cancer in hopes of raising money for her breast implants.

Trista Joy Lathern, age 24, of Waco, Texas successfully was able to fool over 100 concerned citizens, friends and family members to believe she was suffering from breast cancer and actually raised over $10,000 in donations at the same time.

Lathern said that she needed the money for her reconstructive breast augmentation procedure to help cover the cost of her breast implants because she didn’t have health insurance and had no way to pay for them. She even went as far as to shave her head to help simulate the results of chemotherapy.

McClennan County Sheriff investigators said that when she went in for a breast augmentation consultation with a local plastic surgeon; who just happened to know about her recent fundraiser, she never mentioned having breast cancer.

This caught the doctor by surprise considering breast cancer is a serious medical condition that one would disclose and have on her medical records.

The surgeon quickly notified his attorney who in turn notified the local Sheriffs Department.

Lanthern then went to a second Houston breast augmentation specialist in Texas for her procedure which ended up costing $6,800. She was arrested on Nov 4, 2009 but was able to make bail and was released.

Additionally she was later arrested on an out standing warrent and is now being charged with the crime of “theft by deception” and is currently awaiting a court date.

Randy Home breast augmentation, Breast Cancer, Breast Implants, Fake Breast Cancer, Trista Joy Lathern

So call me paranoid but I think Google is just going to far with their information gathering.

For those who don’t know, Google announced on their blog last week on December 4th, 2009 they are now offering personalized search results for everyone who uses Google.

What’s so special about personalized search results? Well here’s a little history for those who may not know. Every search you do on Google is documented and tracked. Up until now your information was only stored if you chose not to opt-out of this program by turning off your search history in your Google preferences. Not many people knew of this. Google “claims” they only use your stored information as a metric to be able to return to you more relevant results based off of your search history.

Now, as of their announcement, Google is storing your information whether you want them to or not. You have no option to opt-out of this information tracking system anymore, which I feel is a violation of personal privacy. Read more…

Randy Home Google, Personalzied Search

When it comes to search engine optimization or search engine marketing, more traffic and more inbound links are the two factors that make the difference between success and failure.

Depending on your niche or the subject matter of your website or blog, finding more and more reliable sources of generating trusted links can be a very difficult task. I came across this website recently that will help you do just that and for free.

Visit this site and just submit your website to them and that’s it. They will then automatically generate a sample directory of your most recent blog posts or web pages which helps to generate more exposure for your site and provides more links to them directly.

As a bonus you will be submitted to the links on the left that self generate links back to your site. So again more traffic and more inbound links to your site.

The only catch is that after your listing is up, you have to be sure to promote it somewhere so Google will find it quicker and start indexing the links. So a quick status update on Twitter or any social networking site should help with that.

Search engine optimization is hard enough as it is with all the spammers out there, and algorithm changes that seem to be taking place. And with the social networking being a huge factor in Google Caffeine which is coming out after the first of the year, hopefully this is something that can help. All we can do is wait and see.

Randy Home Inbound Links, More Traffic, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization

Sorry Yahoo but I sort of have to disagree with you on the last post about how the Full Moon Triggers Wacky Behavior.

It’s not that I don’t believe what Professor Lilienfeld of Emory University in Atlanta is saying but there seems to be one thing that he possibly has over looked; that the human body is about 60% water.

You may be asking yourself what does the percentage of water that makes up a person and the full moon have to do with each other and the answer is quiet possibly a lot.

The Moon controls the rise and fall of all the tides in our oceans. Now ask yourself, what are the oceans made up of? You guessed it, water. And about 70% (326 million trillion gallons) of our planet is covered by our oceans. That’s just 10% more then what makes up the Human body.

So if the cycle of the Moon, which is about 238,857 miles away is able to have such an impact on the water covering our planet, couldn’t it possibly be able to have an effect on the chemical make up of a person and cause them to act a little crazy?

Randy Home Full Moon, Human Behavior, Myths

According to the site CoreofCorruption.com there were four German and Austrian art students illegally living inside the World Trade Center Towers months before the attack on September 11, 2000. What is more disturbing is that they were living on th 90th floor, and had temporary construction permits to work on the towers, and were arrested and detained days after the terrorist attack and found to have connections to terrorist groups.

Watch the video and draw your own conclusions. Conspiracy or not, this is pretty interesting development.

Randy Home 9/11, Conspiracy, CoreOfCorruption.com, Terrorist Attack, World Trade Center Attack, YouTube Video

Today I get to work and like many other office workers in America, first thing I do is log into my social networking website of choice. In my case it was Facebook. Now keep in mind I am a search engine optimization specialist so social networking is part of my daily routine but that’s besides the point.

So as I’m catching up on all the early morning postings of all my friends, I start to notice how they all seem to be bitching and moaning about the same problem; how none of their Facebook aps are loading up. I guess an hour without their YoVille or Mafia Wars is just too much for them to handle.

And then I started thinking how dependent we have become on our social networks.

We use social networking sites to stay in touch with family and friends. We use them for entertainment. We use them to stay up to date with news and celebrity gossip. We use them to stay ahead of the game for new developments in technology and medicine. We have become so dependent upon social networks that we don’t know what to do when they go down or aren’t available every second of the day that we want them.

And this brings me to my next point. The majority of social networks, including the major 3, Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, are all free to join. All someone needs is a valid email account and within minuets you have your new social profile up and running. Free to start your social networking addiction.

But greedy as society is; not content with all the free services that we are offered on these sites, now we expect fully functional technical support, 100% up time, zero bugs and all without any type of compensation to the people running the sites.

A Social Network is a Business

This stuff isn’t free people! It costs money to build these websites, design these flash movies and code all these cool function’s, features and games you love so much. Huge databases of images and profiles to maintain, immense amount of bandwidth to manage. You can’t expect to have all this and still not have any problems for free.

Facebook announced that they finally turned a profit in the second quarter of 2009, it only took them 5 years. Twitter has yet to show any profit on their own apart from what they make from investors.

Maybe its time people stop taking advantage of these social sites and give a little something back. The only way for a free membership based social networking site can make any money and continue to provide the services we have become accustomed to is through advertising. As this seems as the best way to go, it still has its problems.

Myspace has made all its money from advertising but at the users expense. Slow load up times with massive flash advertisements for movies, continuously bombarding people with ads for online dating sites or diet and fitness programs. Sure its easy to ignore but we should be allowed to turn those adds off if we want. Facebook uses ads to make their money as well and they have had their own problems such as letting developers use profile images of users in their ads for dating sites. But with advertising being the only source of profit, what else is there to do?

Maybe its time to start charging a small monthly fee for these sites. Considering Facebook has 300 million users, I’m sure if they carged $1.00 a month for a premium membership that would allow you special features such as turning off these ads people, well people might just go for that.

Now I’m not saying that a paid membership is the right way to go but we have to face the facts. If our favorite social sites arent able to make any money on their own, then investors wil stop giving them money and then they will be forced to sale the site off, stop fixing bugs or worse just shut it down completly.

Randy Home facebook, Myspace, Social Networking, Social Networks, twitter

Today at work I was setting up a Local Business Center account in Google and discovered yet another bug in their system.

As some of you have noticed recently, Google started forcing you to select at least one category from their suggested category drop down in order to move on to the next step of the local business center creation and verification process.

Since this listing was for a Laser Eye Surgery office I chose to select the LASIK Surgeon as suggested by Google’s drop down box as seen here

This example is a quick one I tested tonight with out much information but you can see clearly the auto suggestion is LASIK Surgeon all capitalized. The term LASIK (laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis) is often capitalized because that is proper name and accepted spelling for this procedure.

Now here is where the bug comes in. Google doesn’t allow excessive capitalization in their listings in an effort to help prevent spam and to make for an equal playing field for all local business listings as seen here

Just for good measure I even attempted to spell LASIK Surgeon in all lower case just to test this out but as you can see, Google just wont accept it as I can only imagine because of the capitalized version in their auto suggestion.

Apparently there doesn’t seem to be a way around this so unfortunately as for my clients listing I had to just go with a generic eye surgery listing as that was the only one that seemed to go through.

I havent tested this on any other categories but if anyone else has had a similar experience I’d like to know about it.

Randy Home Google Local Business Center, Google Maps, LASIK, LASIK Eye Surgery

Most people aren’t sure what the difference is between the legal terms DUI and DWI, hopefully this will help to explain in very short and simple terms the difference between the two. Keep in mind, each state may vary in the specifics of this so always be sure to check with your local law enforcement agency to know the laws of your state.

In most states the legal definition of DUI means Driving Under the Influence. Driving Under the Influence (DUI) doesn’t always just apply to alcohol. Under the influence can refer to an alcoholic beverage, illegal narcotics / drugs or even over the counter prescription drugs. Basically any substance that impairs your ability to operate a motor vehicle; and in some states like California, can even refer to your inability to operate a bicycle.

Now in most states the term DWI stands for Driving While Intoxicated. If you are arrested and or convicted of Driving While Intoxicated (DWI) then that means that you were in the act of operating a motor vehicle while at or above the legal blood alcohol level of your state; such as 0.08 in California.

Again be sure to check with your local authorities or even a local DUI Attorney or DWI Attorney to know what your legal blood alcohol content is for your specific state.

Randy Home DUI, DUI Attorney, DUI Lawyer, DWI, DWI Attorney