Skip to the bottom if you’re familiar with PRISM and don’t want to hear any political talk and rampant violations of our Constitutional rights, but still want to protect your privacy.

For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, the PRISM program is an NSA program to monitor electronic activity.

Lots of electronic activity.

The companies identified to be working with the NSA in this grand overreach include AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, PalTalk, Skype, Yahoo! and YouTube.  For most people, that is the definition of “the internet”.  If you’re doing it online, the NSA is–or could be, at their leisure–watching.

This isn’t a crazy conspiracy theory.  This is happening, and the government has admitted it.  In fact, when this broke, the executive branch’s response was along the lines of, “Don’t worry, we’ll find the guy who leaked this information.”

On top of that, the government has been demanding phone records from at least Verizon on a daily basis.

In addition, the Justice Department was just busted wiretapping Associated Press phones.

Seriously, if you put this in fiction, nobody would buy it, because it’s ridiculous in the land of the free.

As far as the people who say I’ve got nothing to worry about if I’m not doing anything wrong: shut up.  You can speak again when you give me your email passwords, bank records, and let me install a toilet cam in your house.  What are you trying to hide?

Seriously, there is such a mess of non-legislative administrative regulations that are considered felonies that the best estimate is that most people commit three felonies a day, without realizing it.

• Catch your kid with a joint and neglect to call the cops?  Welcome to the federal penitentiary.
• Use one of those pill planner things to sort prescription meds for your half-senile grandmother?  In some states, that’s a felony.

When we live in a system with so many rules that have never been voted on and our legal system refuses to consider legitimate ignorance of the law to be a defense and we have a collection of secret laws that are a felony to disclose or violate, government spying gets far more dangerous.

• Many TSA guidelines are secret.
• The Banking Secrecy Act of 1970 has a number of secret provisions.
• FISA.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978(FISA) is the law the NSA is using to justify all of these data requests.  The law, that we all must obey, is being overseen by a small subcommittee in Congress, and the FISA courts are just a small subset of the judges.   The judges are signing warrants allowing the wiretaps and massive surveillance, but that is clearly unconstitutional and, hence, illegal.

The text of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, the supreme law of the United States is: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Any warrant that cannot name a place to be searched is illegal.

Any warrant that cannot describe the person to be monitored is illegal.

Any warrant that is not backed by probable cause is illegal.

Tell me how “I want to watch what everyone is saying on Facebook and seize all of the data” meets any of those criteria.

Bueller?

Wiretapping the AP is a serious violation of the First Amendment, too.  ”Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

“Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Monitoring the press in case somebody breaks a story the government doesn’t want broken is crap.

How can we petition the government for redress of grievances that they call a felony if the company discloses the violation to us?  It’s self-serving circular crap.

When you throw the IRS harassing charities working for the “wrong” politics, you start to pine for the good old days of Nixon-level fair play and integrity.

To be fair, FISA got nasty with the Patriot Act, which was an abomination enacted by a different political party.  Hey, Washington, next time try to remember that your laws will someday be administered by your political enemies, k?  (NSA: I trust you’ll pass the message for me?)

Political talk is over.  How do we stop the government snooping?

There are four main pieces to discuss, based on the scandalous Constitutional violations reported recently.

1.  Social media monitoring.   There’s nothing to this.  If you post things on Facebook, the government sees it and knows it’s you.  Don’t post anything you don’t want broadcast to the police, your grandmother, and your priest.

2.  Internet browsing.  There is very little that is secure on the internet.   The government can subpoena your ISP and get any records they keep.  Unless you go anonymous and encrypted.  Welcome to TOR.  The Onion Router is a system that encrypts your internet traffic and bounces it all over the world.   Once you enter TOR, nothing you do can be tracked, until your internet request leave the TOR system.   The system is not centrally owned or controlled, so nobody in the system can track what you are doing.

For example, if I use the TOR browser to search Wikipedia, a snoopy NSA goon could tell I’m using it, and they could tell there was a request from the TOR system to Wikipedia, but they can’t tie one request to the other.  If I’m dumb and log into Facebook, I lose that anonymous shield.

That’s solid protection from anyone watching your internet traffic.

How do you use it?

Easy.  Just install the Tor Bundle.  When you want the NSA to stop snooping over your shoulder because you want to do a search on erectile dysfunction, you launch TOR and the TOR browser and search without having to share your embarrassing secrets.

3.  Email.  Email is easily the least secure means you can communicate.  When you send an email, that message is in plain text, and it bounces from server to server until it reaches the recipient.  Any of the involved servers can keep a log of the traffic and read your email.

Never, ever, ever, ever put anything incriminating or important in an email.  Don’t send credit card numbers, your social security number, or the address of your meth lab.

But what if you want to have a dirty conversation with your spouse without letting the sick voyeurs at the NSA listen to you ask your wife what she’s wearing and how would she like it torn off?

Use PGP.  OpenPGP is a free software encryption program that is basically impossible to decrypt.   It’s known as public-key encryption, which means that anybody can encrypt a message to you that only you can read.

It’s like magic.

To use PGP, the easy way(for Windows users) is to get Gpg4win.  Install that, then open Kleopatra.  This will let you generate your encryption key.  You do that by:

• Clicking File, then New Certificate
• Click Create  Personal OpenPGP key pair
• Enter your name and email, then click next, then “Create Key”.  Enter your passphrase when asked.

You now have a set of PGP keys.  To get your public key that others can use to send you messages, right-click your certificate and select “Export certificates”.  Pick a path to save the certificate, then do so.  You can open this file with notepad to get your public key, or you can email the file out.  There is no need to worry about security with this file.

You will end up with something that looks like my public key here:

—–BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK—–
Version: GnuPG v2.0.20 (MingW32)
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=fHba
—–END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK—–

To get your private key, that you can use with any number of plugins for your email client, right-click on your certificate and select “Export secret keys.”

You can either use PGP as a plugin for your email client, or you can use Kleopatra’s feature “Sign/encrypt files”.  To do that, write your message in a file, then select the feature inside Kleopatra.  You’ll end up with an encrypted file you can attach to your email that snoopy government man can’t read.

4.  Phone calls.  This would appear to be harder, since your phone is largely out of your control.   There’s nothing practical you do about a landline, except to avoid saying anything sensitive.  On your cell phone, you have options, assuming you use a smartphone.

For Android users, it’s free an easy.  Install Redphone.  If you place a call with Redphone, it checks to see if the caller also uses Redphone.  If he does, it places an encrypted call over your data plan to the other phone.   Nobody can listen in to an encrypted call.   The same company also makes a program for texting.

For iPhone users, you’re stuck with Silent Circle for $10/month,  which may be a better option, since there is support for more devices, including Android.   It was designed by the guy who designed PGP and handles texting and email, too.

That’s it.

There you are, the whats, whys, and hows of modern, hassle-light, private communications.   Doing what we can to foil bad government programs is our patriotic duty.

© Jason for Live Real, Now, 2013. | Permalink | One comment |
Post tags: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, National Security Agency, NSA, TOR, United States

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But I’m not here to talk about that series.  Rather, I’m going to talk about one particular scene in book 6, Faith of the Fallen.

There’s a scene where Richard, the protagonist, ends up in a socialist workers’ paradise, where the government controls distribution and everybody is starving.  Jobs are hard to come by, because everything is unionized and unions control access to work.  That’s a non-accidental parallel to every country that has embrace socialist principles, or even leans that way.  Go open a business with employees in France, I dare you.

So Richard goes out of his way to help someone with no expectation of reward.  This person then offers to vouch for him at the union meeting, effectively offering him a job.

This is the conversation that follows:

Nicci shook her head in disgust. “Ordinary people don’t have your luck, Richard. Ordinary people suffer and struggle while your luck gets you into a job.”

“If it was luck,” Richard asked, “then how come my back hurts?”

If it was luck, how come my back hurts?

Seneca, a 2000-year-dead Roman philosopher said, “Luck is where the crossroads of opportunity and preparation meet.” 

I won’t lie, I’ve got a pretty cushy job.  I make decent money, I work from home, I love my company’s mission, and I kind of fell into the job.

By fell into, I mean:

• I started teaching myself to program computers when I was 7.
• I worked in a collection agency collecting on defaulted student loans to put myself through college while I had a baby at home.
• When I graduated, I went out of my way to help anyone I could, which positioned me for a promotion, getting my first programming job.  The first one is the hardest.
• I spent 3 years studying the online marketing aspects of what I’m doing, with no promise of a payoff.
• I launched a side business in the same industry as the company I work for.
• I built a relationship with an author to include his books in the classes I teach.  He happened to move to the company I’m with.
• I offered advice–for free, on a regular basis–on certain aspects of his business and his responsibilities with this company.
• He offered me a job.

That’s 25 years and tens of thousands of dollars spent earning my luck.  How come my back hurts?

I have a friend on disability.  He has a couple of partially-shattered vertebrae in his back, but he keeps pushing off the corrective surgery because the payments would stop after he heals.   He refuses to get a regular job, because his payments would stop.  He lives on $400 per month and whatever he can hustle for cash, and he will make just that until the day he dies.   And he complains about his bad luck.

His back literally hurts, but not metaphorically.  His bad luck is the product of deliberately holding himself down to keep that free check flowing.

I have another friend who made some bad decisions young.   Some years ago, he decided that was over.  He took custody of his kid and started a business that rode the housing bubble.   When the bubble popped, so did his business.   Instead of whining about his luck, he worked his way into an entry-level banking job.

He put in long (long!) hours, bending over backwards to help his customers and coworkers, and managed a few promotions, far earlier than normal.  His coworkers whined about it.  He’s so lucky.  If it was luck, why does his back hurt?  

We make our own luck.

If you bust your ass, working hard and helping people–your coworkers, your customers, your friends, your neighbors–and you are willing to seize an opportunity when it appears, you will get ahead.   When you do, the people around you who do the bare minimum, who refuse–or are afraid–to seize an opportunity, who always ask what’s in it for them, they will will whine about your luck.

When they do, you will get to ask, “If it was luck, how come my back hurts?”

© Jason for Live Real, Now, 2013. | Permalink | 2 comments |
Post tags: Business, Luck, Trade union

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Unfortunately, that horse isn’t available this year.  We knew that a few months ago, so the plan was to take a year off from the shows and focus on lessons, to get the girls some real skills.  We found a great instructor at a stable about 30 miles from our house.  Since we live less than two miles from the border of the biggest city in the state, that’s a comparatively short drive.

We pay her $200 per month for 1 lesson per week for both girls.   They each get 30-45 minutes on the horse during each lesson.

Now that show season has started, the plan seems to have changed.   The girls will be riding a different borrowed pony tomorrow.  The shows cost about $50 for registration, lunch, and gas.  Our club has 1 show per month, but my wife has assured me they’ll only be hitting three shows this season and limiting the number of events to keep the cost down.

The direct costs aren’t too bad, but there’s a problem with keeping-up-with-the-Joneses accessorizing.  Vests and boots and helmets and belts and shirts, oh my.

I’d guess our costs for the summer will be $300 per month.

One thing we’ve been considering is buying a pony.  We can get an older pony for around $500-1000.  Older is good because they are calmer and slower.  Boarding the thing will cost another $200 per month.   We’ve been slowly accumulating the stuff to own a horse, so I’m guessing the “OMG, he let me buy a horse, now I need X” shopping bill will come to around $1500, but I’ll figure $2000 to be safe.   We already have a trailer, a saddle, blankets, buddy-straps, combs, brushes, buckets, rakes, shovels, and I-bought-this-but-I-will-just-put-it-in-the-pile-of-horse-stuff-so-Jason-will-never-notice stuff.  We’re certainly close to being ready to buy.

(FYI: If you’re starting from scratch, don’t think you’re going to get into horse ownership for less than $10,000 the first year, and that’s being a very efficient price-shopper.)

So we’re looking at $5400 for a horse, gear, and boarding the first year.  If we cancel the lessons, by spring we’d have $2000 of that saved and most of the rest can be bought over time.

On the other hand, if we go that route, we’ll never save enough to buy the hobby farm we’re looking for.

Decisions, decisions.  I should just buy a new motorcycle.   Within a year, I win financially.

© Jason for Live Real, Now, 2013. | Permalink | One comment |
Post tags: Equestrian, Equestrianism, Horse, Horse show, Shows, Sports

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A Chinese gilt bronze stand and statuette of the historical buddha on a lion throne, from Northern China, dated to the Northern Wei Dynasty, c. 480 AD. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The truth is, you can negotiate in almost any situation.   Sure, big-box retailers with low-price goods–like Walmart or a grocery store–aren’t going to go for it, but a lot of other businesses will.  Did you know you can haggle at Best Buy?  It’s true, but only on the bigger ticket items.

You can also easily negotiate at place like these:

• Credit card interest rates and annual fees
• Luxury utilities like cable
• Rent
• Hotel rates
• Airline tickets
• Gym memberships

“Great”, you say.  ”Anyone can do it?”, you say.  ”But how, jerk?”

No need to call names, I’m getting to that part.

I am about to share the First Secret Lesson of Negotiating.   This secret has been passed down from father to son among the celibate Shaolin monks for generations.   Breaking the code of secrecy may be putting my life in danger, but I’m willing to do that for you, no matter the risk.

I rock like that.

Are you ready to be initiated into the secrets of the Ancient Masters?  When our first abbot, Buddhabhadra, first wandered into the Northern Wei Dynasty branch of Best Buy in 477 A.D., he discovered the phrase most likely to break price barriers.

Are you ready, Grasshopper?  This is the “Wax on, wax off” of effective negotiation.

When you are given a price, no matter what it is, say “Is that the best you can do?”

“This T.V. costs $7495.” “Is that the best you can do?”

“That comes to $56.95.” “Is that the best you can do?”

“$149,499 for the Ferrari.” “Is that the best you can do?”

“$12,000 for the kidney.” “Is that the best you can do?”

“Only $8.50 for this set of 10 tupperware lids that have been warped in the dishwasher.” “Is that the best you can do?”

“$50 an hour, honey.” “Is that the best you can do?”

“The salary for this position is $50,000 per year.” “Is that the best you can do?”

It is magical, it’s easy to remember, and it’s low stress.  This is a non-combative question.  The worst possible scenario involves the other side saying, “Yes, that is the best I can do.”  No sweat.

Negotiating Lesson 101.2:

After saying  ”Is that the best you can do?”, shut up.   The other party gets to be the next person to say something.

Go out and practice this over the weekend.   Master the First Secret Lesson of Negotiating.  I’ll be fighting off Shaolin ninjas for sharing the ancient secrets.

© Jason for Live Real, Now, 2013. | Permalink | 5 comments |
Post tags: Best Buy, Ferrari, negotiating, Walmart

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The Lotto Powerball logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I had a friend say this to me this week.    He’s poor–living on about $500 per month–and he was recently evicted from his apartment.

His plans for the future involve taking nearly 20% of his income and burning it playing the lottery.  When he found out that I don’t play, he looked at me like I was stupid.

The odds of winning a life-changing amount of money are 1 in 5,153,632.65.  That’s for a $1,000,000 prize.  The next step down is $10,000, which, while helpful, won’t change many people’s situation for long.  One in 5 million.   That’s 5 times worse than your odds of being hit by lightning this year.   It is, however, 4 times better than your odds of being sainted and 12 times worse than your odds of dating a supermodel.

It’s not going to happen.

Sure, play for fun–because turning cash into valueless slips of paper is a blast–but don’t play the lottery instead of working to improve your future.  The lottery is NOT a retirement plan.

Instead, a much more reasonable plan is to date a millionaire.  The odds of making that happen are just 215 to 1, and you can do things to improve your chances.

Improving the odds of dating a millionaire:

• Hang out where millionaires go.  Yacht clubs, nice restaurants, rehab, that dark corner of their bedroom where the lamp never quite reaches that just looks perfect for a stalker-cam.
• Do what millionaires do.  Golf, high-stakes poker, oppress third-world countries, Centrifugal Bumblepuppy.
• Look like millionaire-bait.  For my friend, the 50-year-old black man, it might be hard to look like a 23-year-old blonde hardbody, but it’s worth the effort.
• Be nice, be polite, give good h…nevermind.

Seriously, getting a regular job and socking money away every month will give you a far better return on your investment than playing the lottery.  Even if you’re saving it in a mayonnaise jar buried in the backyard next to that obnoxious guy who used to live next door, you will be building security and peace of mind.  Every month, you will be better prepared for the storm of crap life tends to throw around.

Do you play the lottery?  Why or why not?

© Jason for Live Real, Now, 2013. | Permalink | 4 comments |
Post tags: Powerball

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My bus. Sorry about the dark picture.

Last weekend, I was having dinner with my friend and business partner.  After our carry permit class, we try to get dinner, unwind from the class, debrief, and figure out how to improve our business.

Over the course of this discussion, the idea of owning a bus came up.  It was part of an impractical-but-useful solution to one of our larger expenses.   My partner mentioned that he had a friend who owned a bus, so I asked him to find out how much he was asking.

A few days later, he called me and said simply, “We bought a bus.”

Oops.

What year?

“I don’t know.”

How big?

“Huge!”

Does it run?

“It used to.  It probably still does, but they lost the key.”

Crap.

So we own a bus.  It’s a 1987 Ford B700.  It’s 20,000 pounds empty, has a 429 motor that doesn’t leak oil, and an air horn.

Under the hood, it’s got a couple of issues.  There are some melted vacuum tubes leading to a vapor box.   The vapor box is used to cheat obsolete emissions standards and doesn’t do anything productive.   There’s also some belts missing.  The belts drive an air pump that pushes clean air into the exhaust system, again, just to cheat emissions standards that we don’t have anymore.  Nothing necessary–or even useful–is broken.

Part of the $1000 we paid for the bus went to a locksmith who came and made us a key.

The interior of the beast is 3/4 converted to an RV.  There are 4 folding bunks in the back, minus mattresses.   There are two RV sofas that fold down to beds, plus seating for another 12 people.  No kitchen or bathroom facilities.

We’ve done some research and come up with a few choices for this impulse purchase:

1. Flip it.  We should be able to at least double our money quickly.
2. Finish the RV conversion already in progress.  This wouldn’t turn it into a fancy motorhome, but it would make a great deer shack on wheels.   I figure we could make this happen for about $500 and turn it into a $3500 toy to sell.   Or take deer hunting.
3. Turn it into a full RV.  This would be more expensive.  My estimate is a $5-6000 investment to make it a $10-12000 RV.  It would take most of the summer to do, which means we wouldn’t be selling it until spring.   I quit wanting to do this when I saw the bus in the light.  There’s not a lot of rust, but it’s more than I’d want to fix to make the outside look as good as the inside, in my head.
4. Party bus.  What’s a better way to spend a Saturday evening that shepherding a drunken bachelorette around with her friends?  It’d take about $2000 to outfit the bus, plus insurance, plus licensing, plus the fact that drunken bachelorettes are obnoxious.
5. Auction.  We got an estimate for a $3000 sale, minus a 20% commission.
6. Stunt-jumping.  I saw a video of a guy jumping a bus over 20 motorcycles.  I could do that.  I’m sure one of the race tracks around here would pay good money to have us do that one weekend.  Afterward, we’ll melt the bus for scrap.
7. Sell the engine and scrap the body.   That should bring us at least $1500.

We jumped into this with no real plan, but there are a few ways we could make our money back.  I’m expecting a healthy profit on a pretty short timeline.

What would you do if you owned a bus?

© Jason for Live Real, Now, 2013. | Permalink | 13 comments |
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English: A goat (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Honey, here on national television, in front of a live studio audience, I’ve got a secret I’d like to share.   You’re not our child’s mother.  I’ve been sleeping with the milkman.  And the goat.  Your mom is the star of my new adult website.  With the goat.  And the milkman.  I’ve got three other families, in three other cities.  I lost the house to my gambling addiction.   Those sores?  Herpesyphiligonoritis.  I got it from the foreign exchange student we hosted before I moved her to Dubuque and married her.  The goat gave her away.  The milkman cried.   Oh, and I wore your panties to the Illinois Nazi reunion.   I know how much you hate Illinois Nazis.  But I still love you.  And your sister.  Especially your sister.  She does that thing with her tongue….”

Why would anyone go on national television to share things like that?

More interesting: why would anybody stay on stage after hearing that?

Stay tuned.

I have this friend.  He bought a couple of cars.  He’s got some issues with money, partially revolving around a need to keep his assets below a certain threshold.   So he put the cars in his girlfriend’s name.  I know, it’s slightly crooked, but that makes the story more fun.

They broke up.

Recently, she called him to say she was suing him for the cars.  She wanted them.  She wanted to hurt him.  She was mean.   Somehow that turned into them agreeing to settle the case on Judge Joe Brown, on national television.

My friend spoke with the show’s producer, then last week, he was flown to California and put up in a hotel for a couple of days.   When he arrived at the TV studio, he was informed that it wasn’t Judge Joe Brown, but a new show that will start airing in the fall called, The Test.   According to CBS, The Test “is a one-hour conflict resolution talk show that will use lie detector and DNA tests to settle relationship and paternity disputes among the guests.”   Coincidentally, CBS also owns Judge Joe Brown.

My friend got on stage with Dr. Phil’s son, Jay McGraw, and was accused of cheating on his girlfriend and stealing her identity.   Lie detectors.  Yelling.  Accusations.

Why did he stay?

He wasn’t given his return plane ticket until they were done filming.

When he was done, they handed him a voucher for cab fare and the itinerary for his return flight.  Until then, he had no other way to get home.

That’s why people stay on stage.  It’s probably also why none of those shows ever have people with money of their own; they can find their own way home in a pinch.

Interesting side note:  The show paid $200  and booked the cheapest possible return flight, with a 6 hour layover.

© Jason for Live Real, Now, 2013. | Permalink | 4 comments |
Post tags: CBS, DNA, Goat, Jay McGraw, Joe Brown

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Kryptonite?

Not the stuff you find on the street or throw from your car window.  I don’t mind that because, on a long enough timeline, everything is biodegradable.  Mother Nature is tougher than I am.  She can handle my McDonald’s wrappers.

No, I’m talking about the real scourge: cat litter.

We’ve got four of the things, and let me tell you, they make poop.  Everyday.  I keep telling my wife that they are going to continue making poop as long as we keep feeding them, but she continues to give them food.

For those of you who don’t know, most cats use a litter box, which is a fun pan full of a sand-like mixture of diatomaceous earth and bentonite clay, which trains your cat to use the neighbor kid’s sandbox if you let the little potsticker go outside.

Thanks for that.

So, everyday, our four cats crap in a couple of pans full of sand. Until the sand pans get too full of cat crap.  Then, they use the couch.

Who decided this was a good system?  Is it a conspiracy of Big Couch to force people to buy new furniture on a regular basis, the way Big Oil suppressed the 1000 mile-per-gallon carburetor, Big Pharma suppressed the cure-all hemlock pill, and Big Sword suppressed world peace during the Dark Ages?

There’s got to be a better way.

Right?

Enter the CitiKitty.  It’s the miracle cat potty trainer featured on The Shark Tank.

Here’s how it works:

1. Move the litter box to the bathroom and start using flushable cat litter.
2. Once the cats are comfortable with that change, put the CitiKitty on the toilet, under the ring and add litter.
3. In a week or two, when all of the cats are comfortable with the setup, pop out the center ring of the CitiKitty.   This gets the cats used to doing their business over water.
4. Every couple of weeks, pop out another ring until the cats are used to standing on the slippery ring and crapping directly into the water.  Praise the cat when it happens, because cats give a crap about your opinion.
5. Throw the litter box away and brag to your friends.

Because I love testing things to make my life easier, and I hate cat crap, I gave the thing a try.

It worked great until step 3.  Apparently, pooping directly into water is similar to trapping a vampire with running water and causes the cats to panic and find somewhere else to poop, never to return to the bathroom.

There’s really nothing better than stumbling into the living room half asleep, turning on the news and flopping onto the couch, only to find a little lump, still warm, under your butt.

Don’t get me wrong, step 2 was a pain in the neck, too.  In order to use the toilet, you have to take the stinking sandbox off of the toilet without spilling litter all over the bathroom, find a place to set it that isn’t disgusting, do your business, put the litter pan back on the toilet, and wash your hands really hard.   If you’re a friend of my son’s sleeping over, it’s easier just to not notice the litter box sitting there and top it off in the middle of the night.

It’s a heck of an idea.  The best execution I’ve seen for getting a cat to crap in the toilet.

But it doesn’t frickin’ work.  If you’ve got a cat using the toilet, I’m guessing you had to sacrifice the neighbor kid to some kind of evil Lovecraftian entity to make it happen, because the CitiKitty didn’t do it.

© Jason for Live Real, Now, 2013. | Permalink | 3 comments |
Post tags: Cat, Cats and Dogs, Kryptonite, Litter box, Pet, Shark Tank

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Push-ups

One from the vault:

Last month, I set a goal to do one hundred push-ups in a single set by the end of the month. Before I started working on this, I hadn’t done a single pushup in at least 10 years. At the beginning, I didn’t know if it would be possible, or how much it would hurt. I knew it would be a challenge, and I was looking for a challenge.

Three days before the start of the month, I did one set of pushups.  I wanted to find my baseline, so I could see the progress I was making, and I wanted a chance to recover, so I’d be starting from scratch on the first of the month. That day, I did 20 pushups. I pushed, but 21 wasn’t going to happen.  That’s not an impressive number, but I ride a desk all day and had spent 10 years lazy.   It could have been worse.

My initial plan was to do two sessions per day, morning and night.   I’d be doing a total of 56 sessions.   Each session would consist of 5 sets of my baseline, progressing to 100 push-ups in a set for the 56th session.    That would mean I’d have to add 1.5 pushups to my sets each session. I decided to add 1 to each set in the morning and 2 in the evening sessions.    My planned progression was 20, 22, 23, 25…95, 97, 98, 100 over the course of the month.

That lasted one day. February 1st, I did 100 push-ups in 5 sets of 20.   That night I did 110 push-ups in 5 sets of 22.  The next morning, I hurt so much I couldn’t do 10.   I did something like 8/5/5/5/cry-like-a-baby. My abs were cramping and my shoulders burned.   I ended the session in the fetal position, hoping all of the screaming muscles wouldn’t cramp up at the same time.  If pain is weakness leaving the body, then I was making a significant contribution to the the problem of homeless weakness particles.

Plan A failed.   As I waited for the pain to end, I had some time to think.  In between “Please don’t cramp! Please don’t cramp! Please don’t cramp!”, I developed Plan B.

I decided to base everything on the previous session’s largest set. The largest set would set my baseline for the next session.   The first set in the session would be half of the baseline.  The next three sets would be 3/4 of the baseline, and the final set would be pushed until I couldn’t go any further, establishing the next session’s baseline.  Starting from my newly established baseline of eight push-ups, my next session was 4/6/6/6/15.  The session after that was 7/11/11/11/16, then 8/12/12/12/16.

Plan B became an aggressive, self-correcting progression. If I pushed too hard, the next session was done at a lower level, allowing me time to recover.

The first week hurt.   Going from little-to-no real exercise to an aggressive exercise regimen is painful.  I was stiff and sore, but I was progressing. One of the best things about Plan B: Set #1 is a good warm-up.  Warming up is important.

By the end of week one, I was back to where I started, doing sets of 20.  I wasn’t sure I’d make it. I had a few days in a row that didn’t improve my baseline at all.   Then I skipped a day.  When I came back, but baseline jumped by 10 push-ups.   I had hit a small wall, gave myself a day to recover and had a 50% improvement.   Guess what got incorporated into Plan B?   If I had two days in a row without improvement over the four sessions, I skipped a day.

By the end of week two, my baseline was up to 60.   I stopped increasing the warm-up set, so it would still be a warm-up and not create strain.   I only went above 20 for the warm-up set once before I created this rule.  At this point, my session was 20/45/45/45/60.  That’s progress.

At the end of week three, my baseline was at 80.   I took the weekend off.

On Monday, February 22nd, I decided to see where my absolute max was.  I did a set of 20 to warm up.  I followed up with a set of 30, to make sure I was ready.   Set #3 was 100 push-ups, a full week early. I’m not going to lie and say push-up #100 was perfect, but it was done.    I went from barely being able to do 20 push-ups to successfully doing 100 push-ups in 22 days.  I spent the rest of the week perfecting my form.   After 75-80 push-ups, it’s hard to tell exactly how straight your body is and how low you are going, without a spotter or a mirror.

Next, I’m applying Plan B to sit-ups.

© Jason for Live Real, Now, 2013. | Permalink | 9 comments |
Post tags: 30 Day Project, exercise, push-ups, pushups

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It was an interesting experience.  Eviction court is a day when nobody is at their best.  Landlords are fighting to remove bad tenants, sometimes questioning their desire to be a landlord, while tenants are fighting to keep their homes, often with no backup plan.  Occasionally, you get someone who just wants to get out of their lease because the landlord is a creepy peeper who digs through the dirty laundry.

Nobody goes to eviction court in a good mood.

If you ever find yourself in eviction court, here are some things to remember:

Everyone

• If you don’t show up, you lose.  Period. Landlord or tenant, judges don’t like waiting around.  You will get the worst possible outcome if you stay home.
• The first day is a hearing.  The judge will either accept a settlement between the two parties, or he’ll check if there is a valid reason for a full trial.  The trial will be schedule for another day.  In Minnesota, that happens within 6 days of the hearing.
• Don’t make faces at the other side while they are talking to the judge.  Do you want to go to jail for being a smartass?  It’s called contempt of court.

Landlords

• Fix the mold, rot, and other habitability issues.  You’ll have a hard time getting your rent back if you are a slumlord forcing your tenants to live in a biohazard.
• If you’ve got an automatically renewing lease, don’t file the eviction notice with the renewed lease for violations that happened under the old lease.    If you do, you’ll be handing a win to your tenant.
• Make sure you lease has an eviction clause.  If it doesn’t, you may not have the right to kick out your tenant for any reason.
• Your tenant’s dirty underwear is not a toy for you to play with.  Creep.

Tenants

• Pay your rent.  If you are withholding rent to get something fixed, you’ll be expected to put that in escrow the day of the hearing, so don’t spend it on vodka or a new stereo.
• Read your lease and the filing.   It may have a backdoor that lets you escape the eviction.
• Try not to get evicted.  An unlawful detainer can make it hard to rent again for a couple of years.
• Dress nice.  I’m amazed by how many people showed up in ratty jeans and uncombed hair.  Look professional.  The judge will appreciate the effort.

All in all, it’s best if landlords and tenants try to keep each other happy.  The whole business relationship will go much smoother if you do.

© Jason for Live Real, Now, 2013. | Permalink | One comment |
Post tags: Eviction, Landlord, Lease, Leasehold estate, Property, Renting

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