First Google Chrome kicked me out of Google services flashing red and refusing to add an exception for an invalid certificate. Next came Firefox which also downright refused to add an exception to the obviously invalid certificate. Is this another DNS problem, did somebody mess up the certificate or are am I (or they) experiencing a denial of service attack?
Secure Connection Failed Google
This is the best explanation yet. The financial crisis explained in simple terms.
Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Berlin. In order to increase sales, she decides to allow her loyal customers - most of whom are unemployed alcoholics - to drink now but pay later. She keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans). Word gets around and as a result increasing numbers of customers flood into Heidi’s bar. Taking advantage of her customers’ freedom from immediate payment constraints, Heidi increases her prices for wine and beer, the most-consumed beverages. Her sales volume increases massively.
A young and dynamic customer service consultant at the local bank recognises these customer debts as valuable future assets and increases Heidi’s borrowing limit. He sees no reason for undue concern since he has the debts of the alcoholics as collateral.
At the bank’s corporate headquarters, expert bankers transform these customer assets into DRINKBONDS, ALKBONDS and PUKEBONDS. These securities are then traded on markets worldwide. No one really understands what these abbreviations mean and how the securities are guaranteed. Nevertheless, as their prices continuously climb, the securities become top-selling items.
One day, although the prices are still climbing, a risk manager (subsequently of course fired due his negativity) of the bank decides that slowly the time has come to demand payment of the debts incurred by the drinkers at Heidi’s bar. However, they cannot pay back the debts. Heidi cannot fulfill her loan obligations and claims bankruptcy. DRINKBOND and ALKBOND drop in price by 95%. PUKEBOND performs better, stabilizing in price after dropping by 80 %.
The suppliers of Heidi’s bar, having granted her generous payment due dates and having invested in the securities are faced with a new situation. Her wine supplier claims bankruptcy, her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor. The bank is saved by the Government following dramatic round-the-clock consultations by leaders from the governing political parties. The funds required for this purpose are obtained by a tax levied on the non-drinkers.
[Kudos to Kobus who mailed me this article and kudos to the original author]
Unfortunately this is not a post packed with all the latest fuel saving technologies (it’s coming, just give me some time), instead, it’s a practical guide on how you can reduce spending, which to be honest, if you’re doing a lot of driving, quickly adds up to quite a large amount of money.
While we’re stuck with burning fossil fuels, we might as well make the best of it until the eco-friendly alternatives are widely implemented.
Do less braking and less acceleration, that means do some planning when you’re driving. When you’re in a speed bump zone, accelerating to a speed bump and then braking just doesn’t make sense, every time you accelerate, you burn up more fuel, rather keep going at a speed on which your car can handle the speed bumps and maintain that speed during the speed bump zones. After all, speed bumps are designed to slow you down.
Also, speeding to a red traffic light doesn’t make sense either, you’re only making yourself vulnerable to smash-and-grabbers when yo have to sit and wait there (something which seems to be a common phenomena in Jo’burg, no wonder people skip red lights), instead, gradually slow down and see if you can catch a green light.
Also, when you’re doing a lot of downhills and uphills, see if you can use the car’s momentum to your advantage by keeping the petrol down just enough to make it uphill and using the downhill to build up enough momentum that you don’t have to accelerate unnecessarily.
The point is, try keep a steady speed most of the time by planning ahead where you should accelerate or slow down and keep it to a minimum.
Keep your rev counter as low as possible. It’s simple, the higher the revs, the faster your engine turns, the faster your engine turns, the more fuel you burn. To keep your rev counter as low as possible, accelerate slower and shift gears sooner. Don’t drive in third gear when you can be driving in forth gear, as long as you don’t stall the car. My car gives me about 20km/l when I keep the engine running as close to 2000rpm as possible, getting closer to 3000rpm, it’ll drop to 18km/l or lower, when I go pass 3000rpm, I’ll be getting somewhere around 15km/l, 4000rpm and above, below 11km/l. These values will obviously differ from car to car, experiment a bit and find the sweet spot where your car runs at its optimal fuel efficiency.
Is that air conditioner really necessary? Switch it off if you’re not using it and keep your windows up to reduce drag. At slow speeds, rather turn the windows down than switching the air conditioner on, air conditioners take away engine power which means you’ll need to drive in a lower gear which means the rev count is a lot higher. That roof rack, have you ever used it before? If not, take it off, it creates extra wind resistance. Same goes for trailers and bike racks.
Keep your tires well inflated, tires lose air over time (about one psi per month) and due to temperature changes (about one psi for every degree drop). Proper inflated tires have less rolling resistance, be sure to check them at least once a month and make sure you check them while they are cold (not after using the car to drive somewhere).
If you buy tires that are wider than your stock tires, you’re probably going to get a lot better handling from the car, but also, the rolling resistance will increase which means you burn more fuel. If you really need the extra handling (which I doubt you’ll need under normal circumstances), at least keep the stock tires for driving long distances.
When you choose new tires, choose a radial-ply patterned tire over a cross-ply patterned tire to reduce rolling resistance and make them last longer.
Service and clean out your car regularly to make sure everything is working properly and that you’re not carrying excess weight. Check your air filter, a dirty air filter reduces performance and fuel economy. Consider getting a K&N or similar permanent filter which is cleaned rather than changed and thrown away, they are much less restrictive to airflow than paper filters. Check that there are no holes in your exhaust, a hole will cause a drop in exhaust back pressure which can lead to several problems including a drop in high speed power, torque as well as a drop in fuel economy.
If you’re in the market for a new car, carefully take a look at what you REALLY need, buying a 4×4 to basically drive to work every morning is not the smartest choice when you can downsize a bit and save a lot of money on fuel consumption. Prioritize where you need to go and rather drive less but longer distances. Driving to the supermarket and the next day driving to the store just a little further on is not only a waste of fuel, but also a waste of time, rather go there once and do everything at once. (Read David Allan’s book “Getting Things Done” if you need help prioritizing your activities and life to achieve optimum levels of productivity)
Driving to the cafe around the corner is not only a waste of fuel, but also puts unnecessary wear and tear on your cold engine, walk or use a bicycle when it’s close enough to do so (A cold engine also uses a lot more petrol than when it’s warm). Also avoid prolonged idling, if it’s been idling for longer than a minute, rather switch of the car, same goes for warming up the engine on cold mornings, 20-40 seconds should be enough.
Check how much fuel you’ve used since the last fill up and calculate whether your fuel consumption has dropped or increased, if you can’t measure it, you can’t control it. If possible, install a fuel consumption gauge, that should make it a lot easier to tweak the variables responsible for fuel economy.
Will post some more information about building your own HHO kit and using hydrogen injection to massively reduce fuel costs.
If you think you are beaten, you are;
If you think you dare not, you don’t;
If you think you’d like to win but can’t
It’s almost a ‘cinch’ you won’t;
If you think you will lose, you’ve lost.
For out in the world you’ll find
Success begins with a fellow’s will:
It’s all in the state of mind.
For many a race is lost
Ere even a race is run.
And many a coward fails
Ere ever his work’s begun.
Think big and your deeds will grow,
Think small and you’ll fall behind,
Think that you can, and you will:
It’s all in the state of mind.
If you think you’re outclassed, you are;
You’ve got to think hard to rise.
You’ve got to be sure of yourself before
You can ever win a prize
Life’s battle doesn’t always go
To the stronger or faster man;
But sooner or later the man who wins
Is the fellow who thinks he can.
From the A4 page on my wall which I received from my coach in primary school who eventually became my mentor, my accountant and the person who kept me motivated when the fire inside me started dimming. Just want to give a big thanks for keeping my fire alive over the last 13 years!
It’s amazing, every second person following me on twitter is a Guru … “Hello, my name is xxx and I’m a guru at internet marketing” or “Are you in need of more woman? Subscribe to my newsletter and get some tonight”
Or how about some real life examples, here are the Twitter Biographies of a bunch of so-called Gurus:
Everyone claiming to be a Guru is trying to sell you something you don’t need, especially all these hyped up MLM schemes which is nothing other than scams plastered with jargonatic adjectives.
Do You Believe The Claims Made On Late Night Infomercials? Sign Up For Our Newsletter Today!
I’m reading through a marketing e-book which I got for free because I was able to respond and enter my email address before the respond-before timer ran out … actually it ran out and then started counting all over again telling me the free offer has been extended due to popular demand. And guess what, the e-book used to cost $1997 and I’m getting it for free, apparently I should be grateful for not having to pay $1997 for it. Just scanning through the index, I’m being bombarded with hyped up jargon …
Wait, just received an email from another one of these Guru marketers badmouthing the hype around the book I’ve just downloaded for free …
I’m a little frustrated with all the crap that’s going on.
There are SO many “miracle” product launches
happening, and people are shelling their hard earned
cash on every single one of them.Today it was xxx - everybody
seems to be promoting it.I’m not.
Not to say it isn’t a good deal or it won’t help some
people, but here’s the deal…I’ve discovered a few factors that are consistent
among successful internet marketers, but one that
REALLY stands out is…
Where was I before I got distracted by another Guru that knows it all … oh, the index page of the book … the page where I downloaded it said something about the niche jargon being a little bit outdated and it’s being adjusted to reflect the jargon of WEB 2.0 (another overhyped keyword, I bet these marketers doesn’t even know what powers WEB 2.0 applications). Back to the book … the index reads like a typical marketing handbook, all fluffetyfoo and full of power punching poo that will make your product the niche that everyone else wants to do (while 5 million other people are trying the same thing after downloading the free ebook with the magic formula of how to make it online). Before I get distracted again, Viral Marketing, Marketing Funnel (another word for MLM where the people at the top of the pyramid just milks their participants for a lot more money), Dumb Down the Site, Powerful Admin Sections, Split Pay for Affiliate Programs, Pop-unders (It’s like a popup, only more annoying as it pops up behind your browser), OTO (The acronym for The One Time Offer Phenomenon), List Building, Lead Generation, Social Media (which is a buzzword for giving a company an online presence through whatever floats their boat), etc …
Online marketers are the new spammers of the internet, they aren’t good at anything, except for inflating their status by deflating the status of other marketers.
When You Aren't Any Good At Your Job, You Can Always Just Turn In Your Competitors.
All these internet marketers have blogs, if you set your “looking for” status on Facebook to Networking, you’ll be swarmed with internet marketers trying to promote their blog which in the end might as well have been a Huffman keyword algorithm generating random hyped up buzzwords which holds very little value seeing as the “Secret To …” is always on another page for which you have to click a trackable link to an affiliate’s page.
Those Who Have Nothing Important To Say Often Speak The Most.
Forums dedicated to emarketing are just as bad, especially if the forum was created by a Guru who wants to sell a niche and have millions of users who worship him …
Multiply An Enormous Number By Zero And You're Still Going To End Up With Zero.
“Social Media” became a buzzword amongst some of the Gurus while the real experts will throw you with a brick if you just mention the phrase. If I were to meet up with a group of marketers and you start throwing me with the “Social Media” jargon, expect to be thrown with a brick and drowned under concrete, the world wants practical solutions, not hyped up rubbish. Giving a brand an online presence is fine, but it shouldn’t be the be-all of your marketing campaign.
Maybe Your Peers Don't Make The Best Judges, Better Make Some Sock Puppets.
SEO Gurus, the internet is so full of people claiming that they are the best at cheating search engine results, it’s like calling yourself an expert at pushing yourself into the front of a row and getting payed to do so.
Let's Face It, If We Were Really That Smart, We Would Have Been Buying Generic Domain Names.
Most of them claim to be White Hat SEO gurus, in other words, they ask politely before they push themselves in front of the row, they follow all the so-called rules and regulations that were made up by search engine companies and they are generally too afraid to play outside the barbwire electric fence on top of the 10 foot thick concrete wall.
Just Because You Follow The Rules Doesn't Mean You Can't Rank For Competitive Terms. Oh Wait, Yes It Does.
Some of these White Hat SEO Gurus will tell you they specialize in link building. From what I’ve read in several sources, Google will actually penalize your page rank if you link to an outside source and not use the “nofollow” flag (unless the link is relevant, not sure how Google’s new double standards are working); thus link spammers will have their own site’s page rank dropped to zero pretty quickly diminishing the impact they have on the other site’s page rank.
Look At Me Mom! Hey! Are You Looking? Over Here! Watch! Are You Watching? Please!
Black Hat SEO Gurus will always have a dark secret that nobody must know about, yet they want to sell you this secret on how to get an “unfair” advantage in the market. Some of the techniques include link building wherin the Guru does a link / banner exchange with random webmasters and then simply use the robots.txt / .htaccess to block all spiders from accessing the links or toggling the “nofollow” flag based on the user’s IP address so that spiders see “nofollow” and users doesn’t see it (which effectively leads to having only links pointing to your site and nothing pointing back to the other site according to the web crawler’s point of view).
The biggest “niche” is to scrape the web for content around a certain niche and simply steal that content for their own automated / generated blogs while stacking those fake blogs with a crapload of ads. This is especially true for Gurus trying to make money of the highest paying keywords (where the competition is tough, for $70+ a click on a Google AdSense ad, I can understand why being the absolute number one and getting the highest cut out of click-pie is so important). Get caught using Black Hat SEO techniques and your site might get blacklisted or severely penalized … but that’s ok, these Black Hatters have plenty of sites they can use to conduct their mischief and overpower the search engine algorithms.
Cloaking Scraped Content Written By A Markov Generator Is Just Another Way Of Enhancing The User Experience.
Calling yourself a Guru is a dangerous thing, you better be able to live up to those incredible high standards if you want to go around calling yourself a Guru.
Any other annoying “Gurus” that you can think of?
Last night when I was driving back from Stellenbosch, I drove right into a thick cloud of smoke so dense that even with my headlights on bright, it was hard to see further than a few meteres. It seems Cape Town is on fire again, this time Devil’s Peak.
For more pics see www.capefires.com
Dear Microsoft
In reviewing our relationship over the past years, it occurs to me that I haven’t been falsely accused of being a thief enough lately. In that regard, rather than spending time, money, or energy developing new features or making the features you have work, I would greatly appreciate it if you could spend time making sure that I haven’t ripped you off.
If possible, it would be best if the new version of the anti-ripoff tool had as many false positives as possible. Also, I’d like it if the tool could be as large as possible and updated as frequently as possible. Finally, every time I download an update from you, including critical security updates, I should need to download a new version of the anti-ripoff tool.
My thinking here is that downloading updates from you isn’t difficult and painful enough, and I don’t yet feel enough of a need to get down on my knees and pray that your update process doesn’t foul up again. Also, the updates I have been downloading are just too darn small, and happen too darn fast.
Anyway, I know that you’ll do what’s right and invest the largest amount of money, time, and effort into the item with the smallest possible return, and the greatest possible annoyances for me, your customer.
Regards
Cecil
PS - I finally figured out all of the differences between the 8 different versions of Windows Vista, the 4 different versions of Office, and the 8 different versions of Windows Server 2008. This is very disappointing! You can do better than that, and I expect to see better from you soon! Why not 78 different editions of each OS and Office suite? That would be much better. I’d never figure out those differences unless I hire a consultant!
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@Cecil, if you’re being falsely accused of having a pirated copy of XP, here’s a patch that will fix just that and stop that annoying WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) popups: removeWGA. The alternative is Linux, any one of the gazillion distros.
