Blind Money

In an article titled "Show Us the Money", written by Cyrys Habib, she tells us how the blind get taken advantage of when using paper cash.  The blind, are upset with the Treasury that their is no way to tell the difference between the bills, but with a $75 million dollar price tag to make bills different, I would have a hard time changing the bills when the blind has other options.  Everywhere I go, I see "Debit accepted here".  In the last few years, I never never gone somewhere where credit/debit is not accepted, even with local mom and pop stores.  So for $75 million, why should they change the way bills are made?  I feel the arguments made by the blind are totally different than others.  Such as them saying its the same difference as wheelchair ramps for the handicap.  This is a bad reasoning because someone in a wheelchair can physically not get up on the curb them self, where the blind does have other options.

Credit Cards Good?

I always hear, "credit cards are bad".  I've heard it from my friends and parents, and even hear my friends parents telling them never get into the habit of using credit cards.  I always ask myself why?  Is it that credit cards are bad, or is it that the user of the card is bad?  My vote goes for the user.  I myself got my first credit card at age 18, and I personally use it like a debit card.  Why?  They paid me 1% on all purchases to use it where my checking debit card paid me nothing.  I always limit my spending.  If I do not have the money in my checking account to spend, I don't put it on my credit card.  In under a year, on that card I accumulated over $25.00 in free money just for using the card.  Now, recently I signed up for a discover card.  Just for signing up, I received a free $50.00 bonus, on top of that, I receive 5% cash back on all online purchases up to $1,500.  Since I knew I would be spending over three thousand dollars on a new motor, why wouldn't I put it on the card, and immediately pay it off when I receive the statement?  If you are responsible, I feel you should use credit card because they reward their valued customers.  If you are told not to use them, you are more than likey being told this by someone who was not responsible and build up debt.

Boring chain stores

In a recent article that I read titled "In Praise of Chain Stores", written by Virginia Postrel, she states that America is known to be a "boring" location for foreign travelers.  She says this because no matter where in America you go, you're bound to run into a walmart, mcdonalds, starbucks, and so on.  But for those traveling from other countries, may not be used to these stores.  They arn't used to a Walmart, where they can buy food, clothing, and electronics all in one mega-store.  If you were used to shopping at a mom and pop store all your life, and you walked into a giant store like walmart, wouldn't you be amazed?  I get where the author is coming from, for myself, when I travel to other states, a lot of the things I see are very similar to my home area, but many things are different.  On a recent travel to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, just on the main drag, you will find mini golf, go cart racing, Titanic museum, bungie jumping, and more restaurants than you could imagine.  I have personally never traveled to another country, but I feel that is more exciting to most then looking at an old historic building for an hour.  And if you are one to look at old historic places, America has many to view, including the statue of liberty.  So how is it that someone could call America the most boring country to travel to just because we have chain stores?

Being Watched

Recently, I have been in progress of building a motor for a Camaro which its original motor spun a bearing.  Throughout this build process, I have been taking extra time to clean, paint, and polish parts of the motor to have it show-car condition.  One night last week I was working on polishing the ends of the heads when I realized I forgot to buy aluminum polish, so I decided to make a trip to walmart.
When I arrived at walmart at roughly 10 p.m., I noticed I was one of probably only 10 customers.  I walked in and headed to the car section.  As walmart sells multiple different waxes, I was in the isle for some time doing research on my phone about what the best polish available to purchase is.  I then begin to notice this man, standing in the same isle as I was, only feet from me, well this is a store so I thought nothing much of it.  After picking out a polish, I went to look at paint gun accessories as I needed a new regulator.  Once again, I seen a man, looking in the same isle as me, but facing the other direction.  I decided to pass on the walmart regulator and headed for the check-out with my polish.  After paying, the lady at the exit door told me to have a good night.  As I was walking out the second line of doors, I heard "Excuse me", from the woman why just told me have a good night.  I turned around and heading around the corner was the same man I had seen multiple times, following me around walmart.  The woman asked to see a receipt!  Apparently, walmart has undercover security, that are not very sneaky, and he must of thought I was up to something because he had told the woman to call me back and check to see if I purchased the polish, and to check to make sure I didnt stuff anything else in my bag.  I feel as though walmart could tell there employees to watch closer, and not just assume a kid in the store is trying to steal something!.

Preparing for college?

All throughout high school I was told "the more words the better" when writing an essay for a class.  Although this never made since to me because I felt that my papers as well as my peers, drug on and on, just to meet the couple of thousand word quota for the assigned paper, of course I listened to receive a good grade.  With that being said, high school is to prepare you for college, correct?  Wrong!  Now that I get to college, fewer words arn't "better" to say, but less is more in a since in chapter ninteen that I read titled "writing with style".  Apparently the "filler" words I used in high school such as: at all times, in order to, should now be simplified to always and to.
I do understand where my high school was going when they wanted more words, which would of been to make sure we are capable to writing a lengthy paper to grade us on grammer and other aspects of a paper, why do they consider it "preparing for college" if the day I get here, writing styles change..

Overweight

As I logged onto my computer today to do my usual morning aol.com look-around, I seen a news article where a school, upset a childs mother.  At first, I thought to myself, oh great!  Another angry mother over nothing kind of story, but I figured why not read more into it.  To my surprise, she had every right to be furious at the school!  The Flordia school sent a letter home with an 11 year old girl, stating that she is "overweight".  Since when are schools health physicians?  They should be focused on learning, and only learning.  Allowing an 11 year old girl to read a note the school wrote stating she is overweight could cause the girl to have self-esteem issues.

I do not fully disagree with schools doing health check-ups on students (if the parents are fully aware), but until a certain age, results to any health related problems should be given directly to parents, not to an 11 year old girl that is able to read that the school is calling her over-weight. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/08/kristin-grasso-florida-school-letter-overweight_n_4058460.html?1381260343&icid=maing-grid7|main5|dl7|sec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D388540

Race

In an article I read, "Race and the White Coat" by Rahul K. Parikh, he states that minorities, specifically African Americans, are not as healthy as whites.  He say's they are known for higher rates of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, HIV, cancer, asthma, and other chronic illnesses.  He then tell's us that doctors do stereotype other minorities, which I think is fair!  Some people are upset by this, but it is not racism.  Minorities are known to not take medical treatments as serious as whites.  They are more likely to ignore what the doctor tells them, such as not taking the prescribed medicine.  If I were a doctor, and I had a patient continuously coming in for the same issues, just to find out he is not taking his medicine, I would begin to stop prescribing him.  In the same sense, I would also be less likely to give him a kidney transplant over someone else, who has been cooperative with me.  So being biased against minorities is not a problem, as these show in studies to be true in many cases.

Iphone 5s

As a big Apple fan, the release of the new Iphone 5s was a big excitement to me.  To go back a few years, my first Iphone was the 4, and overall, it was a great phone.  Always in a case, it was dropped multiple times a week, and owning the phone for 2 years, no screen was cracked, nor did any other problems arise.  When I was due for an upgrade, I got the Iphone 5, which has been a decent phone, with multiple problems.  The phone won't charge 70% of the time!  It also liked to freeze up "under load", such as listening to music and surfing the web for a long period of time.  Now back to today, as I have been debating on just upgrading to the 5s, I get on AOL.com and in the news headlines I read "
Iphone 5s More Fragile Than iphone 5, Tests Find".  My only words are "What is wrong with this company"  It seems as though every iphone has done nothing but get cheaper and cheaper as the years go on.  If I am paying $200.00 for a new iphone, I expect it to last, not stop charging, freeze up, and with one light drop, shatter a screen.  I feel as though apple will begin to loose business over time from those who also realize their products seem to be made cheaper then before.

Silence of cellphones

In the article "Devices Enforce Silence of Cellphones, Illegally" written by Matt Richtel, we are told that there are devices that are on the market, illegally, that allow you to temporary disable any cellphone within so much distance of you.  All though this seems cool, and would be funny to play a prank on your friends.  And like Matt tells us in the article, they are used by employers to disable their employees cell phones while at work, or even by teacher to stop students from being distracted.  Which all seem like good reasons to use one, except for in emergency situations.  Which is why I feel they should remain illegal.  Just think, your at work and get hurt, and when you try to use your phone, its disabled because your boss thought it would be a good idea to disable it.  These jammer's seem to have a couple positive sides to them, but those are easily over thrown by the con of not being able to use your phone if you needed to in an emergency situation. In the article, Matt also tells us that people are buying these jammer's online.  Being illegal in the U.S., they must be coming from other countries, but why are we not stopping this.  Sure, the government is not able to inspect every package that comes into the U.S., but why don't they purchase one themselves just to get the address of the sender, and from there ban any packages from that address coming into the U.S?

Zimmerman

                George Zimmerman, in my eyes, is a threat waiting to happen.  First of all, he was charged back in February of 2012 for the murder of Trayvon Martin.  Between that date and the day his trial began, June 10^th, 2013, he was stopped twice for speeding, and on one traffic stop, he had a gun in his possession.  What is the state of Florida thinking, allowing him to have a gun after being charged for a murder involving a gun?  The first step should have been to take any type of weapon away from him to prevent such case from happening again.  On July 13^th, 2013, he was found not guilty, and released of all charges against him.  Now, only months later, he was arrested for a domestic violence against his wife, Shellie, and her father.  This is the second incident in only a year with George, and not only that, he threatened his wife and father with a gun.   After being arrested, his wife agreed to not press charges but why wouldn’t the state forcefully take away any weapons from this man.  He clearly has a history of using weapons, and now he’s pulling them on others?  Do we have to wait for him to commit another murder before we decide to take action?  His gun privileges should be revoked, immediately!  

http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/09/us/george-zimmerman-detained/

Social networking

In the article “Is Social Networking a Waste of Time” written by Bernhard Warner, he shows up multiple pros and cons of social networking.  Only telling us a couple of cons such as: 6.5 billion dollars of revenue lost in the British industry because of time spent on sites such as Facebook and Myspace, and students in school spending as much time as 30 minutes per day on these sites instead of listening to their instructor.  As for pros, he tells us that his former students have used these sites for good things including to promote their online newspaper, build and promote projects on fighting poverty, organizing music gigs, and coordinating meet ups for political rallies.  Although I also believe these are good reasons that social networking is not a waste of time, I disagree with Bernhard Warner because I feel the cons out weigh the pros he listed to support social networking to not be a waste of time.

        The reason I feel that his cons make social networking feel like a waste of time is because if a company is losing 6.5 billion dollars due to their employees focusing more on Facebook then getting things done, this is causing products such as cell phones, computers, and even food products to increase in price due to the companies losing money.  He also says students spend as much as 30 or more minutes on these websites during school.  The amount of information they are losing, such as important due dates of a paper that they may not have heard was due because they were posting a status could result in failing a class.  To add to his cons list, kids today are not the same kids as they were 30 years ago before social networking was around.  Kids now don’t want to leave the house.  Countless amounts of times have I listened to my sister say “I’m bored”, when she has every possible gaming system, ipods, TV channel, cell phone, and access to any website, including Facebook.  I feel that in my parent’s day, they never complained.  They would go outside and make their own games. 

Goals

                Every human known to man sets some type of goal for themselves to achieve sometime throughout their life.  Whether it be to graduate from high school or a university, become a doctor, run a faster mile, or even move out by a certain age, no matter what it may be, we all set them.  Although many people’s goals are never met, many are.  Which brings me here to write this post. 

When I was younger, I always wanted to own a Fourth Gen Camaro SS.  So at the age of 13, I made a goal to be able to purchase one by my sixteenth birthday.  Many people ask why I chose “this car”, as the money that was spent could have been used to buy a wide variety of other cars.  I believe it came down to the look of it in its bright red color, the tone of the loud exhaust, or maybe just that the already fast motor has a ton of expanding potential to be a very fast sports car, which is something that interests me.

I started with a bank account with less than a thousand dollars in it, and I knew raking leaves in the fall, shoveling snow in the winter, and mowing grass in the summer wasn’t going to cut it, so I thought of different ways to make an income.  After weeks of thinking and searching the web, I found out about affiliate marketing.  After signing up for a company, cxdigitalmedia.com, I was once again stuck.  What was I thinking, that money would just appear, well that did not happen!  It never once occurred to me how I would go about advertising the offers that I was trying to promote.  Luckily, only weeks before, I learned about Myspace.  Myspace having millions of active users daily, this is what I needed.  I began mass messaging an ad titled “Get a Free Apple IPod”, similar to ads you see when visiting random websites.  How this process worked was I used my referral link for the IPod ad through cxdigitalmedia.com, and sent messages to random users on Myspace, hoping they would fill out the information, making me $1.20.  To my surprise, it worked!  For the first couple of weeks, money was slow making only ten or so dollars per day.  As time went on, I found programs to send the messages automatically, allowing me to increase that ten dollars, all the way to one to three hundred dollars per day.  This was awesome, but as people say, “all good things must come to an end”.  After making just under $20,000, my cxdigitalmedia account got shut down for “using social media as advertisement”, although I did not know, such advertising was against their terms of service agreement.

While this was upsetting, I thought to myself, I am 14 years old, and with twenty grand sitting in my bank, I had plenty of money for the car of my dreams, which was the sole purpose to ever making any money.  Just weeks before my sixteenth birthday, I found that perfect car, a bright red, loud, fast, and very clean Camaro ss.  The car is still great, even two years later as I am writing this.