I was stoked to see Silversun Pickups on Conan last night and I was treated to something I’ve never noticed before. Silversun’s lead singer, Brian Aubert, seemed to try multi-tasking by playing guitar, singing and looking at the camera and the audience. Their drummer, Chris Guanlao, also throws down a fun look by swinging his hair around and simulating how he would look if losing his lunch.

Either way, they fukin rock and I’ve gotten past Thom Yorke’s odd look. As long as they make good music, they could look like a complete troll and I’d dig ‘em. This one just threw me because I met Brian in Austin for SXSW and he looks completely normal.

Watched this entire show live online. It didn’t disappoint at all. Being an old band dork, it was like watching my old band in band practice, 86 the awesomeness of the Foo Fighters!

Not sure how well this works, but here’s the video …

***sorry, it’s over***

I’ve NEVER thought Diddy, Puff Daddy, Sean Combs, or whatever this lizard who changes his identity to fit the situation, is someone who is racist…or as the great Ali G would say, “Racialist”.

I have watched every “Making the Band”, every “Making His Band” and every “P. Diddy’s Star Maker”. I love the music industry and if it involves a thriving musician or wanna-be star, I’m going to tune in, because it’s something I always wanted to do but all of these opportunities didn’t arrive until after my wishes.

This leads me to what I’ve witnessed with Sean Combs and his shows on the MTV network channels. At first, his “Making the Band” shows were constantly about the black man or black woman making it into his band. I won’t say that he doesn’t allow white people, but I will say it’s majority black people. I’ll also follow that up with the fact that the black people he picks are amazing in what they do. Matter of fact, most of the black people he picks are some of my favorite ones on the shows. HOWEVER, you have to admit that the overall group of people serve to be very few white people that even get the chance. He often gives it the term “swagger” to apply to the people he’s looking for. At first glance, you think “oh, that’s a certain dance or vibe they give off during their performance”, but the problem is, it’s something that white folk just don’t have much of. So that means it’s like Brett Michaels saying he was looking for band members that have a certain “SWAY” and it applies to something that you’ll only see in white people.

Now I also know and understand that anyone has the right to pick anyone for their musical projects. It don’t matter if they’re black or white (I’m going into a MJ song here) but when it all boils down, it does matter what the leader is looking for. I think Puff Daddy, or Sean Combs, or P Diddy, or Diddy … whatever the fuck his name is now, I think he wanted ‘his people’ to be on his tour. I don’t blame him for wanting ‘his people’ on his tour since they can communicate easier with each other or whatever it is he feels will make it easier, but I have to make it known that it’s not just white people who are being “racialist”, … black people are being just as “racialist” than anyone else.

Tonight I watched the season finale of “Making His Band”, which was P.Diddy’s reality show that was searching for band members to tour with him for his upcoming cd. There were groups within the band who were trying out and most of the groups had a white person involved, but most were all black. The only group that didn’t have a black person in it was the guitarist group, which did have 2 white dudes and 1 black dude, but the group coaches actually cut the black dude before Diddy got involved. So in the end, the guitarist group only had two people, both who were white. And being a guitarist myself, I can tell you that both of them were absolutely AWESOME at their parts in Diddy’s band. Matter of fact, I would go as far as saying they were better at their part than some of the other players Diddy picked for his band.

So what has me up in arms with the term “Racialist” ??? Well, when he called out the guitarist group, Diddy says he doesn’t want either one of them and specifically says “It don’t have nothing to do with the color of your skin”. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Are you fuckin kidding me??? If it ‘don’t have nothing to do with the color of their skin’ then why the fuck would you say that in the first place? Why not just say, “I wasn’t feeling either of you with the way my music sounds?” then leave it at that? It’s because he wants a black guitar player. P. Diddy is a racists piece of shit. I understand that he is in a great place in life and can basically try to undo all of the hurt and pain that his people were caused 100′s of years ago, but dude, the people here now, had nothing to do with all that shit. Get over it and pick people based on their talents, not the color of their skin!

I’ll end my rant with the fact I look forward to Diddy’s new album. I think he’s treading into new waters and I like that. He’s not doing the typical rap crap that worked in the past, but he’s doing shit that no one has ever heard of before. Granted, it’s mostly black people that he has leading his way, but he does have the token white guy on keys who he picked originally. Part of me thinks he will never make it to the actual tour, but we’ll see. Hopefully Diddy will get over himself and take the people who are good and not the people that are just good and his color. What I’ll be even more excited to see is if he hires a black guitar player and that guitar player is absolute dog shit. If that happens, then my rant will officially be rectified. Hopefully I’m wrong, but I can’t help but think he just doesn’t really care much for white people.

Stay hard white people. Stay hard black people. Stay hard all people….Diddy is just being Diddy. Hopefully his music will make up for it all. Other than that, maybe we can get John Mayer or someone to make a “making his band” show and only pick white people. Then see if the black folk get up in arms about that type of decision.

I’m just sayin!

Felt the need for a little rant about my favorite sport and some things being said by one of my favorite people in the sport. I watched some of the old fights before Dana White took over the UFC, when it was a bit of an outlaw type sport and loved it. It was tough to really keep up with it because it was impossible to see unless you were there or was lucky enough to know where to find it on television.

Once TUF (The Ultimate Fighter) hit, I was so into the “new” UFC, I wished I was younger and tougher to even give it a shot, but like most common sense dudes, you decide to enjoy watching other dudes beat the fuck out of each other. Since season 1 of TUF exploded the sport of Mixed Martial Arts, mostly the UFC, into one of the hottest sports in the world, I fit into that perfect customer of Dana White and even other leagues that try to compete with them. I watch as many fights as I can because I love the competition. It’s much more entertaining to me than people hitting a golf ball or tennis ball, hell, even baseball. I put it right up there with football and maybe even with basketball.

Anyhow, I’m FAR from some meathead douche bag that walks around with my chest bowed out like some people are claiming the common MMA fan to be. I’m a father of almost 4 kids and happily married. Have a business I love and I’m pushing 40 years old. Sure, these fights are full of testosterone, but it’s a guys guy sport, what do you expect?

I have a lot of favorites in the sport, but surprisingly one of my top favorites is the color commentator who does most UFC fights, Joe Rogan. I think he’s a funny fucker and he not only knows the sport of MMA, but he also trains in it. Then throw in the fact he does stand up comedy and he has that voice that sounds like he’s screaming in your face and I just think he’s one of the great faces of the sport.

I follow Joe Rogan on Twitter and noticed today he said he’s getting messages about this post on his blog about shirts the UFC fans wear and how they pose in pictures with their favorite fighters. Now, if you don’t follow Joe, this will probably come across much more harsh than it might for me because Joe is just a harsh, opinionated dude that has lots of comedic value to most of what he says.

Here’s my beef with what he’s saying. While he’s basically saying unless you wear Tapout clothing, it sucks, he’s turning the public opinion of that type of clothing against ALL companies that make it. I completely agree some of the shirts are WAYYYY over the top with gold and silver and shit that blinds you, but if someone thinks it looks cool and wants to wear it, more power to them. I don’t look at them like douche bag shirts, I look at them like the sport of MMA jersey’s. A lot of these are put out by different training camps as a way to help fund their fighters and their gyms. Others are there to help fund the leagues they fight in. It’s just a way for the fan to be part of this awesome sport. I think as one of the more familiar faces of a great sport, you should really consider not putting such a bad label on something that helps the sport continue to grow. Reading what he wrote made me want to throw the few shirts I do own away because the last thing I want to be seen as is some meathead douche bag. I definitely will re-consider ever buying something like that again if that’s how people view those that wear them.

Then let’s move on to his comments about how people like to get a photo with their favorite fighters. REALLY??? These are the same people that keep your favorite job going, Joe! Why would you rub so many of your own fans so wrong because of how they choose to enjoy the sport that we all love? If some kid wants to hold a football while getting a photo with his favorite running back in the NFL, you going to call him names? Just because the kid doesn’t play ball means he can’t hold the football in the picture? That’s such a ridiculous beef to have towards fans, I’m shocked he even said it. Maybe he has a beef towards a specific type of fan, but guess what, that type of shit generalizes the entire sport and the entire group of fans that continue to spread the word and empty their pockets to watch it.

I went to the fights here in Dallas this past weekend and was lucky enough to score floor tickets (which is another rant all together). The one cool part of being on the floor is the chance to meet fighters and others that are part of the sport. Maybe even get photos or autographs from your favorites. The one person that wanted no part of the whole scene was Joe Rogan. We tried to call him over to the peasant section but he was either too baked to deal with people or he just honestly wants no part of it. For someone that loves his job as much as he does, it seems weird to me that he wouldn’t want to interact with people that help keep the sport going financially.

I’ll end my rant with this…I’m not angry at Joe for what he said, I just think he is hurting the UFC fan by labeling them with these type of things. It is a free country and you can say whatever the hell you want, but why shit on your own fans? People aren’t calling him a fag for trying to bring back the fanny pack! Anyhow, Joe … keep being funny, but don’t hurt your sport financially!

Kind of a pointless post, but I’ve perfected the fried egg sandwich and I thought I’d share it.

If you are the type of person who prefers a non-runny egg yolk, then it might not be for you, however, it’s really tasty and my mouth is watering thinking about it right now.

Ingredients Needed:

1. Two Eggs (I prefer the organic)
2. Two slices of your favorite bread
3. One slice of cheese (I use American)
4. Lawry’s seasoned salt
5. fresh ground pepper
6. Mayonnaise w/ Olive Oil

First step is to get the eggs cooking. Make sure you have a skillet that fits two eggs at once. I prefer to spray the skillet with the fake butter spray, then turn the stove on about halfway. I usually give it a couple minutes to heat up first so when the egg is poured on, it starts to cook the fluids quick and it doesn’t run all over the place. Also be sure to be careful to not break the yolk. Once both eggs are on the skillet, make sure to contain the egg whites into the size of your sliced bread to prevent it hanging too far off the bread.

Now that the eggs are cooking, put a light dash of Lawry’s seasoned salt and fresh ground pepper over the top so it works into the egg white. The amount is really up to your taste. Salt is salt and I go light, but heavy on the pepper to give it a spicy taste.

Next move on to preparing the bread. You can lightly toast the bread for a crunchy taste, but I like the soft bread for soaking, which I’ll mention later. Put a light amount of olive oil mayo on each slice of bread (not too much, you just want a light taste).

By now, the eggs should be ready to flip. Carefully flip each egg so to not break the yolk. I usually use two spatulas because breaking the yolk ruins it. Once you get the eggs flipped, put another dash of Lawry’s and some more pepper, then take your slice of cheese (use pepper jack for a spicy treat), break it half, and then put each half on each egg.

Allow the cheese to start melting and that’s usually a sign it’s time to pull the eggs off the skillet. Take the first egg off and carefully place it on one half of the bottom slice of bread with the cheese facing up. Take the second egg and carefully place it on the other half of the bread, cheese facing down. You should have one yolk on each side of the bread and the cheese will hold the eggs together.

Put the top slice of bread on top and allow it to cool for a couple of minutes. Then heaven starts. Now be careful when you’re biting into the yolk as it will be warm and runny. I prefer to let the excess yolk land on my plate which I will use the last few bites of bread to soak up.

For the perfect drink, I would recommend a chilled glass of either white or chocolate skim milk.

They have this fancy website and lead you to believe they can help you get a construction loan in any state. We’re about to build a home and just trying to find someone to help us through the construction piece of it.

I call our local credit union and they refer us to their ‘partner’, “Nationwide Construction Loans” who says on their website,

Nationwide Construction Loans is the ultimate source to obtain a construction loan to build a new home in the United States of America. No matter what city you live and reside in the USA you can obtain the best construction loans from the best American banks nationwide.
Nationwide Construction Loans, Inc. is approved with all of the major banks and Investors. Our experience and reputation along with our nationwide construction loan volume, has allowed us to develop strong relationships with all of our lenders over the years. We have positioned our business to pass these benefits from our access through our wholesale channels on to you.

So I complete their form that says “Get Your Construction Loan Quote Here!” and has a picture of America, where you click your state your project will be in, then complete the form. They also say this,

STEP 1:
Receive Quotes From up to 4 Top Lenders in your area.

It’s easy! Just complete the form and our home building specialist will call or email you up to 4 different quotes from the top lenders.

And here is a screenshot of what I was talking about regarding the map:

Nationwide Construction Loans Horrible

I submit this form early on Monday morning. I don’t get a friendly email saying “we’ve received your info” or anything, but whatever. I wait. I wait. No call. No email. Nothing! Finally, today (Wednesday afternoon), I call them to see if there is any sort of status or if the form info made it.

Before I could finish saying I had submitted a form and haven’t heard anything, this rude son of a bitch cuts me off and says, “It’s probably because you don’t qualify or we just don’t work in your particular state.” Well, I know I qualify, because my credit is awesome with no bad marks, but I haven’t even given them my personal info yet…so it had to be something about my state. He says, “what state is your project in?” I say, “Texas”. He says, “Well that’s why, because we don’t work with every state and Texas is one of them.” Then he continues with, “look, we get over 3,000 emails every day so we can’t respond to every request. If you don’t qualify, we won’t respond to you.”

Excuse me? I can understand you lie about working with every state, but why waste “OUR” time? If I click “Texas”, put a big red message saying “Sorry, we are currently not working with projects in Texas!” Or if I click “Texas”, disable the form. But don’t give attitude and paint yourself as this real popular website getting all these requests daily when you could have been polite about it. All that made me want to do is prove that you are also full of shit! Unfortunately for this douche bag, I’m in the internet business and can research claims like that…so I did!

He says they receive over three thousand (3,000) new quote emails every day. That would be roughly 90,000 requests per month. It doesn’t make much sense that the same person would submit a quote form more than one time, so let’s see what a couple analytic 3rd party services say about nationwideconstructionloans.com:

Compete.com:

This is a full year of traffic to their site. Total number of visitors for 12 months? 32,291. A full year of visitors don’t match the one month of new visitors he claimed they receive.

Another source is Alexa.com:

Nationwide Construction Loans dot com

Alexa has been around for a while and they have zero data on them. This usually translates to not enough traffic for them to store data.

***Noteworthy disclaimer***
These 3rd party sources aren’t 100% reliable with their stats. The rule of thumb is, the more traffic a site has along with a high ranking from these analytic websites, the closer to reality it is. In other words, if this site was really as busy as he claims, they would rank pretty high on these analytic sites.

For example, we can compare their chart to my company’s chart.

The numbers just don’t match up. He claims Nationwide Construction Loans dot com gets over 90k unique visitors per month, which is about 75% more than what our company’s website receives. I can tell you that this guy is full of shit. He probably gets less than 300 emails per day. The fact he “can’t respond to all of them” just tells me that this is a shitty company with horrible service.

One last point I’ll make to Nationwide Construction Loans pulling the bait and switch, is straight from their website.

Nationwide Coverage

We provide the best residential and commercial construction loans in all the 50 states if the United States listed below:
Alabama (AL), Alaska (AK), Arizona (AZ), Arkansas (AR), California (CA), Colorado (CO), Connecticut (CT), Delaware (DE), Florida (FL), Georgia (GA), Hawaii (HI), Idaho (ID), Illinois (IL), Indiana (IN), Iowa (IA), Kansas (KS), Kentucky (KY), Louisiana (LA), Maine (ME), Maryland (MD), Massachusetts (MA), Michigan (MI), Minnesota (MN), Mississippi (MS), Missouri (MO), Montana (MT), Nebraska (NE), Nevada (NV), New Hampshire (NH), New Jersey (NJ), New Mexico (NM), New York (NY), North Carolina (NC), North Dakota (ND), Ohio (OH), Oklahoma (OK), Oregon (OR), Pennsylvania (PA), Rhode Island (RI), South Carolina (SC), South Dakota (SD), Tennessee (TN), Texas (TX), Utah (UT), Vermont (VT), Virginia (VA), Washington (WA), West Virginia (WV), Wisconsin (WI), Wyoming (WY)

And just in case they read this and decide to remove and claim they didn’t have it up, I pulled a screenshot!

To sum up me wasting my time on this blog post, I just want to warn anyone that reads this interested in working with:

Nationwide Construction Loans, Inc 3940 Hancock Street, Suite 111 San Diego, CA 92110
Phone: (619) 222-1059 Fax: (866) 231-7303 E-mail: loanisapproved@yahoo.com
Nationwide Land and Construction Loans

Nationwide Construction Loans SUCKS!

My company is a huge believer in Dell products and our entire office is decked out in almost everything Dell related. They’re so much easier to work with and customizing a PC to what you need is just a genius thing. I rarely have a gripe about anything of theirs but recently we purchased a few new desktop computers for new employees and I was hit with a very interesting issue….the computer just stopped connecting to the network.

If you have a Dell Vostro 220s Slim Tower and it all the sudden stopped connecting to the network, this might be worth reading.

How to fix Dell Vostro 220s Slim Tower Network Connection

The symptom would be the computer was connected just fine one day, then the next it cannot get a connection. Almost like your ISP is not working or maybe a bad cable or even worse, a bad NIC (network interface card) chip. Cards are easy to replace, but when it’s a chip built into the system board, you’re screwed. But this might help you get past all of these pain in the ass issues.

Step 1: Open DEVICE MANAGER

Vista Users:

• Click START button to load your menu
• Right-click on COMPUTER button and select PROPERTIES
• In the computer properties window, you should see a left side column with menu options, click DEVICE MANAGER

XP Users:

• Click START
• Right-click on MY COMPUTER and select PROPERTIES
• In My Computer properties window, click the HARDWARE tab
• In the Hardware tab, click the button labeled DEVICE MANAGER

STEP 2 – View Network Adapters

To do this, find the listing labeled “Network Adapters” and click the little “+” sign to the left. It will look like this:

STEP 3 – Update Driver

Right-Click on your Adapter (if more than one, pick the first one listed) and select “update driver software” or “update driver”

Then tell the wizard you want to “Browse my computer for drivers”

Then on the next screen, look for the option that says “Let me pick from a list of device drivers”

Final Step – Pick Alternate Driver
This is where you need to pay attention. In the several situations I’ve had, there are two identical drivers listed for my network adapter. When you get to the list, it will initially highlight the driver you are currently using, as seen in the screenshot below. As you can see, directly underneath the one highlighted, there is a 2nd IDENTICAL (word for word, number for number) device driver listed. YOU MUST MAKE SURE IT IS EXACTLY THE SAME!

If they are identical, select the un-highlighted one, or the “other one”. Then press NEXT and it will update your network adapter with the 2nd device driver software.

Once it’s completed, close out the wizard and restart your computer. If you have this same situation, especially if you have the same network adapter as shown above, it should connect when you reboot. If you do not have identical drivers, then there’s a chance you’re dealing with one of the other issues I mentioned in the beginning.

Hope this helps someone! I stumbled across it and it’s repaired 5 different computers in my office. All 5 were Dell Vostro 220s Slim Tower running windows Vista Business edition.

One of the worst parts of a pull over, polo style shirt is the collar. The shirt itself may last for years, but the collar’s days are numbered. It will ultimately be the fate of your favorite shirt.

The easiest part of the shirt, is everything except the collar. It just hangs down or fits over your arm. The most difficult part of a shirt is the collar. It has to rise upwards, then gently fold over in a nice manner and lay down nicely on top of the shirt. Sounds simple, but after one wash, it gets hairy!

So how do you save a man’s shirt collar from wrinkling beyond repair? Great question! I have a few invention ideas, but nothing I’d want to broadcast to the world at this point. I can give you some suggestions on how to preserve the collar, though.

The shirt collar gets destroyed in the wash/dry cycle. In the wash, the collar will get set in it’s ways. Maybe an awkward fold on one side and a flip up on the other, but it sets the wheels in motion. Then you throw it into the dryer and the hot air pretty much cements your imperfections into place. Once this happens, you’re screwed! Your shirt will NEVER be the same. No matter how many times you try to iron out the wrinkles, or take it to the dry cleaners, your shirt collar will never be the same.

Anyhow, so I’ll give my tips on how to save your shirt collars. Not 100% proven, but they’ve worked for me.

• Wash your shirts inside out with the collar standing up
• Let your shirts air dry with the collar up, then iron the collar and fold over while hot
• If drying shirts in the dryer, make sure the collar is standing up so no wrinkles can form. The normal collar fold is easier to create if the collar has no wrinkle or fold pressed into it.
• Always take your collar shirts to the dry cleaners and emphasize that you want the collars preserved.
• ***MOST IMPORTANT*** – DO NOT WASH YOUR SHIRT (this is more of a joke, but if you never wash it, you’ll never have to worry about the collar screwing up)

If you have a hint or tip on how to save the emphamis shirt collar, help us, help you, help others. We’re all in the same boat, so hopefully we can come together to create the best shirt collar solution we’ve ever seen!!!

Felix Figuereo, from Nicasio Design & Development, has one of the more interesting approaches in earning business. I was looking for someone who could help turn a web design into a wordpress theme. I found the Nicasio Design site and thought their design portfolio looked crisp and clean. I inquired, he (Felix), responded and I didn’t have time to immediately talk on the phone, so I asked him to email any questions that I might be able to answer until we spoke on the phone. He basically told me unless we talk he didn’t consider me a real customer and the comment ultimately made me go elsewhere.

Then he emails a few weeks later with this little diddy…

Ron it is imperative that you take some time to discuss the project details one on one. In over eight years of doing this – I have yet to see a project succeed based on email exchanges.

Let me know if you have the time – and we can set up a time / date.
–
Thanks,
Felix Figuereo – Managing Director
Nicasio Web Design & Development

Now, I can appreciate the pushy sales approach, but at this point, I had a good friend do the work quickly and it didn’t even require a phone call! So I thought I’d send a little reply…

How you doing Felix…. Appreciate you following up, even though it seems a bit pushy. Anyhow, I went with someone else that embraced email and didn’t make me feel like I was wasting their time. It took 2 emails, a few IM’s and a couple of hours. Project done.

I guess Felix didn’t like my reply because he followed it up with this…

You are my idol..

Felix Figuereo
Nicasio Design & Development

It’s just confusing to me why someone would be such an idiot. Why burn bridges before they’re built. We refer business all the time related to web design and blog design…why be such a jerk?

Last night I had to pull over and fill up with gas. No, not the gas I have right now, but gas to make my sports utility vehicle (SUV) run. I usually get gas at Tom Thumb because each dollar goes towards my American Airlines reward miles, which I usually like to use to upgrade to first class when flying. (free drinks)

Anyhow, I stopped at the Tom Thumb on the way home and started the whole pump computer process. After entering my phone number, it asked me if I wanted to use my “rewards” and it was showing a discount of .90 cents! Of course I selected “yes”. Well, let’s just say I filled up my empty gas tank of my SUV for $18!! Same tank that has been costing $80 for the past year or so. Here’s the pic to prove.