My Incredibly Smart Cats

To the left you can see one of my incredibly smart cats named Silly Rocket Girl. It is a long story how she got this name, and if you want to hear it, respond to this blog and I will tell it to you.



Click on the photo to see it really big!!



One night recently Silly Girl stood over by the bathroom door and meowed to get into the bathroom. At least that is what my wife and I thought she was doing. So I stopped what I was doing and got up out of my chair to let her in the bathroom. But as I opened the bathroom door, she scurried away and.... ran over and jumped up into my chair that I had just been sitting in. She never really wanted to go into the bathroom at all. She just wanted me to get up out of my chair so she could sit there. When I realized I had been outsmarted by a cat, I called it an evening and went off to bed, leaving a very happy and satisfied Silly Girl in possession of the chair. Now if this is not a proof of superior intelligence in a cat, I really do not know what is.



Even as I type this very blog, I am having to sit on the very edge of my computer chair because Silly Girl is taking up 3/4 of the chair and sleeping there. She did let me move her ever so slightly so I could at least sit down. I guess you might say that she, along with all our other cats, is spoiled. But when she is so smart, I hate to think what she might do if I make her move.

Sincerely,
David A. Youngs

Home Business?? Home FRAUDS!!

How many of you are literally being bombarded by "opportunities" to go into businesses that you can run from home? If you are like me, your spam filter is working overtime just to keep all these "opportunities" from drowning you in outrageous schemes. Now I am sure that some of these business plans must be legitimate, but from where I sit, (with a cat satisfactorily resting in my arms) a lot of these "opportunities" are basically offering you the great chance to send all your money off to somebody else.

Lately I have been approached repeated online with the concept of "free information." Just put your email address and your name in the appropriate boxes and free information will immediately be mailed or emailed to you. This sounds legitimate. After all, who would not want to actually check out a supposed opportunities before "investing" in them with your time and money -- especially your money. So I put in my name and my email address and then what happens?

Up pops a little dialog page asking for my credit card numbers. Why? Who needs your credit card information to send you FREE stuff? Because you have to pay for the "free" information. Suddenly it is explained that you are only paying initially for the small shipping charge required to send you the free information.

Whatever you do, DO NOT put your credit card information in the boxes. At least not until you read ALL the fine print that they are hoping you will overlook. Most of the time, if you take enough time to read everything, you will find that by filling in the boxes you do get the "free information" AND if you do not cancel, you are also agreeing to a significant monthly charge on your credit card forever. Or until you get tired of paying and paying for that little bit of free information.

Look folks, this is the same scam that sends you a check by snail mail. But if you read the back of the check you discover that if you sign and deposit the check, by affixing your signature to the check, suddenly you have agreed to change your telephone long distance provider, or just signed yourself up for a new life insurance policy which costs only $45 a month, or any number of other things you would not want nor agree to.

My advice to you is DO NOT sign nor deposit the check. This little check (and believe me, compared to the future significant hit to your bank account it is a little check) may be one of the most expensive things you have ever signed.

When the Lottery first came to California and you could buy and scratch off lottery tickets, some bright person in the place where I worked decided that it would be a brilliant idea if everybody pooled their money together and bought a hundred tickets. They were convinced that at least some of the 100 tickets would be winners, and all the people who pooled their money together would share in the winnings. They looked at me as if I was a fool for not reaching deep into my pocket and pulling out lots of green pieces of paper with dead presidents on them.

What happened? They bought one hundred tickets for one dollar each. Out of one hundred scratch off lottery tickets they WON.... about $55. But rather than take the "winnings" they felt inspired to "reinvest" their money and buy 55 more tickets. When they scratched them all, they WON again.... about $26. Well, that did not seem like very much so they bought 26 more tickets and began scratching in earnest again. Again they won... about $14 which they again reinvested in more tickets. I am not sure of all the exact details, but after buying more tickets, scratching them off and winning less, etc., eventually they had two or three tickets and finally they did not win anything. So they had successfully parleyed the initial investment of $100 into a grand winning total of zero dollars.

And yet they were elated. They all told me that they were winners, and I was a fool for not getting involved with this opportunity. When I saw where they were going I said, "well, if you give me $100, I will give you back $75 dollars. And I will continue to give you back 75% of whatever you want to give me. Then you can win at a higher rate!!"

To this they responded, "But you are not giving us the opportunity to win BIG. The scratch off lottery tickets can win up to $3000." Okay, I had to concede their point. But -- did THEY win $3000? NO!! They ended up with zero dollars. And I have found that this is what happens with most home businesses.

Not only do they initially cost money to "join the company" but you have to continue to "invest" your money every month to buy products, to pay for paperwork, to have access to your incredible $5000 web pages (which are exactly like everyone else's web pages except for one or two tiny details such as YOUR web page has YOUR name or associate number associated with it.) or to be a member with access to all the "training" provided. In the end, you spin your wheels, you invest all your time, effort and money, and what do you end up with?

Zero net dollars return. Well, just like my friends at work, you might get a diminishing return on your investment. And just like my friends, you can pretend that even though in the end you are broke you are a winner because you are in business for yourself, and just look at all the "profit" you made. You have got web pages! And own a business, and... are more broke than ever.

So, why do people keep falling for this fraud? Because deep down inside we would all like for it to be true that we can get something for nothing with practically no effort on our part. Yes, it would be nice to earn a gazillion dollars on the web. And there are those who have -- or at least they tell us they have and if we will just sign up, they will send us the free information that will teach us how we too can do it. Just put your credit card information right here in these little boxes. Most of the people offering to show you how to earn a lot of money are earning most of their money by hoaxing you into sending them yours.

I can't stop you. Go ahead... send them your money. I just wish you would send it to me instead. Hey, I will give you $75 return for every $100 you send me. And I will guarantee that. Maybe I will even buy you a lottery ticket from time to time, as a bonus. So... what IS your credit card number any way. Go ahead. Send it to me. You will be enrolled in a special class all by yourself called "the hidden reality about home businesses" And the best part is that you can enroll in this class just as long as you want, and every month you will learn even more. What are you waiting for? Enroll today.

Sincerely,

David A. Youngs

Holidays and Health? No WAY!!!

Look at this picture (to the left) What do you see? I mean besides me sticking my hand out the window which makes my arm and hand foreshortened like some superhero such as Batman or Superman in a comic book. If you look very closely, behind me you see my wife eating potato chips.

Click on the picture to see it BIG!! Something was hanging down from the visor. I am not sure what it was.

Do you have the same problem that I do? During the end of the year holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas) I have a very hard time not over eating. This is especially true when family reunions happen during this time and every one is cooking up a storm. Who wants to not eat delicious food?

Then there are those Christmas parties. Oh yeah. I took pictures of just one Christmas program that I went to at our church school. When you get through reading this blog, head on over to http://pixcited.com/ and you can see them there under the Christmas Program directory. Well, it might be there pretty soon. From the tables heavily laden with deserts, you would think that nobody cared anything about any body's health. I mean there were brownies, divinity, cookies, pies, cakes, chocolate candies, and even a gingerbread house. I did not think anyone would eat the gingerbread house, but I was wrong. After the Christmas program all the teenagers came off the stage and they were HUNGRY. So among other things, they attacked the gingerbread house and ate it all up. It was an amazing sight to behold.

But I helped a considerable portion of all the goodies disappear. I had a big glass of hot apple cider, some brownies, a piece of chocolate with nuts in it, a slice of pumpkin pie and a few cookies. Somehow, my stomach felt a bit uneasy on the drive home and since I had eaten so much sugar laced food, we stopped and bought a couple of hamburgers.

You may not have guessed this, but... I haven't lost any weight. And I don't even wonder why that is. The only good news I can report is that I haven't gained any weight either. At least I don't think I have. But... my pants are getting awfully tight again, and I don't want to buy any more larger pants. Really. I am trying to go the other way. I am trying, but not succeeding very well.

I notice I haven't published anything new in a long time. I am just about to give up trying to get healthy and just start enjoying life. I know that is really going to disappoint my doctor as he keeps hoping I will actually lose some weight. That is a nice thought, but it looks like it isn't going to happen. Hmmm. Some people have been telling me about some amazing weight loss assistant goodies that help to control appetite. Maybe I will try some of these.

Any way, notice is hereby given that this blog is going to be about more then just health. It is going to be more of a "what I did today" sort of thing. Oh, and I might just mention some of my views on things that happen too. Hope you enjoy the change.



Sincerely,

David

Digital Photography can Change your Life

Yeah, that is me in the picture to the left. You can see that one of my eyebrow hairs has grown long and curls up funny. And I can see that maybe I should trim the little hairs growing inside my nose.... I did not know my eyes were so bloodshot.



Click on the picture to see it full size.




I just love digital photography. I remember back in the early 70's I took a photography class at college. Most of the time was spent teaching us how to develop our film properly and how to make good prints. Oh wow, you won't believe how tedious all that was.




Since the class had a flat rate no matter how much film you shot and developed (I think they changed that after I took the class) I bought a bulk roll of 50 feet of film and loaded up my own 35 mm film cartridges over and over. I must have taken and developed 2000 photos during that quarter. I figured that the more I took, the more I would have. Brilliant huh? I learned tons of stuff like f-stop settings, over and under exposing your film, and how very important it is to have the camera in focus. And I spent days and days in the dark room developing all that film.



Fast forward to the present. My wife never took any photography classes. I bought a digital camera and she never even read the manual. She just grabbed the camera and started shooting thousands and thousands of pictures. If something catches her fancy, out comes the camera and click... we have a digital photograph. Essentially, she is learning by doing.



Yes, we have had a lot of blurry photographs that were either out of focus or the camera moved during the taking of the picture, but we also have a ton of really incredible photographs. You can see some of them over at http://pixcited.com/ but be forewarned, we put up the good, the bad and the ugly because I was experiencing the effects of a virus on my computer. So we are sort of using the site to back up our photographs.


There are no fancy index pages, just an index made by the server and if you go there, you have to be patient because the pictures are HUGE. In fact, John Bond who is hosting my site on his rented dedicated server got in trouble with his server host because we really hogged the bandwidth putting them all up there in a hurry. We are in the process of deleting the blurry ones and the bad ones, and renaming all the remaining good ones with more descriptive names. Then I will probably reduce them in size and eventually create some index thumbnail web pages. Maybe.... Meanwhile, John is amusing himself by "improving" our pictures using the software program PhotoShop. If you need any pictures doctored or fixed, John Bond is the man for you. He is a genuine PhotoShop genius.




Recently, I bought a tripod for my wife because she has a challenge keeping the camera still as she depresses the big button that takes pictures. Now the quality of pictures should get even better. And the tripod was less than $10. No kidding.




And the best part is, I don't have to spend days in the dark room developing film. There is NO FILM!! And we can see the results instantly!!




In my next blog, I will tell you one of the dangers of digital photography. Let me give you a little hint in advance. BACK UP your photos.

Just two days ago we figured out how to take movies with our digital camera!! Now that is something that I could NEVER do back in the days of film. Not with an inexpensive 35 mm camera any way. I just love digital photography, don't you?

Keep on shooting,
David A. Youngs