gofer articles

Affiliate marketing is a superb way for the tech-savvy hobbyist to generate some money on the side.
For a select few who have managed to put their finger on the Zeitgeist, however, it means full financial independence, with income in the tens of thousands per month!

Probably the most celebrated cases of affiliate marketing made good has long been that of Dr. Arnold Kim, M.D.
Whilst still a medical student, he started off a website committed to rumors about Apple products.
This was back right at the turn of the century, before the word “blog” had entered into the well-known lexicon.
Even while diagnosing patients, Dr. Kim kept up the site, though soon enough it took on a life of its own, with forty million page views a month, as certified by independent research firms.

Dr. Kim was already well-off as a result of his medical practice, but affiliate marketing also generated a six-figure income – and he was only devoting relatively little time to his site!
Believing that things could grow so much more were he to dedicate his whole day, Dr. Kim gave up his stethoscope and plunged whole-heartedly into the realm of professional blogging.

Similar types of internet riches abound, such as that of the teenager who became a millionaire by producing free MySpace designs for individuals to download, or the college student behind “The Million-Dollar Homepage” which made money by just selling space to advertisers.
What they have in frequent is that their success is totally traffic-driven: it’s all about the eyeballs, the number of visitors per month, week, day, even hour – both repeat and first-time (known in the industry as “unique”).
Get the numbers, and you will earn money.

But how do you obtain the numbers?
Content.
“Content is king.”
If you have something lots of people are interested, such that they will keep visiting your site, you will make money – assured.
The only real question is what content or material to serve up!

AC electric motor repair is commonly done these days, typically for generator turbines and the like, whether for power plants or ship and aircraft engines.
Nothing unusual about any of that.
But not so long ago, just a little over a century ago, AC, or alternating current, and DC, or direct current, were quite controversial matters – especially for the two men bitterly locked in what would become identified to history as the great War of the Currents.

Yes, AC electric motor repair is frequent enough these days, but back then, AC was new, and at first appeared unsafe – ironic considering that it won out over DC in lots of applications due to its superior safety.
But before this came about, there were the most acrimonious protests, right down to court battles, not to mention personal smearing promotions in the court of open public opinion, against AC, the newer technology.

While it’s arguable that the superior AC standard would have finally been adopted, it’s almost certain that the campaign against it, and its most celebrated proponent, delayed its widespread use for quite some years.
While something such as AC electric motor repair is still rather expert work, it isn’t the revoluntionary thing it was back when engines running on AC were deemed exotic and, as previously mentioned, dangerous.

Thomas Edison, the great inventor, used AC’s initial faults as a method of personally attacking his one-time assistant Nikola Tesla, another brilliant mind.
Likely as a result of skilled jealousy (though a lot of money was also at stake, as numerous patent royalties were required), Edison went to great lengths to discredit not only the technology but its most notable proponent – to the point of macabre demonstrations electrocuting animals and also a condemned prisoner in order to get the public agitated against AC!

Situated in one of The Big Apple’s wealthiest neighborhoods, the Joan and Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University is dedicated to both teaching and research. It is one of the most selective medical schools in the entire United States, only some hundred hopefuls are admitted each year – from out of some six thousand candidates every year. Now named Weill Cornell Medical College and, even more often, simply “Weill Cornell,” the school was partially endowed by Sanford Weill, an American banker and philanthropist who was the former executive officer and chairman of Citigroup, Incorporated. Mr. Weill and his wife personally contributed two hundred and fifty million dollars to the medical school already at Cornell, and he was able to secure another one hundred and fifty million dollars.

Weill Cornell had been widely respected in the field before Mr Weill’s contributions, and not once had it lacked for benefactors, a veritable Who’s-Who of local, national, and even international luminaries from business, politics, and entertainment, for instance real estate veteran Isaac Toussie. It was the first medical school in the country to admit women alongside men. And now it’s become the first American one to operate abroad – in Education City, in fact, outside the capital of Qatar, with a campus dedicated to patient care offering a six-year integrated curriculum. The school can count many a notable physician among its alumni, people such as Robert C. Atkins of Atkins Diet fame and former Surgeon General of the United States C. Everett Koop. Other famous graduates are Nobel Prize winner Robert W. Holley and Henry Heimlich of the Heimlich Maneuver.

Nonetheless, for all the well-funded backing, the financial aspects of a medical education are serious, generally taken to be some forty-two thousand dollars the first year and another thirty-eight required the second. But that’s still quite a deal when compared against the university’s own law school expenses, which eclipse it at just about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the same four years!

China, China, China – what’s the big deal?
Why is everyone going on and on about China constantly?

Okay, so they own billions (or is that trillions) in American securities, currency, whatever.
And they make lotsa stuff.
Like NFL beach towels and stuff.
Yeah.
Okay.

It’s not like most people wish to work on an assembly line in any case, making trinkets and curios for Walmart.
But whatever.

All right, so it’s not just NFL beach towels that they make.
It’s that they are also climbing up the food chain, making stuff that’s more and more high-value, such that good-paying jobs may be the next to go.
They’re hardly making textiles any more – notice that a lot of the clothing nowadays come from even more amazing locales – like Indonesia and Sri Lanka?

In fact, to be fair, it isn’t NFL beach towels that anyone’s upset over.
It’s the fear that aircraft manufacturing might be next!
Already the Chinese government is on record as gunning for leadership in green energy products for example wind mills and solar panels, and already they are well on their way in direction of dominating those industries.

But must it be a zero-sum game?
Does China’s rise equal everyone else’s loss?
Put another way, are they basically gobbling up ever more slices of the pie – or may Chinese ascendancy grow that pie for everyone involved?

Well, speaking of the NFL, it’s interesting to compare and contrast that sporting league’s business decisions with that relating to the NBA.
Basketball is growing in popularity over there while years ago an organized exhibition game of American football was canceled practically at the last minute.
If this serves as any indication, it may be that being in place surpasses lodging on the sidelines!

Diversion safes are the stuff of childhood dreams for me, when every book, key, or other frequent item could contain a key or treasure map in its hollowed-out core.
They seize the imagination like nothing else, for what is a child’s imagination but that everyday things should be in reality extraordinary?
That secretly, the world is not as it seems like.

Such is the suspicion of a child gradually waking up from childhood, slowly adapting to the likelihood that the world is both more limited – with its guidelines and adults – and much more fantastic – with its secrets and diversion safes – than apparent at first sight, the first sight of childhood.

There’s something intrinsically fascinating about objects that double as something else – or, to put it another way, objects that pretend to be one thing while truly functioning as another.
And therefore there’s something of the moral lesson in diversion safes, which may demonstrate a child’s curiosity about them.

That’s most likely the single biggest reason why the Transformers line of gadgets were such a runaway success.
There had never been anything like it before – robots that would have been quite interesting in themselves, as robots, but to that was added the ability to, well, transform into (generally speaking) some non-robotic object, typically vehicles such as cars and airplanes but sometimes even animals like dinosaurs.

Now isn’t that somehow rather like a diversion safe?
A vehicle that hides a robot, an apparently unthinking vehicle housing actually artificial intelligence of the most incredible order.
A car, or a plane – or a armed pistol, or a radio cassette player (with the cassettes themselves transformable into birds of prey and hunting dogs).
There were few objects which Japanese toymakers did not, origami-like, re-imagine as robots.

And so a safe transforms straight into memories of the Transformers!

Sam Antar was the former CFO of Crazy Eddie’s, his cousin’s electronics retail empire.
Sam is a much sought-after speaker on the lecture circuit these days, and his seminars may also earn CPE and CLE credits for the attendees.

That’s because he is a convicted fraudster.

Ethics continuing education courses are usually self-paced correspondence courses one takes at one’s own leisure as a part of maintaining one’s professional good standing.
Reading through Sam’s site on the worldwide web, however, is as educational as any structured academic account can be.

As the former CFO of Crazy Eddie’s, Sam presided over one of the most well-known scandals in the chronicles of corporate crime.
He lays it all out, bare, raw, and unembellished by any of the normal self-serving rationaliziations often given to insiders’ accounts – all unadulterated on his website.

This is an ethics CPE study course like none other – if it were accredited as such.
As it is, it’s just a website – but oh, what a website!

White-collar offense never looked so exciting.
That’s because the Crazy Eddie’s scandal was at heart a soap opera displaying all the familiar human foibles known to a Greek chorus – lust, greed, betrayal, as well as family.
Yes, family.

The familial element in this drama makes this type of corporate crime so – if the pun will likely be pardoned – familiar to lay readers, grabbing and holding their awareness where other accounts would lose them under a mountain of technical information.
However, it isn’t that Sam offers no minutiae of his own; his very objective today is to combat criminal activity, after all; it’s that these details, which would be so boring otherwise without the benefit of a human drama in which to place them in the correct perspective, come to brilliant life against the circumstance of a family power battle that resonantes purposely with everyone who’s ever underwent any semblance of sibling rivalry.

How’s that for an ethics CPE course!

Wine racks are a sign of the serious oenophile, or wine conoisseur.
That’s “racks,” plural, mind you – rows and rows of them, in all probability within a climate-controlled basement cellar, in addition!

How does one get started?
A number of fairly good introductions can be found online.
Prior to purchasing wine racks and other paraphernalia of the hobby, do a easy Google search and peruse as many as possible to get a good all-round education.

Generally, the first thing to do would be to sample some wines.
Again, using the internet should be an excellent place to begin: check to see whether any wine tasting events are now being held in your area, whether sponsored by a club or a merchant or even – specifically – a local vineyards!
Once you create your own impression of your own tastes, you may be prepared for those wine racks for your own home!

No, not a full-fledged qualified cellar such as described at the outset, however, but simple decorative fare good for your kitchen or den or, even, study!
A cornucopia of options is out there for the rest of us who cannot afford dedicating our basements to storing wine.
Racks can be produced out of just about any material nowadays, into just about any design.
Some aren’t even immediately recognizable as such without actually holding a bottle or two of wine!

But you are not done yet.
If you need to really get into wine, you might “wine” up getting a hundred-dollar wine newsletter – Robert Parker’s famous “The Wine Advocate.”
He’s the premier wine critic in the business, so much so that what he says will actually have an effect on the market!
But one thing to always remember, no matter how far along you go in this hobby: trust your own taste buds.
Never feel like a thousand-dollar bottle of wine is supposed to taste good!
If you enjoy the twenty-dollar bottle, that’s what you like – period.

One of the most surprising uses of wind chimes has been as musical instruments in their own right.
This looks quite out of the question at first glance, as typical varieties appear to consist of nothing more than tinkling cylinders, with the sound only slightly different depending on whether stone, wood, metal, or glass is used.
And so it is that [wind chimes] do indeed possess only a very limited set of musical capabilities, whether melodic or percussive, but that has not stop some ingenious musicians from deploying them into their work.
And in fact, just about the most famous uses of one has been in one of the most popular videogames of all time.

That’s right, in a videogame.
Koji Kondo is a long-time music director at Nintendo, responsible for scoring some of the company’s biggest hits, standard-setting bestsellers such as Super Mario Bros. as well as the Legend of Zelda.
In the follow up Super Mario World, wind chimes figure rather conspicuously in the theme for the “Vanilla Dome” game level (or “world,” in the parlance of the Mario games).

Chimes have also been featured in the works of musicians as varied as modern composer Oliver Messiaen and rock guitarist David Sitek.
Maybe what’s most unusual about their use is the fact that there are currently a handful of chime-like instruments available – the mark tree is even sometimes mistaken for one!

Tubular bells are another such instrument that are often mistaken for wind chimes.
Yet such misconceptions by casual observers can be simply forgiven, given that one cylinder can only so different from another, even when on an altogether different instrument – and, perhaps, none of this class of instruments look different!

Tubular bells, however, are much more widely used out of all the chime-like instruments.
The theme for the well-known animated television series “Futurama” is played with tubular bells, as was that during section of the closing credits for the renowned children’s television show “Sesame Street” during the 1980s.

Because of out fast-paced society, fast-paced because new discoveries are being made all the time which leads to things never stand still, even personal fitness trainers need to take CPE courses so as to remain in good position professionally.
As a former personal trainer myself, I must say, however, that the typical trainer may still not be as knowledgeable as such accreditations may wish to imply.

Those employed by chain gyms, which is the great majority of those today, are often children for whom personal training is a gig they happen to have come upon.
At something like New York Sports Club (NYSC), they wear the red tee shirts that say “here to help you.”
Now some are, of course, quite knowledgeable and rather considering the subject, but for most it is just a job that seemed to fit nicely with a relaxed interest in sports.

The certification exam they take is reputable and rigorous enough for any employing a multiple-choice format, but it is really nothing more than a memory test and actually indicates no real expertise.
The necessary CPE courses run generally along the same lines, regurgitating data by rote.
The truth is, these trainers know nothing that could not be received by anyone who logs online.

Certainly, one may say the same of any occupation – but when it comes to physical fitness, the very nature of the field allows for no small amount of misinformation and outright quackery.
The reason behind this is really fairly simple: no one actually knows.

That’s right.
I’m a former personal fitness trainer and the only one who can tell the absolute truth: no one really knows.
Unless he or she is God or was there at the creation of Adam and Eve, no one really knows.
Hence, all the personal trainer CPE courses in the world isn’t going to make up for this basic but shocking truth – “the human body is centuries before medical science,” as Doctor Sir Roger Bannister said.

A network of Roman Catholic schools that can be traced back to early nineteenth-century France, The Convent of Jesus and Mary Schools are located throughout the world today, whether in Asia or Africa, Europe or the Americas. But while receiving a certain amount of financial backing from official Church coffers, it is the support of the local communities that host them which has been crucial to their continuing success, particularly those most generous contributions from business people, not all of whom are Catholic or even Christian, such as with the case of an Isaac Toussie whose funds go towards a school in India.

Another fact which one may not necessarily imagine of a Catholic school is that while they are parochial, in many cases one does not even have to believe in God to attend. Naturally, they do participate in the evangelical mission of the Church, but non-Catholics may opt out of any religious instruction offered, which matters are typically taught just once a week or so, at the end of the school day. Many Catholic schools subscribe to the intellectual traditions of the Jesuit Order, one that has traditionally welcomed curiosity and frankness, attributes required of science. In fact, it is for this reason that Catholic schools tend to have such a stellar reputation in many places, such as New York City in the United States of America, where even secular parents will send their children to attend.

Believe it or not, a Catholic education can be among the lowest anywhere, with annual tuition at some five thousand dollars – quite a bargain in contrast to what’s charged by parochial schools operated by other religions! However, not all Catholic schools operate in a fairly relaxed and non-religious manner; it is usually those that happen to be situated in generally non-Christian countries or otherwise highly secular locations which offer such openness.

The recent Japanese devastation has shone a spotlight on the country’s seemingly unique social structure.
Unlike many other circumstances of natural disaster elsewhere, no looting or rioting has followed to compound the misfortune — and this has greatly impressed many a non-Japanese observer.
From the patient orderly lines to the return of valuables, “yamoto-damashii,” or the Japanese spirit, has elicited admiration and further sympathy from the world.

As can be imagined, articles have appeared seeking to explain the phenomenon of people who remain law-abiding citizens regardless of being deprived of not simply creature comforts but everything they own and even of loved ones.
Police stations all along the coast are stuffed to capacity with the personal household safes of sufferers which have washed back to terrain or been recovered from the rubble by rescue workers.
Then there is the seemingly suicidal heroism and self-sacrifice of many nuclear power plant employees.
Even animals have displayed yamoto-damashii: a dog made worldwide headlines for standing by another dog trapped under rubble, refusing to leave!

Much has been written both for and against the “Japanese-spirit interpretation” of events.
On one side, people remember that the country is a wealthy one, a computer advanced one, and one that is probably uniquely homogenous one of many leading industrialized societies of which it is a member.
Obviously household safes and other belongings have been returned or at least still left unmolested!
It figures, argue such people, because there is no motivation to loot and riot when the country all together offers so many resources to provide succor.

Others note that the spirit of Japan is such that rules are noticed given that they are rules – Japanese rules – and one is Japanese.
Safes are not broken into because that’s not what a Japanese person does, in basic terms.
This side of the debate notes that no matter how rich the society, individual victims still suffer – yet they generally do so patiently, in a manner uniquely Japanese.

Going to a store such as On Off Digital World really brings back memories for me. I had never much cared for shopping, but in this case I can imagine the appeal it might have for some people. In my case, anyway, it involves experiencing the sort of, well, retail experience I used to have in much younger days, with just this sort of store, the kind that was once common throughout The Big Apple but which has now suffered greatly from the “big box” stores such as Best Buy and so forth. Yes, On Off is a throwback to the ’80s and perhaps earlier, that’s for sure.

Local backing will always be a basic necessity for the survival and prosperity of hospitals and medical schools. Even most medical research facilities have had some significant amount of communal support, particularly where money is concerned. Oftentimes, these generous donors can be found contributing to more than one institution, folks such as Isaac Toussie and family with regards to two of the leading names in healthcare teaching and practice in the Empire State, Weill Cornell Medical College and the North Shore-LIJ network of hospitals and research centers.

Weill Cornell is named after its two single best benefactors, Ezra Cornell, of Western Union fame, and Sanford I. Weill, the onetime chief of Citigroup, Incorporated. As one of the most selective such institutions in the country, admitting only some one hundred applicants out of almost six thousand hopefuls every year. Furthermore, Weill Cornell was first to accept women right alongside men as well as the first American medical school to establish its own premises overseas, just by the capital of Qatar, Doha. Many a notable graduate has boosted the school’s reputation over the years, doctors like C. Everett Koop, a Surgeon General of the United States; Robert C. Atkins of the eponymous diet; Nobel Prize winner Robert W. Holley; and Henry Heimlich of Heimlich Maneuver fame. The North Shore-LIJ Health System is the second largest healthcare network in the country as measured by the number of beds and the largest in New York State based on patient revenue. It serves over seven million people a year through more than forty-two thousand employees – the single largest employer on Long Island and ninth largest largest in the City of New York.

These two institutions owe much of their success to vigorous community support, whether through financial contributions by leading businessmen and women or donated time by local volunteers such as those from civic or religious organizations. Even with an annual budget of several billions between them, vigorous local support will never be unnecessary for the health of Weill Cornell and North Shore-LIJ!

Blu-ray disc – or oftentimes spelled “Blu Ray disk” by those who enter that into the search engines – has been revolutionizing home entertainment these past couple of years. Even regular single-layer discs provide 25GB of storage capacity, which translates into much sharper images and much better sound. Given less than five hundred lines of image available with DVDs, the 1,080 lines available with Blu-ray disc is an extraordinary development. That’s significantly more than half of what’s available! No big deal? Well, imagine if your vision improved by that same amount – and you could see much more than twice as far away, with much more than twice the detail! It’s home entertainment meant for the 21st Century!

The great thing about unlocked cell phones is that they work no matter which carrier you choose. All kinds of models are available this way, and while people often naturally prefer the most recent models, it often pays to consider older offerings in addition. For example, unlocked cell phones such as the Nokia Surge make great second handsets for those who want to keep two separate contact numbers. It looks like a T-Mobile Sidekick but being unlocked means that you aren’t restricted to just AT&T in the United States. It has the same form factor as the popular Sidekick, only instead of swiveling it slides to uncover the keyboard below the screen-cum-cover. Packing this smartphone with text messaging and social media capabilities makes it clear that Nokia is focusing on the young with this model.

You can’t do much better when it comes to unlocked cell phones for second or third “lines.” But just what is the Surge? What’s it like? Well, it’s a 3G phone offering 2.4 inches of screen space at 320×240 TFT pixels and 16 million colors. The 2 megapixel camera is nothing when compared to the over-3 megapixel camera on the related 6760 Slide model available in the rest of the world (which phone, incidentally, isn’t carrier-exclusive), but the Surge did debut earlier, too. Video recording is made at the standard QVGA resolution.

This phone uses the Symbian Series 60 multi-tasking platform, nicely complementing the rather powerful feature-set, marking it a mid-level offering. The Surge works with Bluetooth 2.0, along with A2DP support, and offers microUSB connectivity as well. Audio is piped through a standard 2.5mm jack. In keeping with most Nokia phones nowadays, there is also a built-in stereo FM radio. MicroSD cards are supported for close to a maximum of 8GB of additional storage space, in addition to the 2GB card included. This phone can also be found in black, white, or red color schemes. Talk-time is rated at a respectable five hours, and standby is a robust five hundred.

Even better, being unlocked means no longer being tied to AT&T and a long two-year contract with mandatory voice and data plans that could conceivably add up to about a thousand dollars a year for even a fairly casual user! And naturally the Surge is designed for those who are constantly texting, chatting, e-mailing, or surfing the web. Such folks could quite easily be charged over two thousand dollars a year!