Rough times, and money is harder to find. Let’s look at some of us who are making some good money in this bad time in history. Maybe we can get some ideas!

5. Bankruptcy Lawyers

I don’t think I need to explain this one, do I? Bankruptcy has been going up around the world, including in North America as well as European nations. France is a nation known for its love for fine dining and wining, yet French restaurants are feeling the pinch of bankruptcy. Check out the Google Trends for the search term “Bankruptcy Lawyers”. It’s been rising the last few months it seems.

4. Divorce Lawyers

Tough economic times mean more strains on marriages, and we all know that financial problems are the number one cause for divorce. Divorces involve lawyers. They’re getting lots of business with all those households that are going into financial crisis.

3. Online Fraudsters

According to Symantec, online fraudsters who steal and abuse credit card information and bank account details will make $3.3b this year. That’s a lot more money than most financial institutions will net in profits this year.

2. Loan Sharks in HELOC

HELOC stands for Home Equity Line of Credit, and it refers to a loan that is made with your home equity on the line as collateral. If you default on your HELOC, the loan company can then take your home and sell it off to mitigate their losses in debts. But this in turn, obviously, becomes a huge asset to the loan sharks. In most default and foreclosure cases, chances are, the homeowner will lose a lot of money to the mortgage investors. Foreclosure rates in the US have been going up since late 2007. Of course, if property values drop down a lot more, then perhaps the resale of a foreclosed home may not return all of the money owed anymore.

1. Somali Pirates

This is my favorite one. Forget all the other lucrative recession-time opportunities listed above - check out the Somali pirates. They’ve been more active than ever, hijacking cargo ships full of goodies all over the high-seas. They made $150b this year. That’s a hell of a lot more than what Ford and GM are going to make this year. Sounds like the most lucrative gig on the list right now!

James Bond Jr. is a tv show that aired across the United States and Canada in 1991~1992. It was an old-school cartoon. I’m not talking about Family Guy style cartoon - this was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles type of a cartoon, strictly for kids. With the release of the second “new” 007 movie, I thought I’d pay tribute to the old tv show that I grew up on as a kid. I used to love this old show.

You see, I’m not the average North American - privileged from birth, full of empathy and sympathy, trying to be self-righteous by doing small insignificant deeds of good that only makes the doer feel good while it does not fix the problem. I’m a very realistic person who sees things for the truth rather than idealism. I don’t believe in basics or minimums that are guaranteed by default, and I believe in Darwinism. Even the right to survive is, technically and truthfully, not a guarantee. We have won it as a society, and we also need to sustain it as individuals.

When you decide to cross the street at night wearing a black jacket, you are gambling with your right to life. When you decide to go to war with Iraq, you are forcefully taking away the right to life from innocent Iraqi civilians. In an ideal world, everybody has the right to live. But who said these rights are guaranteed? I don’t understand how these standards somehow became a philosophy. These standards we set are merely artificial human attempts at achieving a higher goal, but really, there’s no law in physics that grants us any kind of rights whatsoever.

When you ditch out on a job and decide to shoot up on heroine, eventually you will lose your right to an income. When you lose right to an income, you lose your rights to food, shelter. You’ll also lose the right to heroine, since money will be scarce. Eventually you will lose rights to live. You will die on the streets. Unless. We encounter the idiots who decide to give petty change to these people, feed them in soup kitchens, so as to grant them the right to food and heroine that rightfully should be taken away from them. It only makes the problem worse.

Some people might be saying at this point, “In some cases, it’s not their fault. They have mental illnesses.” or something of the sort. Once again, going back to the very basics of physics - nothing is guaranteed. Unfortunately some are born without adequate ability to survive. If they have rich parents who are willing to lend them the right to carry on, great. If they found some other talent through which they can obtain the right to live, great (paralympians, for example). If not, who the hell says that we as society should guarantee them basic rights just because they’re human beings? It’s all man-made, and merely an opinion. It’s not a golden standard, unfortunately.

When a homeless person asks me for change, my response is “No. Get a job.” If you are incapable of getting a job, REGARDLESS of whose fault it is, then you lose rights to money, and in consequence, you lose your rights to food, shelter, and ultimately, survival.

You see, if you give these guys change, they’ll carry on for another day. Buy cheap food, and cheap drugs. That doesn’t solve the problem. The only thing it might do is make you feel like a nice smug person who is generous and all. But it doesn’t really help anything in the long run.

I’m a more charitable person than those donating soups and change to the drug-addicted homeless people in downtown and the eastside (I live in Vancouver by the way). Because I encourage them to learn how to fish, so they can find their own rights, rather than borrow rights from others on a daily basis. We as society, thanks to our ancestors, have created this magnificent world of opportunity and wealth. If you can’t grasp even a tiny bit of it, too bad. Darwinism says you will just perish away and nobody will remember you. It’s cold, it’s sad, but it’s the truth.

Just to make things clear - I donate for other charitable causes that involve childrens charities, as well as international charities for Africa and what not. Their economy and way of life has been raided by the influence of Western civilization, the global economy and the currency exchange system that enslaves some of the poorest nations. This is a fact I cannot change because I’m not that powerful. To offset the fact that the wealths I enjoy are trickled down wealths from the global economy that leeches from the poor 3rd world countries and piles it up in the hands of North Americans, I donate for those causes. I just don’t give a single fucking penny to homeless people in Vancouver.

Most hosting companies do not provide an IMAP platform, and the most common email method is POP3. Even worse, a lot of small businesses opt to simply forward their corporate emails to their hotmail or gmail accounts and reply from those addresses. The downside of using POP3 on your hosting server is that webmail access is often cumbersome and awkward (using CUBE mail or Squirrel Mail etc.) and if you have several computers, you have to delete emails or mark them as read emails on multiple platforms, and that includes your handhelds. With an IMAP platform, however if you read the email on your computer, it will be marked as read on your iPhone as well as your webmail platform.

Putting all this together is the Google Apps solution. This is how you activate Google Apps.

1. Visit https://www.google.com/a/.
2. Sign up for either the free or the Premium edition, as it fits you. You need to have a domain, or sign up for a domain on the spot.
3. Verify domain ownership.
4. Configure your MX record on your domain (this is through your web hosting company).
5. Configure your computer, iPhone, Blackberry, etc.

Using the Google Apps platform, your Mail Exchange record (MX Record) is updated so that all emails are routed go ghs.google.com, or a similar address. The emails are hosted on the Gmail platform, BUT using your domain natively. So even though you are on the gmail platform, you are still natively sending emails from your own company domain.

Using this set-up, you can have IMAP access to your emails from all devices, as well as advanced gmail access if you need webmail access while you’re on the road. As a matter of fact, I find myself often using the gmail platform on my portal at http://portal.synchronous.ca (you won’t be able to log in - you must be an employee) rather than Mail on my Macbook Pro. It’s fast, easy to use, well organized, and clean.

Other benefits of using Google Apps as your email and collaboration solutions are these:

• You get a calendar on the Google Apps platform which can be shared (or not shared) between employees, and synchronized to your desktop calendar (such as Outlook, or iCal)
• You get the Google Docs platform, on which you can do word processing, spreadsheets, and more. No more confusion on who has the most recent file of that proposal document. You work on it together online. And the functions are so robust, you won’t miss Microsoft Word or Pages.
• SalesForce is the most popular CRM solution on the market, and Google and Salesforce are partners. They offer an integrated CRM/Google Apps solution that integrate seamlessly with each other. Visit http://www.salesforce.com/googleapps/ for more details.

Using the Google Apps platform, we have achieved ease of use, time saving, easy collaboration and data sharing, better synchronization, and most of all, relaxation. It just works.

Many of you are already aware that I am a Liberal Party supporter, and I support them mainly based on their foreign policies, as well as tax regulations. The Conservative Party has robbed us by reducing one tax and increasing another one. The Conservative Party is also too much in line with aggressive partisan politics of the Republican Party down south.

Many Canadians are supporting a vote that will get the Partisan Harper government out - meaning, they are supporting voters to vote for whichever candidate has a better chance of defeating the Conservative candidate in the riding.

www.voteforenvironment.ca is one of the most prominent websites that promote the anti-Conservative vote. Essentially, these people (and myself) feel that getting the Conservative Government out by any means is a better way to ensure Canada experiences a balanced growth in a peaceful and respectful manner.

But. My opinions are my opinions, and as a staunch supporter of true democracy, I invite you to vote for whoever you wish to vote. Better to vote than to not vote, honestly.

7DayBuzz has a rule that resounds in its name - they will update every day, if not more!!! That’s more than I can say about my own blog, unfortunately. And did I mention the diversity of content already? There’s something for everybody. Here’s some takes on the more interesting posts that they’ve had recently.

Vaccinations: What To Do (or Not Do) - We all acknowledge Vaccination as something we do as a given. But some say that vaccines can cause autism, aspergers, and other disabilities and anomalies. The official recommendation is that children are to receive more than 2 dozen vaccinations, and then there’s the question of what side effects it may have! Read for yourself, and pitch an opinion.

Is America Ready for a Black President? - Let’s say you’re a democrat who supports Clinton (not Bill), and Obama (the potential Black President) wins the nomination for the Presidential Election. Would you rather vote for John McCain to prevent a black man from becoming the US president? Sounds crazy eh? Well, at least by Canadian standards, this is complete bigotry and would not be tolerated in many places, but hey, we never had slavery - USA did, and apparently, some people feel that way! They’d rather vote for a Republican candidate in order to stop a black man from becoming president. Get the scoop!

The Messiah’s Disciples and Their Behavior Towards One Another (MATT 18:1-35) - Redefine a “child” through biblical teachings and meanings. I hear many of you saying “well I’m not religious so…” Here’s the thing about the Bible, the Koran, and other scriptures - even if you are not religious, there’s things in the scripture that can be used as universal learning material, not to mention give you a good education in anthropology and culture.

Yes, as you can see, the diversity of posts are astonishing, and it’s one of those places where you can hang out, chat, sometimes get into a heated debate/argument over politics, and have fun.

I don’t give a fuck if you just took a nap, or if you are sleepy at the moment and are about to take a nap, or if you just had sushi, or if you just went shopping, or if you just fucked my sister. I don’t give a fuck if you just went for a nice drive (maybe I’ll care if you say you bought a brand new Mercedez or something like that), I don’t give a fuck if you just came back from a day of skiing.

Unless you can keep your twittering to valid and interesting information (such as “just saw the newest edition of the iPhone - check it out!”), please shut the fuck up cause I don’t care about the smallest details of your lives.

What’s next? “I just sat down in my toilet.” -> “I just took a big dump and it stinks.” -> “I ran out of toilet paper.”

Well I won’t be the one there to give you a fresh roll of toilet paper, I’ll just hope that out of the scramble and panic you’ll drop your fucking iPhone in the toilet so that you can’t twitter anymore.

John Chow used to be against macs - he said to me, when I first got my Macbook Pro, “Should have gotten a PC!!!” but recently he got a Macbook Pro (same as mine!) and is loving it. Now he’s finally done it - he got the iPhone the first moment Rogers started releasing limited editions.

Check out John Chow’s review of the Rogers iPhone here. Yes, Canadians no longer have to jailbreak and unlock US editions of the iPhones anymore. What relief!

That being said, the corporate world does give you some valuable insights into business, finance, and human relations, and I would still go through it again if I had to do it over again (although just after a year, I hated it so much I quit without a back-up job). For young people who want to become independent business owners and entrepreneurs, yet do not have the funds or the ideas to start upon, I would actually recommend going through a corporate job for the experience of it. Learn what you can get, and then leave.

My specific job function was a call centre agent, and for the most part I worked in the business/corporate account department. I was the asshole on the other side when you call 611 and then press 0 on your cell phones. And then I would go onto explain why that extra charge IS a valid charge and you still have to pay it, or give you some lame excuse to why we’ve raised the System Access/911 Fee on your cell phone bills. Now out of my defense, I was one of the best agents for troubleshooting phone problems, billing errors, and also troubleshooting our own customer management systems that we used to handle inquiries.

This job obviously involved plenty of conversation with customers, as well as interaction with colleagues as well as obliging to corporate standards and guidelines. It was interesting and educational while it lasted.

1. Memorizing your workflow or training is not always the best thing.Memorization of cell phone plans, billing details, pricing etc. was discouraged at Bell. Of course, there are some items that you memorize after a while (price of Caller ID etc.) but the truth is that the pricing for those items, the conditions etc. can differ from many different account types, and trying to memorize this all during the training course was a ridiculous goal, not to mention unnecessary. The truth about these plan details and what not is that they tend to change from time to time as well. We had an internal knowledge-base system similar to Wikipedia, with all current and past details of different products and services that we were encouraged to refer to. This may increase each call time by a small amount, but it drastically reduced training time as well as margin of error on account handling.

   The same applies to my current profession as a design & marketing guy, who constantly works with PHP code. It’s a given that I probably have tonnes of PHP commands and syntaxes memorized, but I don’t try to memorize it. All I need is to be aware of what is possible, and when the time comes to use it, I look it up on the PHP official website to verify, or look it up on Google for application examples. Some people that know how much I code may assume I memorize most of my functions but that’s far from true.

2. Rules ARE bendable depending on your people skills.In my work environment there were always disputes about pricing, contract extensions and what not. As much as there are corporate guidelines on the eligibility for perks and discounts for certain clients (based on length of business, length of contract, average monthly revenue and past promotion records etc.), there’s always a margin to it.

   Some clients would call in all ready for an argument and complaints - some people just seem to have an issue with corporations overall, and preserve that left-wing attitude that makes them view corporations as the “enemy” or something of the sort. When these guys call in and start an argument from the beginning, there was no way I would budge and give a discount, or make a one-time adjustment. I would hold my ground and did not give a shit if it escalated to one of those “supervisor” calls (and they’re not always the actual supervisors - just more experienced agents specializing in escalations).

   On the other hand, if a person calls in with a happy jolly tone, the last thing I feel like saying is “Sorry ma’am, that is a valid charge as per your service agreement.” or “That offer is no longer available on your account.” To avoid any potential arguments, and to keep the conversation civil, I would just let it go and turn a blind eye. Besides, the management is not capable of checking all the discounts and adjustments made, so small amounts could just fly. It was simply the margin of error that the corporation had in mind anyways.

3. Sales pitches, and mirroring personalitiesEven in the customer service center which is set up to wait for inbound calls, we had a fair bit of sales quotas to meet. For example, when a person calls in, and we notice they are using some text messages but does not have a text messaging bundle, we can offer it and try to get him/her to add it to the account. These are small sales in amount but sales nonetheless, and throughout my career I became better and better at naturally spotting the clients’ needs, offering the right product in the right tone of voice, and getting the sale.

   What also helps is to always mirror the personality of the person you are trying to sell. If it’s a rowdy businessman calling in with some ego, your tone of voice would match, and the choices of words as well (”You got that right sir!!!” in a up-beat tone, kind of sucking up would do the trick). If it’s an older female who is about to stick a golf club up your bum if you say one wrong thing, you want to keep things very fine-tuned (”Yes, that is correct ma’am.” in a polite tone would be suitable). There are many different archetypes of people based on personality, age, ethnicity and what not, and over time I obtained some natural feel on how to respond to different people. And this is a continuous learning process for me - to keep learning and polishing my skills for sales.

And then a banner caught my attention - it started with “Win a free lease and..” or something like that. I waited for the banner to keep scrolling, and here’s what I saw:

Yes, you can win a TV.. and not just a regular TV, you can win a COLOUR TV!!! And even better, it’s spelt “colour” with the extra U, the French (or the original) way to spell it, in accordance to the spirit of Montreal. The last time I saw a colour TV was about 4 hours ago… it seems like yesterday however. Wait, it was yesterday, since it’s 2AM as I’m writing this. Those things are so rare these days, that I had to venture all the way out to my own living room to spot one.

Honestly, we live in an era where a Black & White TV would probably sell for more than most colour TVs due to its antique factor, as a collector item. I can’t believe somebody actually decided “we should specify that it is a color TV, in case somebody thinks we’re giving away a B/W tv set.”

So. Anybody want a fancy dancy colour TV? Go to the 515 Ste. Catherine rental website and check it out! It’s a chance of your lifetime.

Blu-Ray currently has over 80% of the market share, and more retailers as well as movie producers are choosing the Blu-Ray format over HD DVD format for a variety of reasons.

This review, however, did not trigger a decline in Toshiba shares, but rather, an incline, as it is viewed as a wise move to cut losses. Admitting defeat is also a very admirable trait, I suppose, and Toshiba shares went up, and the rating by Nikko citigroup for Toshiba shares went from “neutral” to “buy”. This is a rather interesting movement on the stock front, a somewhat unconventional one (although maybe it seems that way because I’m not an expert in stock trading).

Full News Story on HD DVD’s potential defeat to Blu-Ray

• Internet Explorer 7
• Internet Explorer 6
• Firefox 2
• Safari

Of course there are other rogue browsers that are rarely used, like Camino, Netscape, and some other nameless ones that most people do not know about, but the above 4 are the most frequently used browsers in the world right now.

Among all of them, Internet Explorer has, perhaps, the worst parsing and display system. It has problems with displaying PNGs (alpha layers will show as a weird light blue) while the CSS parsing as well as certain Javascript command handling are limited. Also the security vulnerabilities are not very nice either. Oh, did I mention, IE6 is the only one among the above list that does NOT support tabbed browsing? That means that if you wanted to have multiple web pages open while you navigate the World Wide Web, you need multiple windows open.

Many people still use IE6 because they are simply unaware of what is available to them - either switch to Firefox, or use Internet Explorer 7. Compared to IE6, the two browsers I recommend have far better parsing, security, and usability, with less errors.

Now let’s think about this from the industry perspective. Web development becomes more time consuming if IE6 compatibility is demanded, and that means higher production costs for websites, as well as bigger headaches for web developers like myself. The faster IE6 is phased out of common use, the more efficient our industry will be as a whole. Money will be saved, and time as well.

In an effort to convert more people to use Firefox or Internet Explorer 7, I have put a little addition on my company website for Synchronous Design & Marketing (www.synchronous.ca). If the website detects that it is opened by IE6 (or God forbid, lower than that), it will show a black box in the top space which is normally blank, and ask people to upgrade their browsers, since the one they have are outdated. Check out the following screenshot.

Out of all the places I could have ended up in, I ended up pulling into a bus stop. It was on Robson Street, however, so with the help of some drunk passer-bys, I managed to roll the vehicle back into a smaller street and parked it.

At 2:23, I called a tow truck through BCAA (I have a BCAA plus membership), and at that point the lady told me 40 minutes or so. I was on the phone with somebody for a while, and after 40 minutes I phoned again to check. She said she located the driver a few kilometres away, and that he should be arriving soon. Another half an hour passed so I called to check again, a bit irritated. I’m supposed to show the BCAA guy my membership card to get it towed to my mechanic so I couldn’t quite abandon my car, so I had to stay, and I was getting sleepy.

She told me that the tow truck itself had mechanical problems, and the driver is trying to sort it out.

Talk about irony eh? My car breaks down, and then the tow truck that got called to help me out is about to break down too. Luckily, the driver managed to resolve the situation on his own, and finally, at 4AM, I managed to get home.

Turns out the alternator was dead, according to my mechanic (and it was also my #1 guess based on my read of the symptoms). If you don’t know, the alternator is the spinning part that does the reverse of an electrical motor - it converts spinning motion into electricity. It connects via a drivebelt to the engine shaft, and as the engine runs, it spins, charging your battery. If this thing dies, or a wire becomes loose, you’re draining your battery and when you finally kill it, your car dies. So if your electricals become weaker and weaker, die one by one until the engine finally dies while driving, you’ve got a non-charging battery.

However. If your car runs fine once it’s going, but has a hard time starting up, it’s the opposite - the alternator is working, but the battery isn’t supplying the energy. It’s either the battery wire/terminal, or the battery itself. In that scenario, while the car is running, the electricity generated by the alternator keeps the sparks going as well as your radio so your car won’t die during operation, but once you shut her down, you’re done.

Yes, not only do I know how to build websites and databases, I know a fair bit about mechanics and engineering too.

But when I tested out the BOSE Companion 2 Speaker set after checking out some Logitechs (which are great great speakers if I may add) and Altec Lansings (which by the way have very messy sound, if your ears are sensitive enough), I was blown away. I couldn’t believe how much sound clarity and weight was coming off a 2-speaker set without a subwoofer. Their slogan is “better sound through engineering” and they were not kidding. The difference in the clarity and tone of music was so obvious, I was sold in a few minutes. It was $99 in price. I could have gotten a 2.1 set from Logitech for around that price, or some lower-wattage models, even less, but I was still going to stick with the BOSE set I chose.

After some struggles trying to get my new AMEX card to put the transaction through, I brought them home to test it out.

Here is my critique on this speaker set:

1. Sound clarity is amazing. Especially considering these are single channel speakers. This one sounds better than the 3 channel speaker set by Logitech that I tested out. Usually speakers with 2 different channels sound better but this one proved that presumption wrong.
2. The bass is very powerful, even without a subwoofer. This is great, because it saves me a lot of space by not having that big subwoofer sitting on my bottom shelf. I can now utilize that space.
3. If you like to plug in other devices such as an MP3 player, or some kind of an external device, however, it’s a bit wonky. Usually these speakers come with an extra port for external devices other than the laptop itself, but this one doesn’t. It means you need to unplug-and-replug when you switch devices. Not a big problem for me however - I don’t own ANY portable music devices whatsoever.
4. The speakers cannot be mounted on the wall. So even though I saved space in my bottom shelf, I lost space on my desktop. Not much lies behind my laptop anyways, so it’s not a huge loss.
5. They could have made it a bit prettier. But oh well, it sounds good so I guess the looks can be compromised a little bit. But it’s basically a slanted box with a steel mesh covering - pretty typical for speakers.
6. If you’re used to having a wired remote sticking out for volume control, forget it. This has one volume knob on the right side speaker. No treble or bass or tone switches… but then it sounds so good

Overall, this was a worthy investment, priced at $99 and tax at Futureshop. They’re having a sale - they claim that regular price is $150. The BOSE website, however, sells them for $119.99, which is a curious thing in regards to Futureshop’s pricing. Usually manufacturer sites are the most expensive, and then the prices get slashed as you go to other more competitive retail outlets.

In Kindergarten and Elementary School, we used to have tornado drills, as it was a frequent visitor in the prarie area that we lived in. The drill was to either get to the basement part of a building, or, if that’s unavailable, go to what would be considered the deepest core of the building, in order to minimize your chances of being hit by flying debris. In case of schools, those were the hallways. Classrooms would be evacuated, so as to minimize the chances of getting hit by flying glass. Once you hit the hallway, you would crouch like a turtle, with your knees to your chest and your arms wrapping your head, into a small ball, with your head directly against the walls. This was supposed to reduce the chance of you getting blown away, or getting hit by other objects, in case the intensity of the tornado rips through part of the building. Even if the roof got blown away, this covert position would reduce surface area, and help to keep you on the floor, in the building.

Tornado alarms were installed in all the municipalities, and that thing was so loud and the noise hit a large area. It was a long wailing sound, sort of like a ambulance siren except much longer in its high-low wave. When you hear that, your best bet is to hide according to your drills. Our apartment was on the 2nd floor, but in such places, neighbours are always there to help. Anybody living in lower floors would happily welcome their neighbours into their apartments to hide out during a tornado blast. All apartments were built with the first floor as half-basements, specifically for tornadoes. Most houses were built like that too, if they did not have a full basement under it! Even the architecture of such towns were affected largely by this powerful natural phenomenon.

When I went back to Korea, however, the government was not so much interested in natural disaster relief, but leaned more towards wartime provisions. There was training for bombings and other aerial attacks that may incur in our city, which was 4 hours away from the North Korean border. This was not only for schools, but it was a city-wide provision. All schools, offices, and homes were to comply when this happens. If I remember correctly, everybody was supposed to be indoors during that short period, but it was not enforced very well. It had been more than 40 years since the Korean War, and not many people took it seriously. However they would still do the military drill of emergency take offs and what not, as well as police officers being put on alert until the military took over.

And then I came to Vancouver, and went to highschool in the GVA (Greater Vancouver Area). We are located on the Pacific plate belt, or whatever it’s called, and we’re considered to be at high-risk for earthquakes. We constantly had earthquake drills, where we’d hide under a table or desk to avoid being hit by falling objects. And then, before the second wave would hit, we’d all evacuate through the designated evacuation routes, assemble with our teacher, in order to make sure the head-count matched from when the class begun, so that missing students can be easily identified and searched for.

Growing up in 3 different countries, in very distinct environments has given me such a wide array of emergency preparation training, and it’s actually quite amazing that I managed to experience all this throughout my life.

Does anybody else have any interesting anti-disaster training that’s not often seen in many parts of the world?