Music Monday-George Harrison "Here Comes the Sun"

I have always loved The Beatles. Many years ago, when I was in college, I worked with a young lady who was a year or two older than I was.  Her favorite Beatles song was "Here Comes the Sun."

Well, I wanted to go out with her, but she was dating another guy.  However, being a guy and a guitar player, I put a little plan in motion.  I learned how to play every riff of "Here Comes the Sun."  I made arrangements to meet her on campus to play a few songs.

After I finished playing "Here Comes the Sun," she complimented me and told me that it was her favorite song.  I replied, "I know.  I learned that song for you."  It nearly worked.

A couple days later, I was talking to her on the phone.  She called to tell me that the guy she had been dating had asked her to marry him and she said yet.  She also told me that she really liked when I sang for her, and that she had considered breaking up with the other guy.

I wished her well and her fiance well.  In the back of my mind I remember thinking, "Yeah, this will last.  Just how solid a relationship will they have if she would consider breaking up because some guy played a song for her on the guitar."  I think every guy who ever learned to play guitar does it to impress the fairer sex.

In addition to George Harrison, this particular version of "Here Comes the Sun" features, Eric Clapton and Jeff Lynne (from ELO) on guitars, Ringo Starr and Phil Collins on drums, and Elton John on piano.

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PS: Because of spamming purposes, the linky will be closed on Thursday of each week at midnight, Malaysian Time. Thank you!

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Visual Watermark Software

Do you take a lot of photos and share them online?  Maybe you are a blogger with a photo blog or you just like sharing your pictures online with your friends and family.  If you want to protect your images from unauthorized use by using Visual Watermark Software.

PC World Magazine wrote in an editorial about Visual Watermark Software:

If you upload your photos to a photo-sharing site like Flickr or even to your personal Web site, you should be aware that anyone could claim your work for their own. As PC World's Digital Focus writer, Dave Johnson, warns in a September 2008 column: "I hear stories all the time about people who post photos to online photo sites and later see one of their images gracing some stranger's blog."


Using a watermarking program like Visual Watermark is a good way to protect your photos, as Dave writes in his column. Visual Watermark lets you create your own watermarks using text or graphics, embed EXIF data into your digital files, and save your images to secured PDFs. You can perform all these tasks on batches of files at a time, as well as resize them in groups.

You can download a working demo of Visual Watermark Software at their website.  They are currently offering discounts on the purchase price of the software.  You can get the personal use version for $19.95 vs. the regular price of $29.95 or you can get the professional version for $39.95 discounted from $59.95.  Here is an example of the type of watermark available.

This post brought to you by Visual Watermark Software.

A Blogging Opportunity

Image via Wikipedia

Here is an opportunity for my fellow bloggers to be paid to blog.  Proctor & Gamble is looking for to hire five bloggers for the holiday season, November 23-December 31.  The salary for the assignment is $10000.  Not bad for five weeks work.

The assignment is for each of the bloggers to work in their Charmin Restrooms in Times Square during the holiday season.  The "Charmin Ambassadors" will greet and entertain visitors to the restrooms.  Then they will blog about their experiences on Charmin branded blogs and various social media.

If you are interested in participating, P&G will be conducting interviews on Thursday, November 5 from 10am-6pm at the Hilton Hotel at 53rd Street & 6th Avenue in NY City.  You can get more info at the Charmin Enjoy The Go website.

If I were a single man, without a steady job (or at least one flexible enough to take a month long absence) then I would have to consider this.  Of course, there is something about hanging out in the bathroom for five weeks that is a little troublesome.  After all, isn't hanging out in restrooms what got Larry Craig into trouble?

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Cash For Clunkers Follow Up

Shortly after the government's Cash For Clunkers program ended, I posted about the initial results of the program.  At the time I tried to identify the "winners" and "losers" of the program.  Here is what I said at the time:

So the big winners in the "Cash For Clunkers" program are the people who were able to take advantage of the program by having additional dollars towards a new car. In addition, Ford, Honda, and Toyota were the industry winners.

The losers are Chrysler, General Motors, the government, and the US taxpayers. The taxpayers are on the hook for bailing out GM and Chrysler and for funding a program that did nothing for the two companies that the taxpayers basically own. The other losers are those people who would have been willing to buy a used car but will see used car prices rising because of all the "clunkers" taken off the market reducing supply.

Well, Edmunds.com has done a study and here is what they found.  During the program, they show that a total of 690,000 cars were sold.  Their analysis suggests that the program may have added a total of 125,000 sales.  Based on the cost of the program, that works out to $24000 per car.  If you really stop to think about it, this makes perfect sense.  After all, a fair percentage of the cars sold would have sold regardless of the Cash-for-clunkers program.  It is logical, therefore, to calculate the cost per car on the incremental sales that the program generated.

Needless to say, the very thin skinned White House had to issue comments critical of the study. This drew another nice little press release on Edmonds defending their analysis. 

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Nutritional Food Labeling

I have been in the retail food industry for nearly all my adult life.  Over the years, I have seen a number of changes to the labeling requirements on food.  The labeling has become more and more complicated as the government has required more and more information to be included on the labels.

It used to be that the labels would show the total amount of fat in a serving.  Now you see total fat, saturated fat, and a few years ago, trans fat.  Same with carbohydrates.  Now you see total carbs, dietary fiber, and sugars.  You need to be a chemist to understand all the information on the label.

To be honest, I rarely look at the nutritional labeling.  About the only time that I ever do it is if I am actively trying to watch what i eat or am trying to lose weight.  Even then, I am primarily looking at calories and percentage of fat in a serving.

So I really don't need any new information on my food labels.  I especially don't need it for something as bogus as what the folks in Sweden are starting to see on their nutritional labels.  Sweden has begun requiring that the carbon impact of the product be included on the label so that consumers can make an informed choice on how their food products are impacting carbon emissions.  One such label reads "Climate declared: .87 kg CO2 per kg of product."

The Swedish government has also issued new dietary guidelines for selecting food products.  For instance, they recommend that people choose carrots over items like tomatoes and cucumbers.  The reason being that tomatoes and cucumbers have to be grown in heated greenhouses causing higher emissions.  Being ornery, I would probably deliberately choose the higher carbon impact items.  I have to ask, how much info do you pay attention to, if any, on a label, and would the inclusion of carbon impact on a food label change how you eat?

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Arrested For Being Nude At Home

I recently started using Twitter.  On my Blackberry, I use TweetCaster by Handmark to read and send my tweets.  During lunch today, I was reading a few tweets when I read one that caught my eye.  It was particularly interesting because it is a local story to the DC area.  Tip of the hat to Leslie Blanchard at The Progressive Patriot who sent the original tweet. 

Last week, a man in Springfield, Virginia was arrested and is facing indecent exposure charges for being nude in his own home.  He was home alone last week and at 5:30 in the morning went downstairs to make himself some coffee.  Since he was in the privacy of his own home, and alone, he did not feel the need to get dressed first.  Unfortunately, a woman and a seven year old child were passing by and saw him through his window.  The woman called the police, and they arrested him.

I don't know about you, but depending on the time of day, I do not always have clothes on when I am in my house.  There have been times when after showering in the morning, if the laundry is still in the basement laundry room, that I have gone downstairs to get clothes,  I have stepped into the kitchen on some of those occasions to start the coffee brewing so that it would be ready when I finish dressing.  Fortunately, I have curtains in the window, so I don't think anybody can see in. 

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Swine Flu Vaccine

Let's see if I have this straight.

The Center for Disease Control, Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the White House, and the media have whipped the citizens into a frenzy and have increased the demand for the swine flu vaccine.  So much so that the demand currently far exceeds supply.

Over the weekend, President Barack Obama signed a proclamation declaring swine flu to be a national emergency due to higher reported numbers of Americans infected with the flu.

Meanwhile, Sebelius has stated that the US will donate 10% of our available vaccines to the World Health Organization before our demand is satisfied so that WHO can decide what countries will receive the donated vaccines.

Now I am all for the US giving humanitarian aid to less developed countries, but given the first two statements, does it make sense for us to put our own citizens in danger of contracting the disease by not meeting our demand first.

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