So there’s a few things AT&T and Verizon do not want us to know and the main thing is, they are ripping us off horrendously.  They nickle and dime us to death with the little fees they put on our bills every month.  When I was with AT&T I was supposed to be paying around $90 a month but for whatever reason it was always around $94, until we turned off texting.  Then it went back to normal.  Speaking of texting, that is a hoax as well, AT&T was charging 10 cents a text BOTH ways, that is some major double dipping… jerks.  So anyways, my point here is STOP GETTING RIPPED OFF PEOPLE!!  This is where Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile come in.

 

 

 

 

 

These guys, from what I hear, are Sprint creations so your calls and data connections will be made on Sprint’s network which is not bad at all.  They are pay as you go but have sweet deals that come along with the plans.  The two plans my wife and I got are amazing, give us more features, and ends up being, right now, $15 less a month and that number will grow.  I will explain why later.

My wife got the Boost unlimited plan that starts at $50 a month.  Yes it is unlimited everything.  Texting, talk, and data.  And they have a thing where if you pay your bill on time for 6 months, your phone bill gets dropped by $5.  Then after another 6 months another $5 until it gets down to $35 a month.  That is a ridiculously amazing price.  Unlimited everything for $35 a month.

Verizon and AT&T really should be ashamed of themselves.  They are ripping us off so badly but hey, we keep paying it so why not right?  “But the phones must suck” you proclaim!  Not really.  Yes, they don’t have an amazing selection like Verizon and AT&T but they have a very sweet Android phone that is comparable to the iPhone 3GS called the Samsung Galaxy.  We got it new off Ebay for $160 after shipping.

Oh and guess what, NO CONTRACT people!  Quit when you want.  There is no making you pay for 2 years because they gave you a “discount” on the phone.  The phone runs Android 2.2 and runs its well.  The processor and RAM are plenty to play really whatever is wanted.  She loves it and so does our monthly budget.  No more minute/texting counting YAY!  And even better, no more fighting about her going over her minutes (:  She is now a free soul.

Now for my plan, I got mine through Virgin Mobile.  It is the perfect plan for a nerdy, doesn’t like to talk on the phone, person like me.  It’s 300 minutes (no weekend or night minutes) whenever you use the phone, you are using the minutes.  Then unlimited data and texting for $25!  My jaw dropped when I saw that price, yes people, only $25 for 300 minutes (which I don’t even get close to using) and unlimited texting and data!!!! **edit**They now jacked the price up to $35 a month which still isn’t too bad**  And the phone is awesome.  It’s a LG Optimus V and I got it at Radio Shack on a sale for around $160 after taxes.

It runs Android 2.2 and runs its well.  So far I’ve had it for 2 months and both months I used about 100 minutes so this plan is absolutely perfect for me.  We have had hardly any dropped calls and the data connection is not as fast as AT&T but it gets the job done.  And the turn by turn navigation is amazing.  Anyways, I could go on and on about this but the main point here is stop getting ripped off, Verizon, Sprint, T-mobile, and AT&T are absolutely robbing us and it needs to stop.  Virgin and Boost mobile have amazing deals and the service is great.  Get them people, get them!  Chau.

So I have been a Netflix subscriber for a while now. Love the service, going to lie. But now they are jacking up the prices by $6. Now you may be saying, “That’s hardly anything!” And you would be right. But I’m going on principle here people, PRINCIPLE! Right now I’m paying about $12 a month for blurays included. Now they are going to bump that up to $18… pretty freakin messed up. Then there are others that are saying, “Blame it on the big evil movie corporations!!! They are raising their prices so Netflix has to as well!” That, my friends, is a big fat lie. Dave Pogue, Mr. New York Times man who writes about technology addressed this single point in one of his articles found here:

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/14/why-netflix-raised-its-prices

And guess what? It is NOT because of movie companies raising their prices. So what is the reason you may ask?? To be honest I can’t see it as anything else but greed and want of more money. They’ve already put most stores out of business like Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, and others. So they are getting close to a Monopoly so now they are going to raise their prices and why? BECAUSE THEY CAN. Well, screw them, this is going to happen September 1st and I’ll be getting rid of my account before then. Another weird thing is they told David Pogue that they are expecting people to cancel and they are ok with that… boggles my mind. Their forecaster people have decided they will be fine when the masses quit. Only time will tell if they are right but for me, they lost my business because they don’t deserve it anymore. Chau people, chau.

Oh and about having Netflix ads on my blog…. uhhh no comment (:

This post is basically for me more than anyone but it’s meant to be a resource for finding a job as a instructor or adjunct instructor at Salt Lake’s different Colleges and Universities. These links will take you straight to their job pages so you can check them quickly and they are in alphabetical order. Here we go:

American Intercontinental University

Argosy, and Art Institute

Ashworth College

Broadview University

DeVry

Eagle Gate College

Everest

International Academy of Design and Technology

ITT Tech

Kaplan University

LDS Business College

National University

Neumont

University of Phoenix

Rasmussen College

Salt Lake Community College

South University

Stevens Henager

Strayer

Walden University (online classes)

Western Governors University

Westwood College

I’m a teacher in Utah and always wanted a resource where I could easily access the salary schedules and insurance info for the school districts throughout the state. So I created this page. These are links to the general insurance and salary schedule pages, not the pdfs since those change year by year and I’d have broken links all over the place. These links should get you to where you need to go and then from there you can click on what you want. Also, I couldn’t find the info for all the districts so if you happen to find the pages that I don’t have, please hook me up with the links. Anyways, hope this info is helpful (: If I’m missing any districts you want to see please let me know.

Alpine District

Insurance and Salary Schedules

Box Elder District

Insurance
Salary Schedules

Cache County District

Couldn’t find anything on insurance
Salary Schedules

Canyons District

Insurance
Salary Schedules

Davis District

Insurance — scroll down until you see “Specific Plan Information” The health insurance handbooks are there.
Salary Schedules — just click on Salary Tables

Garfield District

Couldn’t find either salary schedules or insurance info sorry ): If you find anything please let me know.

Granite District

Insurance
Salary Schedules

Jordan District

Insurance — just scroll down and you’ll see the links for the handbooks.
Salary Schedules — Once you get to this page you have to mouse over the button at the top of the page that corresponds to your job category. Then the salary schedule link will be on the drop down menu.

Logan District

Insurance
Salary Schedules

Murray District

Insurance — Couldn’t find it on the website. If you find it please let me know (:
Salary Schedules

Nebo District

Insurance and Salary Schedules

Ogden District

Insurance and Salary Schedules — The way they did this is weird. The Salary Schedules are buried in Word documents. So click what job category you are, then open the Word Doc and scroll down till you find it. For the insurance info there is a link on the right hand side called, “Insurance Benefits Booklet” click it. Hopefully Ogden gets their act together, this info was way too hard to find.

Park City District

Insurance
Salary Schedules — have to scroll down a bit

Provo District

Insurance and Salary Schedules — Scroll down and it’s all there

Salt Lake District

Insurance
Salary Schedules

San Juan District

Couldn’t find insurance info
Salary Schedules

Tooele District

I looked all over Tooele District’s website and couldn’t find anything. This page is all I could find that could be somewhat helpful.

Uintah District

Insurance
Salary Schedules

Wasatch County District

Insurance
Salary Schedules

Weber District

Insurance
Salary Schedules

The dreaded time has come. Itunes is making me update my software. I HATE it when this happens because it’s always the same process. I try to update the software with their stupid updater, it downloads everything, which takes a while, then it has me restart my comp, which I do, then when I try and run itunes I get this great little message:

And the great thing is, I click on help and it does nothing. I guess they are messing with me, they really aren’t here to help. I have to click ok and then it goes away leaving me just as screwed as before. And why the crap does a MUSIC program need a VIDEO program to work? That is one of the most idiotic things in the world. I mean c’mon Apple seriously? You are a multi BILLION dollar company and you can’t even get your software to update correctly? This is why I get a nasty feeling in my stomach every time it MAKES me update their piece of garbage. Well, I guess it’s ok cause I can just go use some other program with my iphone…. oh wait, NO I CAN’T. Every time they update the firmware on my phone it basically makes all the other itunes knock offs worthless. They make you use a piece of crap whether you like it or not. So ok, I guess I’ll have to play their stupid, 3 hour update game, so I went to their site and downloaded the installer. Double clicked it and after waiting WAY too long for it to install it finally works. Which is interesting because in the past, even after downloading the installer it wouldn’t work. I had to uninstall the whole thing, then reinstall it. But I guess they finally got something right and fixed that issue.

Oh, and there’s more. The way it works is horrendous. Syncing…. oh geez…. the all too common 5 hour sync!!! We all love it. It can’t just sync the music it has to sync, videos, music, ringtones, apps, dogs, cats, babies, and everything else it can take a dump on. And it doesn’t just sync, it has to make a backup as well, which is ok UNLESS YOU DON’T WANT A BACKUP!! But itunes doesn’t care if you want a backup or not, IT JUST DOES IT. You put new songs on there and it has to sync. You take songs off, it syncs, you sneeze and it syncs. And to make things worse it will only sync with ONE COMPUTER. So if I have music I want on there I have to put it on the ONE computer itunes is smart enough to handle. I mean heaven forbid it works just like EVERY OTHER MP3 player out there and allows you to just click and drag music into a folder and bam, it’s on your player. No, no, no, that would of been too crappy to have it do something intuitive like that. So once you have your music library all set up and how you want it, and one day you want to handle your music manually, yes they actually have an option to do that, it says all the music will be erased from the iphone. So yay, we get to start all over and wait another 5 hours to put all the music on AGAIN and wait for it to sync which will take as long as it takes me to DIE. And it works the other way as well. You’re managing your music manually then you want to switch to the album library way, yep it will give you this message and erase everything you have.

How completely moronic…

Then there’s apps. You a backup of all your apps, great, now you don’t have to re-download them, which really isn’t a big deal to do but whatever. But then what the crap?! all the apps I deleted on my phone are back!!!! GAAAHHH I HATE YOU ITUNES!!! It takes all the apps it made a backup of and puts them back on the phone if they aren’t present. So even though you deleted the app, itunes doesn’t care, it just puts the app back on there because it was part of the backup….. it doesn’t think, HMM MAYBE HE DIDN’T WANT THAT APP BACK ON THERE. Now some of you may be thinking, “Well, don’t sync your apps then!” Ok well, when I go to uncheck sync apps, I get this popup:

Ya I absolutely totally completely want that to happen… shoot me now…

Oh and ring tones!!! I love how ring tones work as well. I had them all added on itunes ready to go into my phone. It copied them over and I went to my ring tone section and they weren’t there. I tried for about a half hour to get them on, it said they were on there but of course they weren’t showing up. So after googling around a little I found a site that said you can’t manually manage your music and put ring tones on there at the same time. You had to have itunes control your music by the album library method to get the ring tones to work. Isn’t that great? So I had to erase EVERYTHING on my phone, put the music back on the stupid album library way, and resync it (which took forever), just so my ringtones would show up. Ohhhh how I hate thee itunes, may a sword fall on thyself and thrust thee through!

Now don’t get me wrong, the iphone is ok, it has its issues but for the most part is a pretty incredible device. But Apple knows what they are doing, they have to keep you dependent on their way of doing things. You have to use THEIR crappy itunes software, shop on THEIR app store, use only the apps THEY say you can, use THEIR computers to develop apps, and the list goes on. They are restrictive and way too controlling and for that reason, next September, IT’S ANDROID TIME BABY WOO HOO!!! May itunes die a horrible death. Thank you for your time.

P.S.
All I wanted to do was add ONE song to my iphone, that whole process with the updating of itunes, syncing, and all the other garbage Apple makes you do with their devices took about an hour. Just the syncing alone lasted from 7:25pm my time and ended at 7:50pm and all I did was take off an e-book and add one song… itunes is amazing ladies and gentlemen, let’s give it a gold star, then shoot it in the head.

Everyone take a look at this picture

Incredible looking am I right? Makes me drool anyways. I personally love KFC, yes my heart screams at me every time I go there but my taste buds love me and dance for joy when the chicken touches my lips. So what’s my beef (or chicken should I say? haha) with this sandwich? IT’S THIS FREAKIN PICTURE!!! I looked at thinking it had to be AT LEAST the size of a Whopper… maybe a little bit smaller. Well I was right, if you add a Jr. at the end. Yes my friends the size is comparable to Burger King’s DOLLAR burger, the Whopper Jr. Really Colonel? Are you kidding me or what? This reminds of their Snacker. Same deal happened. The sandwich looked amazing and I couldn’t believe that KFC had ACTUALLY made a dollar sandwich but when we got it… holy crap people two bites later and the thing was gone. So for your viewing pleasure here is the picture I took of my **huge** Dublicious from KFC.

LOOK AT THAT!!! The dang fry box is bigger than the sandwich! Now here’s the kicker… I paid $5 bucks for this!!! It’s robbery, it really is. Now don’t get me wrong the sandwich was as good as it looked. It was amazing actually but just like the snacker in about 4 bites it was gone and I was left sandwichless and depressed ): I could of got a Little Caesars Pizza!!! Or a foot long sub for this price!! Uggh, I must say I was extremely disappointed today and couldn’t believe the size of the sandwich. I totally think it’s deceiving advertising since the pictures KFC release make the sandwich seem monstrous when in reality it’s no bigger than my child’s poop… sad day.

Last night my wife and I finished listening to the Mockingjay, the last book of the Hunger Games trilogy… and holy crap people what a messed up/amazing thing it was. If you don’t know anything about these books here’s a very quick synopsis. It’s about a young girl who gets throw into the Hunger Games which is a competition held every year where young boys and girls get thrown into an arena and have to fight to the death. The capital is the main source of power that makes this happen and the whole trilogy is about them trying to make it through the games and destroy the capital.

I’m not sure what to say about these books… I guess it’s like that old adage about a train wreck, you don’t want to look but you do anyways because of the craziness. I mean these books have the most horrendous things happen that I think I’ve ever read but yet, I loved each minute of it and finished all three of them. There are points that make you want to scream in anger of the injustice that happens all throughout the stories. The capital… grrr… what horrible people. I mean that’s the whole thing. It’s this crazy society that goes back to the gladiator days where people killing each other is considered entertainment. Ms. Suzanne Collins even said that was part of her inspiration for the story in the books. I don’t know what to say though except that those books tired me out. I mean ALL the stuff that happens, all the crap that the capital does to people is all just totally tiring and absolutely messed up. But yet, I LOVED the books. It’s a weird feeling loving such an incredibly screwed up set of stories. But it’s only something that you can understand if you read the books which I HIGHLY recommend doing. Amazing books, incredibly moving and shocking. They blend into each other very nicely and they leave wondering what will happen next until the ending which I really liked, no matter what anyone else says. It’s ridiculously sad and depressing but it does have a little bit of happiness thrown in there.

If you haven’t read these books here are the three of them and a quick and I mean quick summary of each.

The Hunger Games (Book 1)

This is book one and starts out telling you about the hunger games, Panem (the name of the society they are in), and tells the story of Katniss Everdeen and her experiences in the hunger games.

Catching Fire (Book 2)

This book talks about the aftermath of the first hunger games and the crazy crap that the capital pulls to the winners.

The Mockingjay (Book 3)

This is the final book where Katniss and the rebels try to take down the capital and own their sorry buttoxes.

Anyways PLEASE read these books. They are incredible and will change how you think about a lot of different things and issues. Great job on these Ms. Collins and thank you for taking us on quite an amazing ride.

Final Score: EASILY a 10/10

So I just helped my buddy get a new computer and he ended up getting a beast. It’s a quad core, 8 gigs of RAM, 1 TB hard drive with a Nvidia Geforce GT 240 for about $570 which isn’t too bad. Anyways, he downloaded Steam and got Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, and Alien Swarm installed on there. Each time he double clicked on those games they would look like they were about to start and then out of the blue they would quit out and go back to the desktop. For L4D2 he would get a message saying from Steam saying “Unknown Video Card” that looked like this except the name of the video card was Geforce GT 240.

This is weird since it’s a one of the more popular cheaper ones. So the games he paid for were unplayable which is always lame and I also felt kinda like an idiot because I recommended he get this computer and now it wouldn’t even play the games. So we spent probably around 4 days on this on and off. Well, if you read my other post about how I fixed the Camtasia install freeze then this solution will make more sense. Because of what happened with Camtasia I thought to myself, “What if I disable Spyware Doctor again (he had it installed as well) would that help?” I couldn’t see how a spyware program would be messing with video games but hey, it was worth a shot. So I disabled it and yep, the game started right up and all was good. I mean I love Spyware Doctor but this two strikes in two days against it so I may have to look for something else. I mean it took me a long time to figure out both the Steam and Camtasia issues so I dunno if I’m going to get rid of it or not. Spyware Doctor has been good to me over the years so I’ll probably give it one more shot… we’ll just have to see. But anyways, it was lame it took me so long to figure out but figured it out I did and all is good. So if something isn’t working on your computer, just disable Spyware Doctor and magic will happen (: Be good people chau.

So I’m a teacher right? Right. So I make video tutorials for my students to help them and to be blunt, to not have to teach the same thing over 10 billion times. We upgraded our lab to Windows 7 which makes me happy because Microsoft finally got it right after the junkyness that was Vista. What’s messed up though is that they charged US for THEIR mistake. I mean Vista sucked and what do they do about it? They fix it and then charge us even more for that fix…. lame. Anyways back to video tutorials. So I made a bunch for night classes I teach and such and I’ve been using Camtasia which is pretty nice. So I went to install it and every time it freezes when there’s about 8 seconds left. It doesn’t say what it freezes on, just that it freezes which was no help at ALL. So I read in a ton of forums, didn’t find anything. I’m trying permissions, trying to install it off a downloaded file instead of the cd, trying compatibility mode and nothing is working. So finally I read in this forum that sometimes virus protection or spyware programs will block the install. The forum said there is a especially big problem with Spyware Doctor and of course what do I have on my computer? Yep, SPYWARE DOCTOR. Grrr.

So I disable it and poof, problem goes away and it installs perfectly. And that only took me around 3 hours to figure out yay…. ): I also disabled Avast and all my other security software installs so you may have to do that as well. So if any of you are having that same problem as me on Windows 7, I hope this helps. If so click one of my ads and comment (; haha. Be good people chau.

Ok so I went to log into my Starcraft 2 account today and now it’s asking for a Authenticator Code… so it seems my stupid account was hacked… and I’ve only had it for about a week. It has ALREADY been hacked. I’ve heard a lot of other stories just like this but with World of Warcraft accounts instead. I mean does Blizzard’s security really suck that bad? It must cause I didn’t do anything to get it hacked, just played the dang game. Never got a phishing email, never was contacted by a “Blizzard” employee, all I did, like I said, was just play the freakin game. So I think to myself, “Blizzard is a good company, they gotta have great support for their loyal customers that dump bazillions of dollars each month into their products.” So after reassuring myself that they’ll take care of me, I called their support number and the response I got said something like this, “Due to the volume of phone calls we get and the fact that we are too cheap to pay for more phone support even though we could easily afford it because we make a butt load of money off of WOW each month, we are unable to take your call at this moment, please go to our website where you will get hopelessly lost trying to find an answer to your issue.” I mean really Blizzard, REALLY!?!!? You have too many calls? I got my account hacked and you have too many calls on your plate so you just don’t take it? What kind of customer service is this? I could understand if it was some no name company who just started business and has like 5 employees… but a multi-billion dollar company such as this, just simply smacking you in the face and not offering customer service over the phone because the call volume is too high? What the crap Blizzard? What the crap? After getting over the shock of Blizzard pooping on my head, I decided to try my other option, email them, and hope to heck my email gets there and that they fix this issue. Well this is a quote from the email I received,

“Thank you for your report to Blizzard Entertainment’s Hacks & Anti-Piracy team. This is an automatic message to let you know that we have received your report.

Due to the volume of email received by the Hacks & Anti-Piracy team it is not always possible for us to respond to each report individually and this may be the only email you receive from us regarding this matter.”

Hmmm this may be the only email I receive from them regarding the, oh, not so important matter of my account being hacked and the game I PAID for being unplayable because Blizzard’s systems suck and are easy to hack. All I can say to all of this is wow…. and I don’t mean World of Warcraft. I’ve been reading some forums and a lot of people have had the same issue I’m having now and they are saying that in 24-48 hours Blizzard will contact me, want me to prove I am who I am, and then they’ll fix it and want me to get an Authenticator so this won’t happen again. If I had to pay for one I’d be pretty mad but I have an Iphone and there’s an app that will do that so I guess that’ll have to do. It’s just kinda annoying I’ll have to have my phone with me whenever I want to play the game. Upgrade and fix your systems Blizzard, for a company as awesome as you are, this is pretty lame and unacceptable. Hopefully you’re listening. Chau people.