A new found charity?

Due to recent events in the world and in my life I figure there is always a way to have fun. You can have fun no matter your financial situation, your “status” among friend or any type of wellbeing. Do I live among the “wealthy” people here in the US? I can’t tell you that because of the way real wealth is measured. You can talk about tax brackets, annual income, or just how much crap you can buy. Any of those conditions just suck for the matter of how the person in question can actually measure their “wealth.”

Long story short, I’m starting two small feats as personal goals:
1) http://www.kiva.org/ – Giving someone else in other countries to rock out their dreams whatever they may be. These people deserve a right to have their dreams come true, if mine don’t come true, I want theirs to flourish.

2) Without giving a long story, I want like me to have fun. I see on a regular basis people worrying too much about this, that and the other thing. Let’s bring it to realistic basics and make a prize and actual fun thing. When was the last time you signed up for some prize, free giveaway, souvenir or any other random item which you though you actually had a chance to “win” ?

As I’m one of those not so lucky winners, I’m just going to start tossing random stuff out there to the random person who never wins anything like me. Let’s do this thing right.

Follow @kenStaude and check what happens. Let’s all working on “micro loans” through http://www.kiva.com give others a chance to win along the way!

Flower in the Park

2008_08_15_17 012, originally uploaded by k3n85.

Close shot of a flower at Frame Park Waukesha, WI

Integration of Social Applications

In today’s environment, it’s hard to go a day, hour, heck even a few minutes without hearing something about Twitter, Facebook or some other social networking application. With the iPhone being one of the most prevalent “smart phone,” and Apple being the innovators they are, I think there is room for a small improvement. The next iPhone 4.0 OS is right around the corner and what an opportunity to build in some system wide integration.

What if you set your user name and password just once for your phone and let the applications interface with the phone “keychain”? One of my biggest pet peeves is to re-enter credentials for every single application. While you may have to give each application its own access to your social account, it would be a lot easier to have a system wide control.

Just as you can copy/paste around the OS, why not be able to “Tweet” or post any content you see on the phone to the app of your choice? I think there is much potential for this type of feature.
Another quick fix, why can’t a link in your e-mail flip open to a built-in Safari as opposed to closing Mail and opening Safari separately. In order to get back to that e-mail, you have to close Safari and re-open Mail, just wasted potential IMO…

What a waste of money, energy and water!

I saw this originally on a blogpost from someone at work, and just found it rediculous how bottled “water” is. Obviously if I knew how big of a market this was going to be, and how much of a cash cow it is, I would have jumped on it instantly! Some of most outrageous things from this I found were the following:

• “10,000 times the cost of tap water” you have got to be kidding me people.  Can you imagine if your daily use of water was all bottled? 
• Bottled water isn’t tested for “e.coli” or required to produce quality reports… just outrageou in my mind.  Especially with all of that extra income, probably used for packaging.
• Only “1 in 5″ of the bottles are actually recycled, again, rediculous.

I’ll let you read the rest for yourself, but just boggles my mind in all cases.

Presented by Online Education

Northwestern Mutual Foundation Supports Haiti Earthquake Relief Efforts with $100,000

Good to see the company I work for giving when others need it:

“We recognize that the disaster in Haiti calls for a compassionate response from people and organizations that are able to help,” said Edward J. Zore, Northwestern Mutual chairman and chief executive officer. “Supporting the American Red Cross allows us to have an immediate impact.” ( http://tr.im/nmlhaiti )

 I myself have donated as well, giving  something to someone that recently has nothing can only help.

THREE WOMEN, TWO YOUNGER, AND ONE SENIOR CITIZEN, WERE SITTING NAKED IN
A SAUNA.

SUDDENLY THERE WAS A BEEPING SOUND. THE YOUNG WOMAN PRESSED HER FOREARM
AND THE BEEP STOPPED. THE OTHERS LOOKED AT HER QUESTIONINGLY.

‘THAT WAS MY PAGER,’ SHE SAID. I HAVE A MICROCHIP UNDER THE SKIN OF MY
ARM.

A FEW MINUTES LATER, A PHONE RANG. THE SECOND YOUNG WOMAN LIFTED HER
PALM TO HER EAR. WHEN SHE FINISHED, SHE EXPLAINED, ‘THAT WAS MY MOBILE
PHONE. I HAVE A MICROCHIP IN MY HAND.’

THE OLDER WOMAN FELT VERY LOW -TECH.. NOT TO BE OUTDONE, SHE DECIDED
SHE HAD TO DO SOMETHING JUST AS IMPRESSIVE. SHE STEPPED OUT OF THE
SAUNA AND WENT TO THE BATHROOM.

SHE RETURNED WITH A PIECE OF TOILET PAPER HANGING FROM HER REAR END.
THE OTHERS RAISED THEIR EYEBROWS AND STARED AT HER.

THE OLDER WOMAN FINALLY SAID………WELL, WILL YOU LOOK AT THAT….I’M
GETTING A FAX!!

Random Thoughts of the Day…

I got the e-mail today which I just had to share, because it’s so true:

---

I wish Google Maps had an “Avoid Ghetto” routing option.

More often than not, when someone is telling me a story all I can think
about is that I can’t wait for them to finish so that I can tell my own
story that’s not only better, but also more directly involves me.

Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize
you’re wrong.

I don’t understand the purpose of the line, “I don’t need to drink to
have fun.” Great, no one does. But why start a fire with flint and
sticks when they’ve invented the lighter?

Have you ever been walking down the street and realized that you’re
going in the complete opposite direction of where you are supposed to be
going?
But instead of just turning a 180 and walking back in the direction from
which you came, you have to first do something like check your watch or
phone or make a grand arm gesture and mutter to yourself to ensure that
no one in the surrounding area thinks you’re crazy by randomly switching
directions on the sidewalk.

That’s enough, Nickelback.

I totally take back all those times I didn’t want to nap when I was
younger.

The letters T and G are very close to each other on a keyboard. This
recently became all too apparent to me and consequently I will never be
ending a work email with the phrase “Regards” again.

Is it just me, or are 80% of the people in the “people you may know”
feature on Facebook people that I do know, but I deliberately choose not
to be friends with?

Do you remember when you were a kid, playing Nintendo and it wouldn’t
work? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically
fix the problem. Every kid in America did that, but how did we all know
how to fix the problem? There was no internet or message boards or
FAQ’s. We just figured it out. Today’s kids are soft.

There is a great need for sarcasm font.

Sometimes, I’ll watch a movie that I watched when I was younger and
suddenly realize I had no idea what the f * ck was going on when I first
saw it.

I think everyone has a movie that they love so much, it actually becomes
stressful to watch it with other people. I’ll end up wasting 90 minutes
shiftily glancing around to confirm that everyone’s laughing at the
right parts, then making sure I laugh just a little bit harder (and a
millisecond earlier) to prove that I’m still the only one who really,
really gets it.

My 1 hour flight adventure covered in 14 hours!

My worst flight experience to this day … Dayton, OH –> Milwaukee, WI, let me begin.

So he I was with having my girlfriend drop me off at the airport around 8:00 AM on Tuesday morning for a 9:48 AM flight… small airport, plenty of time, so we just sat around for a bit to say goodbyes after I got my boarding pass.  Come 8:45 or so, I get up to the gate A14 looking so innocent until I hear the lady come over the intercom “We’re looking for 4 volunteers…” and it was then I knew that there was no way I was leaving on time….

It turns out the first flight to Cincinnati at 7:15 was delayed due to mechanical reasons and passengers were put on my flight (luckily I was going to get bumped..ugh).  So since only 3 of 4 volunteered I gained $200 for letting my seat go (non-voluntary) but eh whatever, I was already late for work.  At this time the 7:15 flight was scheduled for 11:00 AM, still not too bad, right?  If this flight would have taken off early/on time, the 18 minute flight to Cincinnati I may have had a 2% chance to make my connecting flight to Milwaukee, along with a backup 2:30 PM flight.

Come that 10:45 mark where we should be boarding, I look up at the board to see that the flight is now delayed until 12:30 PM without any prior announcement *ugh* again…  This is where people that have been waiting since 6:00 AM start to loose it a bit, myself included.  In the time that we’ve been waiting and delayed, word comes back that there isn’t even a mechanic working on the original plane and thus the new time for take off is TBD (really Delta?! that’s the best you can do?)

We move the part of the story where people are arguing with the ticket counter people, back and forth, yada yada… not getting anywhere.  With a mix of people that have been at the air port for the last 6 hours already, it’s hard to argue, but it was getting ridiculous. After convince the Delta agents that this was obscene we got them to get us a limo/bus service to drive us to Cincinnati, fan-freaking-tastic right? So we get escorted out to the ticket counter which is where we meet up and wait for our bus to get us.  After about 30 minutes, we finally see a bus and load on up.

– Hour and a half pause for the driver to get use there –

We arrive at Cincinnati and have to get into another line of death in order to find someone which we get to explain out extensive adventure through the Ohio airports.  At this point we’ve missed 3 take-offs, 2 connecting flights and enough hours to literally drive all the way back home (trust me, I’ve done it).  After we all explain out flight plans and get new tickets I get the luxury of waiting for another 5 hours until my flight takes off.

At this point I just suck up the complete loss of the day and decide to call the corporate customer support to see if I can milk the $400 gift over my $200 ’cause I’m bored.. but negative, but worth a shot right?  Here I have at least $21 in meal vouchers which buys me a burger and beer, sadly the beer can’t be covered… c’mon!  Luckily I got one of the nicest waitresses and somehow made money…that lead to her $10 tip on $15 meal.

Eventually I got to my destination, Milwaukee, the land of beer and a real bed.   After the extent of the longest short trip I’ve ever had…I was just glad to be out of an airport.

I plan to use my $200 at Delta just because, but then thereafter… anything but.  Too many flights just messed up, delays, heads up rear-ends, just not worth the cheaper price any more.

Enjoy the story and hopefully you never have to endure it like I did!

Enable tethering on your iPhone 3.0 … so easy your Grandmother (or father, can’t discriminate) could do it!
http://tcrn.ch/47g -via the TechCrunch gang aka John Biggs

Want a quick way to insert lyrics into your song via iTunes?
- http://tr.im/nJRn (via Doug’s AppleScripts)