Unfair Pricing tactics used by gas companies

It seems that the gas companies use a very interesting strategy in determining the price per gallon of gas. We have all heard some of the reasons (or excuses) for the rising cost of gas, the war in Irag, the fire at a refinery, etc... My favorite reason was the one about the cost of transporting gas has increased (So, gas prices went up because of the rising cost of gas).
But what you may not know is that the gasoline companies have some partners in this situation. Companies that you may think are on your side, looking out for the little guy, are actually helping the gas companies to get an unfair advantage.
In a press release from AAA, results from a survey of their members revealed that 32.1 million people were planning a trip by car this summer. AAA considers this a 1.8% increase over last year and reports that the gas prices are not making travelers alter their vacation plans.
A separate survey by Travel Industry America went so far as to say that gas prices would have to reach $3.50 a gallon before people cut back on their driving. This is the exact same thing as the gas companies doing a survey asking people how much they are willing to pay for gas. The only difference is that people are actually answering the travel companies.
Yet another independent survey from a company that is most likely owned by a gas company stated that consumers planned to cut back on their shopping so they could afford gas.
So, now the gas companies have all the information that they need to know that the prices are not yet high enough, what the maximum price would be and they know that they can even raise prices beyond that and customers will still buy gas they just won't eat.
Not surprisingly, gas prices went up the day after the press release, so what is the reason for that increase? I think the real reason for the increase is imply that they want to make more money. My idea is to call the gas companies using SpoofCard
to make it look like I am calling from the Associated Press. Then conduct an interview using LiarCard
and ask why the gas prices are rising.

Dating married men.

I read somewhere that 35% of the men on the online dating sites are already married. It kinda makes sense, only married men have time to date. I mean, if I had a wife at home to do chores, cook and babysit the kids, I would have time to date. But as a single guy, I have to mow the lawn, cook, clean, dust, the list goes on and on.
Of course I am not being sexist, I am being sarcastic. I really don't think it is fair to us single guys that married men get to have two women.
Then, I watched Oprah and the women they had on that show were talking about dating married men. Yep, they actually new these men were married and kept dating them. One of them even went so far as to say that she thought if the sex was good enough he would leave his wife for her. Are you kidding me? Now sex is like an Olympic event, if you are a married man, you have women competing for the Gold.
I immediately called my best friend (Who is a woman) and said, "We gotta get married so I can find a woman that will have sex with me competitively". It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure out this is the winning combination. I'm thinking that the reason I am having such bad luck dating is because there is no wedding band on my finger.
Now, let me straighten this mess out for you. If you are dating a married man, you are on the back burner. He won't leave his wife for you and if he does that just moves you to the front burner and he will find another back burner woman just like he found you. And if you think that you are going to change him, consider this, Why would he change if it is working for him? I'm sure he told you some story about how he can't leave his wife right now for financial reasons or because of the kids and you believed it. That's a load of bull. You need to just let him go. You don't have to believe me, you can get a LiarCard
and put him to the test.
We need to get real here and think about stuff a little more intelligently. And, I need to stop watching Oprah. Most of her shows are great but some of them make me want to hurl myself off of the nearest cliff. Luckily, there's not a whole lot of cliffs in Florida.

Are the Doctors picking on me?

A few years ago, despite my very good life, I felt tired and depressed. I had no reason to feel depressed at all so I figured it must be a health problem. I went to the doctor and underwent a series of tests, mostly written.
After reviewing the tests, the doctor tells me that I suffer from Severe Acute Depression. I tell him that I am uncomfortable in social settings and he says that I may also have Social Anxiety Disorder.
Now, I felt fine all summer, it was only in the winter that I began feeling rundown and depressed. Upon hearing this the doctor delivers another possible diagnosis of Seasonal Affection Disorder.
So, lets review here what this doctor is telling me, Severe Acute Depression (SAD), Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD), Seasonal Affection Disorder (SAD), are you kidding me? Do the doctors do this on purpose? Why is it that anything that has to do with depression is S.A.D.?
So, I asked a friend why the test I took seemed to ask the same question over and over just worded differently. He said that it was a form of Psychological Inversion Scoring Test. So, basically, the doctor gave me a PIS Test so he could tell me I was SAD.

Great Ideas for Phone use.

Here's a few things that you probably didn't know that you could do with your phone. Using Spoof card, you can place a call from any phone and change the number and name that shows up on caller ID. You can also change your voice to male or female and even record the call. With April fools day approaching, this would be a great way to play a prank on your friends but it also has some more practical uses. If you just met someone and they gave you their number and you want to call them but aren't sure if you want them to have your number yet use spoof card to test the waters. If the conversation doesn't go well, don't worry, they won't be able to call you back. If it does go well, you can give them your number at the end of the call or call them again without the service. You can also make business calls from your personal home or cell phone and have the caller ID show up as your business phone number. So, you can take a day off, stay at home and still get your business calls made without going into the office. You can try this service once for free at SpoofCard

Liar card allows you to make a phone call from any phone and have a normal conversation with someone and then go online to a secure website to view the results of the voice polygraph test. Find out if someone is lying to you without them knowing, just by talking to them on the phone. This is great for getting a better business deal or catching a friend that isn't being honest. Imagine going to buy a new car, and telling the salesman that you will call them and let them know what you decide. Then, call them and ask them if that was the lowest price they could give you. If the results come back that they are lying, you can try to negotiate a better deal before you sign the papers. Use this same technique for all of your business deals to gain a competitive edge. All you need to do is set up an account and you are ready to go. Are you being lied to? Find out with LiarCard.

Want to know if someone is attracted to you? Simply make a phone call using Love detect from any phone and have a normal conversation with them. Then stay on the phone or go online to see the results. You will get a rating from 0 to 10 as well as levels of anticipation, embarrassment and concentration that the service detected in the persons voice. This works best on new relationships where there is still a sense of nervousness and anticipation. Use this to decide if you should continue dating someone or move on. It might be a good way to tell if this person likes you and is playing hard to get or just isn't interested. Try it at LoveDetect

Improve your MySpace profile

Your MySpace profile defines who you are, make sure you give the right impression. If your page takes too long to load and some features aren't available, you will not get a good response from your friends. View your profile and get an idea of what your friends are looking at to come up with a game plan for any changes you may want to make.
Now, open another tab in your browser and go to your "edit profile" page. This is the best setup to make changes to your profile and see the results. I like to open a text editor like "Notepad" to copy and paste codes to so that I have a backup in case I don't like the changes I made.
With this setup you will be able to copy and paste the existing contents of your profile, make changes to your "Edit profile" page, save the changes, tab to your view profile page and click on refresh to see the results. Now, we can get started on making a few tweaks to your MySpace profile.
First of all, avoid using duplicate style tags. You should only have one set of style tags in your "about me" section. Typically you will end up with duplicate style tags when you copy and paste multiple codes into your profile. All of the codes you've collected should go in the same set of style tags. Deleting multiple style tags will shave a few seconds off of your load time.
If you have videos or sound files on your profile, make sure that they don't play automatically when your page loads. This gets confusing to your viewers and sounds terrible. It also makes your page load slow. Check the code for these embedded files and change the auto play element from true to false.
If you have any falling object codes make sure that they don't interfere with the function of the page. Although falling object codes look nice, they can cover up the links on the page making them useless. I have seen profiles where the falling object codes made it impossible to send messages or leave comments so if you haven't heard from your friends since you got the falling object code, that may be why. If you really have to have your falling object code, you will want to spread it out so that it doesn't cover your contact box or nav bar. I'll cover that in another article.
Keep the width of your profile to the screen size. Most of your viewers will have a mouse with a scroll wheel on it making it easy to scroll up and down. But if your page is twice as wide as the screen, they will probably not see half of what you have on your profile. If you have images on your page that are too wide, you will want to place a width element in there to confine them to fit the screen.
Keep your graphics and videos to a minimum. I know you want everyone to see all of your favorite videos and pictures but if it take too long to load your page, people will leave. If you uploaded your own pictures and they load slow, try uploading a new one that is a smaller size or lower resolution. This includes the background image on your page. If you found it online check to see if you can find one with a smaller file size or save a copy of it, reduce it and upload it to your MySpace or Photobucket account.
Don't hide your comments. There are just as many codes to view hidden comments as there are to hide them so it doesn't work anyway. Besides, comments are for all to see, messages are for your eyes only. Some of the hide comment codes also hide the "add comment" link. You are more likely to get comments if people can see the comment link and read the comments that they sent you.

Use your own pictures as comments.

I'm sure that you are very proud of those pictures you have in your photo album on MySpace and would love to show them off. Or maybe you just can't seem to find the perfect picture comment on any of the several MySpace layout websites. Fortunately, it is very simple to show off your own photos as a comment to all of your friends. I'm going to give you the HTML you need and explain the process involved. Then, I am going to go into more depth on what the HTML is doing and why. This way you will be able to modify the code if you feel you need to.
The first thing you need to do is copy the HTML to place the image as a comment
<img src="" width="260px">
Paste this into notepad so that we can insert the picture into it. You could also go ahead and paste it as the comment then open a new tab in your browser to get the address of the picture. Either way, the next thing you will need is the URL or location of the image you want to use. Go into your albums and find the picture that you want to use. Right click on the image and select "Properties" from the pop up menu. When the Properties box appears, you will see a line that says "Location" and next to it is a line that begins with "http://" Highlight the location, make sure that you get the entire address. It should begin with "http" and end with ".jpg". Now, go back to the line of html. Click your mouse between the quote marks following src=. Then, right click and select paste. The address will now be pasted between the quote marks for src and you are ready to post your comment. Click on the post comment button and see if the image appears the way you want it. If it doesn't, you can always click on the back button and make changes or start over.
The HTML is fairly simple. Within the brackets is the tag for placing an image "img" and the source of the image "src". I also added a width of 260 pixels to make sure that the image fits in the comment area and fills it properly. The web browser will take care of setting the height property so the image is not distorted. If you want to add your own caption for the picture or add some text, you can do that before the html if you want your text above the picture or after the html if you want your text to appear below the picture.
You can also make your own picture comments and upload them to image hosting services like photobucket or flickr. Once you set up an account and upload your image they provide you with the html you need to leave the images as a comment. Just make sure that the images you upload are no wider that 160 pixels or your comment may get deleted by your friend when it interferes with their layout.

Possible Upside to Down economy

With the economy struggling people are trying to find ways to make their money go farther. Over that past two decades we have become a complacent in the land of plenty. Our lifestyle has become that of a "Throw away" society and not a conservative one. We have gotten used to buying new clothes, new cars, new homes and throwing out anything that is "out of season".
Today, there are more people that live alone, having an entire apartment or house all to themselves. Now, however, it may be more affordable to have a roommate to help pay the rent or mortgage. It may be more cost effective to keep your car for more than 3 years. We may be looking at a lifestyle change where people become more social and make better decisions when it comes to purchases.
Corporations have gotten wasteful. In rough times the typical response is to cut back on labor costs. But with the wastefulness being brought to light, we may see corporations opt to become more streamlined while retaining their workforce. It is estimated that the grocery stores throw away 30 billion dollars in food every year because it doesn't sell in time. They just throw it away. We may see a change in policy, possibly cutting back on the amount of inventory packed on the shelves. It would make more sense for the stores to be out of an item for a day or two rather than buying too much and throwing away what doesn't sell.
This may be the beginning of some much needed changes.