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In an interesting twist, you are not suppose to make lemonade if you are given lemons, according to the Portland Health Department.

Julie Murphy, a 7 year old girl was slapped on the wrist for setting up a lemonade stand at a street fair by the health department. Apparently, she did not have a temporary restaurant permit to sell food at a public place. The permit cost $120. She was forced to shut down or face a $500 fine.

As opposed to selling lemonade, she gave the lemonade away for donations. The health officials came back when traffic started to pick up and gave her an ultimatum, “shut down or face a fine”.

She would need to sell or get donations that equate to 1000 cups of lemonade if she would to continue to maintain her booth, as she was selling a cup at $0.50.

In an ideal world, you would want to work yourself out of your job and hopefully retire in comfort. Well, the Season Ticket Sales Staff of the Miami Heat found out that they worked themselves out from their job when all the season tickets were snapped up after the Miami Heat recently signed LeBron James.
The Heat fired all 30 of its season ticket sellers. One seller acknowledged to the Miami Herald, “There was really nothing left to do.”

Hopefully, the Heat gave the ticket sellers some benefits from that as that saved the team a lot of money in wages for the 30 ticket sellers.

Every now and then, Google would change their homepage to reflect a certain event or cause. Today, you are able to play Pac Man on Google for free. This it to acknowledge that it is the game’s 30th anniversary.

Hey Web Searchers,

If you’ve visited our homepage today, there’s no doubt that you noticed our Pac Man doodle honoring the game’s 30th anniversary. If you insert the virtual coin, you can begin playing this legendary game or you can wait 10 seconds and it will automatically start. If you’re not a Pac Man fan or want to skip the music and lights, just enter you search query as usual and you’ll be directed to our normal search results page. Other options include:

1. Closing your browser
2. Turning the volume down or off on your computer
3. Playing Pac Man all day long (or at least until you beat your co-workers)

Happy Friday!

~Rubie

I got this e-mail from a dear friend and there is some truth in this. I am not sure who wrote it but it was well thought of.

NINE WORDS WOMEN USE

(1) Fine:This is the word women use to end an argument when they are right and you need to shut up.

(2) Five Minutes:If she is getting dressed, this means a half an hour. Five minutes is only five minutes if you have just been given five more minutes to watch the game before helping around the house.

(3) Nothing:This is the calm before the storm. This means something, and you should be on your toes. Arguments that begin with nothing usually end in fine.

(4) Go Ahead:This is a dare, not permission.. Don’t Do It!

(5) Loud Sigh:This is actually a word, but is a non-verbal statement often misunderstood by men. A loud sigh means she thinks you are an idiot and wonders why she is wasting her time standing here and arguing with you about nothing. (Refer back to # 3 for the meaning of nothing.)

(6) That’s Okay:This is one of the most dangerous statements a women can make to a man. That’s okay means she wants to think long and hard before deciding how and when you will pay for your mistake.

(7) Thanks:A woman is thanking you, do not question, or faint. Just say you’re welcome. (I want to add in a clause here – This is true, unless she says ‘Thanks a lot’ – that is PURE sarcasm and she is not thanking you at all. DO NOT say ‘you’re welcome’ .. that will bring on a ‘whatever’).

(8) Whatever:Is a woman’s way of saying F– YOU!

(9) Don’t worry about it, I got it:Another dangerous statement, meaning this is something that a woman has told a man to do several times, but is now doing it herself. This will later result in a man asking ‘What’s wrong?’ For the woman’s response refer to # 3.

* Send page to the men you know, to warn them about arguments they can avoid(if they remember the terminology).
* Send this to all the women you know to give them a good laugh, cause they know it’s true!!

It’s been quite some time since I posted on here. With the extended vacation which I have yet to find and upload the pictures to my new position, it’s been a hard hitting Q1 2010.

Somebody sent this to me and I thought I would share the quiz.

FIRST, do the simple math below.
THEN, scroll down to find your hero.

It is truly remarkable just how accurate this is!
1) Pick your favorite number between 1 and 8
2) Multiply your choice by 3
3) Add 3
4) Multiply again by 3
5) You’ll get a 2 digit number…..maybe 42, for example
6) Add the digits together. Example 4 and 2 = 6

Now Scroll down.
With that number, see who your ROLE MODEL is from the list below:
1. Albert Einstein 2.
2. Oprah Winfrey
3. Mother Theresa
4. Ronald Reagan
5. Bill Gates
6. Gandhi
7. Eleanor Roosevelt
8. Babe Ruth
9. Eric Ewe
10.Winston Churchill
11.Barbara Walters
12.Dalai Lama

If you have some spare change and would like to own part of history, you can put your offer in for an authentic space shuttle at 31.43% off the asking price. There are some strings attached and you have the next 30 days to look under the matress to find the money before putting in the offer.

Here is a fact that you might not know about the Shuttle program. The first space shuttle developed by NASA was the Enterprise (aka OV-101) and was rolled out on Sept 17, 1976, but it never made it into space.

In an article reported by Associated Press on Jan 15, 2010:
Nasa has slashed the asking price for its soon-to-be-redundant space shuttles from 42 million dollars (£25.8 million) to 28.8 million dollars (£17.7 million).

The shuttles are for sale once they stop flying, supposedly this autumn.

When Nasa put out the call to museums, schools and others in December 2008, seeking buyers, about 20 expressed interest.

Nasa spokesman Mike Curie expects more interest, especially with the discount. “We’re confident that we’ll get other takers,” Mr Curie said.

Discovery is already promised to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum. Atlantis and Endeavour are up for grabs. It’s possible that Enterprise, a shuttle prototype that never made it to space, also will be available. Enterprise currently is at the Smithsonian.

Mr Curie said no decisions will be made before summer.

The new lower price is based on Nasa’s estimate of the cost for transporting a shuttle from Kennedy Space Centre to a major US airport, and for displaying it indoors in a climate-controlled building. The travel cost may vary based on location. Nasa moved up the delivery date to the latter half of 2011, instead of 2012.

Potential customers have until February 19 to put in a request.

As for the space shuttle main engines, those are now free. Nasa advertised them for 400,000 to 800,000 US dollars each in December 2008, but no one expressed interest. So now the engines are available, along with other shuttle artefacts, for the cost of transportation and handling.

Assembly will be required, however.

Google announced today that they are taking an aggressive move to make reviews more accessible to those brick and mortar stores. Google will allow U.S. consumers to read reviews about local stores on their cell phones when they point and scan the bar codes on those local stores.

Google labeled this initiative as “Favorite Places on Google”, and Google sent out 100,000 bar codes to 100,000 most popular local businesses based on searches. That initiative spanned across 9,000 towns across the 50 states.

Businesses can put the barcode up in their window; searchers can scan it with any camera- and app-enabled phone, then read the reviews and other info on the Place Page, and even get mobile coupons on the spot. The QR codes can be scanned by a variety of mobile phones, including Android-powered phones, the iPhone and BlackBerry devices, provided that the user downloads a barcode-scanning app. Google suggests its own Barcode Scanner app for Android, and the $1.99 QuickMark app (iTunes) for the iPhone, among others. 

Google mentioned that the barcode initiative will be expanded with more bar codes being sent out, but there was no mention of a timeline. If you are keen on getting onboard, you can claim your own barcode via this Google Favorite Places link.

The once high flying Sharper Image is back, but utilizing a different business model with funding from Camelot Venture Group. I doubt that they are able to breach their ever successful pre-2004 strategy and this holiday season is going to be a good barometer. Their present model evolves around selling to consumers through other retailers as well as maintaining a presence online. I have no doubt that Sharper Image invested millions of dollars in building its brand since their inception, but having another retailer sell your products is similar to having Wal-Mart sell your product among the 5 other brands that they sell.

Some of their brick and mortar retailers that are selling their products are Best Buy, Staples, Kohl’s, Bed Bath and Beyond to Macy’s. Well, they are not in Wal-Mart yet but just image, if you are going to get Dad an electric shaver, would you go with something like Remington, Norelco, etc which produced quality shavers for a living or Sharper Image which sources for products and slap their brand on it? Hummm???

If they have a Sharper Image store, then it is a different story as they only carry and selling one item; not items with multiple brands.  So making a sale with Sharper Image product sale is much easier at a Sharper Image store as opposed to a store like Bed Bath and Beyond. Blanketing the nation with retail stores will not work too [read on].

As for their website, it is OK. It did not blow me away and hosting videos on YouTube. If one is on a shoe string budget to setup the website, then YouTube is the way to go. i.e. the “The Sharper Image® Deluxe Nose & Ear Trimmer With Vacuum” video was hosted on YouTube. Why not create a video hosting engine and not distract online consumers with another brand like YouTube – they are on your site, focus on selling your brand and your product.

Overall, it is a good effort to kick start a brand that went through bankruptcy in Feb 2008 and I sincerely hope that they do turn around and make a profit… plus bring back the retail stores. Brookestone which is their closest competitor are still going at it and can be found at Malls. With the retail stores, just don’t go over crazy and maybe test out revolving mall stalls that is established in Q4 like what ToysRUs are doing currently to capture the holiday shoppers.

I was in Seattle recently and I met up with some of my friends from college, most of them worked for Microsoft. Wait, I think it was everybody who worked for Microsoft and there were people from the server group, guys who were working on the long awaited Windows 7 to some guys working on the infrastructure of their internal applications. One thing I heard from them were “Microsoft and the new anti virus” and everybody was given a beta copy.

Recently, Microsoft entered into the highly lucritive anti virus industry. In 2006, the industry was estimated at $4 billion and growing at 13.6% from the year before and that industry continues to grow as computers become more affordable. The new software released on Sept 29, 2009 is called Microsoft Security Essential and the it is a free download. Yes, FREE. The Microsoft Security Essentials provides real-time protection for your home PC that guards against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software. 

Reviews so far looks positive as it is simple to use, quiet and efficient. It is compatible with WIndows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and you must have a genuine Windows to run the program. One cannot run Security Essential with other anti virus applications. The Security Essentials public beta also took fourth place in a recent roundup of free antivirus software. In a tests conducted by AV-Test.org, the Microsoft Security Essentials beta detected 97.8 percent of malware.

For a free application, I give it two thumbs up!

Link to download Microsoft Security Essential

Earthlings, in the show of their military might are flexing their muscles and literally taking a shot at the moon. In the pre-dawn hours Friday, a rocket is scheduled to punch a 13-foot-deep hole in the moon’s south pole to deter an Martians from invading Planet Earth. This bold action was planned many moons ago when the rocket was launched in June 2009 and it is set for impact on October 9, 2009. The target of impact is the Cabeus crater which located in the south pole of the moon and upon the rocket impact, scientist expect a dust cloud rising as much as six miles above the lunar surface, providing a rare show for amateur astronomers.

According to some news reports, thousands of people are expected to show up tonight at the Ames complex south of San Francisco for an evening of music and movies that will culminate with a live video feed of the impact. “It’s kind of hard to keep on top of how much interest there is out there..I’ve heard 10,000 are coming.” according to Dan Andrews, the project manager at Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., which designed the rocket’s instruments.

Actually…

There are no Martians. Sorry to burst your bubble. The project by NASA to send a rocket into the moon was planned a long time ago and it is definitely not an expenditure in fiscal policy by the Obama Administration to stimulate the economy. Although this exercise will cost $79 million, their goal is to find out whether ice is hidden in a crater that hasn’t seen sunlight in billions of years.

The initial rocket will crash into the Cabeus crater at 5,600 mph around 6.30 AM CST. Four minutes later, if all goes as planned, another spacecraft will fly through the cloud of debris that will rise above the lunar surface. Before crashing itself less than a minute later, the satellite’s nine instruments will analyze the dust and debris for evidence of water.

The impact is theoretically, visible with a telescope throughout the southwest and as far away as Hawaii if good viewing conditions are ideal. Because the debris cloud from the impact is expected to last less than a minute before settling back down on the lunar surface, viewers need to be punctual and have sharp eyes.

If we get invaded by Martians or Moon-tians, “we asked for it”