That Connection

As most of my blog posts usually do, this one came to mind after reading an article: There Really Is A Dating Site For Everyone. The article is poking a little fun at all the boutique style dating websites out there for people looking to connect with a specific type of person. From sea captions to prison inmates and gold diggers to people interested in physical features only.

There are all kinds of dating sites out there and then there's social media and Craigslist. Social media allows people to preview friends of friends before actually meeting them as they would in real life. How many of us have dated a friend of a friend? It's easy, simple and you already have at least one thing in common.

Rights: http://goo.gl/2J1wq

I know a couple who met on social media without having a mutual relationship. According to her, she needed a date to a company function and she posted so online asking if any guys wanted a free meal. A random name popped up, they talked and she took him to her company event. 

Now they're practically married: living together, joint accounts, purchasing cars together, etc.

But there are dating sites out there for just about everyone such as animal lovers looking for the same or Myers-Briggs based connections. Heck, there are even motorcycle related dating sites.

Heck, there's even a new one using Google's Knowledge Graph to help you make that special connection.

The point being, there really is a dating site out there for anyone who's looking for someone.

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Best Western Mardi Gras Review

I went to Vegas for the first time ever a week ago for my brother's wedding. I only had a couple of conditions for finding a place to stay:

1- Close to the Wynn and Treasure Island (where my brother and family were staying)
2- Hot water and doors that locked
3- Cost effective for somewhere I wouldn't be doing much more than sleeping

Not too bad for $30/night

I booked the BW Mardi Gras because the price was right and the walk wasn't too far from where I would be spending a lot of my time. More importantly, I drove over to Vegas and has access to my vehicle, so walking was only something I needed to do if I chose to walk.

http://www.mardigrasinn.com/

When I came in the front door it seemed like a bunch of derelicts were hanging out in front of the place. Perhaps they were trying to save a buck too, I thought. No problem. I entered and checked in which was nice and easy. The people there were dealing with some woman who was drunk or high, who just yelled at everyone, walked out the door, then came back in and yelled some more, all the while demanding top-notch service and amenities.

Oh great, I thought.

My Room, Actual Room

The guy directed me to my room, told me I could take the elevator or a flight of stairs. I drove around the building and unloaded my bags then walked over to the elevator. It didn't work. A big "NOT WORKING" sign taped to the door. For the next four days the the elevator never worked.

Every morning, beginning somewhen around 7:30 the maid service tried to get into the room. They caught me bare as a baby one morning and unless I put the chain on the door, they tried to come on in. If they couldn't come in they came back hourly until they could get into the room.

Smudge That Never Went Away

The cleaning itself wasn't too bad. They moved my belongings and put them back when they were done, replaced the towels and sheets daily and left the room looking good as new. Unfortunately, new wasn't that great. There was giant black smudge on the side of the toilet's tank that I only saw as I exited the shower my first night, but over the next four days, it was never removed. I also wrote on the mirror and tile while they were damp from the shower and the writing was there every day.

The BWMG was indeed not too far from the Wynn. In fact, I could see the Wynn right out the window. However, it was a 20 minute walk, which isn't too bad, I walk further than that daily, and the monorail's northernmost station is half a block away. While the BWMG did have a shuttle, it dropped off too far from the Wynn making it too inconvenient for me to use.

Locking Doors

The door did lock. It even had a chain, which saved the cleaning lady from admiring me too much one morning as I walked around in my birthday suit.

Hot water

Technically yes, there was hot water. But I learned the hard way it takes nearly 30 minutes of having the shower on before the hot water reached this particular room. After my first night there I learned Treasure Island lost hot water all together for the morning, but the BWMG was consistent in their hot water deficiency. After the first shower I learned to start the water going for a half hour or so before even testing it to see if it was hot. The environmentalist in me hated wasting so much water, but the guy who paid for the room wanted hot water.

ROI

The room was very cost effective. Apparently I booked at just the right time because I was able to reserve the room for $30 a night. That was less that $100 for 3 nights/4 days. Not too bad for having a 20 minute walk or a 5 minutes drive and parking at the Wynn's free self-service parking lot on the strip.

Checkout was just as easy as check in and quieter without the loud woman yelling at reception.

All in all it wasn't bad, per se, and I've definitely paid more for worse rooms in other places, but as a vacation destination, I really expected some effort put in by a facility that has to compete with the big guns across the golf course on the Strip. During the day I saw a lot of people milling about, college-aged kids, families, people looking to have fun and save a buck. People like me.

I showed the images to my friend who's been to Vegas a number of times and she said for $30, she'd consider staying there, especially with the tram being so close and a cab ride from the Wynn, Venetian or Palazzo being only a couple of bucks each way.

Would I stay there again? Only if I needed to be near that area of the Strip and I was counting pennies.

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iWhores

The problem here is that people become so attached to a single thing and identify themselves by that thing. For some it might be religion, for others a political party and for others still it might be their job or career.

A year or so ago I read numerous articles and blog posts about the Samsung Galaxy SIII and how it's new technology far outpaced what Apple's 4S or rumored 5 were going to sport. The iPhone users clutched their devices to their chests like protective parents  Then there was the iPad mini, the long lines awaiting the iPhone 5 and Samsung's mocking commercial extolling the virtues of the Galaxy SIII over the lines of people waiting for the i-5.

For years Apple fanboys (or as I call them, iWhores) have strutted about the developed world exalting their device as being above and beyond anything else available -- a better physical handset and a better software experience -- better than Blackberry, better than clamshell phones, better than Nokias and Palm. 

For years new handsets were compared to Apple's iPhone, the media darling benchmark for smartphones, their software was compared to iOS and the physical features were placed side-by-side with Apple's engineering department's gee-whizz factor.

Now the tables have turned and suddenly, when Android fanboys are holding in their hands the latest and greatest techno-darling, Apple's adherents are feeling distressed and persecuted for holding on to their Apple-tech. Suddenly the people who used to be proud telling you about their brand spanking new 4, 4S, 5 and soon to be 5S are feeling the pressure the rest of us felt when our devices were deemed inferior to theirs and they don't like it.

I like my Android, but more importantly I like technology I can use. I'm free of iTunes, free to multi-task and the generational differences between non-Apple devices are much larger leaps than the generational differences between Apples i-devices. I'm free to root, free to install third party apps and free to install an entirely different software altogether if I so choose. PalmOS really impressed me, but HP tore out the IP and left the rest to rot. I kept hoping someone would make it work and continue the innovation PalmOS brought against Android and iOS, but as far as I can tell, no one's really using the SDK to pioneer a new direction for mobile OSes.

And I may customize my device, depending on the Ubuntu OS or custom Android ROMs in the future. However, I can't if I'm tied to Apple. Apple users have no freedom and no choice.

My brother is an iWhore. I called him one to his face. He smiled and said it is what it is. He has an iMac, the latest and greatest iPhone, iPad, you name it. He's a strong adherent to the i-religion. So much so, he's convinced our brother, our sisters, our father and stepmother to go Apple and they have.

I recently used the term iWhores on Google+ when posting about an article I saw: iPhones are entry level smart phones.

This article struck a chord with me because my mom bought an iPhone at the behest of the Apple store employee. A friend of mine who's grandmother still has a clamshell device which is used about 15 minutes a month recently called her and asked if she should get an iPhone. My friend, an IT Sys Admin, asked her grandmother why she wanted the more advanced phone when many of the features would be left unused based on her grandmother's natural phone habits.

In the end my friend told her 80-something year old grandmother that an iPhone would be fine for her -- not to advanced and not too difficult to use.

The simple matter is, Apple's moved from the top of the pile to the an entry level device and the Apple fanboys, or iWhores, are feeling the sting of gripping tightly onto their Grandma friendly technology. And they don't like it one bit.

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Windows 8 Cheat Sheet

I'm not using Windows 8. I don't know if I will in the forseeable future. However, if I do one day use Windows 8 I'd like to know there's a cheat sheet out there for me to glance at once in a while. I like cheat sheets, don't you?

Maybe I'll remember to come back and check out this post. Chances are I won't. I'm forgetful like that.

Note: I did not create this sheet, it was shared with me in it's current PDF form.

Link to PDF on GDrive

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The Trail of Genghis Khan

EDIT: Apparently ABC has made a copyright claim to the below videos. I apologize for this inconvenience. If you can, I suggest finding the documentary on DVD at your local library. Fantastic piece of work.

On of the best documentaries I've ever seen. Tim Cope, an Austalian man in his mid-20s decides to follow the footsteps of Genghis Khan, from Mongolia -- across the Steppe that is most of Asia -- to the Danube River in Hungary. Beset by bad luck, thieves, personal tragedy, arctic conditions and broiling heat, Tim goes alone where Khan had an army.

The documentary is about perseverance, honoring those who came before, the benevolence of the human spirit, and a dog. After all, where there is a dog, there is a way.

I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

 Part 1 of 6 Part 2 of 6 Part 3 of 6 Part 4 of 6 Part 5 of 6 Part 6 of 6

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Victimhood

For the first time ever I told someone to block me. The more I get to know people in Google+ the more I'm ever more grateful for the *I* in *INTP*.

I understand over the years, especially during this last election cycle and with the advent of the Tea Party and 8 years of Bush era policies, somehow somewhere along the way I've been labeled liberal. 

As much as I've rebelled against that label, I am still saddled with it for my support of social issues, equal rights, immigration reform, social justice, civil rights, and many many more causes. However, that doesn't mean the Right isn't correct once in a while.

I saw a fairly large backlash when I defended (then-candidate) Romney for misspeaking at a public event. He said "apples" when he meant to say "oranges" and while every liberal on the internet jumped on him for being an idiot I preached a more understanding viewpoint: the man is campaigning. He is probably getting between 4 and 6 hours of sleep a night; he probably has 4, 5, 6 or more 'advisers' constantly pushing facts and figures into his head, along with names, dates, and other localized facts; and being human he probably said the wrong thing. 

You know what? I say the wrong thing once in a while. So does my roommate. So does the guy I work for (although, to be fair he does it much more than regular people) and so do you. Just the other day I referred to the 90s as 10 years ago. Someone laughed and pointed out my math was wrong. I laughed after realizing my math and my age were wrong and then moved on. It happens to the best of us.

More recently, with the shootings and the violent reaction to ban all guns at the federal, state and local levels also got the liberals in a backlash against me. I abhor the NRA and the idiocracy they usually sprout, but you know what, sometimes they're right, too. Guns don't kill people; people kill people. Cars don't speed; people speed. Drugs don't do themselves; people do drugs. To declare an inanimate object being able to have will or being able to do anything is simply anthropomorphizing.

The so-called "gun problem" in this country isn't a gun problem but rather a mental health care problem. You know, looking at the underlying cause instead of the easy target. 

But instead, the liberal people who are connected to me jumped on me like a tiger hunting a pig, claws ready to rend and tear; teeth locked and loaded with accusations of sympathizing with child killers. 

Most recently, today in fact, I watched a conversation unfold on social media. Four persons were involved:

1- Myself (my thread, my rules)
2- Person A, liberal female
3- Person B, liberal leaning male
4- Person C, moderate or Reagan Republican (side note: is it sad that Reagan Republicans are considered moderate now?)

The conversation started with my link to an article about the death rates of women across the USA rising, especially in certain areas such as the south, the midwest and the PNW.

For the most part, Person A and Person B were talking back and forth until Persona C jumps in and says something along the lines of "it couldn't be because of all the genetic foods, medications, lack of exercises unnecessary vaccines, could it?"

Person A jumps back with her own pithy comment about Gardasil. 

Person C comes back and says something like, "You said it, not me, Ass Munch."

Person B comes back and says to Person A, "Who are you talking to? I must have this person blocked."

Person A responds to Person B with, "It's just Person C, he's a douchebag."

I jump back in and say something like, "Person C and I don't always agree, but he's not a douchebag."

Person A then turns on me, "But it's okay for him to call me 'ass munch'? Nice double standard."

I then reply to Person A with, what I thought, was a very agreeable response, "He called you an ass munch. You're a big girl, you can handle that yourself. However, you told Person B Person C is a 'douchebag'. There's a difference."

And then it got worse with Person A now claiming I was attacking her and not using the same standard on both parties. It's simple, I tell her, they're two different situations and therefore the same standard does not apply.

In the first example, he calls you a pejorative name.
In the second example, you tell someone who can't even 'see' Person C, Person C is an derogatory term.

Person A then whines and says she's just going to block Person C because she doesn't like him. That's her prerogative. I don't agree with that particular policy because it creates a society of people living in ideological bubbles just like people who only watch Fox News or people who only hear from the proverbial 'yes men' -- but that's my opinion.

Since this line of discussion is in my thread and I have a policy of not locking posts or moderating the discussion (since I believe everyone is allowed to share their opinions unless they're overtly trolling) there was nothing either party could do other than leave the discussion. I've been locked out or had my comments edited from plenty of discussions because they didn't support or reinforce the original poster's predetermined opinion. It's the nature of discussion to have people disagree with you and it's the nature of personal growth to be able to address those disagreements in a respectful manner. But again, that's another of my opinions.

Person A goes on to claim I'm not treating her fairly. I finally explained it again and told her she's more than welcome to block me too. 

If Google+ has shown me anything about the human condition it's that most people are looking for an excuse to play the victim. He disagrees with me, he must be a misogynist; he disagrees with me, he must be a child molester (yes, that actually happened); he disagrees with me, he must be a liberal. Now that I think about it, only one person's pulled the race card on me and that person was white: you disagree with me, you must be a racist. Granted, the discussion was about Tea Party racism (can you guess she's a liberal) and I said it's not racist, instead it's endorsing a negative stereotype. I even showed academic sources stating the difference between stereotypes and racism, but she didn't care instead telling me that since my sources didn't agree with her, my sources were invalid.

But that's beside the point.

The point is people are too thin skinned and for the most part I'm seeing those people generally lean political and socially liberal. Why is that? A study proved that people who declare themselves conservative or right are generally more fearful people, but why do liberal leaning people need to lash out and attack anyone who doesn't agree with them? What happened to the art of conversation without having to resort to moderating opinions, deleting disagreeing posts or without name-calling?

Why do some people always have to play the victim?

If you really must

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How to embed a PDF in Blogger

I recently needed a way to embed a PDF file into a Blogger post. Simply put, sometimes when I'm around the internet it's easier to create a PDF using Chrome's print to PDF function versus a screenshot which might not catch the whole page.

So I searched the interwebz. There were many websites purporting to know how to embed PDFs as view-able media by uploading the PDF to free hosting sites or Google Pages (Sites) or a variety of other avenues to approach this problem.

Most of them relied on Google Drive and getting a link to the PDF file from the share function and linking to the file on Drive. But that's not what I wanted to do, I wanted the PDF embedded in the blog post just like a picture or video. Unfortunately, you cannot load a PDF using the image uploader tool in Blogger. File type not supported and all that.

However, it's a lot easier than the internet would have us believe.

Tools Needed:

1. PDF file
2. Google Drive (Gmail account)
3. Blogger (Gmail account)
4. Basic Computer Skills

The 6 Steps to Happiness:

1. Upload the PDF file to Google Drive. This can happen a number of ways, the easiest of course, is to use the Drive desktop folder with a simple drag-and-drop. The second easiest is to open Drive in the browser and use the upload tool there. Or, just FOLLOW THIS LINK
2. Open the PDF file you're looking to embed. Down in the lower right hand corner will be a OPEN button. Click on that pretty blue (as of this posting) button. The PDF should open as a PDF with a series of Menu options under the file's name: FILE, EDIT, VIEW and HELP.
3. Click FILE. Go ahead and click it, you won't hurt anything. About mid-way down there will be an option to "Embed this PDF FIle." That's what you're looking for. 
4. Select "Embed this PDF File" and a window will pop up with some iframe code. Highlight the code and copy it. The code shouldn't be more than a couple of lines or so. You can also customize the height and width of the PDF here. 
5. Now head on over to Blogger and create a new post. Under the Blog's name are Compose and HTML. Choose HTML and paste the code. 
6. Save. Preview. Open Blog. Whatever. It should be right there.

You can then create a post before or after the PDF, or just leave it as a PDF.

If you don't want to read all the above (he he he) then just watch this 4 minute video:

.  

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Putting the Bible Back in Business

I'm a member of one of the local Chambers of Commerce's Meetup Page. Usually, they just post about networking events, grand openings, grand re-openings, and other after hours social gatherings with a business twist.

Having attended a number of events with the South Metro Chamber, I knew the chamber's president was a devout Republican and after hearing him speak on a number of occasions, I also came to conclude he was a devout Christian as well. I know there's no rule against mixing religion with business, but I couldn't believe the gall to actually promote a Biblical Business event, or how to run your business within Biblical principles.

I wonder if they'll talk about selling your children in slavery to make ends meet or keeping money out of politics (you know, giving unto Caesar and all that). Below is a PDF of the email I received from the South Metro Chamber.

Does anyone know any good Bible passages about doing business?


 

South Metro Denver Chamber
2154 E. Commons Ave. Suite 342,
Centennial, CO 80122

Staff Contact Directory

(303) 795-0142 | (303) 795-7520 fax
Patrick Pratt, Executive Assistant
ppratt@bestchamber.com

John Brackney, President:
jbrackney@bestchamber.com

[PS: embedding a PDF in Blogger is really easy once you learn how to. unfortunately, people on the internet made it harder than it needed to be.]

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