Will It Go Round In Circles? Paying It Forward, One Byte at a Time
Here’s a thought-provoking article from a Newsweek reporter about his internet-addicted, homeless brother.
Links to a QUIZ at the Internet Addiction Recovery Program you can take to see if YOU (or someone you love) have a problem with internet addiction.
Interesting read!
But that’s exactly what I did about 2 weeks ago, about 10 days before our car insurance policy was set to expire.
And, miraculously, it paid off.
I’d been happy with our insurer, GEICO, until they inexplicably raised our rates by over 20% last August. My husband and I have perfect driving records and have always simply carried basic liability on both our automobiles, so the rate raise was hard to justify. I found it quite ironic that the rate raise seemed to correlate with their massive increase in ad campaigns advertising their LOW RATES.
GEICO, however, was completely unsympathetic to my plaintive complaints, and simply offered the option of an online defensive driving course to lower our costs. But there was the inevitable catch in the fine print: the discount was only good at GEICO and the meager savings it offered wasn’t worth the time/expense of the course, in our opinion.
So, we reluctantly renewed our policy last year and resolved to look into a better rate before renewing this year. Naturally, being a typical American procrastinator, I didn’t get around to it until just about 2 weeks before the policy was set to expire. And I wanted to get it all over with as quickly as possible.
Can you think of anything more dull than spending a day on the phone talking to a bunch of insurance agents about car insurance rates? Me either, other than spending the day proofreading computer code.
Needless to say, I was HIGHLY MOTIVATED to find a workaround solution, and I found a great one.
Whether you live in Texas or not, you can make great use of a little-known tool the state of Texas has devised to allow its citizens to compare car insurance rates for about 50 different insurers (such as Liberty Mutual, Safeco, Hartford, GEICO, Allstate, AAA, etc.).
Simply enter your basic information (TX zip code–use any TX zip if you’re not a resident—, type of auto, how it’s used, marital status, age bracket, etc.) on an online form & you’ll get a sortable list of insurers and their annual sample rates. It also shows each company’s AM Best Rating, Complaint Index, and Rate Changes over the last 12, 24, and 36 months.
I ran this form, sorted by annual sample rate, then worked my way down the list by best prices (and complaint index), calling or filling out online forms with 4 different insurers. It took a little more than an hour to find my ideal insurer and we traded GEICO’s $567 annual rate for a $404 annual rate (from Liberty Mutual) for exactly the same insurance coverage for two cars. Well worth the time invested!
Do your family a favor & check it out here: HelpInsure.com
Happy hunting!
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originally posted elsewhere on the web, 8/15/2011
During my early morning, coffee-driven recreational web browsing, I came across an obituary about a New York City man I knew nothing about, Roy Neuberger, who passed away (12/24/2010) at the incredible age of 107. There’s a wonderful photo accompanying the article, showing Mr. Neuberger, looking stunningly healthy to my eyes, receiving a Medal of Arts from President Bush in 2007 (at the age of 104). Wow!
What, I asked, drove a man to live that long?
Art and the love of business. A successful wedding of Happiness and Purpose.
I found this to be a fascinating life, a story of a man who founded a NY brokerage firm (Neuberger Berman) and experienced 3 market crashes (’29, ’87,’ 2008). And he was also a patron of the arts, who collected (but rarely sold) artworks of living American artists.
It’s worth your time; read the obituary here at the New York Times.
The documentary explores the largest Mall in the world (bigger than Mall of America in Minnesota).
It’s the South China Mall outside of Guangzhou, China. Outdoing the techniques of American consumerism, South China Mall is Disneyland, Las Vegas and Mall of America rolled into one. There are carnival rides, mini-parks, canals and lakes amid classic Western-style buildings with space for hundreds of shops.
What’s the problem? It’s deserted.
In a nutshell, it’s a cautionary tale of supply outstripping demand OR how impossible it is to impose Western “values” on an ancient civilization OR how unnatural an impulse unbridled consumerism truly is OR a true-to-life fable of the folly of being “too big to fail” OR, better yet: a reminder of the Truth contained in my all-time favorite Shelley poem, Ozymandias.
Take a few minutes to watch this; it’s just a 14 minute piece and well worth your time.
Welcome to the Brave New World.
Calia is a Canadian woman, traveling the world alone and blogging about her adventures. As she puts it:
I have very few definite plans really. I intend to fly (no pun intended) by the seat of my pants and follow wherever whims (and budget) take me. That’s how this entire thing started anyway. I woke up one morning and thought about what it would be like if I wasn’t the me that lives in Toronto, but another me that had a different life. That other me had decided to go back to my roots and be a vagabond / nomad. Toronto me started to feel distant and insignificant, so here I am starting on my real world vagabonding adventure. (Yes, this started with a daydream that ran out of control. Trust me, anyone that knows me wouldn’t think that unusual in the slightest. :))
There’s so many places that I’ve always dreamed of visiting Mexico, Peru, Egypt, Ankor Wat in Cambodia and I very much want to visit Europe again for the summer since there was a lot I didn’t get to see last time. The world is also changing fast, I’d like to be able to look back and remember things that I actually witnessed and experienced, not just stuff I saw on telly or read about online.
Lots of neat photographs and interesting thoughts about her various adventures. Enjoy it here.
And here’s the background story on WHY she decided to travel in the first place.
Interesting reading; enjoy!
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originally published elsewhere, 7/11/11
And then I grew up.
And now, it’s all so clear to me. I know nothing. And have even less to say about it.
The Ignorance of Youth is the Gift of the Gods.
It’s the intoxicating brew that lets us step into the unknown, full of confidence that we, in fact, know EVERYTHING.
It’s a limitation of the brain that makes an acorn think it’s an oak tree. The potential is there, but an acorn is no more an oak than a College Kid is his Father. But who thinks he’s the better of the two?
Okay. It’s time to post another Amazon Review (just because I’ve been too busy working on my tax returns to spend too much time blogging). This will fill the gap, till I can get back to some fun recreational writing again : )
Here’s my review of a favorite unique DVD, available from Amazon: Alone in the Wilderness, Part II:
Love Wilderness Living? You’ve Got to Get This AND Part I
For the uninitiated few, I would suggest you get a copy of Alone in the Wilderness first, THEN watch this wonderful sequel. Although this film does successfully stand alone, Part I is just not to be missed, IMHO (In My Humble Opinion).
I first saw the original Alone in the Wilderness in 2005 on our local PBS station when my husband and I were living in the mountains (snowy, remote, and wild, like this movie’s setting). As soon as I realized Amazon carried the DVD, I got a copy. My husband has watched it repeatedly over the years; it’s one of his all-time favorite films. We just received Part II today & he’s seen it already. He likes it as much as the first one. Happy shopper : )
Alone in the Wilderness (and this, Alone in the Wilderness Part II), is a narrated videolog created by the team of Bob Swerer Jr and Sr, using film footage shot by the subject himself, Dick Proenneke. Proenneke moved into the wilds of Alaska and lived there, alone, for about 35 years. And unique for the time, he set up a camera on a tripod to film snippets of himself living life in the wilderness. Hunting, building a cabin, fishing, cooking, creating furniture, hammering out his own homemade cooking utensils, constructing cache buildings, collecting foods and berries, making homemade pancake syrup, making stew, sharing space with Grizzlies, baking sourdough biscuits–you name it, Dick Proenneke filmed it and wrote about it in his personal journal.
My understanding is that the Swerers took Proenneke’s journal entries and used them to write some very interesting and natural sounding scripted narration for the films (after what I am sure was years of film editing) and created a unique look at an Independent American living the frontier life, told in the first person.
These are REALLY, REALLY great films. They are not slick Hollywood productions–these are real moments filmed by a real person living a unique life that he notched out of the world with his very own hands.
You get to see him (in Part I) build his own cabin and then, here in Part II, you see wonderful additions to the original footage (building a cache for supplies, caribou, grizzlies, fishing, cooking frontier foods, flying with his brother in a bush plane, and lots more).
These are very unique films that appeal to the rugged individualist/adventurer in us all. If you loved Part I, you’ll love Part II. Highly recommended!
Add the extra benefits of boosted mood, better memory/mental clarity, and improved immunity, and you’ve got a winning combination.
We’ve all heard of the importance of taking a good B-complex vitamin and I’ve tried many, many different brands over the years. Unfortunately, almost all of them caused me to feel nauseated, no matter what kind of food I tried to couple with them.
So, I dedicated some time last year to find some alternatives. I started with Source Naturals Coenzymate B Complex.
These worked GREAT and because they were sublingual (dissolved under the tongue), they bypassed the liver, allowing the B Complex to move directly into the bloodstream. This meant no more nausea! The downside was that since they had to be dissolved under the tongue, I found (to my dismay) that they stained my teeth. Even though they gave me more energy, it came at the cost of temporarily yellowed teeth. No go!
Then I found Country Life’s Coenzyme B-Complex Caps, thanks to the help of the generous reviewers at Amazon.
They worked GREAT for me. I took them for a good 6 months or so before it dawned on me that they might just help my husband with his longstanding fatigue problem. He took his first two on April 22 and has been feeling great ever since (it’s now May 2).
We shared some with some neighbors in their 70’s who were having some fatigue issues, and to our amazement, within a few hours of their first dose, they were feeling energized. SERIOUSLY energized. They spent the whole first day out in their backyard, doing yard work.
I can’t recommend this particular supplement highly enough. My husband has tried countless other forms of B-Complex vitamins that never, ever worked anything like these. The effects were potent and immediate.
One important point: unlike any other B Complex I’ve ever used, this one is DESIGNED TO BE TAKEN ON AN EMPTY STOMACH. We take 2, first thing in the morning, with a full glass of water, about an hour before eating.
Depending on your energy needs, you may need multiple doses a day or just a single capsule in the morning. The great thing about B vitamins is that they’re water soluble, so you really can’t easily overdose on them–your body will eliminate what it doesn’t need. Fat soluble vitamins, on the other hand (like A, D, and E) are stored in the body and it’s important that you exercise more caution.
What seems to make this particular form of B Complex so effective are the additional coenzymes that make the B Vitamins more bioavailable (absorbable by the body’s tissues).
Here’s the ingredient list, FYI, direct from the manufacturer–just click on the “Supplement Facts” link on this page.
Good luck!
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More Info about the value of taking a high quality B Complex:
Study shows B Vitamins reduce incidence of macular degeneration in women by 1/3
Study finds Vitamin B supplementation may delay onset of Alzheimers
B Vitamins crucial in helping alleviate depression and anxiety
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(originally published elsewhere on the web 5/2/2011). I have no financial interest/connection with Country Life Vitamins.
Great photos of the excavation are included, thanks to the BBC!