Some Blog Site

I heard an ad for a new book entitled “Peaks and Valleys” by Dr. Spencer Johnson, the same guy who wrote “Who Moved My Cheese?”.

I haven’t read the book, nor did the ad make me want to read the book. But the ad did get me to think about its description of the book’s results: how to “have more peaks and fewer valleys” in your life.

I can somewhat agree with the other descriptive points: “get out of a valley sooner” and “stay on a peak longer”. But more peaks and fewer valleys? Every peak requires a valley, and every valley requires a peak. You can’t have more peaks than valleys, nor can you have more valleys than peaks.

Well, I suppose that, depending on where you start and where you end, you can have one more of one than the other, but the difference can be no more than one. You can’t have many more peaks than valleys.

And staying on a peak longer just implies that you aren’t moving. You can loiter at the peak I suppose. Stay on a peak longer – if you’re happy where you are, then just don’t do anything different, and you’ll stay on that peak.

But these self-help/motivational-type books don’t want you to stay still – you need to go go go do do do be be be. So how do you stay on a peak longer while still moving?

To me, it looks like a plateau. But no one in that industry likes to have people plateau. “If you’re not advancing, you’re declining” or “if you’re not improving, you’re regressing”. I like plateaus though – they’re safer. You’re less likely to fall off a plateau than a peak, and the view from there is just as good.

The only way I see to have more peaks and fewer valleys while not plateauing is to have one big incline, like this:

But then you don’t really have a peak, since you never get to the top. And you never get to rest. And if you slip, it’s a long fall back all the way to the bottom with no valley to catch you.

“Why do you look with envy, O mountains with many peaks,At the mountain which God has desired for His abode?Surely the LORD will dwell there forever.”
– Psalm 68:16

Last night on The Biggest Loser, they were getting quite ridiculous with the sponsorship censorship.

They are obsessed with blurring-out any logos, slogans, or names of brands that are not approved to be on the show.  If someone is wearing shoes that the show doesn’t want to be seen, then those shoes are blurred for the show, so that you can’t tell what brand they are.

If someone, anyone at all whether foreground or background, is wearing a shirt with a logo that is not okay, then it is blurred.  If they are showing a segment from inside someone’s house, you’ll see pictures on the wall – but some of the pictures will be blurred.

I don’t know if they have signed some contracts with corporate sponsors that dictate that they have to remove any competitors from the show.  That is a pretty strict contract, if that’s what they are enforcing, so I hope they are getting some good money for the effort that they have to make.

Or another reason could be that they are hoping to extort extract some money from companies. “We have a very popular show, but your products aren’t being shown because you’re not paying us any money.” or something like that.  Inadvertent product placement would be a legitimate concern on a reality TV show, because the average people that appear on the show don’t necessarily know or care with which companies the show has agreements. The people just wear or use what they normally do.

If you’ve seen The Biggest Loser lately, you are very aware that product placement matters a lot to them. The show has at least one very obvious product placement part of the show. It’s meant to appear as just another segment of the show, but we can instantly tell when a product-placement segment is beginning. They’re not fooling anyone.

The reason for this post was a certain fuzzing-out that occurred in yesterday’s episode. When Sione was going home, they showed the vehicle that was driving him to his house. They fuzzed the logo (or badge) in the middle of the vehicle’s grill, ostensibly to hide what brand of vehicle it was.

But it was a Cadillac Escalade!

Just hiding the logo on any Cadillac made in the last few years will have no effect, because their grills and overall shapes are distinctive. The show fooled no one.

Plus, they forgot to mask the word “Escalade” that was visible on the side of the SUV.

Cadillac has done a good job in designing the exterior of their vehicles. I can think of some vehicles, mainly sedans, that most people would not be able to identify without their badges. But Cadillacs do not fall into that category.

For that reason, I think TBL is going by some letter-of-the-law contract, because it is pointless to disguise only the Cadillac badge on an Escalade.

On a somewhat related note to my last post – 12:01 is not the start of the day. The new day starts right at midnight, 12:00.

I heard an ad recently that something was going on sale as soon as possible on such-and-such a day, and the ad specifically said 12:01 AM. But what day is it between 12:00 and 12:01? If the current time is half a second after midnight, isn’t that the first part of the day? What about a quarter of a second? You could keep going and going and the only way to have a definitive answer is to say exactly 12:00, or 00:00 for our military friends.

And since 12:00 is midnight, it must be the start of the new day (i.e. it’s early, not late) and must be AM, not PM.  Unless you use the military time of 24:00, in which case midnight is the end of the day.

You don’t need to use GoDaddy for a website.  In my experience, moniker.com is

• cheaper,
• faster loading, and
• much less morally objectionable

than GoDaddy. Why would you not transfer your domains to Moniker?

Back when I started setting up websites, I went with GoDaddy because that’s what everyone else was using.  It is by far the most popular registrar, so all the how-do-I-get-started helpful websites referenced it.  I kept it because I had everything automatically renew and so I never really thought about it.  Plus I wasn’t really aware that switching registrars was an option.

After the 2009 Super Bowl, people started complaining about the GoDaddy ads, and I realized that I was contributing to the problem.  I decided to contribute to the solution (or at least stop giving money to help fund the offending ads) by switching registrars.  Switching registrars, by the way, is easy to do.

I first looked at a list of the most popular registrars.  I thought about Tucows, because they started in Flint, MI.  But they are now located in Canada.  I know that the Canadian government frowns, and sometimes yells, at people or publishers who might offend someone else.  I didn’t want Canada to take legal action against me and have Tucows shut down my websites just because someone didn’t like what I said.  So I decided to use a registrar based here in the USA, where the concept and practice of free speech is still respected.

So I decided to look at register.com.  But their prices were at least triple what GoDaddy’s prices were.  I began to see why GoDaddy was the most popular registrar.  I then looked at enom.com, but you had to pay a steep setup fee in order to get comparable prices.

I noticed that some hosting companies offer to register domains for you.  I transferred one domain to Host Gator, which goes through Registry Rocket, which is a service of enom.com.  That was $15 per year instead of $10 at GoDaddy – a small price to pay for peace of mind.

Then I tried to transfer a second domain, and the user interface was horrible.  The Registry Rocket account is for the domain name, not for the user.  So I would have had to transfer each of my 20 or so domains separately, typing in my contact information each time.  And paying separately each time.  And maintaining each one separately each year.  I quickly saw that would be a nightmare and decided to try another registrar.

Somehow, I found moniker.com.  I also tried to use dotster.com, but the pages would never load.  Being on dial-up, I have an appreciation for fast-loading websites.  GoDaddy is not one of them.  It has too much overhead for what you need to do.  The last time I logged out of GoDaddy, it took about 30 seconds for the log-out.  And the log-in is even worse.  In comparison, Moniker takes about 5 seconds for the log-out.  Anyway, Moniker loaded and Dotster did not, so I went with Moniker.

I looked at Moniker, and I could have one account and manage multiple domains.  I could transfer multiple domains in one shot.  Being a little hesitant from the last transfer, I transferred just one domain to make sure it worked and I was happy with the service before I did the rest.  After a couple of days (Moniker and GoDaddy had to send information back and forth and I had to approve a couple of things on each side), the first transfer was successful.  Ahh, I could then transfer the rest of my sites.  As an added bonus, the domains were $10 to renew at GoDaddy or $8 to transfer to Moniker.

You can transfer registrars just like you can transfer your car insurance – at any time.  At first I was worried that I wouldn’t get credited for time remaining on the domain name.  Domains expire (and therefore must be renewed) annually.  I had some domains that were not near their renewal time.  But the domain name and its expiration date both transfer, so nothing is wasted and you lose none of your money by transferring.

Now I am 100% GoDaddy-free.  Well, I suppose that since I mention them a few times in this post, I am not 100% free.  But at least now my money does not go toward supporting their ad campaigns.  I do find it interesting that GoDaddy will terminate your service if you are found to be doing anything “morally objectionable”, yet they have no problems sending out “morally objectionable” content themselves.  See http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/agreements.asp?ci=8924 for their Terms Of Service.

I’m not planning on starting a boycott, but if you don’t have a website yourself and want to do something, then you could bug people who do have websites.  If you know someone with a website, or you have some favorite websites or blogs, just use the Whois service to see who the registrar is.  If it is GoDaddy, then call, email, or write that person and tell him your objections.  When using a Whois service, type in the domain name and TLD (e.g. someblogsite.com, not www.someblogsite.com or http://www.someblogsite.com).

On one of our many, many grocery shopping trips, I was in charge of picking out the bread. Actually, I was in charge of everything because the only one with me on that trip was our kindergartner.

I don’t have a favorite brand of bread, and the bread shelves have way too many different choices. I know I want whole-wheat bread. Other than that, I go by price, mostly.

I saw a row of loaves by one company (company A), and they were lower in price than the next row by a different company (company B, the one with the bugle boys). I was about to go with company A, but the loaves by company B had conspicuous blue circles on their wrappers, and those circles caught my attention. If the conspicuous blue circles had been on the loaves themselves instead of the wrapper, that may also have caught my attention. But not in a good way.

The text inside the circles said something like “No corn syrup added” or “No high fructose corn syrup” or something to that effect. I figured “big deal, just marketing hype” but I picked up the loaf and read the ingredients to verify the claim. It was true, but not surprising.

Then, in order to relegate those loaves to the pile of useless marketing rejects, I read the ingredients on the slightly cheaper loaves of whole wheat bread. I was surprised to read that they did contain high fructose corn syrup as an ingredient.

So I promptly set those down and bought two loaves of the blue circle type. They were slightly more expensive, but better nutrition usually is.  If I could remember the company names, I would list them. But I have no idea which brand I bought and which one I dismissed – that’s how little I pay attention to bread brands.

I do check for corn syrup in the ingredients of my bread now. The loaf my wife just bought did not have corn syrup, but it did have raisin juice concentrate.

“He distributed to everyone of Israel, both man and woman, to everyone a loaf of bread and a portion {of meat} and a raisin cake. ”
– 1 Chronicles 16:3

AT&T Yellow Pages has been advertising on the radio quite frequently.  The ads mainly say how effective their book is for your ads.

My question is this: if ads in the Yellow Pages are so effective, why doesn’t AT&T just use itself for advertising its own services?

Why must they take to the airwaves instead?  Why are they paying other people money to advertise?

The first answer that comes to mind is that AT&T must be getting desperate for more customers.  The next answer that came to mind is that maybe radio ads are more effective. There are probably other answers too.

“for a wide door for effective service has opened to me, and there are many adversaries.”
– 1 Corinthians 16:9

To cut down on our mail, I selected the option given to us by our credit card company to just do everything online and skip the paper account statements.

One of the benefits of that is that now I don’t have a collection of papers piling up. I like to save things, and financial statements are one of those things. But if they don’t mail them to me, I can’t save them and so I won’t have to wonder how long to keep them. Perfect!

But they still sent me things in the mail, like this:

Read it closely, and you see that they were sending this letter as part of their All-Electronic Program. And we got this letter every month!

At the very least they could do is stop claiming that it is All-Electronic (not to be confused with All Electronics) and call their program Mostly-Electronic.

The letter went on to say how to update our email address and how to update our postal address and how we should enjoy the benefits of the All-Electronic Program. The letter never gave any indication why it was being sent.

After a few months of these letters (and no problems with the online access), I decided to check my contact information. They had my old email address and so their emails were being rejected and so they were sending me letters. I assume the letters were supposed to get me to update my contact information, but they did a lousy job. Nowhere in the letter did it say anything about my email address being invalid. All they had to do was say that their emails were being returned and I need to provide a good email address. Then I would have known what to do.

So if you’re wondering why the program you enrolled in to receive your statements online only instead of in the mail is still sending you mail, wonder no longer. Just update your email address in their system and the letters will stop.

“Just now the wise men {and} the conjurers were brought in before me that they might read this inscription and make its interpretation known to me, but they could not declare the interpretation of the message.”
– Daniel 5:15