I always have interesting trips to Starbucks.

Buying a coffee and banana nut cake there, I decided to change my coffee size from a Grande to Venti. This was after the lady cashier had rung me up and given me $14.50 (change for the $20 bill I gave her). The manager comes over and cancels the transaction. He then tells her to redo the transaction.

All seems well so far, fairly straight forward job I thought. As I was about to take 35 cents out to cover the extra cost of the Venti sized coffee, the lady cashier proceeds to hand me yet another $14.50 back in change.

Now if I wasn’t a nice guy , I would have taken the change, my free coffee/ cake and been $14.50 richer from when I did go into Starbucks about 10 minutes earlier. I did tell her that she had already given me the change and I needed to pay an extra 35 cents but she didn’t seem to comprehend. I think she still didn’t know what I was talking about when she reluctantly took my extra 35 cents.

So that’s my good deed of the day with some karma points added in there too.

While I am on the subject of Starbucks, I found this Planet Green Game sponsored by them. It is a fun game to educate the public about climate change and how some of the things we do affect the environment.

This question was posed to Miss South Carolina at Miss Teen USA 2007.

Question: Why do you think 1/5 of Americans can’t locate the US on the world map?

Her answer:

“I personally believe that US Americans are unable to do so, because, some people out there, in our nation, don’t have maps, and I believe that our education, such as South Africa, and the Iraq, everywhere like, such as, and I believe that they should, our education over here, in the US should help the US, or um should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future, for our children.”

She was on Good Morning America defending herself saying that she was nervous. I’ll give her the nervousness excuse but it is more than just than I believe. If you are to going to take the role of representing your state at a Miss Teen USA pageant, you really need to polish up on your public speaking, the ability to think on your feet and your head a little more. Looks can only take you so far.

It just gives a stereotypical impression of the teens in the USA being pretty but unintelligent and adds to the dumb blonde theory. Everybody around the world is laughing at us as we speak and you may have just embarrassed your home state. Thank goodness she didn’t win. I can’t imagine the fact that she could have been our teen representative to the rest of the world.

Saying that, such is our society that stupid and unintelligent behavior earns high TV ratings & endorsements as people love to see and hear them. This girl is probably going to earn millions in the future.

Remind me to invest in a map so that I can help Africa, Iraq and Asian countries “build our future, for our children” in the USA.

The logos for next year’s presidential election seem to have two characteristics - most of them opted for a blue background and the American flag theme (red, white and blue). Four have their first name instead of their last name on their logo e.g. Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson and Dennis Kucinich.

Classiest logo: Tie between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama
It clearly shows they have spent a lot on their campaign starting with good logo designers. Honorable mention goes to Dennis Kucinich’s redesigned “Dennis” logo.

Catchiest logo: Fred Thompson’s “I’mWithFred”
Although it does sound like the old group Right Said Fred. (Anyone remember them?)

Most unique logo abstract: Mitt Romney
The logo is supposed to represent an eagle swishing though the air. The swoosh doubles up as a wavy American flag. (In the image above, it is in the 4th row next to Chris Dodd’s logo)

Worst looking logo: Mike Huckabee
The yellow somehow doesn’t go with the rest of the colors. Tom Vilsack’s logo is a close second. I don’t particularly like his large V emphasis. (Middle logo, 2nd row from the bottom)

Other notables:

- Rudy Giuliani’s “Rudy” logo is a classic one that just oozes simplicity. He is in a select group of people famous enough to be recognized by just their first name. Couple of others that come to mind — Arnold (Schwarzenegger) and Hillary (Clinton).

- McCain’s logo has a classic look that represents his military background. Subtle but to the point. Nice touch!

For their individual campaign websites, Obama’s site is the best looking with rich content features and easy navigation. Hillary Clinton and John Edwards come a close second.

Almost all of them jumped on the Web 2.0 bandwagon and made their sites more interactive. Obama, Clinton and Edwards top the list yet again for introducing heavy social networking aspects.

Rudy Giuliani’s site is a little disproportionate with part of the right hand sidebar sticking out of its margins. Besides that slight ugly part, his site is not too bad.

The least appealing and most confusing is Jim Gilmore’s site. His site www.gilmoreforpresident.com defaults to a blog instead of an informational site. That blog looks like a Wordpress template that you can download for free. He further confuses us by having another presidential blog. Gilmore has since withdrawn from the Presidential race.

Candidate Websites:

DEMOCRATS

Hillary Clinton
Barack Obama
John Edwards
Bill Richardson
Joe Biden
Dennis Kucinich
Mike Gravel
Chris Dodd
Tom Vilsack

REPUBLICANS

Mitt Romney
Rudy Giuliani
Fred Thompson
John McCain
Sam Brownback
Ron Paul
Mike Huckabee
Tom Tancredo
Duncan Hunter
Jim Gilmore
Tommy Thompson

I haven’t decided whom I’ll support. Have you?

I am going to be like a kid in a candy store today. That’s because I have a $100 gift card to Sharper Image and there is a big store at a mall on the other site of Cleveland. Actually, it’ll be a gift card spending day with J having a Macy’s and a TGIF restaurant gift card. So it will be off to lunch at TGIF, then our separate ways to Macy’s and Sharper Image. A free shopping day except for the cost (of gas) driving there.

I wonder what I’ll buy. Here are some of my choices… a nice atomic digital watch, a bluetooth speaker for my car or a coffee maker that tells the weather through MSN. Maybe a Superman statue. That won’t work as it’s way above my spending limit at $5000. I was thinking about the official, limited-edition Darth Vader™ Helmet made from the original Lucasfilm™ movie studio mold but at $999.95, that’s slightly out of my price range too.

Decisions galore! You should see me at a Best Buy or Circuit City store. J has banned me from it.

I also found this earlier on Stumbleupon, it is a personality test similar to Myers-Briggs. It is pretty accurate (except for the assassin, dictator and international spy part in my favored careers). Here is what I am:

ENTP
risk taker, easy going, outgoing, social, open, rule breaker, thrill seeker, life of the party, comfortable in unfamiliar situations, appreciates strangeness, disorganized, adventurous, talented at presentation, aggressive, attention seeking, experience junky, insensitive, adaptable, not easily offended, messy, carefree, dangerous, fearless, careless, emotionally stable, spontaneous, improviser, always joking, player, wild and crazy, dominant, acts without thinking, not into organized religion, pro-weed legalization

favored careers:
dictator, computer consultant, international spy, tv producer, philosopher, comedian, music performer, it consultant, figher pilot, politician, diplomat, entertainer, game designer, bar owner, freelance writer, creative director, strategist, news anchor, professional skateboarder, airline pilot, comic book artist, college professor, private detective, mechanical engineer, lecturer, ambassador, astronomer, research scientist, judge, web developer, scholar, fbi agent, cia agent, electrical engineer, assassin

disfavored careers:
personal assistant, wedding planner, travel agent, secretary, interior decorator, clerical employee, government employee, social worker, pre school teacher, copy editor, child care worker, hospitality worker, occupational therapist, home maker

Blue is my favorite color, especially the blue of this theme. Thanks Yoshi from Hello! Yoshi for giving me the best robot colored theme yet. I now have 5 different robot colored themes. How ya like me now?

I have finally downsized my Outlook Inbox from a whopping 1125 emails to 105 with only 10 unread emails. I have been meaning to do this email cleanup for about a year now.

Since I am in a get your life together mood, here are some useful free life hacking tools to do exactly that:

Calendar: 30 Boxes or Kiko (I use 30 Boxes)
Project Management: Basecamp
Bookmarks: del.icio.us
Goals: Joe’s Goals
All in one to-list,notes and reminders: Backpack (has a super online calendar but you’ll have to pay for it)
Online Scrapbook: Tumblr
To-do lists: Tadalist
Shopping lists: Shopgetwhat.com
Reminders: PingMe (reminders emailed to your inbox or mobile phone)
Sending large files that your work email won’t allow you to: Yousendit
Online file storage: Box.net
Organize and keep track of your receipts: Shoeboxed.com

Anyone else want to share more get your life together tools, feel free to add to the list. I’m always looking out for them.

Enjoy!

I’ve been an admirer of Janet from A Planet Named Janet ever since I started blogging. Her nick name is Jan Van Gogh, a fitting name for such a talented artist.

One of my favorites of Janet is her colorful patterned fishes. At first glance, you’ll see a colorful fish but you’ll soon notice that it is more than that. All her fishes have cleverly placed animals and people painted against its bodies.

Here is one of many that Janet sent me. This one is titled Cat Fish. It’s nearly a Miles (if not for the white stripe under it).

You can see more fishes here.

This is taken from one of my favorite websites The Skyscraper Page. The site gives you information about all the building and tall structures in the world. Buildings can be searched by the name, date it was built, where it was located and more. It’s a great resource and I can spend hours on this site.

(Click on the picture to reveal a larger size and information about each building)

Some other good links from the site

Buildings built this year
Tall buildings currently under construction around the world
Tall buildings under construction in the USA

There was a sigh of relief watching America’s Got Talent yesterday, 14 year old Julienne Irwin did NOT win.

It really annoys me that she is a 14 year old trying to act like a 40 year old. Kids need to act their age … they are only that age once. Face it, you are a kid… be one! No one is going to hold that against you. And stop dressing like a 40 year old, your time will come. I believe the American audience saw that too, hence her being voted off first.

Cas Haley and Butterscotch were pretty good and it was a real tough choice for the winner. I am pretty sure they’ll have a bright future ahead of them.

I was glad that the winner was not a singer as there are just too many singing reality shows out there. I loved the winner Terry Fator’s ventriloquist act from the very beginning. I may be a little biased towards puppets (another one of my secret likes, together with the Muppets) but you do have to admit, the guy has tremendous talent in making his puppets sound like the actual voice of famous singers e.g. Tony Bennet, Roy Orbison, and more.

I nearly fell of my chair when Kermit and some of the Muppets (Animal, Beaker, The Swedish Chef and Miss Piggy) made an appearance. Was also rolling on the floor when Kermit brought out his backup chicken singers (Camilla & friends). Hilarious!

Forgettable moment of the night — David Hasselhoff singing. I felt like hitting myself on the head with a baseball bat. No offense David, you were better in Knight Rider (as cheezy as you were) and I am still not sure how you managed to be a Sex God in Germany.

(Pictures from Muppet Wiki)

“Have you ever had a dream that you were so sure that it was real?”
“What if you aren’t able to awake from that dream?”
“How would you know the difference between the real world and the dream world?”
“The answer is out there… it is the question that drives us …”
“What is the Matrix?”

This is a final project from a group of students from the ITT Technical Institute in Louisville, Kentucky. I love it! … Especially since I love the Matrix, the Muppets and Kermit the frog. Great job guys!