Archive for June, 2010

Hurricane Alex – update

Hurricane Alex is in the western Gulf of Mexico and poised to make landfall on the northern coast of Mexico, just skirting south Texas later tonight.  A HURRICANE WARNING exists from Corpus Christi, Texas to as far south as Tampico, Mexico.

Although the storm is still a Category 1, forecasts suggest that the hurricane could intensify just before landfall, possibly gaining enough strength to develop into a Category 2 (96-110 mph winds) hurricane.  The good news for those living in south Texas is that Hurricane Alex is forecast to take a sharp turn to the west, keeping its impact on the continental U.S. to a minimum. Read more…

Hurricane Alex – South Texas / Northern Mexico

The National Hurricane Center has issued a HURRICANE WARNING for south Texas (Corpus Christi to Brownsville, TX) and the northern Mexican coastline.

As of right now the storm has passed over the Yucatan Peninsula and is currently gaining strength in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico.  It’s still technically a tropical storm, but the forecast has the storm becoming a hurricane by tomorrow and remaining a Category 1 hurricane when it makes landfall on Wednesday evening.

The good news for those people living in those areas is that the storm is not forecast to become a major hurricane.  Right now we’re looking at a maximum wind speed of around 90 mph on Wednesday, which keeps it in the Category 1 range (74-95 mph).

The bad news is that if the storm strikes just south of the U.S./Mexico border, the area from South Padre Island up to and including Corpus Christi could experience storm surge, with the damage diminishing the further north that you travel. Read more…

iRenew – A Marketing Review

Just recently I had the pleasure of seeing a new infomercial.

This time around a salesman was making a pitch for a product called iRenew.  iRenew is a bracelet that supposedly helps balance your body’s natural energy system, bringing everything in line and giving you more flexibility, strength and energy.

Is this a real, proven part of medical science, or are we looking at pseudoscience at best?

Then again, it’s not like alternative medicine and other artifacts haven’t been sold to the general public before.  Alternative medication is actually a huge industry.  The trick is sorting out the real from the scams.

Let’s take a look at the iRenew commercial and try to determine what is real and what is myth.

Here’s the full version of the current TV commercial:

iRenew TV commercial

That looked pretty neat, didn’t it? Read more…

Audible.com – A Marketing Review

Recently I’ve been seeing commercials for a company called Audible.com, an Amazon company.

What is Audible.com?

Like Amazon was originally known as being an online book store wa-a-a-a-a-y back in the day, Audible.com is an online audio book store.  You can search through thousands of books and download the audio files.  Then just sit back and relax or do whatever you do and just listen to the story.

What caught my attention was a recent TV commercial for the company.  I’ve seen this a few times now, so I know it wasn’t just a one time fluke.

Is it just me, or is this how the company believes that most people act these days?

Or perhaps I’m just out of touch with reality.

Let’s take a look and see how Audible.com presents itself in this TV commercial. Read more…

Summer Solstice 2010 and Recent Weather

Here we are again on the longest day of the year for those of us living in the northern hemisphere.

According to the astronomy news, here in Atlanta we had 15 hours and 23 minutes of daylight.  Tomorrow is forecast to be one second less of daylight.

As a comparison, my hometown of Detroit, Michigan had 16 hours and 26 minutes of daylight.  Orlando, Florida, my favorite vacation city, had 14 hours and 51 minutes of visible daylight.

One of the weirdest things is that even though the amount of daylight is now decreasing until late December, we’re still approaching our peak summertime temperatures.  It’s going to be scorching hot outside come mid to late July and early August.  Then again, we’ve already been experiencing some decent heat so far this year.

So how hot has it been outside?

Let’s take a look at some data. Read more…

New California License Plates

Believe it or not, but a recent came out telling a plan for new California license plates.

To help reduce the state’s massive financial deficit, one plan is to use digital license plates and have them show advertisements when the vehicle is stopped.

But there’s more to it than that!

In addition to being able to show advertisements, the plan mentions that the license plate could also be used to show traffic information and other things such as Amber Alerts.

I don’t know about you, but such a plan being promoted is downright frightening!

First of all, it should be illegal for the government or any other organization to force an advertisement on your property without your permission. Read more…

Top 10 Summer Movies

We may still be a few days from the first official day of summer, but here in Atlanta we’re being cooked by a heat wave and already seeing highs in the mid 90s.

The neighborhood swimming pools are busy, the local ice cream stand (yeah, just one.  Atlanta sucks.) is packed with customers, and the air is humid and stuffy.  Welcome to summer.

Here’s a listing of what I consider to be the ten best movies that symbolize events of the traditional summer break.

10)  Ernest Goes to Camp

What do you get when you combine wanna-be camp counselor Ernest and a bunch of juvenile delinquents attending a summer camp? Read more…

The A-Team (2010) – movie review

Over twenty-seven years ago The A-Team aired its first regular season episode on television.  The action-oriented series, made famous for its elaborate yet often predictable sequences that always involved the team getting captured and then having them construct some sort of vehicle or weapon to escape and defeat the bad guys, while also being on the run from the military, was a smash hit and lasted for five seasons.

And now, twenty-three years later, the movie adaptation for The A-Team finally hit the theaters.

After seeing the film, a movie that I’ve been following rumors to for nearly ten years now, hoping, wishing and praying that the movie would finally be made, couldn’t have been more disappointed.  I should have wished for the movie to have been made correctly!  My bad!

The movie was an utter waste.  It’s a waste of time for those who enjoy good movies, and what Hollywood produced was a complete insult to fans of the legendary TV show.

So was there anything good in the movie? Read more…

Florida-Project.com – Update & Future Plans – Summer 2010

My website Florida-Project.com has been growing by leaps and bounds since its creation back in 2008.

Since then, I’ve scanned and added hundreds of old and current Walt Disney World and Universal Orlando theme park guidemaps, dozens of vacation planning guides, and THOUSANDS of digital pictures.  The website is my personal dedication to fellow theme park lovers and those who want to know more about the history of the parks and rides.

And recently, I began editing and adding video clips of rides and attractions.  These clips include walking through line queues and recording first person P.O.V. on the rides themselves.  This is just the beginning as exclusive video content of vintage and extinct parts of Disney and Universal will (hopefully) start being added in the next 3-4 months.

Here’s where I stand right now with the content: Read more…

Book Review – Larry Bond’s “Vortex”

The other day I finished reading Larry Bond‘s epic novel, Vortex.  This 896-page book takes you into South Africa of the early 1990s with the idea of a radical seizing control of the country, going as far as launching a full-scale military attack against neighboring Namibia.

Vortex takes you back to the days near the end of the apartheid government and racial clashes throughout the country.  The country is on the verge of changing when a hardline Afrikaner and his radicals assassinate the South African president and gain control of the country.  The new regime launches a military attack against Namibia, which causes the Cuban troops stationed there to retaliate, launching their own campaigns from Namibia and Mozambique into South Africa.

Vortex feels like two books in one, with the first story being an adventure, suspense story and the second one involving global strategy and hardcore military action. Read more…

Bark Off – A Marketing Review

Don’t you hate it when your dog or a neighbor’s dog keeps barking?

Isn’t it pretty annoying?

Don’t you wish that there was some magical way of making the barking stop, like through some kind of a wacky invention?

Well, get ready for some good news!  There’s this relatively new product called Bark Off, and according to the TV commercials, it can make your dog stop barking!  Hooray!

An older, longer TV informercial for Bark Off.  The current TV commercial at least manages to use different breeds of dogs, and not just the same one over and over again.

Let’s take a look at the TV commercial for Bark Off and see if it looks like a good product or more like a scam. Read more…

Recent DirecTV Commercials

As almost anybody with a TV set can tell you, DirecTV tends to run a lot of commercials featuring celebrities.  Some of the more entertaining ones were from a few years ago when scenes from classic movies were re-shot, this time around having the actors tell us about DirecTV.  It was clever and pretty funny.

Some examples:

Back to the Future

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classic Star Trek

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Aliens

Those were great albeit expensive to produce, but they were still entertaining commercials.  I remember another commercial with Bill Paxton reprising his role from Twister.  While chasing a tornado he decides to tell us about the TV channel provider.  Between those, I definitely like the Back to the Future commercial the best!

But a recent trend where DirecTV commercials criticize DISH Network is just plain bad. Read more…

Midwest Tornado Outbreak Aftermath – June 5, 2010

This past Saturday afternoon and night saw a rather impressive tornado outbreak throughout central and northern Illinois, northern Indiana, northern Ohio and southeastern Michigan.

In all, fifty-five tornadoes were reported, and sadly, seven people were killed in the storms.  Large sections in Millbury, Ohio (just southeast of Toledo) were virtually obliterated as an EF-3 tornado ripped a 300 yard path ten miles through the town, killing five people in the process.

Believe it or not, but the midwest does experience its fair share of tornadoes each year, usually in the late spring and early summer.  It’s common to see tornado shelters outside of homes out in farm country.  It’s just that for the most part, the tornadoes are not as strong as violent as those that commonly strike the central and southern Great Plains as well as throughout the south.

The first time I saw an actual tornado shelter was not when living in Michigan or here in Atlanta, GA, or when going to college in Starkville, MS.  No, the first tornado shelter that I saw was when visiting friends of the family outside of the Dayton, Ohio metro area.  In their backyard they had an underground storm shelter.  When visiting the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force at Wright Patterson (also in Dayton), I saw numerous signs pointing the way to storm shelters in the basements of buildings.  Oddly enough, here in Atlanta where we experience violent storms each spring and fall, you never see signs or shelters. Read more…

The War on Stupidity

The war against stupid crap that drivers do has taken another step forward.  Or, at least the media is trying to help the issue get pushed forward, hence their reporting on this story.

So what’s the big story this time?  What is worthy of the local news station’s time and effort?

It’s the battle to ban texting while driving!

According to one local news source, students at Morgan County High School have been pestering Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue about signing Senate Bill 360, also known as Caleb’s Law.  Amazingly, this law has already been passed in both the House and Senate, and it’s just awaiting the governor’s signature to make it an official state law.

A signature on the bill would be another win in the battle awarding stupidity in society. Read more…