This whole recycle thing started about 20 years ago or so.  I remember as a teenager that the town required us to separate our garbage.  We had a bin for each color of glass – brown, green and clear.  I had to bundle newspapers – we were not allowed to place them in a paper bag.  I also had to bundle cardboard.  I don’t think we were recycling plastic in the 80′s, but it came later in the early 90′s.  And then, there were certain types of plastic that we couldn’t recycle.  What a pain.  Throwing away garbage was like sorting mail at the post office.  But we all need to do our part to save the planet.

The US Government makes laws to reduce the amount of carbon emissions from automobiles.  This is great, the air really is so much cleaner, at least it seems so.  And we are encouraged to buy energy-efficient appliances to save electricity, which in return reduces the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere.  Replace your inefficient incandescent light bulbs with ultra-efficient fluorescent light bulbs.  At the same time, we will save money on electricity.

In my opinion, we are being deceived.  I have a couple of key points that need to be pointed out.  Before you scream that it’s all BS, just sit back and think about it for a bit.  It took me years to figure out what’s going on, and I have gone back and forth on the issue, but I think I finally get it.

1. We are saving the environment

This is the emotional propaganda that is used to sell this to you.  Today, I went to Lowe’s to replace one of my ultra-efficient fluorescent light bulbs (yes, most of my house has these).  First off, the replacement bulb for the bathroom was $5!  But I’m doing my part to save the earth.  Umm, until I look on the light bulb and it states CONTAINS MERCURY.  Hmmm, now that doesn’t sound so eco-cool, does it?  Mercury is so incredibly toxic, why would we now start putting this into lightbulbs?  We took it out of thermometers because it was so toxic.  All of these “green” bulbs are going to wind up in a landfill, and will ultimately contribute to poisoned groundwater. And since the US Congress has outlawed incandescent bulbs as of 2014, you will have no choice but to use these mercury-laced bulbs.

A similar thing can be said for batteries for electric cars, but I would expect there would be a lot more control over this.  I do not think all of those electric batteries will wind up in a junk yard.  Time will tell how that plays out.  I see a lot of toxic batteries in our future, and I cannot see how this can be managed on a grand scale.  The verdict is still out on that.

We are buying energy-efficient Energy Star rated appliances!  We are saving on our electric bill and reducing our carbon footprint!  WOW!  Wait a second…  Read my next point.

2. We are saving money on our electric bill

I only wish this was true.  It may be true in the short-term, but that’s not the electric company’s goal.  Why would they want us to pay them less?  This makes no sense whatsoever.  The truth is that in this digital age, the electric infrastructure is being taxed like never before.  The need for electricity is great, so the utilities need us to reduce our usage while they upgrade the power grid.  Nuclear energy could easily solve this problem, but that’s not going to happen anytime soon.

Electricity service is being deregulated in PA in early 2010.  And guess what?  Our rates are increasing by 34%!  Deregulation is happening in states across the country.  Now that we are all brainwashed into reducing our carbon footprint and saving energy and lowering our bills, they go ahead and raise our bill by one-third!

3. We are reducing our carbon footprint

It’s baaaaad for the environment.  It causes cancer.  In fact, the government wants to tax you if you use too much of it.  The government likes to tax things that they know people are going to use (even though they shouldn’t).  Think of alcohol and tobacco.  They do not outlaw it, they over-tax it.  You can expect taxes to increase on petroleum products.  Count on it.  But what scares me is a carbon tax.  They want to tax you if you buy something that has a high “carbon footprint”.  Do you understand what this means?  If you buy a TV that does not meet certain environmental “standards”, they will tax you.  They are not going to force these TVs not to be made, that would be too easy.  They want your tax money.

4. And the TRUTH of the reality is…

Green has nothing to do with saving the earth.  The entire movement, while possibly founded by the hippies and tree-huggers, has been hijacked by the government and has ulterior motives.  While not necessarily bad, Green is greed.  I just wish they would tell us the truth.  Here are the reasons that we are hell-bent on green:

a) GREEN equals something for nothing – “Give” your recyclables to your town who can sell the resources in bulk to suppliers and make money.  Sounds fine, but most towns have ordinances that require you to do so.  Personally, I should be free to sell my recyclables to the highest bidder.  The only recyclable that really has any true value is aluminum due to the market value of the metal itself.  Furthermore, the recycle process actually is a money-loser, while at the same time creating a huge “carbon footprint” to be green and recycle.  And more than half of recycled materials wind up in a landfill anyway.  The entire recycle process is a contradiction of the green initiative itself.

Remember paper bags at the grocery store?  Those were green.   There was no harm to the environment.  Paper is a renewable resource.  You can plant more trees.  We were forced to use plastic bags because it was more eco-friendly.  Huh?  Plastic bags made from oil that wind up in our landfills?  And what about all of those metal cans we used to have?  Remember Hawaiian Punch and the like?  Now it’s all plastic.  Plastic from oil.  Why?  It is cheaper.  Now they sell cloth bags at the supermarket, because we are all realizing that the switch to plastic was never really a good idea to start with.

It all comes down to money.  Plastic is cheaper than paper or metal.  That’s the truth.  And the only way not to destroy the environment when using these materials is to recycle.  We were fine the way it was before.  It comes down to corporate profit.  They just play on the emotions of people.  It’s all a scam.

b) GREEN equals the switch to more ELECTRIC power. This is the same electric power that is now being deregulated and increasing in cost.  This is all being done for a reason, and it has nothing to do with reducing our carbon footprint.  Not a thing.  So what could it be?  I know what you are thinking.  This is happening all over the world, not just in the USA.  And you are correct.  The reason is so obvious and simple.  Too simple.  But the connection between green and the truth is never communicated.  It all comes down to the goal of energy independence from the middle east, which in turn will take the money out of their hands and place it into the world’s leading governments.  Electricity is the new oil.

In order to make electricity the new oil, you must make people not want to use oil.  Make them feel guilty for destroying the environment.  But tax the hell out of them in the process.  What you are now seeing is a carefully planned strategy to shift the power from the middle east to the world’s leading nations.

Now you can speculate on your own, but one thing is for sure.  It all comes down to money and power.  Let me say it again: money and power.  Your government doesn’t care about the manatee or the fish or the trees or the carbon in the air.  They care about the money and power (and tax dollars).

I am for saving the manatee and fish.  (Sorry, trees are a renewable resource that should be used.) But I happen to be a fan of common sense and truth at the same time.

While all of this green seems great, it’s a huge lie in the process.  They are generating all kinds of harmful waste and toxic chemicals and materials in the ongoing quest to go green.  The idea of green sounds nice, but so do unicorns and rainbows.  I’m not sure true green is possible.

I’m all for saving the earth and stuff, but I don’t like deception.

Last week, I went to Longhorn to have a burger… Guess what? It came in a basket.

Today I went to Panera Bread and I was no so surprisingly served in a basket-like tray.  Now to be fair to Panera Bread, their basket is partly a tray, but it is mostly a basket!

But grab a bite to eat at Red Robin and you are going to get yourself the most basket-like basket you ever had. A freakin’ basket.

All of these baskets have wax paper which makes it all that more annoying to eat from.  I feel like a second-class citizen whenever I eat from these things.  Like I’m not worth a plate or something.

“Hey Joe, just throw that food in a basket.  It’s just Len, he doesn’t need a plate.“

It used to be that only fried clamstrips or chicken came in a basket.  Now everything winds up in a basket.  Why?  It all comes down to lazy people and lazy companies that don’t want to buy real plates, nor do they want to clean them.

So to be really clear, here is a Perroots.com list of approved food basket use:

• Fried clams
• Fried chicken
• Fruit baskets
• Easter baskets
• Gift basket (cheese, pepperoni, crackers, etc…)

After posting this blog about my anger towards the apparant copy-protection embedded in the new Linkin Park CD “Minutes To Midnight”, I received several unhappy messages and comments from people.  

My blog was spammed by someone on a mission (RepentTokyo from the idolator.com message boards) to get me to take down my post. 

Before I continue, let me address this.  If my blog is spammed over and over again with childish comments and name calling, it will be deleted.   That does not make me “technically challenged” nor not willing to accept other opinions.  If you don’t like my blog and you write a response that attacks me personally, consider it deleted.

Other blogs like this one and this one posted negative comments as well.  Some of them thought that I had no idea what I was talking about… Others blamed it on my Mac.  Whatever.  The point is that I could not copy my new CD into iTunes.  And this is the only CD that I have ever had this problem with.

Now, maybe there isn’t DRM on the CD.  But something is definately wrong with the CD.  Not only would the CD not even play in iTunes, but it would not even mount.  I tried it on my Windows PC (running XP) as well.  To be perfectly honest, I do not use WMP at all, so that explains my confusion with the 1kb files in Windows Explorer.  However, even WMP would not import or play the music. 

But, I was able to get it to work on my older Power PC Mac.  I make an image of the CD and burned it onto a CDR for the car.  And guess what?  It would not play there either.  I am thinking that the CD is defective and not copy protected.  I think that my older Power PC Mac was more forgiving to the error, but the new Mac and the Lenovo ThinkPad were not.

Since I know that I was not the only person in the world to have such issues, I know that my claims were valid.  Furthermore, it is my feeling that there was most likely a bad batch of CDs and that it was not a covert operation by Warner Bros. 

One more noteworthy point.  I still continue to buy my music.  Most of it from iTunes.  And to be honest, I never even pay attention to who the record label is.  I don’t use P2P to download music illegally or any other questionable method.  (Ask Mr. Shiney… He will tell you)  I am a believer that music should be paid for and that’s why I happily pay for music from both CDs and iTunes.  The $10 or $15 for a CD isn’t going to hurt me financially.  In fact, I prefer to buy a high-quality digital download or a CD.  You never know what you’re going to wind up with if you download over P2P.  I was just furious when I paid extra money for a physical CD that appeared to be copy protected.  Next time, I will just return the CD to the store and demand a new copy or a refund.

And the new CD?  I’m not too crazy about it anyway.  Linkin Park’s first 2 albums were much better.

I bought the CD for $16.99, and when I went to pop it into my Macbook Pro, the CD never showed up in iTunes. And it never displayed in the Finder. I thought maybe my mac goofed, so I ejected it and inserted it again. No dice. So I popped it in my work PC, and it opened Windows Media Player and allowed the CD to play, but, when I tried to view the CD’s contents in Windows Explorer, it showed the tracks as 1kb files, which is obviously wrong. The true files are hidden. They secretly employed some type of copy protection to prevent my fair use. I have the right to copy or listen to my music on my computer.

Then I did a Google search and found out that other people had the same issues. Then I got angry. There was no disclaimer on the CD packaging. In fact, the CD had the compact disc logo, which as far as I know is a standard, but it seems that this Warner Bros. CD is not following the standard.

I decided to try the CD in my older Power PC iMac. It worked! I ripped the CD into iTunes and then added the tracks to my MacBook Pro. So I paid full price for a crippled CD from Warner Bros. And I pay for my music! Why are they trying to restrict my ability to open the CD on my Mac and rip into iTunes?? It’s conduct like this that will cause people to stop buying CDs and download illegally instead.

From this point on, I will no longer buy Warner Bros. labeled CDs, nor will I purchase them on iTunes. I will acquire music from this label by using other means. Warner Bros., this is your fault!!! And if this happens when I purchase any other CDs from other record labels, they will no longer get my money. And I will tell everybody that I know.

In The Office:

1. I hate people when they must reply and carbon-copy the entire freaking company on a simple email that I send directly to them. It’s rude and it makes them look like an idiot. There is a time to bring others into an email trail and a time to simply press the Reply button.
2. I hate people who pay more attention to what I do, when they have no reason to care. They should mind their own business.
3. I hate people who will stab you in the back the first chance that they get so that they can pass their failures onto you.
4. I hate people who need to be held by the hand like a little baby and will go no further than their designated “job role.” This erks me to no end.
5. I hate people who won’t take lunch because of their so-called dedication to the company. These are the same people who roll in 15 minutes late everyday and complain if you leave 5 minutes early.

Other People I Hate:

1. I hate contractors who don’t want my business. Whenever I call a contractor to bid on business, most don’t even call back. The few that do never follow up with an estimate or a phone call. They don’t want my money. I don’t understand them. I have money to give them and they won’t take it.
2. I hate nosey neighbors who try to disrupt the peace and tranquility of life by budding into things that do not pertain to them. (For my neighbors reading this – I’m not talking about you. It’s the other ones we all have to watch! But if you’re lucky, I will hate you too!)
3. I hate people who judge others based on tangible items. If you have money or if you don’t… Either way they look down on you.
4. I hate people who hate. People who really hate people. Now don’t get me wrong, I hate people as much as the next guy. Actually, I hate things that people do sometimes. I don’t really hate people.
5. I hate people who are all grown up and still live at home with their mommies.

If you can read between the lines, perhaps you can see that I’ve made my best attempt to blend humor and seriousness into this blog. So don’t be offended. This is just a little rant… A few events have happened in the past day or two that sparked this. It’s my blog afterall!

Last year, I was laid off from my job of 6 1/2 years.  I decided to take a job as a “consultant”, (also referred to as a Contractor) for a major pharmaceutical company. While it was good to be employed, others looked at this position with skepticism, and still do. Why? Let me give you the basics of what being a consultant is first:

• You work for a consulting company, not the actual company you work at.
• You work under a contract term, generally 3, 6, 9 or 12 months at a time.
• You are paid by the hour.
• You do not get paid for time off such as sick days, vacation days or holidays.
• You do not get company-paid or subsidized health insurance.
• Sometimes, you get a 1099 instead of a W2, so you need to pay your own taxes.
• You do not escalate up the corporate ladder.
• You do not have the “security” of a regular salaried job.

Why would anyone want to do this? Let me address these points, and I will start with the latter:

You do not have the “security” of a regular salaried job.
This is totally false. As I had already described above, job security does not exist anymore. Most people agree with this, until you mention consulting. For the last 3 years at my previous employer, I lived with the constant threat of layoffs. Every quarter. Finally my number was up. Being a consultant is no different. As an employee, you are working “at-will”. Same as a consultant. Any party can end the relationship at anytime. There is no difference.

You do not escalate up the corporate ladder.
You are correct. But you will make more money and have more freedom. You will not need to be concerned with corporate politics in order to move up. You will move up by building your reputation and increasing your hourly wage when negotiating your next contract. Why settle for a 2% annual raise when you could give yourself a significant raise throughout the year? Besides, I’ve never been one for the corporate ladder!

Sometimes, you get a 1099 instead of a W2, so you need to pay your own taxes.
Sometimes you have a choice. For many consultants, it is their business, so they will only accept positions which allow for a 1099. However, many consulting firms these days prefer to make you a W2 employee of their company.

You do not get company-paid or subsidized health insurance.
True. I was offered a group insurance plan, but I chose to pay for my old insurance through COBRA. Yes, health insurance is expensive. However, you will be making more money than an employee, so this cost is offset. This is more of a psycological issue. I hated writing out a check for $830 per month. But when you take into account what I actually make now, it more than covers the cost of paying for health insurance.

You do not get paid for time off such as sick days, vacation days or holidays.
True. This is the same answer as the health insurance answer above. You make more money. In fact, I allow myself 6 weeks (30 days) off per year for vacation, personal, sick, etc… and I still make more than I did as a regular employee. If I want to take time off, I do. It’s much different as an employee. I have the freedom to take off whenever I want and I really like that.

You are paid by the hour.
Yup. So I work no longer than 40 hours per week! And if they want more, they have to pay! No more working long hours for free. I am guaranteed 40 hours per week, which is typical of consulting.

You work under a contract term, generally 3, 6, 9 or 12 months at a time.
“But what happens when your contract ends?” I am asked this often. Well, in my case, the employer can choose to renew for another term, which is the case for me. Otherwise, there are plenty of contract positions available out there. You can go from contract to contract and negotiate your pay at each location. In fact, you can financially benefit from each move.

You work for a consulting company, not the actual company you work at.
Ahhh yes! And I don’t have to worry about the politics or ass-kissing. This is the closest thing to being my own boss that I can get with a guaranteed paycheck. After over a year of consulting, I can say that the benefits far exceed any drawbacks.

First of all, Citibank forbids more than 6 electronic transfers (in or out) of your bank account in any statement month.  The disclaimer on their website says that this is due to Federal regulations, but I think that is not true.  I make transfers in and out of my main bank numerous times without issue.   OK… Whatever.  On to my real rant.

Today, I called Citibank Direct to inquire about my blank checks that I’ve yet to receive.  An Indian gentleman picked up the phone, which normally I could care less about as long as they can perform their job.  Well, this guy just couldn’t get it together.  He asked for my account number, which I told him I do not have.  Then he asked for my ATM card number, which I do not carry with me.  I asked him to look me up by my social security number, but he said that he could not.  Then he asked me to spell my name for him.  After saying it twice and spelling both my first name and last name three times, he told me that he could not find an account with my name.  He then asked me for my account number!  Grrrrr….  I then insisted to be transferred to a supervisor.

I was expecting to be transferred to a Level 2 CSR in the good ‘ol USA, but no.  I was still in India speaking to someone who could barely speak the English language.  The same thing happened.  He asked for my account number, which I told him I do not have.  Then he asked for my ATM card number, which I also did not have.  He then asked for my first and last name.  You can imagine how that went.  After spelling it several times, he asked me if my account was active.  He then told me that I did not have an account with Citibank.  Then he asked me for my social security number.  He immediately found my account and confirmed several facts before proceeding to discuss my account.  I was so frusterated with this call to Citibank that I may consider taking all of my money out!  Then watch what happens to their stock price! 

Does anybody know of a good eSavings account with customer service in the USA?

I installed Parallels for Mac, which will allow you to run Windows in an isolated, virtual machine. And now that Mac is on the Intel platform, it runs very well. (I have decided NOT to install Windows using Boot Camp on my beautiful MacBook Pro). So, I was testing MAME software to use on my arcade game, and all of a sudden, I got the famous ‘Program Is Not Responsing’ window for IE, so I pressed End Task. Mistake.

The next thing I see is a program called ‘System Doctor’ running in the background, and it is scanning my hard disk. I tried to close it, but it then opened more web browser windows. Shortcuts for advertisements were placed all over my screen. In IE, I had this so-called pop-up blocker. I couldn’t do anything. Once I tried to uninstall the malware, I pretty much rendered my Windows XP useless.

So, apparantly, it was not a real ‘Program Is Not Responding’ window. They were very clever and somehow masked an Active X control or something else which allowed this program to be downloaded. I did not have to enter a system password or anything. What a pain in the ass. And as quite a knowledgeable computer user, I fell for the prank. I am very surprised, because I can normally detect such scams in advance. So, you know this was a good one.

I am spoiled. With a Mac, if a program wants to place files across the hard drive, the OS prompts for an administrator username and password. Usually, most applications for the Mac are one ‘file’ (actually it’s a bundle, but that’s another conversation). To delete it, you just drag the program to the trash. Simple. But, some programs require files to be placed in certain directories. Even though I am an administrator on my Mac, I am prompted to enter my password. This is a great safeguard against attacks like the one that I had using XP.

Now, fortunately, I was running Windows XP under Parallels virtualization software, so I just had to delete one file to remove XP. Now, I should have made a backup of my original XP image (but I didn’t) so next time I can just start from scratch with no effort at all.

The whole malware, spyware, scumware, virus thing on Windows really took off after I left the platform 4 1/2 years ago. It was never as bad as it is now. It is the perfect time to switch to a mac. Really.

http://www.apple.com/getamac/