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Neville's Digital Surrogate Brain

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I Love Klipsch Speakers

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Back in late high school and early college I started a couple of businesses and they all made some modest degree of money.  The funny thing was the money went to my single student checking account…and I didn’t know what to do with it!

It just accumulated. I didn’t understand it was like cash.

Then one day I discovered ordering stuff online. I could pay for stuff online with that number it said on my bank statement. SWEET!

One of my very first purchases was high quality speakers. I’m a bit of an audiophile and love high quality sound.

I researched every computer speaker out there and ended up buying the Klipsch Promedia 4.1 sound system which was the best (and most expensive) set of computer speakers I found.

I….was…..BLOWN AWAY by them.

It truly was one of the most satisfying purchases I ever made. THX certified, 400 watts, BOOMING sub woofer (but not just booming…but REALISTIC bass)….the list went on. Watching movies and listening to music on this audio system in a tiny dorm room was the coolest damn thing in the world to me.

I had all four satellite speakers setup in my tiny dorm and the huge sub woofer setup under my desk (when turned up, it would rattle my plastic desk so violently I couldn’t use my computer mouse)!

I actually found pictures of my old setup.  You can see only one speaker in this setup (and apparently someone played a little joke in the top-right corner):

More speakers lining the room.  The funny thing was even the small 40 watt system I had before was more than enough to fill these small dorms with loud music.  But going 10X more was WAY more fun ;-)

It was kind of funny looking through these old pictures, here was our door (yes, I know I spelled “weird” wrong):

About 9 years later, my poor Klipsch speakers have finally run their course. Something is wrong with the amplifier and it doesn’t seem easily fixable.

Anyhow…usually I’d be pissed something I bought is no longer working. But not these.

I’d gladly pay $400+ again for the pleasure of listening to these.  I loved those speakers.

So the last several places I’ve lived I only used two of the satellite speakers, and the bass never gets turned all the way.  The system is powerful enough to keep all the settings at half and still sound incredible.  So I just bought a new set of them, except it has only 2 satellite speakers, and the system is also wireless (so I can play music from my laptop and have it stream directly to the speakers).

Cheers to the speakers that have caused so very, very, very many of my neighbors to complain, call the cops and make them just downright frustrated to live next to me.

“Non-Profit” Apartment Complex Loophole

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This was actually a draft of a post I wrote on August 20th, 2006. However I still think this is a clever loophole, as I know people who run apartment complex’s, and it would be GREAT if you could strictly discriminate who lives there (although that’s illegal):

——————————————–

For the summer I lived in a “student community” where you HAD to be a student to live there, however they weren’t associated with any university.

I went to speak with the manager about this, asking how they were allowed to ask for student ID’s as a prerequisite to live there….as this obviously violates the Fair Housing Act (you can’t decline someone housing based on pretty much anything such as occupation, race, gender etc).

He told me the whole complex was a “Non-Profit Organization” which I immediately didn’t believe.  There HAS to be someone making money from this I thought. The manager didn’t know much about how it worked, but he said there are bond holders and some other people that make money off the apartments.  I knew it.

Someone is definitely profiting off a 400+ unit apartment complex.

I asked a close family friend of mine who deals with apartment complex’s what was going on, and I found it very interesting:

He said that there used to be a loophole in the system where if a property was established as a non-profit, they could accept or deny whoever they wanted to live there. This is why even in a heavily low-income, Hispanic part of town, there are only students living in the apartments.

The loophole was shut down, but people already under that loophole could continue operating as non-profits.  They were basically grandfathered in.

Obviously there were SOME profits, so I asked how those were collected. He said there are bond holders for the loans, so when the apartment makes a profit, it’s issued as tax credit. So if the apartment makes $1,000,000 in profit, they could sell that tax credit for $900,000 in cash to someone looking to save money on their taxes.

So while the complex loses a little money in the tax credit arbitrage, their ability to decline whoever they want probably makes them more profitable than others.

I found this VERY interesting…..it wasn’t illegal, but it’s very sneaky.

I’m On A FIREPLACE

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I’m in Detroit right now (stealing WiFi access from a nearby Wendy’s), so instead of my So-Useful-You’ll-Never-Want-To-Miss-One-Or-Else-Your-Life-Will-Suck blog posts…here’s a picture of me by a fireplace:

FASCINATING!
Also checkout what I was up to one year ago in August 2009:
https://www.nevblog.com/2009/08/

6 Dr. Klaper Videos

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Just a random share:

These six YouTube videos (all of the same speech….so technically ONE YouTube video) changed my attitude towards meat.

I doubt I’ll ever fully give it up, but I have been eating significantly less since I saw this:

Next vids:

This video answered a question I long couldn’t figure out: Why do we get fatter?

I mean…how is the fat PHYSICALLY deposited in/on our organs and belly and thighs?

It all made sense to me when I heard:
Animal fats are solid at body temperature.  Plant oils are liquid.  Eureka!

Watch and learn.  He has an easy-to-understand way of explaining this all.

Is it illegal to write on money?

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So is it illegal to write on money? Can you deface it without the big bad government sending a helicopter SWAT team to your door?

The short answer is: You can write on the edges of money totally legally.  BUT, there is a little more to it than that.

Suppose I took a dollar bill and did this to it:

Writing on money

Illegally writing on money

…is that illegal?

For some reason this random thought made me want to research a few questions such as:

  • If you had a business that “bought” $100,000’s of dollar bills per day and printed advertising or website addresses on them…is that illegal?
  • Or what if you just put a sticker on top of each dollar?  Is that TECHNICALLY defacing it?
  • How can you alter money so it’s NOT illegal?

Well I’m no lawyer….Actually…screw that, I hate disclaimers that are utterly obvious.

I AM a lawyer.
You SHOULD take my recommendations.
Everything I say should be taken as SOLID LEGAL ADVICE.

(Ok, now I’m scared….disregard the above).  Moving forward….

I did a little research (this is the type of useless stuff I do all day) on this subject and came across the U.S. Treasury’s website with the answers:
https://www.moneyfactory.gov/historicallegislation.html

DEFACEMENT OF CURRENCY:

Defacement of currency is a violation of Title 18, Section 333 of the United States Code. Under this provision, currency defacement is generally defined as follows: Whoever mutilates, cuts, disfigures, perforates, unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, Federal Reserve Bank, or Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such item(s) unfit to be reissued, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.

Defacement of currency in such a way that it is made unfit for circulation comes under the jurisdiction of the United States Secret Service. The United States Secret Service web address is www.secretservice.gov.

So you can’t….

  • Mutilate
  • Cut
  • Disfigure
  • Perforate
  • Unite
  • Cement together…

….currency.  But it doesn’t say anything about “writing” on it.  These are also all sort-of-wishy-wash terms.

However it says you can’t do that stuff with intent to render such item(s) unfit to be reissued.

Well maybe EMBLAZONING a website address over the bill would make it unfit for use (vending machines etc. might not recognize it).  So something like this would be bad:

-Or-

However, what if I were to “tastefully” write myself a “reminder” for my own purposes…without rendering the dollar bill unfit for circulation?  Perhaps:

Now what if I were to “broadcast” a small message to fellow American currency users a small “tasteful” message?  It has no intent of de-valuing the currency in question.  It doesn’t create the need for the currency to come out of circulation.  Maybe something like:

Hmmmm…..

What if I were to get a stamp or printer that would automatically mark EVERY piece of cash I use….in a “tasteful” way of course ;-)

This might be even better than my other Illegal Business Idea of the Day!
Hopefully Not In Prison By Now,
Neville M.

My abs shrank….

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After doing MyBodyTutor for 120 days my diet has completely changed in a way I’m very satisfied with. However my six pack has been slowly fading away…meaning I CAN still easily see it, but it’s not quite as defined as when I was doing MBT.

My body fat is still pretty low, so that’s not the problem. Sadly, I know exactly where I’ve slipped….I stopped doing the ab exercises Adam made for me.

Nisch Nisch.  If I’m doing 98% of the work to stay fit, why not do that extra 2% to be REALLY fit??

I’ve been doing Bikram Yoga one day, then biking the next….and somehow stopped doing the ab exercises (which honestly take very little time).

The issue is clearly I haven’t been pushing those muscles to grow (they looked so much better when they were being exercised regularly).

The solution is clearly to start doing them again!

In case you need a refresher:

Bicycle Situps: 3 sets of 20

Knee Bends: 3 sets of 20

Foot Reaches: 3 sets of 20

Checkout the six-pack exercises for more info.

UPDATE (8-19-2010):

Adam (founder of MyBodyTutor) emailed me shortly after this post:

Instead of setting a daunting goal of doing them every day – which is over-training anyway – aim for 2-3 x per week. If you trained your abs 2-3 per week for 15 minutes a shot, it’ll be all you need.

-Adam

Nordstrom Return Policy Traffic and Hilarity

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For the longest time I’ve looked at my Google Analytics for NevBlog.com and noticed one post consistently in the top 10:

My Nordstrom Return Policy post!  Weird huh? This was a simple little post I did back in…2009..no…2007….no….2005 which has somehow topped the rankings for the search term “Nordstrom Return Policy.”

As I recall, up until a year ago it was #1 in the Google search results, now it resides at number 2:

What’s HILARIOUS to me is how many clicks, comments and stupid debates the post gets!  I’ve actually deleted many of the comments in the past, but now I’ve just plain stopped reading/moderating them.

The ONLY REASON I expect someone would visit that post is because it’s ranked so highly in Google, and on the actual Nordstroms page you can’t leave a comment.

On my dinky little post, people can feel free to air their opinions.  It seems like a lot of pissed off Nordstroms sales people visit the page.

Often these people are anonymous, so who knows how accurate their feedback is….

While that post does give my blog a lot more traffic, that traffic has an astoundingly high 94.71% bounce rate! This tells me that people searching for information about the Nordstrom return policy are not that interested in me.  What a shame.

It’s always funny to see what random articles gain traction!

Casio Exilim EX-G1 Underwater Camera Pics

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It’s summer, and in Austin that means a lot of boating and river floating.

Generally this by default means “put all your electronics away because they might get wet”…which sucks because you can get cool pictures while hanging out in the water.

On a recent boating trip I saw a friend had this camera….the first thing I did was go back to my hotel and order it on Amazon.

It was of the Exilim family which I go WAY back with.  I’ve had like 3 different versions of the Casio Exilim in the past, so I didn’t mind buying another (even though I have a fantastic Cannon camera).

The camera is the Casio Exilim EX-G1 and soon as I saw it was waterproof….I was sold.  I’ve been wanting to get a waterproof camera for a while, but the ones I’ve seen look too dorky and clunky.  This is the first one I’ve seen that looks cool, PLUS is waterproof (and shockproof…which is good because I DO NOT treat my electronics well):

So the first step was to take a few pictures with it.  Keep in mind I almost ALWAYS slightly tweak the colors of my photos using Photoshop, other than that, these are close to the originals:

Me showing off and taunting the driver of the boat by STANDING UP whilst tubing:

Wake boarding on Lake Austin:

Blowing underwater ring bubbles (are there such things as ABOVE water ring bubbles)??

This is the VERY FIRST picture I took underwater!

Finding Nirvana….underwater (let’s hope they have oxygen in Nirvana):

And finally here’s the first underwater test footage I did.  This was compressed with Windows Media Maker then uploaded to YouTube, so it looks pretty crappy….but otherwise the quality of video is surprisingly high:

The Homeless Experiment – One Year Reflection

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Roughly one year ago I did a rather odd thing and willingly became homeless.

This was all part of a Homeless Experiment I’d been wanting to try for a while.

It was definitely the most engrossing series of posts I did since I literally LIVED it for 5 days.  It wasn’t exactly a safe thing to do, and a lot of people thought I was going to get shanked, killed or pick up a weird disease from doing it.

It also wasn’t all that fun doing it (at the time)…but I’m really glad I went through with it.

When I tell the story, I get several recurring questions, which are answered here:

Did this make you more compassionate towards homeless people?
No.  In fact I have even slightly more animosity towards homeless people because I’ve seen how true the stereotypes are.  However, I’ve never failed to mention that by “homeless” I mean those CHRONICALLY HOMELESS people that you may see on the side of the road with a sign.  I don’t like them.  They’re like human litter to me.  Most homeless people don’t fit that mold…those are just a very visible minority.

Are you going to do it again?
When I got back home…I was SO DONE with that experiment.  Being around that many homeless people is like being in a room full of failure.  When everyone around you is a failure, it’s likely you’ll pick up their habits.

The conversations I had, the stories I overheard….they’re often so negative and I’m-The-Victim’ish that it starts to poison your brain.  That’s why if I had to make ONE CHANGE to the entire homeless system, i’d play The Strangest Secret on repeat at the homeless shelter.

I also have a very low tolerance for idleness….and there was too much “doing nothing” for me.  I think doing experiments like this do LESS for the world than doing experiments on how to improve.

C’mon…do it again, c’mmmooonn!
No way man.  I explained pretty clearly in this post before the experiment took place that simply anticipating this experiment made me “think homeless” all the time.

“Hmmm…I bet I can sleep in that park.”
“You know…behind that trail would be a good place to poop.”

These aren’t the type of thoughts I exactly enjoy thinking.  So while the experiment was technically only 5 days, it seemed waaaaay longer since I was thinking like my Homeless Alias.

On the brighter side, I thought it was a great example of immersive journalism, it’s a great story, and I even won an award for it!  There were a lot of other small side benefits like people hearing about my blog and learning how to publish a book on the Amazon Kindle (it actually makes sales believe it or not…even though it’s entirely free online).

I also learned something crucial in how I can improve my beloved City of Austin:

Move the homeless shelters away from the epicenter of Downtown Austin! Most of the chronically homeless people travel no more than 8 square blocks from the hand that feeds.  I think it’s an all around bad idea to give such prime real estate to homeless shelters when they could be operated cheaper and less intrusively by being just slightly further.

Guy 1: Hey, where should be keep several hundred homeless people that sit around all day waiting for meals and free services?  Oh by the way, we’ll also throw in a bunch of crackheads, meth addicts and just plain bat-shit-insane people into the mix.

Guy 2: How about right in the heart of the entertainment district!? It’ll quickly turn the surrounding property into a shithole, scare people away, and even create a panhandling problem!

Guy 1: You….are….. a genius.

Obviously that’s not how it went….but you get the point.

I think what will eventually happen is the property will eventually get SO valuable, it will no longer make economic sense to keep the shelters in the current location.  They’ll be bulldozed, new businesses will move in, and I’ll be happy.


Soooo….what’s the name of your blog again?
Pretty much every time I tell this story to someone, they end up going online and checking it out.


Are you glad you did it?
Absolutely.