Commuter trains for Souther California.

Welcome to Los Angeles!  It used to be that Los Angeles had one of the most robust network of public transportation systems in the United States filled with electric trolley routes.  These routes have all since been abandoned or effectively made inactive because GM sought to eliminate public transportation in favor of selling automobiles when they bought up public transportation companies.  Albeit there are plans to put forth tax payer dollars and using Federal funding to improve the infrastructure, we are starting slowly and any of these plans may not be realized until the end of the first quarter of this century.  For now, we get the Metrolink and the Metro for all commuting purposes which really does not have many stations to make this any convenient.

Hmm, our equivalent to the BART in San Francisco. A bit bare to be honest.

One things certain, I do not feel bad for GM.  They pumped out crappy cars for the past three decades enabling foreign automakers to dominate the U.S. automobile market.  I seriously hope they get on the right track, restructures itself and start introducing vehicles that would make all American’s proud.

There will also be rumors of a high speed rail to be introduced between Los Angeles and San Francisco with Sacramento and San Diego implemented later.  Another suggested line or rumor is a high speed rail from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.  In my opinion, I would welcome both as it would definitely ease traffic along with the time and headache dealt with traveling to both places.  If I had an option to travel by train, I would prefer it over plane or automobile.  Automobile requires me to try my hardest to avoid freeway syndrome and there is always the potential traffic disaster that comes with leaving Las Vegas on a Sunday afternoon.  Flying is always the quickest route, but it is also much more expensive and going through airport security is not the most inviting aspect to start or end a vacation trip.  So I’ll go on a limb and belch out a given, “HELL YES!” for a high speed rail that will connect top destinations as well as a public train transportation on the local level that can get me to the “grand station” to connect to all those other cities.

I can look forward to the future where a high speed rail can take my lazy ass from LA to Vegas in a little over 1 hour and a trip from LA to San Francisco in just under 3 hours.  Even if I’ll be 50 by that time, it’ll still be the “green” thing to do.

I would welcome unemployment if it meant that there was a severance package plus weekly unemployment checks.  What a golden opportunity it would be.  Time off to evaluate myself.  Decide a befitting career in front me.  Pursue something I actually have passion for.  Forced time off, extended vacation due to economic circumstance yet still be paid to live.  Why would any professionals with no obligations that have been laid off since last year be in a rush to re-enter the job market?

This unemployment period should be considered funemployment for those lucky enough to have obtained the criteria of severance plus steady unemployment checks.  This scenario may even be better than any summer break or after one graduates undergrad studies because at that time period, you didn’t have a steady job, didn’t have any work experience and most likely still be under your parent’s roof.  It wasn’t like after you graduated you found your calling right away or had the resources and time to figure out whom you were.  If anything, you just looked for a job for experience-sake.

This time, your mid-career, understand the under workings of society and corporate business economics and know exactly what you want out of life.  During my undergrad studies and even after graduating, I still had no clue on what I wanted to do for a career.  After graduating undergrad, it was more like find  job, pay my dues and figure things out along the way.  Then half a decade passes by, I am in a job or industry I dislike and become numb to accept the role I am in, in society.  Again, I am envious for those that can actually benefit from being unemployed and call it funemployment.

I know of many people that were laid off now pursuing an MBA now because finding a job was too difficult.  Their outlooks already look brighter because when they receive their MBA and once the economy rebounds combined with previous corporate work experience; they’ll probably end up in a better position than before.  Besides doing graduate studies, others are becoming entrepreneurs by starting a business.  People are a resilient species especially when put in stress situations that force us to survive.

Life experience.  How can one actually enjoy life when they cannot enjoy what they do?  Its a recurring sentiment with many unemployed people that they re-evaluate their position and figure out that they have been living with sole purpose to work.  Forget that, life’s short. I want to live!

So lets not be too down if you are unemployed and can actually gain some productivity from this extended unemployment.  See it as a golden opportunity and are actually the exception to the rule.  Find yourself and I look for you lucky folks to help us out in the near future as we are the ones still keeping this economy going.  But again, if I were laid off and can go through funemployment, I’d welcome it.

Now I wonder how many aspiring artists are going out and asking their friends to use a bat and hit them over their heads to cause some new innate ability that has been dormant.  Perhaps.

But I have come to realize that time is a terrible thing to waste.  Blame the internet for this although if you actually set your mind to it, you can be productive and learn almost anything.  (Thank you Google!)   So for the the graduating Class of 2009, good luck because the economy is in a state of SHIT and you’ll be fighting to find a job.  My advice, go abroad!  Join the PeaceCorp.  Do something and don’t sweat about not landing an ideal job. You’ll come to realize that having that the degree you received does not mean anything and you probably should have went to a technical or trade school to learn a concrete skill as opposed to obtaining a degree in some general aspect of studies such as Social Science, Business Administration, Economy, etc.  The four years and all that money you’ve just wasted.  So sad but true.

Welcome to the real world!

A friend linked me to this from Gizmodo. Thought I’d pass it along and share it as well.

Watch the entire video; it’ll make your day. Support PlayForChange.

I particularly found the two people with the eye patches (one with it over their right eye and the other over their left) to be funny.  I wonder if the shot was taken at the same time of a couple or if it was pieced together through thousands of photos taken in those twenty days.  Regardless, I found it interestingly enough to share and put my thoughts on it.

What do you think about it?

The funny thing to me is that music artists cry about the fact that making music is unprofitable.  Some may even give up making music.  Sure, piracy is bad but don’t musicians do it for the love and talent?  If your music is highly downloaded, it should be a positive no matter what because you will gain celebrity status as well as have more exposure.  Now, I’m not in the music industry but I would think these record labels have cash and will pay for talent.  At the same time, what is unprofitable?  These days with the economy being in a recession, its obvious that “unprofitable” does not mean making no profit.  It just means less profit to the greedy bastards on top.  Even at my company, which expects us to grow our sales by 40% in profit is stunting our growth with these unattainable goals.

Now, here’s my recommendation for all aspiring music artists that feel they should stop making music because its unprofitable.  Get yourself a marketing manager that can help sell… You, the product.  Creating your music is just your avenue outlet to getting a message out to the masses.  Once your in the public eye, you are able to sell tickets for your concerts or merchandise related to your music.  If your talented enough or if your producing music worthwhile, people will pay for your stuff and go to your shows.

I swear, the reason for so much downloading of music, movies and software out there is because there is a ton of crap out there.  Why would I pay for a full album if I know there is only one song I like?  Same goes for movies, trailers make them more appealing then they really are and sometimes, its just not worth the price of admission.  Software is another thing; I understand the need to release a new version but sometimes, it really is not all that worthwhile to pay for minor upgrades from version to version.

Now go check out this list of music worth buying.

I guess people really don’t know much about schemes but honestly, can you trust a company that will basically send you an envelope for you to put your jewelry in and then pay you on what they determine the value of the items?  I guess most logical thinking would be that if you had anything of value, you would already know and probably take it to a real jeweler to get it appraised.  Unless you are super lazy to even do that.  Then it is just your own damn fault.  However, I still just can’t stand how a company like Cash4Gold can continue to operate.

How much money is Cash4Gold making?  Must be quite a buck for them to afford some advertisement time during the Super Bowl.  Let’s not fall victim to stupid ads like this, and if your going to do something meaningful, go donate to charity.  Why let this company profit???

Anyways, you can find it here at Cubeecraft.com and this website also has a whole bunch of ther craft art characters you will be able to print and build.  I have also included the Obama figure for you to download in case it becomes a special limited edition which isn’t available any more such as the John McCain cubeecraft rendition.

Have fun!

Click on the picture to see it in full size and find out why the funnel effect is so important to disrupting and causing traffic slowdown.  I think we should really investigate how to apprehend that first intial car who caused this entire slowdown on the freeway.  And if the freeway is prone to this type of activity, is there any project planning by our lovely city, state or federal council to prevent this from happening?  Seriously, one car exiting last minute can cause such ruckus?  Have we not advanced far enough to at least defy gravity and beat some other laws of physics.

Instead, I have to sit in my car peering to my left or right to see what IS exactly going on?!?  At times, I wonder if a car is engulfed in flames therefore we are all slowing down to watch a trapped driver inside.  Just kidding.  But seriously, I hate and loathe traffic and feel that there has got to be a better solution to this.  If not, lets all just stone the driver of the first car who exited last minute because of their dumb ignorance for not knowing which exit to take.

Let look forward to a great 2009! Lets be optimistic in a time where so much pessimism is around us.

Trouble staying awake at work

People may perceive me as lazy and unwilling to wake upI, but little do they know that I am just not a morning person.  In the morning, I feel lazy and easily distracted to the point I am unable to concentrate.  The antidote and recommendation is that I need more sleep; at least 8 hours a night.  The difficult part is trying to sleep early but just unable to shut my brain off and fall into deep sleep early.  I feel wide awake at the hours of 10 PM and even more so.  I typically will not feel tired until 2 or 3 AM.  This is not normal, or as society would want us to be because business hours are from 7 to 8 AM to 5 to 6 PM.  If you experience the same problem, you may be suffering from a disease known as delayed sleep-phase syndrome or DSPS.

After researching the web on how to remedy my sleeping patterns or how to sleep earlier to wake up in the morning to feel energized, I found out about DSPS.  The easy part is understanding the problem, but now, the hard part is how in the world can I use this information to help me?  I have tried numerous methods such as getting to bed early, but I still lie in bed wide awake until the wee hours of the night.  I have also tried tiring myself out, such as exercising at night to burn out some of that energy.  It worked for awhile but once my body adjusted to the workout, I felt even more energized at night.  Another method is to get by with 5 or less hours of sleep and the next night, I would sleep early.  That ended up with me being in bed by 7 PM, missing dinner and waking up a little bit past mid-night and then falling asleep again at 4 or 5 AM.  The most vicious part about this cycle is, even when I am able to adjust by the end of the week, when the weekend rolls around I revert back to old habits.  Thus starting another week of either tiring myself out, struggles to sleep early end up tossing and turning or flat out being tired from lack of sleep.

I am probably at fault because I never disciplined myself to sleep earlier when I was younger.  Also, late night cram sessions for finals during college did not help either.  Staying up late and partying did not help.

Most jobs or careers have us waking up early to get to the office by 8 AM.  That in itself is the most difficult part.  What are some careers out there that gives me flexible hours with a good potential?  If you think of any, please share.  Hopefully some of you may feel my pain and may have overcome DSPS, please share your experience.  If you just found out about this from my article, glad to have helped.

As Al Bundy once said, every man deserves a real toilet and that toilet is a Ferguson. But for those that cannot have a Ferguson the quoted “King of Toilets”; you can make your normal average day to day toilet just as easily accessible and functional with this Self Lifting Toilet Seat. I am sure I always had an idea for this in the past since as men, we have all grown accustom to some woman telling us we need to put the toilet seat down after lifting it up. And how many of us are just as guilty of just pissing right into the bowl with the toilet seat down?

*I’ll raise my hand*

So an episode of ‘How I Met Your Mother’ showed Barney’s bachelor pad (character played by Neil Patrick Harris of Dougie Howser fame). Barney had a Self Lifting Toilet Seat! It got me in awe… something so simple and all it really required is just a spring to make it work. Course, I had to own it and now I have found it on the internet.

Take a look; this is a business opportunity GOLD MINE! They come manufactured straight from China and guess what; I agree with the product description. This CAN keep public Men’s Rooms much cleaner.

Here’s the link to the manufacturer below (please note that clicking on the link will be opened in a new window or in a tab).

http://www.alibaba.com/catalog/11060766/Seat_UP_Self_Lifting_Toilet_Seat.html

I am actually not attending this expo but did get a few snap shots of some of the models on display for this expo. Hope you enjoy all the pictures. Click each thumbnail for the full size image:

I recently watched a movie called ‘Flakes’, it is a comedy love story trying to over come all odds.  Go rent it, its a pretty good movie.  I found the most interesting part of the movie was the business concept on a breakfast store serving ONLY cereal.  So simple yet how come there aren’t franchises yet?  This is the next business opportunity that could explode like what Starbucks did for coffee.  Coffee was something you could have prepared to drink at home, at the office or picked up at any mom & pop donut store.  Starbucks took coffee to the next level; offering multitude of choices and alternatives.  From cappuccinos, lattes, frappacinos to now even iced tea varieties.  The pure convenience of having coffee anytime of day to any where you live and marketing it as the trendy thing to do became a phenomenal money maker.  No more is coffee constrained for the morning or the typical sleep depraved coffee fanatic.  It is available to all!  Worse of all, coffee is not even supposed to be healthy for you.

At least cereal has nutritional value being that fiber is an essential part to a healthy food diet.  Same as having breakfast.  Instead of coffee, have cereal!  Come by the local Flakes store.  A cereal novelty breakfast store can really catch on.  With the right business model, it can definitely take off.  Cereal doesn’t need to be a private affair in your own apartment any more.  You can have cereal can be cool!  Think of all the Gen X and Gen Y people now working, not eating breakfast, downing coffee – what they lack is cereal!  Plus, there is that nostalgic factor in it.  What’s your favorite cereal?  Cap’N'Crunch?  Apple Jack’s?  Coco Crisp?  I for one grew up on this and remember watching Saturday morning cartoons eating a bowl of Cookie Crisps.  I remember searching for the hidden toy inside the cereal box, do you?

As a business model, if marketed right, targeting the right demographics and located at the right area, it can definitely work.  Consider this, if you can pay for $5.00 coffee from Starbucks, couldn’t you spend $5.00 on a bowl of cereal.  I can even make it fancy for you, mixing two types of cereals and give it a special name so you feel the love.  So if you did miss breakfast, head on over to your local Flakes! (It does not exist, but it should!)