Verizon Edge: Still Scamming You Twice

Seriously, if you really want or need that new phone, just buy it; don't subsidize it. Or if you really must, use your credit card but don't think Verizon's newer Edge plan is better. It's still awful.

As noticed by CNET and confirmed on Verizon's site, the carrier has made a tweak to Edge that does let customers using it upgrade even more frequently if they're so inclined — now, instead of waiting for six months to trade your phone in and get a new one, you can do so after just 30 days. Of course, you're still responsible for paying off half the retail cost on the phone, which means you won't save much money with this new plan. The earlier you upgrade, the less time you're paying Verizon two phone subsidies (the monthly Edge payment as well as the phone payment already built in to your contract) — but it's still not a good deal, just a less bad one.

However, Verizon subscribers who wants to upgrade their phones whenever they want are probably better off just buying phones at their full retail cost — you control exactly when you buy a new phone, and you get to keep or sell them afterwards rather than give them back in to Verizon.

NFL Championships Game of Thrones Style

If you like Game of Thrones and are excited about today's AFC & NFC Championships, this Austrian promo video is for you! Why didn't this show here as a US version? http://youtu.be/EsmQ2uwItKU

Hipsters Ordering Beer

If you love beer, drink beer, are into beer tastings and the overly hippy hoppy beer or ales, whatever, this video is for you! http://youtu.be/KWBV7yKWhWE

Beat Zelda: A Link to the Past in 5 mins!

Wow. Speechless. Just watch and be amazed. Also, while we're at it, anyone have a spare SNES and ZALTTP copy that I can borrow for a bit? http://youtu.be/tiNe-okXMGU

Spotify or Pandora and Introducing Beats Music

With the impending January 21st release of the subscription only Beats Music, I'm thinking two things: 1: why on earth do we need another music streaming service and 2: with Spotify announcing unlimited ad-supported service just yesterday, why would I want to pay $9.99 a month?¹ I'll admit, I do like Beats Music "Madlibs" type playlist creation and the interface does looks pretty slick. Since they have a free trial I'll give them a shot. As a small bonus, apparently because I'm an AT&T wireless subscriber, I have the opportunity to get 90 days free on the family plan! After that, it's $14.99 a month and I already know that I'm 90% NOT going to pay. I'm all about equal opportunity and trying out new services, but both the free Pandora or Spotify options don't have me wanting to spend money.

Unrelated, my wife and I are REALLY contemplating unplugging our television services later this year. Time to hunker down right and spend money wisely. Too bad turntable.fm didn't last and what the heck HBO? Why can't you detach yourself from a cable subscription already?!

In our experience it’s always been a living, breathing human who has brought us that song we fell in love with. The song you couldn’t stop playing over and over. The album you deemed a headphone masterpiece. The mix tape that made you think “I’m gonna marry this one.” We tried to remember a time a robot found us magic but all we could find were the times the robot made us laugh: “You like Pantera? Have you heard of Black Sabbath?” “You like Mumford and Sons? Here’s another song with banjos!”

We wanted to build a service that was more than a server, one that was truly of service to the listener. We wanted to combine the trust that comes from excellent hand-picked music with the personalization that knows you’re an individual and that a handful of stations can’t satisfy all listeners.

If you want to be transported somewhere else, try RIGHT NOW. Just tell Beats Music where you are, what you feel like doing, who you’re with, and what kind of music you’re looking to hear and we’ll take care of the rest by delivering you an endless playlist for your context, be it real or imaginary.

As of this writing, the following are numbers of 'Likes' from their Facebook Page: 6.3 million for Pandora, 4 million for Spotify and 92k for Beats Music. I guess that's good for a service that hasn't launched yet.

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1. Pandora One cost $36 a year or $3.99 a month; Spotify costs a similar $9.99 a month. ↩

Sitting Idle Costs Money or in this Case Drivers Too!

It makes sense. If you sit parked with the engine running, you burn gas. If you drive around aimlessly content, you burn gas. In this case, the San Francisco Cab Drivers Association was caught with their tanks on empty. Some people call this disruption but I call it laziness, content, sitting fat, dumb and happy or reactive and definitely not proactive.

The San Francisco Cab Drivers Association (SFCDA), an association for registered taxi drivers that promotes fair working conditions and business practice, reports that one-third of the 8,500 or so taxi drivers in San Francisco – over 2,800 – have ditched driving a registered cab in the last 12 months to drive for a private transportation startup like Uber, Lyft or Sidecar instead.

Box Throws in Free 50GBs!

I'm a paid, and happy, user of Dropbox but with the other company Box updating their iOS app to 3.0 and throwing in free 50GBs for life, I might just have to switch on over! That's a steal in my book. I also wouldn't be surprised if Dropbox threw something out there too in the next week or so so keep an eye out. If anything, there's nothing to lose with signing up!

We couldn’t be more excited to announce that today we are releasing our brand new, completely rebuilt Box for iPhone® and iPad® app. And to commemorate this, we are offering 50GB of free storage for life to users who download the app in the next 30 days.

Stop and Use Honest

Since the birth of our daughter, my wife and I were already all about Jessica Alba's company, Honest. In fact, I was so eager to check them out that I ordered a sample a few months prior to her being born and even scheduled our first bundle to ship while we were still at the hospital! We've been subscribers ever since and haven't looked back.

In lieu of recent events of allergies, particularly to methylisothiazolinone (MI), popping up, I thought I'd reiterate their not only effective, but unquestionably safe, eco-friendly, beautiful, convenient, and affordable philosophy. If you haven't read the report on NBC News, I'd get on it then head over to Honest and try out a free sample. Here's a small excerpt:

Dr. Robin Gehris said she has been seeing more and more kids with reactions to the wipes. It’s possible, she said, that this is because manufacturers have bumped up the amount of MI used in wipes 25-fold.

Being the cautious father I am, I still felt compelled to look up the ingredients of the Best, Natural, Plant-Based Baby Wipes by Honest and wasn't surprised at all that it DID NOT contain MI. Here are all the ingredients:

Purified Water, Citric Acid (Fruit-Based Stability Agent), Silver Dihydrogen Citrate (All Natural, Water-Soluble Preservative), Decyl Glucoside (Sugar-Based Cleanser), Sodium Citrate (Corn-Based Antioxidant), Punica Granatum (Pomegranate Fruit) Extract, Glycyrrhiza Uralensis (Licorice Root) Extract, Chamomilla Recutita (Chamomile) Extract, Cucumis Sativus (Cucumber Fruit) Extract, Peucedanum Ostruthium (Masterwort Leaf) Extract

You can read more about Jessica and Chris' story here. Once again, it DOES NOT contain methylisothiazolinone (MI). Go grab a bag and try them out!

The Super Awesome Trinity Knot for Neckties

I'm definitely a lot more comfortable these days with tying a bow tie thanks to Mr. Offshoreorganbuilder, but this is something new to me! This Trinity knot is my next knot! I guarantee it! Watch Alex Krasny do it up! Maybe I'll even post a knot selfie on my Instagram later this week. http://youtu.be/QPyxTrhsBiM

Here's a picture of it too!

Maddux's Respect for Tony Gwynn

Greg Maddux on the secrets to his pitching success via Thomas Boswell for the Washington Post. If you're a San Diego Padres fan, you'll enjoy this!

Maddux should be one of the most-copied pitchers ever, yet few would even know where to begin, because he seldom opened up about what he believed about pitching and why.

First, Maddux was convinced no hitter could tell the speed of a pitch with any meaningful accuracy. To demonstrate, he pointed at a road a quarter-mile away and said it was impossible to tell if a car was going 55, 65 or 75 mph unless there was another car nearby to offer a point of reference.

“You just can’t do it,” he said. Sometimes hitters can pick up differences in spin. They can identify pitches if there are different releases points or if a curveball starts with an upward hump as it leaves the pitcher’s hand. But if a pitcher can change speeds, every hitter is helpless, limited by human vision.

“Except,” Maddux said, “for that [expletive] Tony Gwynn.”

The Truth about Regional Airline Pilots' Pay Wages

I've written about this topic before but in light of the upcoming tentative agreement voting window closing today at 10 EST, why not post another about the real wages of the airline pilot. In fact, I wrote a few which you can find here. My Schedule / Rest and Regulations At my airline¹, we are guaranteed 75 hours a month at rates of $43.59 an hour for first officer and $74.89 an hour for captain. My first year here, I made $19.02 an hour and didn't even break the poverty level for a family of 3 let alone barely rise above the family of two². Not to mention that my loan took 70% of my paycheck too but yes, I did chose this profession³. I didn't know what I was in for either but ignorance was / is bliss.

A portrait of these hourly pay scales becomes even more pathetic when you consider that regional airline pilots, who are paid only from the time the airline leaves the gate to the time it arrives at the destination, only are on the clock on average about 21.5 hours per week.

For a first-year co-pilot at Republic Airlines, for example, that translates into gross weekly pay of a mere $495 per week.

For a pilot with 10 years’ experience at SkyWest, the weekly gross paycheck might be around $1,312.

But, then you have to consider that these wages don’t nearly reflect the hours that regional airline co-pilots and pilots have to put into the job.

Although they may only be on the clock 21.5 hours per week or 85 hours per month,” pilots typically are away from base, and from their families, about 240 to 300 hours per month (or about 60 to 75 hours a week),” according to the Airline Pilots Association.

For the lowest paid co-pilot on Mesa Airlines earning about $22 per hour, this imbalance works out to $6.80 an hour for a 60-hour work week.

Make sure you navigate over to skift for a full on perspective with pay scales and fancy charts too! Also for further reading, check out "The Truth About the Profession".

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1. On average, I personally safely fly 150 people a day four times a week. Just yesterday, this airline recorded over 2206 departures second to Southwest! ↩
2. $17,170 for 3 / $13,690 for 2 via http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/07poverty.shtml/ ↩
3. Just to clarify, I am a 7th year commercial airline pilot who recently made captain. The quality of life on a reserve schedule is a whole other topic. ↩

What's the Real Unemployment Rate

What are the real numbers? I like to see "participation" go up as I'm all for everyone contributing to the greater good.

"For forty years, I have decried the reliance upon the non-farm payrolls number as anything other than a number pulled from thin air. The revisions have been higher or lower in absolute terms by 40-50,000 per month, and there's no consistency to it," Gartman, the founder of the closely-watched "Gartman Letter" told CNBC Europe's "Squawk Box."

The data showed that the labor force participation rate tumbled to 62.8 percent, its worst level since January 1978. Gartman said the younger generation were looking for jobs less and less.

"In the cohort of 15-25 year olds, the number keeps falling every single month and it has since 1994. When the youngsters are asked would they take a job even if they could find one, the answer now is overwhelmingly 'no.' Meanwhile, the [participation rate] among the 55-65 cohort keeps going up."

"The young don't want to work and the elders are continuing to work," Gartman said.

via CNBC

Timing Your Mac Usage

Have you ever wanted to know what the heck you're spending all your time on the computer doing? Now you can track what applications, website, etc are taking most of your time. I'm hoping to use 'Timing' to increase my productivity.

Timing automatically tracks which documents you are editing, which applications you use, and the domains of the websites you visit. You'll never have to worry about forgetting to start or stop a timer again - there are none! It's all done in the background!

For the next couple of days, you can purchase Timing by Thomas Osthege and Daniel Alm at 50% off! If you don't trust my recommendation, then check out the free version, Timing lite, which only allows you to show todays' and yesterdays' data. But seriously, at $4.99, there's nothing to complain about! For a full list of apps that can be tracked with Timing, refer to the FAQ.