Archive for category Home Life

They’re Dreaming of a $$$ Christmas

Nov 23

Posted by Robert Stinnett in Home Life | Comments

… just like the ones the retailers used to have! (come on, sing along, you know the tune!)

The holiday season is upon us — it comes earlier every year — and this year, thanks to the sour economy and double-digit unemployment retailers are nervously trying to get people to buy “stuff”. One of the ways they get you to buy this “stuff” is to disguise so-called gift guides and “hot item” stories as news. This trend started right around 1999 or so, and in the past decade retailers have found that they don’t need to write the so-called news articles anymore, the “news” sites will do it for them. Why you may ask? It’s all about the $$$.

Websites and online news sources quickly discovered that there was gold in those gift guides. Click gold that is. Through referral partnerships (whereby the merchant pays the referring website a percentage of the sale) and pay-per-click (the website gets a few pennies each time the story is displayed, or a link clicked) the money rolls in 24×7. Why report on any real news at all when you can post faux-news and collect that click gold?

Case in point, let’s take a look at MSNBC. They have been rolling out the gift guides for some time, but today I happened upon one called “Gifts for the hardcore techies” filed under science and technology news. Thank goodness there wasn’t any hard science news to report on instead — you know things like the radiation leak at Three Mile Island that happened yesterday or something like that.

A quick read of this gift guide leads me to ask two questions:

Did anyone bother to tell MSNBC that we’re in the worst economic downturn since the Depression?
How much money are they earning off this one?

So let’s take a look at what gifts they “recommend” we run out and buy our geek friends. I’m sure they have personally used and tested each of these, right? And by used and tested I mean for more than 30 minutes.

First on the list is the Android phone from Motorola — the Driod. This will only set you back $199, but it also requires a 2-year contract. I don’t know about you, but I don’t care how good a friend they are, I’m not going to sign into a two year contract for a phone for them. What if they already have an iPhone or a Windows Mobile phone and love it? This one sounds fishy right out of the gate.

So the phone is out, but hey they have a lot more “recommendations”. You can get your friend a $1,800 laptop (I wish I had friends like that) or for a measely $2,000 you can get them a plasma TV. Geez, I got to start hanging out with some better friends — I usually just get a free lunch or a card. I feel like I’ve been cheated all these years!

Let’s just hope you don’t have a lot of friends who are into tech, otherwise you are going to have to ask Uncle Sam for your own personal bailout by the time you get done going down the shopping list that MSNBC and their “tech writer” have put together. The cheapest thing on the list is an overpriced 2GB “designer” USB drive for $24.99 (which can be found for less than $9 as of this writing on Bing’s shopping site).

I don’t know what just upsets me more. The fact that a news site is passing this kind of nonsense off as “news” (especially science and technology news) to fatten up their coffers (every product on the store had a link at where you could click off and buy it — click gold!) or that apparently they think that the average person on the street going to rush out and buy their friends gifts that cost more than a mortgage payment (or two, or three!)

Perhaps instead you can invite your friend out to a nice, long lunch or a special night on the town. Maybe you could get a group of friends together and treat them to a movie and popcorn (ok, so I know that one can be pricey!); or give them all a batch of homemade cookies and fudge to enjoy. Don’t fall for the hype that comes out this time a year — and don’t get sucked into the mindset that you have to buy expensive gifts for family and friends. The best gifts I ever got cost less than $10.

If you still feel this burning need to spend money might I suggest you consider donating a few bucks to a food pantry or other charitable organization. In fact, I know of a Food Pantry where I live that could really use some help and appreciates whatever small donation you can give. And no, I don’t get any click gold whenever you click on that link.

Of course you’ll never see MSNBC put something like that into their “gift guide”. No $$$$ — no coverage. That’s just the way these guides work nowadays. Buyer/Clicker beware.

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Tags: charity, christmas, gifts, scam

Angry, Old, White Men

Aug 12

Posted by Robert Stinnett in Home Life | Comments

Turn on the news nowadays and you’d think that pure civil unreset was getting ready to happen in this country. Listen to reports and you’d be led to believe that every man, woman and child was standing up and screaming “hell no!” to health care. It’s a revolution, a call to arms, a battle cry — oh, wait a minute, it’s just a bunch of angry, old, white men.

Have you taken a look at who most of these loudmouths are who are disrupting the democratic process? It’s none other than angry, old, white men who want everything for themselves and nothing for anyone else. It is the same people who got a free college education courtesy of the GI bill; the same people who line up for free health care at the VA; the same people who are enrolled in Medicare and have their healthcare taken care of by you and I — the taxpayers. You see, this is the generation that got us into this entire economic mess. The selfish baby boomer generation that wants everything for themselves and nothing for anyone else. They want to continue to dictate to the rest of the country how we are going to live — whether we want to hear from them or not.

Now let’s be fair. It isn’t all baby boomers — I know plenty of older folks who think this is the right thing to do. The people who are causing problems are mostly the same group of folks who didn’t vote for Obama because of the color of his skin. As I wrote earlier, the underlying racism has a lot to do with what is going on here. A friend of mine pointed out that some Republicans and their roaming gangs are hell-bent on supporting anything that this administration tries to do because of who Obama is — it doesn’t matter whether it is right for the country or not.

I really believe we are at a turning point in history where this is the last stand for many of these angry, old, white men. People, especially those of us in the younger generations, are tired of hearing it. We are ready to move this country forward, not backward. It’s time for these angry, old, white men to just shut up. The rest of us will solve this problem just fine — and it won’t just be the younger generation, it will also be the open-minded older generation who will help as well.

The relevance of angry, old, white men long ago faded — and not a moment too soon. Just like the relevance of Rush Limbaugh — where the only people who listen to him anymore is the same angry, old, white men.

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Tags: healthcare, politics

Hate, Racism and Smiles in 2009

Aug 9

Posted by Robert Stinnett in Home Life | Comments

The health debate currently taking place in the United States has brought about some unexpected realities to society. We’ve been seeing hate and racism boil over in some locations all under the guise of "well, I didn’t mean it that way.”

There are certain people in the US (and thankfully they are a small number, but nonetheless) who take their marching orders from hate monger Rush Limbaugh. Now, let me say, I’m a big guy – fat if you will – but how anyone could stand to listen to this sweating, pill-popping pig of a person is beyond me. Rush is what we call an angry, white man who pretends like he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He is trying to stir the racism and hatred pot, and thanks to his shrinking audience size the only people left to listen to him nowadays are the true nutcases that will do whatever he tells them to do. That’s just plain scary.

There are so many people out there without healthcare. People without access to basic preventative services that it is no longer up for debate in my mind whether we need it or not – we need a national healthcare system, and we needed it 30 years ago.

I have high hopes that the small lunatic fringe led by the conservatives and Rush will be ignored and we can have a serious, intelligent debate with good results in the end. I have faith that most people want to do what is right and have more sense than to listen to a drug addict tell them how to think.

Even if you are against nationalized healthcare for whatever reason (other than Rush told you to be against it), you know what is happening at these town hall meetings isn’t right. You know racism and hatred when you hear and see it.

Turn off Rush, think for yourself – and no matter what side you are on, let’s all have an intelligent debate on the future of healthcare.

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Tags: healthcare, obama, racism

Taking Time Off to Read

Jul 10

Posted by Robert Stinnett in Home Life, My Adventures | Comments

Next week I’ll be taking some time off from work and one of the things on my list is to catch up on my reading. As of right now I have about 18 books that I want to read that I just haven’t gotten too – and some are several months old!

One of the things about most workplaces, and where I work is no different, is that employees are never really allowed to recharge their batteries. Sure, you get a few weeks vacation each year – but as anyone can tell you (and studies have proven) most employees come back to work feeling worse than before they left because all they can think about during the week or two they take off is work, and all the work waiting for them at work when they get back!

Some companies do it right and offer employees sabbaticals every so often. For example, a few companies offer employees one or two months off to do whatever they want (in addition to their regular vacation) for every 5 years of employment. The employees get to really relax and come back to work energized and refreshed and ready to really contribute to the team and the company. They have enough time to completely decouple their lives from work and enjoy the down time.

Other companies take it a step further and have gotten rid of the notion of vacation time altogether. Employees are encouraged to take as much time as they need, whenever they want to – as long as they meet their expectations, they are treated like adults who can manage their own lives. What a concept – being measured on your contributions and results instead of your ‘butt in chair time’.

For me, though, its a rush to do a thousand things in 7 short days so I can jump back into the rat race. At least, if nothing else, I hope to be able to enjoy a few good books – and let my imagination soar.