July 15, 2005
Laser Eye Surgery $499
Laser Eye Surgery $499 - A Good Idea?
I've had problems with my right eye since birth. I suffer from both a cataract and astigmatism in this eye. Lately, I have been considering laser eye surgery and have seen a number of deals. The question I am asking myself is $499 laser eye surgery seems kind of cheap and is there a risk involved with a cheaper service? I've read a lot of reports stating that when LASIK (Laser-Assisted In Situ Keratomileusis) centers offer laser eye surgery for $499 to $999 per eye, they are usually cutting corners.
Some of the problems with discounted laser eye surgery are inaccurate eye measurements, lack of standard eye sterilization techniques, inferior equipment and worst of all, an inexperienced surgeon. The reports also state that you should be skeptical of any LASIK surgery that costs less than $1,600 per eye.
I actually saw a good comparison on a reputable laser eye surgery site. It states that your eye is connected to your brain and most sane people would not go out and look for a discount brain surgeon. This makes perfect sense, why would you want to put your eye sight at risk in order to save a few thousand dollars. If there is one sense you don't want to mess with it is your sight. I don't think anybody would forgive themselves if they became blind due cheap LASIK surgery.
The nice thing about writing this entry is I have now convinced myself that laser eye surgery $499 is not for me. I will spend more to make sure i don't put my sight at risk.
Posted by Dogger at 04:33 PM | Comments (0)
July 11, 2005
Green Card Lotary - A Good Idea?
In one of my previous blogs titles Green Card Lottery, I described the basics behind the diversity lottery. Each year, 50,000 foreigners are granted legal entry into the United States as a result of this government sponsored event. There are 2 basic requirements that one needs to meet in order to enter the Green Card Lottery. First, the applicant must come from a country that has not sent more than 50,000 immigrants to the U.S. over the past 5 years. Second, the applicant has to have the equivalent of a high school education or meet certain training requirements.
The requirements seem simple enough. The real question is should the U.S. continue with this program in light of how the world has changed over the past few years. I'm not necessarily talking about terrorism because I would hope that sufficient screening and background verification is performed prior to granting permanent resident status to any foreigner. What I'm getting it is isn't the United States diverse enough right now? The Green Card Lotary is officially called the diversity lottery and is meant to guarantee that the U.S. remains diverse. Fundamentally this sounds like a good idea, I mean the U.S. is a melting pot and was built by a dynamic group of people. I think you would be hard pressed to go to any large city and not find a large mixture of ethnic and cultural groups. I don't know this for a fact but I would bet that the United States is the most ethnically diverse country in the world. Assuming this is true, why then do we find it necessary to have a green card lotary? Do we really need to make an already diverse country more diverse? Maybe this wouldn't be such a bad idea if we were better at controlling illegal immigration. When you add up both the legal and illegal immigrants, there are most likely hundreds of thousands of people coming to the United States to live each year. I think this within itself helps make the United States diverse and I believe that if the Green Card Lotary were to disappear tomorrow, the U.S. would still be as diverse as ever.
Posted by Dogger at 10:48 PM | Comments (13)
June 29, 2005
First Class Upgrade
Continental Airlines Elite Upgrade
I was in Boston this past weekend with my family for a good friends wedding. While we were eager to see our friend get married, we absolutely dreaded the thought of flying 2,700 miles with our two kids. When we moved to Los Angeles, our flight from Washington D.C. to L.A. was absolute hell. Our 2 year old cried almost the entire flight and the people sitting near us wanted to kill us. This was a little more than 3 months ago so there was no reason for Samantha to change her behavior in such a short period of time.
We decided to take Continental Airlines from L.A. to Boston with a connection in Cleveland. The reason we chose Continental was because I have Elite status which gives us the slight possibility of being upgraded to first class.
I don't necessarily fly a lot but I used to manage some large affiliate programs, of which, Continental was an affiliate. As a token of their appreciation they extended me Elite status and also gave me access to the President's Club which is their VIP lounge at the airport.
To make a long story short, the flight out was full so no upgrade for my family. Unfortunately, my kids acted exactly as we expected. My younger daughter didn't want to sit still for a minute and kept kicking the chair in front of us. I received a number of angry glares from the guy sitting there. The best is when the people around you tell you that your kids have strong lungs.
A strange thing happened on the flight back, however. We received two upgrades from Boston and Cleveland and one first class upgrade from Cleveland to L.A. Now for those of you familiar with this Continental route, it is virtually impossible to get bumped up to first class from Cleveland to L.A. because this is a very busy route. On this day, however, the frequent flyer gods were favoring us. Not only did we get to annoy the other people who were sitting in first class, but my kids actually behaved better. The seats are more comfortable and there is much more leg-room so my youngest daughter had more room to move. This got me to thinking, if I buy a nicer, bigger car, will they stop screaming while I'm driving? If I buy a bigger, nicer house, will they behave better at dinner? Good questions, unfortunately, no money to test out my theory. For now I'll have to stick to the first class upgrade on Continental Airlines.
Posted by Dogger at 09:28 PM | Comments (1)
The Green Card Lottery
Green Card Lotary
I was just looking for the Permanent Resident Alien Address Update Form for my wife when I came across some interesting info regarding the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program or Green Card Lotary. Apparently, each year the U.S. Government makes 50,000 permanent resident visas available to persons from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States. I'm not going to get into whether or not the Green Card Lotary is a good idea, I'm just going to present the facts.
The annual Green Card Lottery program makes permanent residence visas available to people who meet certain requirements. Applicants for Diversity Visas are chosen by a computer-generated random lottery drawing. The Green Cards, however, are distributed among six geographic regions. The most visas go to regions with lower rates of immigration while no green cards are issued to citizens of countries that have sent more than 50,000 immigrants to the United States in the last five years. Within each geographic region, no single country can receive more than 7% of the available Green Cards for any given year.
For the 2006 Green Card Lotary, the following Countries were not allowed to participate (most of these are no-brainers):
Canada, China (mainland-born), Colombia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Pakistan, Philippines, Russia, South Korea, United Kingdom (except Northern Ireland) and its dependent territories, and Vietnam.
The nice thing about this Green Card Lotary is the fact that it is free. You can apply at the official Diversity Lottery site, however, applications for 2006 are no longer being accepted.
From what I have read there are only 2 real requirements in order to participate in the Green Card Lotary. The first is that you come from a qualifying country and second is that meet either the education or training requirement. For the education requirement the person applying must have either a high school education or its equivalent. If you want to participate in the Green Card Lotary but you cannot meet the education requirment, you can apply using the training requirement. This calls for the person to have at least two years of work experience within an occupation that requires at least two years of training or experience in order to perform the job (this is a little confusing if you ask me). The U.S. Department of Labor's O*Net database is used to determine qualifying work experience.
Posted by Dogger at 03:35 PM | Comments (6)
June 21, 2005
Game 6 Pistons - Spurs
It's Do or Die for the Pistons
Wow what a game! After a heartbreaking loss in Game 5 of the 2005 NBA championship, the Detroit Pistons were able to go into San Antonio and win a game. The amazing thing is that the Pistons had not won a game in San Antonio in almost ten years and the Spurs had only lost a few games at home all year.
The San Antonio Spurs didn't do themselves any favors by scheduling the victory parade for this coming Thursday. This was definitely locker room material and gave the Detroit Pistons some extra incentive to win.
The score was close the entire game with both teams going up by a few points throughout the first three quarters. The Detroit Pistons were in front for the majority of the final quarter going up by as many as 7 points with a few minutes left. San Antonio made a small run but Detroit was too much and wound up winning by 9 points. Rasheed Wallace and Richard Hamilton had huge games for the Pistons. Rasheed played the last 5 minutes with 5 fouls and he turned out to be the difference in the game.
Now its on to game 7 which I believe they said is the first game 7 in the NBA in 7 years and only the second game 7 in the last 17 years. Interesting note: The home team had won each of the first 4 games before the Spurs were able to break serve in Game 5.
Stay tuned for an exciting Game 7 between the Spurs and the Pistons. We'll see which team puts on the 2005 NBA Championship Hat.
Posted by Dogger at 11:00 PM | Comments (0)
June 19, 2005
Pistons Spurs Game 5
Will the Home Team Prevail Again?
Game five of the 2005 NBA Championship between the Detroit Pistons and San Antonio Spurs is underway. The two teams took Saturday off in order to have the showdown on Fathers Day. It will be interesting to see if the Spurs can be the first team in this series to win on the road.
San Antonio started strong and got off to a 4-0 lead but the Pistons scored 8 stright points to grab a 8-4. Detroit streched the lead to 7 points with 6 minutes left so the Spurs were forced to take a time out. Greg Popovich made some adjustments and with 4:28 left in the first quarter the Pistons lead is down to 4 points.
Oh the joy of Tivo, my wife insisted that I give my daughters a bath so I've been gone for 30 minutes but haven't missed a second of the game. I've actually had tivo for 5 years but have never really liked recording sports. I just feel that sports can only be watched live (if possible). Any way back to the game.
It's now the second quarter and the Pistons lead by 4 points with 11:18 left. You can tell the Spurs are a little uptight by the fact that Tim Duncan just received a technical foul. Another interesting tidbit is that Ben Wallace is 4 for 4 from the free throw line. Why is this intersting, simply because the guy shoots 48% from the line.
Well there is 8:29 left in the second quarter and the momentum has shifted. The San Antonio Spurs are now winning by 4 points. Actually, the lead is not at 9 point with 6:28 left, the Pistons can't buy a basket. Detroit has now gone on a 6 - 0 run and only trails by 3 points. The Spurs have called a timeout to kill the Pistons momentum. Let's see if it worked. Duncan just took an awful shot that resulted in an airball but the Pistons were called for an offensive foul so the score remains 38-35. Ben Wallace has come back down to earth after shooting an airball from the free throw line. Well, the first half just ended and we are all tied up at 42. Finally a game that will actually have an exciting second half. Unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to watch it live. Time to go back upstairs and read the kids a story.
Posted by Dogger at 08:25 PM | Comments (0)
June 16, 2005
Balding No Big Deal
Spray on Hair, What a Concept?
I have to admit that I am balding. I started losing my hair on top around 7 years ago. I'm fully aware that there are numerous treatments available, from laser hair replacement to Rogaine. I think these are good options for a lot of men and women who are losing their hair but I have never given them much thought. I guess my thinking is that I'm married with kids so I'm not really trying to impress anyone.
Lately, however, I've been noticing my hair loss a little more. That bald spot seems to be getting bigger and bigger each time I look. I still don't think that I'm at a point where I would actually be willing to spend the money on laser hair replacement and I definitely would never ever consider a hair peace, but I am starting to notice my problem a little bit more.
So here comes the inspiration behind this post. I was at the barber yesterday for my $25 haircut (which is $15 more than I ever had to spend on a haircut before I moved to Santa Monica) when my barber asked me a question. He asked if I wanted him to use some spray on hair on me. I guess I have been living in a shell because I had no clue what he meant. He showed me the can and explained how it works. I came to the conclusion that it is spray paint for your head. I politely declined and proudly said that my bald spot doesn't bother me. Well him being the intelligent barber he is, said "yeh, right". I'm sure he's heard that response thousands of times before. He said, come one try it, you won't regret it. At this point I felt like Mikey and remembered back to my childhood how Mikey actually did like the cereal after he tried it. He explained that it would wash off with my next shower so I said, ok, go ahead. He sprayed it on and pointed the mirror at the top of my head. To my disbelief the bald spot was gone. I thought, wow, thats really cool. It's instant hair in a can.
I paid the barber and thanked him. As I walked out the door he said just make sure you don't touch your head too much because you will get the spray on your hands. I said don't worry and left. The true test was about to happen, would anybody notice the difference. I'll make a long story short by saying that the only person that did notice only did so after I told her what had happened, and that person happened to be my wife. Now I am a cynical person so if a friend of mine sprayed hair on his head I would give him an earful. I work with cynical people and I didn't receive one comment. This makes me assume that nobody even noticed that I had suddenly "grown" hair. Everyone is used to the bald spot so why should they look and see if anything is suddenly different. I mean if my own wife didn't notice then why would I do this again. Even worse, can you imagine spraying this stuff on your head, going out to a bar and picking up a girl, only to have your "hair" stain her pillow.
I guess what I'm getting at is hair in a can is not for me. I can live with my bald spot and the day I can no longer deal with it, I'll spend the money on laser hair replacement or some other treatment. And yes, my shower water turned black.
Posted by Dogger at 11:24 PM | Comments (0)
NBA Home Court Advantage
I'm sitting here watching game four of the NBA championship between the Pistons and the Spurs and I can't believe what I'm seeing. There are about 8 minutes left in the game and the Piston are up by 24 points. At this point the game is all but over. I mean, I know it's the NBA, but 24 nobody loses a 24 point lead with 8 minutes left. San Antonio is still playing their starters (which I think is stupid because of the risk of injury in a game that is out of reach) probably because it is the finals and not just another game. Update --- the lead is down to 20 with 6:56 left.
I think it is amazing how much the home court means in the NBA. If you look at games 1 and 2, the Spurs pretty much blew Detroit out. Games 3 and 4 have had the same result, except, Detroit has been the beneficiary of playing at home. How can it be that the home court advantage means so much to professional athletes. I mean these guys are getting paid millions of dollars to perform at their best level night after night, regardless of where the game is being played. How can the San Antonio Spurs play so well at home and so lousy on the road? The same goes for the Detroit Pistons. Update --- the lead is back up to 24 with 3:20 left and the Pistons have begun to empty their bench.
Game five of the NBA championship is in Detroit so according to this trend, Detroit should win. The bad news for Detroit fans is that if they are going to repeat as NBA champions, they need to win one on the road because games 6 and 7 (if necessary)are in San Antonio. The Pistons proved last year they can win on the road when they need to. They didn't have the advantage last year but it didn't seem to matter. Hopefully for them, they will be able to steal one on the road and repeat as champions although I wouldn't put my order in quite yet for my Pistons championship jersey. Final update --- Detroit Pistons 102, San Antonio Spurs 71.... that my friends is what you call a blow out.
Posted by Dogger at 10:35 PM | Comments (1)
June 15, 2005
Home Protection
Is a Taser Really Safer?
Let me start off by saying that I do not own a weapon. I have young children and the thought of an accident scares me to death. My house does have a somewhat primative security system but I have always been somewhat hesitant about the effectiveness of home security systems. After all, once the robber is in the house, the beeping security system won't stop him from harming your family. I heard about tasers a while back and thought that purchasing one may be a good way to have a little peace-of-mind. After all, I do live in Los Angeles, ok Santa Monica, but you never know. Most tasers cost between $400 to $1000 and deliver about 50,000 volts. A taser works by temporarily screwing up the electrical signals that help the brain communicate with the rest of the body. After all, if your brain cannot tell your legs that you want to run, you can't run.
Because I had not heard a lot of negative things regarding tasers, I just assumed it was a much safer alternative. Lately, however, there have been a number of news segments and newspaper articles talking about how these stun guns are either causing deaths or have been a contributing factor in a number of deaths. I guess this got me thinking about the viability of the taser versus a conventional weapon. Is a taser any safer? It probably depends on the situation. I don't think there have been a lot of studies done on the effects of 50,000 volts on young children and I can't recall hearing about any taser accidents involving young kids but I'm sure most parents would not volunteer their kids to partake in this kind of a study. At the same time, who hasn't heard about some poor child who happened to come across a loaded weapon and started playing with it like a toy.
I think the safety issue boils down to personal preferences and beliefs. I have always feared firearms and therefore would never think of purchasing one. At the same time I don't have any preconceived beliefs or biases against a stun gun because there isn't a lot of negative hype surrounding them. If the taser continues to receive bad press, whether justified or not, I will probably end up having the same bias against them as I do for firearms. Until that happens, however, I might give the taser a try. I think the home security system along with an air taser might do the trick. If I hear the security system alarm go off I can boldly tell the intruder that I am armed. I hope I never have to use it but at least I know that I have the taser and this gives me the peace-of-mind I need.
Posted by Dogger at 03:24 PM | Comments (0)
June 03, 2005
Verizon DSL Problem - No IP Address
Verizon DSL Problem - No IP Address
I recently woke up one day to find out that my Verizon DSL service was not working. Nothing had changed on my computer that I was aware of and I ran both a virus and spyware scan and both came up negative. The problem I was having was that my DSL modem (Westell Versalink)was not able to resolve an IP adress. It was simply 0.0.0.0.
I'll be the first to admit that I am not technically gifted, however, I am pretty good at troubleshooting a problem. You may ask why not just call Verizon technical support, but I will get to that in a second. I could list all the things I tried but I don't want to bore you. Trust me when I tell you that I tried all the tricks in the book (except for the one that actually fixed the issue). It was becoming obvious that I wasn't going to be able to fix the problem myself so I had no choice but to call the dreaded technical support.
First, you have to deal with the annoying automated voice system. I realize that companies save money using these systems but do they understand how much people hate using these...... Next, you have to go through the usual bs of repeating your information to a live person (when you finally get one) even though you have already entered it using your phone. Once you finally get somebody to help you they ask if you tried turning off your modem, blah blah blah. To make a long story short (after a 45 minute call), the first person I spoke with wasn't able to resolve my problem so they told me they would run a few tests on my line and get back to me.
The next day I when I get home there is an automated message on my answering machine telling me that the problem has been resolved and that the ticket has been closed. I think to myself, wow, they fixed the IP problem within a day. I go upstairs, turn on the computer, and guess what, same problem. I call back Verizon DSL support and go through the same routine to get to a live person. They basically tell me to try the same things the first person told me to do (check the filters, disconnect the modem, turn off the computer) and then ask me to go into the command prompt and run ipconfig/all, ipconfig /release and ipconfig /renew. I plead with the women telling her I tried this before and that it isn't going to help. Sure enough, I run the tests just to humor her and I continue to have the same problem. After about an hour, she recommneds that I go out and buy a new ethernet card because it is definitely a hardware problem and that this will solve my problem.
I was sure that a new card wasn't going to fix the IP issue but I was desperate. I went to Circuit City after work and picked up a new ethernet card making sure it was a different brand then my original one in order to ensure that I wouldn't have any driver conflicts. Guess what happened? I installed the new card and continued to have the same issue. I called back Verizon DSL support (now I'm mad because I have no internet connection plus I just spent $30 on a card I didn't need) to vent my frustration. After an hour on the phone, the technical support person told me there was nothing further they could do and that my only option would be to cancel my DSL service.
After I hung up the phone (a total of over 4 hours if you add up all the calls to Verizon DSL support) the dim lightbulb in my head finally went off. I thought to myself that I couldn't have been the only person to have had this problem. I would turn to Google for my answer. I typed in "no ip problem verizon dsl" and quickly realized that there were others who have had the same problem. After clicking on a few posts, I finally found my answer. Here is the solution in case you suffer from the same problem, by the way, I am running XP.
Go to start, control panel, adminitrative tools and services. Now, find the DHCP Client option. Right click on it and hit Properties. You can select start under Service Status and that should get you on the internet. It is important to remember that you need to have this going when you turn your computer on the next time so go to "startup type" and select "Automatic". The last thing you need to do is restart your box.
The solution seemed so easy and commonsense (granted I would not have thought of it but as I said, I'm not technically literate) that I have no idea why the people over at Verizon DSL did not suggest doing this. I definitely learned my lesson when it comes to technical phone support. Instead of spending hours upon hours on the phone, try searching for the problem first. In 9.9 out of ten cases I think you will find your solution.
Posted by Dogger at 02:59 PM | Comments (1)
May 29, 2005
Red Bull and Vodka
I've never really been a fan of energy drinks. I know they have been around for a while. I remember when I worked in Mexico for Allied Domecq, we started taking a look at Red Bull around 1998, at least I think it was Red Bull. Even back then I thought, who in the hell is going to drink this stuff. Well as time went on, I kind of forgot about the drink until about 2 years ago when somebody asked me if I had ever tried a Red Bull and Vodka? Not being a huge fan of Vodka (I'm a beer drinker) or Red Bull, my immediate response was no but being the sport I am, I thought I would give it a try.
It took my taste buds a few seconds to adjust but my initial thought was, damn, that's pretty good. Actually, it was very good. My only complaint was that it was expensive. A Red Bull and a top shelf vodka such as Grey Goose can cost you ten bucks. Multiply that by 6 or 7 drinks and it starts to add up quickly. Luckily, you don't need to use top shelf vodka in order for this mixture to taste good. I haven't stooped as low as Smirnoff, but I have found that Sky or Monopalowa work very well. Monopalowa is a Polish potato vodka that can be found at Trader Joes. It costs around $10 for a liter. The bottle isn't very pretty, but at the end of the day, who really cares. The thing that amazes me the most about Red Bull and Monopalowa is that I can have 7 or 8 drinks and I feel fine in the morning. I don't know if it's the mixture of the energy drink and the vodka, but it is rare that I can have that many mixed drinks and not feel like crap the next morning.
As much as one can try and sip a vodka - Red Bull, I have found it to be quite difficult. You see, they actually taste really good and go down very easy. That my friend is a recipe for disaster. You see, just because this drink doesn't give you a hangover doesn't mean it can't knock you on your ass. I think alcohol can effect different people in different ways. I have found that Vodka Red Bulls sneak up on me. I can be sitting back, enjoying a few drinks and then all of a sudden I get up to go to the bathroom and discover that I'm drunk. To be honest, it is kind of an obnoxious drunk. This is probably the result of the Red Bull. Of course, if you drink responsibly, this shouldn't happen. Unfortunately, I've never been a very responsible when it comes to Red Bull and Vodka.
Posted by Dogger at 11:28 PM | Comments (1)