Boredom Relief

What's Wood got to do with it?

2011-08-16T18:39:00.000-07:00

Ok, silver sounds cool, the sun exciting, but WTF is up with a wooden stake? Think about it. I know it goes back years, but really, of all the ways to kill a vampire, doesn't that just sound down right boring? That is all.

One of My Favorite Songs

2011-03-22T16:49:00.001-07:00

So, Sick Puppies newest single happens to be one of my favorite songs off their album Tri-Polar. Its Called Riptide! Hopefully soon their music video will be released, but in the mean time they have created a lyric video version for people to see! You can check it out here: http://t.co/nhcvqXf

What Would You Do For a Phone Call From Your Favorite Band?

2011-03-03T17:54:00.000-07:00

I'm addicted to the band Sick Puppies. Their music is contagious, whether its listening to the CD's in my car driving to and from work or at a live show! So a few days ago they released an 8 song EP that is accoustic and revamped with what feels like a full orchestra behind them available at Walmart and online at Amazon and iTunes. Now they they are having a contest and the Grand Prize Winner gets a phone call from one of the band members. Thats right, someone is going to get a call from Mark, Emma or Shim. So your question is how do I enter this contest. You can find all about it at http://www.sickpuppiesworldcrew.net/

Sick Puppies Start 2011 Big

2011-02-13T21:21:00.001-07:00

Can't get enough of the band Sick Puppies. They have been on fire so far this year with appearances on both the Tonight Show and Lopez Tonight playing their single Maybe that has crossed over from the rock charts to the AC and Top 40 charts. Their newest single off their album Tri-Polar, Riptide, was officially released on February 8th and has itself already started its climb on the Rock and Alt Rock charts. They have just returned from a UK tour and will shortly be embarking on a U.S. headlining tour after playing a few dates with 3OH!3 and Nelly! They then return to Europe before hitting up Festivals both here in the U.S. and in Europe. They seem to never stop. And now if you log onto Amazon you can catch a sample of the reworked tracks off of Tri-Polar for the new album Polar Opposites. Seriously, you need to give at least "Your Going Down" a listen to see just how much work went in to the new album. It makes one think whats next? Well, they did a lot of work on a live DVD on their winter tour in November and December and SP fans everywere are (im)patiently waiting to hear when it will be released as well!

Sick Puppies On Tonight Show 1-3-11

2011-01-04T14:09:00.000-07:00

Sick Puppies perform Maybe live on The Tonight Show on January 3rd 2011: (after the ad)

Sick Puppies Summer Tour 2010

2010-08-01T12:08:00.000-07:00

Its now August, and there are a lot of dates left on the Sick Puppies summer tour. They are currently the headline act, touring with My Darkest Days, It's Alive, and Janus. All great bands! Whats more, you could win a guitar signed by the bands. Click on the image below for more information. While your at it, make a quick visit to the Sick Puppies World Crew website and become a member. Its free, and gets you access to one of the best fan forums on the the web.

Jinx - Gear for Gamers and Geeks

2010-07-26T18:15:00.000-07:00

Or is that Geeks and Gamers? Or maybe Hackers. Ever see someone with a "HACKER" shirt or D&D but cool? Odds are they found it at Jinx. The sight is more that just a tshirt site tho. Its a community with games, trivia, and contests. Members get experience points and "gold". Unlike other sites, getting exp and gold is not impossible here. In one day you can surpass 600 points and get 100 gold just by voting, answering a trivia contest and commenting on designs. Designs? Well its a tshirt site where the members submit game/geek related designs that are voted on. Winning designs get printed and the artist gets paid! So, what does exp and gold do you ask? Well experience goes towards leveling, and any geek is going to want to get the highest level possible. I hit level 6 in just a couple of hours of stumbling around the site. Gold? well that's currency on the site. They sell stuff and you can build up gold to decrease the cost of your purchase or better yet make it free! 1 gold is worth 1 cent and there are ways on the site to win anywhere from 100 -1500 gold. That's $1-15. And the contests are fun and in many cases simple. Own one of their shirts? Just take a pic of yourself (make it funny or interesting) and upload it. it could be worth some gold! Its that simple.

What the Woot? Woot bought by Amazon

2010-07-11T18:08:00.000-07:00

So Woot is now one of many companies owned by Amazon. The question lies in what does that mean for us the consumer. If they follow the way Zappos did, it will probably go un noticed by the average consumer. But Woot is not the average company. Just follow Woots CEO on Twitter and you can tell that. Or better yet, see what their mascott had to say about it on Youtube. The first day after the deal was anounced, Woot was selling the famous Kindle. So now we wait for the next wootoff to see if the Random Crap becomes a higher class of crap as well!

Whats the Deal....of the day?

2010-06-08T19:58:00.000-07:00

A few years ago I got hooked on a site called Woot. If you never heard of it, its a website that sells one item a day until either they sell out of the item or the day ends and the next item goes up for sale. Beware, its very addicting. Woot is the master at the deal of the day and has been emulated many times over, even by their own people with Shirt.Woot (another favorite of mine) Wine.Woot, and Kids.Woot. But how does one keep up with all of these sites and the dozens more out there. The site I found recently is called Deal of the day tracker. And it does just what it says. It lists a ton of deal of the day sites (a few I wouldn't agree are DOD but that's semantics). and timers as to how long the deals are still available. The site is great, but it has put a small hurt on my wallet with more sites that I could have gone a lifetime and not known they existed.

Blog away for Android

2010-03-28T12:47:00.001-07:00

A few months back I got a Droid phone. But that's not what this blog is about. Its about an apparently that I just downloaded. Its called blogaway. After installing it just a few moments ago I am posting to this blog from within the app

Paying Off Bills Becoming a Trend

2010-01-11T18:52:00.001-07:00

(Edited Title not to confuse people into thinking that this is about how to pay off ones bills. original title
was simply "Paying Off Bills")

I have read a few articles about bills of late. It seems that Joe Consumer is paying off debt in an alarming rate. Alarming to the credit card companies that is. The ccards want us to carry high ballances so they can collect intrest. But thats not enough for them. They want penalties and fees as well. Ones that many of us have never recieved before. So before changes happen to the laws governing them, the ccards have been trying to stick it to consumers any way they can. On of the ways is by cutting the limit on many peoples cards. For some people the limit was cut to just over the balance they were carrying so if they made any purchases, it would take them over the limit. The ccards did this just before the holiday season at that. For this I am glad to see people killing their balances, and hopefully taking a pair of scissors to their cards. While I know it probably wont last, my hope is that for a while at least, people will stop their reliance on their cards and live like our parents, grandparents and their parents did. It was not uncommon just 30 years ago for a family to save up for a big purchase or vacation. Now we live in a do it now, pay for it later time. It will be good to revert back.

The reason behind my lack of posts

2010-01-02T22:35:00.000-07:00

I haven't been posting mainly because one of my hobbies had taken over the majoraty of my spare time. That hobby is competing in Tshirt design contests. Anyone with a program like Adobe Photoshop (I use Photoshop Elements) and an inkling of any artistic ability ( I like to think I have some) can compete. I am working on a new blog just for this. There are a ton of sites that one can compete at and the criteria is different for each. The newest one I have sent a design to is called GoodJoe. This site is unique in that its only requirement is that the shirt be inspiring or have something inspiring behind it. My submital is called Recycle peace and was inspired by the fact that peace should not be finite. Its a simple design with a simple message. I hope to come up with more designs that meet the requirements of GoodJoe.

Another site for Tshirts... Ink Hound

2009-04-29T20:31:00.002-07:00

Ink Hound has been around since November and slowly becoming popular amongst the Tshirt crowd. The site is taking ongoing submissions of artwork for shirts and baseball caps and based on voting and comments on the site. The winners get published and the items sold for one week. The artist gets $2 for every item sold during the week and retains ownership of their art at the end of the sale. Currently there is about 30 shirts and less than 20 hats up for vote. Joining the site is free but if you like any of the items for sale its gonna cost about $12 for a shirt and $16 for a hat. They also have long sleeve shirts and hoodies for sale of the current worker.

Mysoti... A cool place for intersting Tshirts

2009-04-14T19:51:00.002-07:00

Mysoti is a place where artists can upload their work and have it sold to the world. Setting up an account is easy. Being a good artist and having something people want can be the hard part. Boredom Relief does have an account and will be uploading to the site hopefully on a regular basis. Currently, you can check out Limes! a shirt based on a line from Austin Powers. Can you guess who said the original line? Leave a post and let me know you think it was.

What is Your Weekly Grocery Budget?

2009-02-28T20:57:00.002-07:00

I just read an article on people that are getting by on $25 a week per person. This comes to about $3.50 a day. On Friday's I usually don't take my lunch and lunch this past Friday cost me $5. I would have blown 20% of my weeks budget. Now my wife and I have been paring down our budget over the recent months and have our budget of $150 for the both of us per week that includes a $20 each personal spend on what we want, such as my lunch on Friday. I just went shopping today for this coming week and spent $112. To some this may seem like a lot and to others this may not seem like much at all. For us its about right for a family of 2 with 3 dogs (forgot to mention them). If I take out the dog food from this weeks bill, its more like $88. This comes to about $6.30 per day per person for all meals. No matter what your weekly bills for food are, there are some simple ways to keep them down. The easiest is just decrease the number of times you go out to eat. The average family eats out 2 times or more a week. The second is to clip coupons which is again a no brainer. But one of the best thing you can do, is to pre plan your meals before going shopping. By doing this, you decrease, if not completely remove, the purchasing of things that do not get used in that weeks meals. Those impulse buys can balloon a grocery bill very quickly. Another thing, which is hard for me to do, is to learn to take left overs for lunch the next day. This allows you to increase the amount spent on dinner because the next days lunch is free. And of course, there is always the buying in bulk. This works well for frozen foods and foods that keep. For a family of 2, like us, fresh ingredients are not an easy thing to buy in bulk but for larger families this could be different. The thing is that no mater what you are doing now, I bet there are a few ways that you can decrease your grocery bill even if you think you are doing well now already.

Digital Television and its Delay

2009-02-01T20:55:00.002-07:00

Is it me, or do others see the digital television delays as a big joke. I understand that there are a lot of people that are not ready for the change over. However, lets look at the situation. The change was supposed to happen years ago. They delayed it then because the TV stations around the country were not ready. Now that all (most all) the stations are ready, the new hand up is that the population is not ready. Why you ask? Its simple, because no one in our government looks at a situation until its already to late for decisions to make sense. When this whole mess started years ago, the only people that were familiar with it were videophiles that are not going to be affected by the change over because they have the latest technology. Then as HD took off on cable and satellite over the recent past, more people who are not going to be affected upgraded their televisions. The people left out are people that only rely on over the air programing. These same people are the ones that unless someone brought it to their attention would not know of the change. Only recently have local TV stations been running tests and short term blackouts. This caused a influx in phone calls by people that were confused. Go figure. Even with the lack of planing and push, the governments plan of offering coupons for converter boxes that will allow people with analog TVs to still get their programing ran out of money to support its own program. Again do to the poor planning. I know that a good number of the coupons that were requested were done so by people that will not need them because they already are on cable or satellite. So what is going to happen? We will get another delay, this time until June. Then, nothing will happen until June gets closer and the cycle will continue.

This could have all been avoided by better planning.

Are People Really Lazy?

2009-01-27T19:13:00.003-07:00

If you go by our waist lines, then the answer is a definite yes. But I mean in terms of doing anything. Many people love to take shortcuts which could be construed as being lazy. But what I have been noticing lately is that some times the effort needed to find and take that short cut is really more than the effort needed to go the direct route in the first place. If you don't understand what I mean, just look at the effort a little kid will go thru to not do anything that their parents want them to do like going to school. But the funny thing is, many of us (if not all) find ways to do this as an adult as well. Take a look back at your day. Was there something you just did not want to do. Did you spend a lot of time thinking about how to not do it? Did you succeed? There is a good chance the answer is yes and yes. Now think about the amount of effort you needed to succeed in not succeeding.

Happy Year of the OX!

2009-01-26T19:31:00.002-07:00

So, its year of the Ox in the Chinese calendar. Just what does that mean? Well, year of the Ox is supposed to be a year in which brings prosperity. It is a sign of a strong leader and one of patience. This will be interesting for 2009. We now have our new leader in the U.S. in Barak Obama and time will tell of the strength of new President. Prosperity is something that many will be looking for after seeing the last half of 2008 take a hard hit on the stock market and retirement funds. Patience may be the one thing that will be needed to get us through this year with the economy in dire straits right now. If the year rebounds and exits on a high note it will truly be the year of the Ox.

Thanks For Using The Drive Thru, Now Pull Around And Wait

2008-12-21T19:10:00.003-07:00

Is it me, or is it becoming increasingly more stressfull to go thru the drive thru window at fast food companies? We try to limit our fast food trips, but it seems that three to four times out of ten we are asked to pull around and wait for our order. I know that they want to push as many people thru the system as quickly as possible, but when there are ten cars in the parking lot and 8 of them are people waiting on orders that they gave at the drive thru window, its getting ridiculous. Its faster to go inside and probably cheaper because you are not sitting inside a car with the engine running. I think that maybe I shouldn't complain because the food is more fresh but like I said, going inside is quicker, and on a recent trip to one place near us I noticed that people inside were getting preferential treatment. It made me wonder why? I came to 2 different conclusions. The first is that the people inside are easier to notice when they are upset with waiting, and the second is the people in the drive thru are a captive customer. What are you going to do? You already paid and are now waiting. Going inside could be an option but if you wanted to do that, you would have already right? I guess its live with it, learn to park and go inside, or better yet eat at home where its cheaper and better for me. Yeah that's going to happen.

Stayed Home on Black Friday

2008-11-30T18:11:00.002-07:00

We were some of the few it looks like that stayed home on black Friday. I for one am not a fan of big crowds at the malls. I am glad to see that many people ventured out and that the numbers look way better than the predictions were. I have read anywhere from 2 to 6 percent higher than last year! As for us tho, this is going to be the year to shop online. We usually do about 25% of our shopping online every year because that's about the percentage of out of state people that we buy for. But this year we are going to be around 90%. So far its looking good. The only thing that could hamper the process is delivery. With just about everything already on order, its looking good so far. Yes that is right. not only are we shopping online, we are just about done with our shopping! We try to get done early every year and this year will be no different. It all goes back to not liking the crowds. If I miss something then I have to venture out as the crowds get worse and I don't plan on that happening.

Comericals... People Are Idiots, Buy Our Product Anyway

2008-09-08T17:40:00.002-07:00

This has been a beef of mine for years and every year it just gets worse. Is it me or do the Ad Agencies that come up with commercials love saying to us the consumer that we are idiots but buy the product they are pushing anyway? For example, every other commercial shows the "consumer" as an oblivious moron that if it wasn't for their product would not be able to get on in life. As as a consumer we should feel the same way? There are a lot of products that I have to admit I purchase/use even though these commercials make me not want to but there are a few that I just cant stomach to give my money to just because the commercials attached to them.

Have a Social Page? Carefull What You Put On It.

2008-08-24T18:52:00.002-07:00

I have read a couple of news articles lately where people have either gotten in trouble or had trouble get worse because of the information that they put on their personal pages at the various social networking sites. What you put on their can and (in some cases already) will be used against you. Pictures from peoples sites have been printed and used against them in court cases. Now I am not saying they did or did not deserve whatever they got but really people, i know its a "social" site but you have to be careful just how social you want to be. Personally I am probably on the safer side when it comes to the social networks that I belong to. I don't like to use a picture of myself on my pages, so you wont see me in any pictures that could come back and haunt me. Other than my name (which I even avoid in many situations) and city and state, I keep all personal information just that... personal.

People wonder why their friends wont join a social networking site. Maybe its because they see the things I am talking about here. The thing is that you just need to pay attention and be careful. And if you have kids with pages, be even more careful!

Yuwie About to Pass 750,000 members

2008-08-16T18:15:00.002-07:00

I have been a member for close to a year now. I still use the site as a social site more than a networking site but it is geared towards those that want to network and make money doing it. The concept is a good one and seems to be working well for the people that started Yuwie. Every month someone is blogging about how much money they made in the previous month. The thing is is to get as many people to visit your pages and to visit your friend's pages as well. The bigger your numbers at the end of the month the bigger your cut of the profit sharing that which is based on some complicated formula that I don't even want to figure out. What gives the site a bad rap is that its a referral system. So, just like all other referral systems the more people you refer, the better your numbers because you get credit for their page hits as well and this is where the people that are getting the big numbers are getting them from. This is because the referral system goes 10 deep. So here is an example of how it can multiply if you get the right people that want to play the game. Say you sign up and get 5 friends to sign up. They each get 5 friends and down to the 10th level thats 5 times 5 to the 10th power This would add up to over 9 million people by my numbers. (keep in mind only 3/4 a million are on the site so no one has done this yet). I got 150 combined visits I made and visits to my page last month and managed to accumulate a penny. So now being ultra conservative, lets say that you have your 5 to the 10th power in sub referrals and they all only log in and visit only one friend. Based on the system that would add up to a nice winfall. It will be interesting to see anyone do that.

In actuality, the theory would be broken by economics. Here is why. As the number of members grow, there are more people to "share" with. So my 1 cent off 150 visits at 3/4 a million people would require 10 times as many visits if there was 7.5 million members. Still its an interesting social experiment that is fun to watch from the inside.

(Yes the link above is a referral link but is not mine but a friend who I would like to see do well. Mine can be found on the sidebar of this site for anyone that wants to visit my page.)

Christmas In August?

2008-08-09T18:55:00.002-07:00

My wife and I had some shopping to do today that took us to about a half a dozen stores around town. A few stores already have Halloween items on the shelves and I can go along with that but what was hard to swallow is the Christmas items that are already creeping onto store shelves. Do people really start purchasing decorations this soon? I can understand early shopping for gifts when you see that perfect do hickey that you just cant pass up, but the 8 foot tall inflatable Santa that plays 3 different versions of White Christmas is not something I even had on the back of my mind right now. Maybe I remember it differently or maybe I want to remember it differently, but when I was a kid Christmas stuff did not start to appear until after Halloween and even then my parents complained that it was out to early. So maybe I am becoming my parents. Ahhhh what a thought. But really, isn't it a tad early to be shopping for an artificial tree, I mean really, no one in their right mind would be cutting down a real one just yet.

Summer Break Almost Over

2008-08-03T16:05:00.002-07:00

Back to school time is different around the country but here in Phoenix many schools are already starting back up this week. And for me that means that Football season is right around the corner and not to far behind that will be hockey season. Priorities priorities people! This summer has been a busy one for us and I have not had much time to find things that are worth updating this blog with. I hope that this will change, but this last year has been such a roller coaster ride that I am not sure what will be in store for the coming months. I thank everyone that stops by to read my ramblings and regardless of whether I post more or less often I always keep it in mind when I come across things that I find interesting to share them here.