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Date: 2011-02-07, 3:58PM EST
Reply to: [email protected]
My name is Travis Broyles and I will do whatever* you want me to do for less money than whoever you are paying to do it now.
Below is a list of just some of the things I can do. I do want to stress that I DO ANYTHING so email me if your requested service is not listed here.
Things I Will Do For $5:
Stare at you for 5 minutes
Give a hug to the person of your choosing
Call you on the phone and seem genuinely interested for 10 minutes
Draw your face on a balloon
Sing Barenaked Ladies’ “One Week” from memory to the best of my ability
6 minutes of copywriting
Things I Will Do For $10:
Write your new theme song
Perform your new theme song on your voicemail
Spin until I throw up or you lose interest
Rename your Pokémon
Host a conference call with you and a person that you’ve always thought was cool but never really got the chance to hang out with, you know?
12 minutes of copywriting
Things I Will Do For $50:
Break-up with your boyfriend or girlfriend
Help you quit smoking (I’ll call you every day for a month and yell “HEY DON’T SMOKE”)
Tell the person you like that you think they’re cute and what if you had sex together?
Try my best to fly in a public place for an hour
Make you a really great profile picture
1 hour of copywriting
Things I Will Do For $100:
Tell your kids which one is actually your favorite, and what the others could do to improve their standings
Fight someone much smaller or girl than me
Email you a list of 250 things I like about you (need access to any and all social network accounts)
Clean most of your house and apologize for the things I didn’t
Deliver 5 fully cooked DiGiorno pizzas right to your door (5 mile radius from my home)
2 hours of copywriting
Things I Will Do For $1,000:
Host an event (will not host anything racially insensitive, i.e. human being auction)
Give a PowerPoint presentation on team building to your business and/or extended family
Rename your children
Build you a cardboard car and make vroom-vroom sounds while you drive it
Star treatment for a month (I’ll hide in bushes and take pictures of you)
20 hours of copywriting
Things I Will Do For $100,000:
Yell your name every time I wake up for the rest of my life
Change my political and spiritual leanings
Screen all your phone calls for five years
Recreate the best day of your life (or worst, whatevs)
84 straight days of copywriting *BEST VALUE*
If interested, email me at [email protected].
*Prices and tasks are subject to negotiation. I will not murder or steal or perform a legendary murdersteal. No rapes, and the sex has to be unrelated to the payment, like “Oh, after you’re done cutting those trees down, do you want some lemonade?” but the lemonade means sex, mostly.
PostingID: 2202170274
(source)
For the squinters:
“A year or so ago, you were at some party or something, and were getting a ride home with someone else. I guess it might have been longer cause you didn’t have a cell phone. The time were supposed to be back came and went and you didn’t show up. Mama & Daddy started to get a little worried. I was taking a shower and starting worrying too. What if you didn’t come back? It was you I was worried about, but it was my life that flashed before my eyes. We were sitting in front of the TV playing Aladdin, and I was trying to keep you from chucking the controller at the wall. We were scripting intense dramas with legos and playmobile people. Mickey and his hang of beanie baby misfits were playing soccer and dancing the night away to the Space Jam soundtrack. We were being sent to our rooms for getting in trouble each sitting in our own doorway, plotting against the “enemy”! Even as I write this it is hard to keep the tears that poured out in the shower that night for splattering all over this card. Don’t ever think for a second that I am not so grateful to have such a great sister. I love you Elizabeth.
-Matthew”
Written by Lance Ulanoff
The arrival of the Verizon Apple iPhone 4 has been cause for some celebration among Verizon customers and even some who are already using the phone on AT&T. In fact, virtually every smartphone customer is likely wondering if they should adopt one of the leading smartphones on the U.S.’s most reliable mobile network. These 12 facts may help you decide.
1) The Verizon iPhone is No Thicker or Heavier than the AT&T Model
Apple told me and my examination proves that these phones are like twins (more identical than fraternal). Both iPhones are 9.3 millimeters thickâstill among the thinnest smartphones on the market.
2) The Antenna Design is Different for a Reason
It’s no accident that the AT&T iPhone 4 and Verizon iPhone 4 antenna bands (around the phones) do not look exactly the same. The differences are hard to notice unless you hold the two phones side-by-sideâas I did. The Verizon iPhone uses a CDMA network antenna. In fact, it uses two CDMA antennas (a necessary redundancy for the CDMA network). As a result, there are identical antenna band bar breaks on either side of the phone. By the way, Apple told me that, unlike GSM, the CDMA network actually works to give you a few more seconds of connectivity before the call breaks off completely. In other words, even on the worst connections, you may still be able to recover the call. I never had a bad enough connection to see this in action.>
3) Death Grip is Hard to Find
No matter how hard I gripped the Verizon iPhoneâor in what configuration, I could not recreate the old AT&T iPhone 4 Death Gripâthat is unless the connectivity was already weak. So on the very rare occasions that I dropped down to two bars (which means I was in 2G land), I could cover all the antenna gaps and get the bars to drop down even further. Still I never cut off the signal.
4) It has a Personal Hot Spot
There aren’t a lot of differences between the AT&T iPhone and the Verizon model, but this is a biggie. You can turn the phone into a Wi-Fi hub for up to five devices. In my tests, the connection was strong and held on for at least 25 feet (One of my tests involved leaving the iPhone on a Windowsill and connecting through my Blackberry Torch from a room upstairs and on the other side of my home). Data throughput performance on the iPhone itself does diminish a bit when it’s sharing.
5) Data Will Cost You
As much as I love the personal hot spotâand I really do love itâit will cost an additional $20 a month with, for now, unlimited data for an additional $30 a month. That’s pretty pricey when you consider you’ll also be paying a monthly service plan fee. However, if you consider what you’d pay for a separate EVDO modem and the monthly data costs, you might actually come out ahead.
6) You Can’t Do Voice and Data at the Same Time
This is probably the single biggest limitation of the Verizon iPhone and could turn into its most popular complaint. You can make a call and you can get your data connection, but do not try and do it at the same time. For most people, this will not be a problem (how often are you calling and browsing the Web at the same time?). In fact, if you receive a call while using the Personal Hotspot on a 3G connection, the Verizon phone will prioritize the call. Interestingly, on a 2G connection, the call will go straight to voicemail.
7) AT&T and Verizon offer Virtually the Same Voice Plans
If you’re trying to decide between a Verizon iPhone 4 and the AT&T model, don’t base the decision on the calling plans. Both have $69.99 unlimited calling rates and, at the lower end, offer 450 minutes a month for $39.99.
8) No SIM card
Another physical difference between the AT&T phone and the Verizon iPhone is that the latter lacks a SIM card slot. CDMA phones don’t use SIM cards, instead relying on a cloud-based set of serial numbers to authenticate network phones. So you won’t be transferring this Verizon iPhone to another CDMA network unless that networkâperhaps Sprintâdecides to start authenticating Verizon’s CDMA iPhones. (PCMag’s mobile expert Sascha Segan told me the customer support headaches that would attend this decision make this possibility highly unlikely) Since we expect most people to be very happy with Verizon, this doesn’t seem like a big deal. Sprint customers, of course, may disagree.
9) General Availability Comes on Feb 10th
By now you’ve probably heard that Verizon sold out of the pre-order inventory of Verizon iPhones. Apple did tell me that the phone would only be available in “limited quantities” to existing Verizon customers. It’s unclear what supplies will be like on the 10th. Also unknown is when, exactly, Verizon will start shipping those phones.
10) Verizon and AT&T 3G Are Both Fast
There’s no question that AT&T’s 3G network, once America’s fastest mobile network, is faster than Verizon’s 3G, but, as I can attest, it’s only faster when you can get it. Verizon is fast, too, and I doubt most people will notice the difference even when both networks are operating for you at peak speeds. I certainly didn’t. What it comes down to is coverage. I had better coverage overall with the Verizon iPhone, which means that even if there were moments when my mobile data network wasn’t as fast as the best I could get from AT&T, I knew that at least I could get connected from virtually any location. This was never the case with the AT&T iPhone.
11) Your Old Bumper Won’t Work
If you bought a bumper for your AT&T iPhone, you may want to throw it out or leave it on the AT&T model when you pass it along to your nephew. Apple moved the volume buttons a few millimeters and the hold button a bit more. The new Universal Bumper will work on your new Verizon iPhone and the old AT&T model, as well.
12) Don’t Wait for iPhone 5
While there’s no guarantee Apple will introduce this now much-talked about vapor-phone, it’s a safe bet it’ll arrive this summer. That said, when it does arrive, it will be in short supply. There is also no guarantee that the iPhone 5 will launch on multiple carriersâmost smartphones do not. What if Apple starts with AT&T again? Won’t you feel silly for waiting?
Bonus:Naturally, the common people don’t want war…
Written by Mike Hofman
Every entrepreneur spends some time haggling, whether it is with customers, suppliers, investors, or would-be employees. Most business owners are street smart, and seem to naturally perform well in negotiations. You probably have a trick or twoâsome magic phrases to say, perhapsâthat can help you gain the upperhand. But, often, the moment you get into trouble in a negotiation is when something careless just slips out. If you are new to negotiation, or feel it is an area where you can improve, check out these tips on precisely whatnot to say.
1. The word “between.” It often feels reasonableâand therefore like progressâto throw out a range. With a customer, that may mean saying “I can do this for between $10,000 and $15,000.” With a potential hire, you could be tempted to say, “You can start between April 1 and April 15.” But that word between tends to be tantamount to a concession, and any shrewd negotiator with whom you deal will swiftly zero-in on the cheaper price or the later deadline. In other words, you will find that by saying the word between you will automatically have conceded ground without extracting anything in return.
2. “I think we’re close.” We’ve all experienced deal fatigue: The moment when you want so badly to complete a deal that you signal to the other side that you are ready to settle on the details and move forward. The problem with arriving at this crossroads, and announcing you’re there, is that you have just indicated that you value simply reaching an agreement over getting what you actually want. And a skilled negotiator on the other side may well use this moment as an opportunity to stall, and thus to negotiate further concessions. Unless you actually face extreme time pressure, you shouldn’t be the party to point out that the clock is loudly ticking in the background. Create a situation in which your counterpart is as eager to finalize the negotiation (or, better yet: more eager!) than you are.
3. “Why don’t you throw out a number?” There are differing schools of thought on this, and many people believe you should never be the first person in a negotiation to quote a price. Let the other side start the bidding, the thinking goes, and they will be forced to show their hands, which will provide you with an advantage. But some research has indicated that the result of a negotiation is often closer to what the first mover proposed than to the number the other party had in mind; the first number uttered in a negotiation (so long as it is not ridiculous) has the effect of “anchoring the conversation.” And one’s role in the negotiation can matter, too. In the bookNegotiation, Adam D. Galinsky of Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management andRoderick I. Swaab of INSEAD in France write: “In our studies, we found that the final outcome of a negotiation is affected by whether the buyer or the seller makes the first offer. Specifically, when a seller makes the first offer, the final settlement price tends to be higher than when the buyer makes the first offer.”
4. “I’m the final decision maker.” At the beginning of many negotiations, someone will typically ask, “Who are the key stakeholders on your side, and is everyone needed to make the decision in the room?” For most entrepreneurs, the answer, of course, is yes. Who besides you is ever needed to make a decision? Isn’t one of the joys of being an entrepreneur that you get to call the shots? Yet in negotiations, particularly with larger organizations, this can be a trap. You almost always want to establish at the beginning of a negotiation that there is some higher authority with whom you must speak prior to saying yes. In a business owner’s case, that mysterious overlord could be a key investor, a partner, or the members of your advisory board. The point is, while you will almost certainly be making the decision yourself, you do not want the opposing negotiators to know that you are the final decision maker, just in case you get cornered as the conversation develops. Particularly in a high-stakes deal, you will almost certainly benefit from taking an extra 24 hours to think through the terms. For once, be (falsely) humble: pretend like you aren’t the person who makes all of the decisions.
5. “Fuck you.” The savviest negotiators take nothing personally; they are impervious to criticism and impossible to fluster. And because they seem unmoved by the whole situation and unimpressed with the stakes involved, they have a way of unnerving less-experienced counterparts. This can be an effective weapon when used against entrepreneurs, because entrepreneurs tend to take every aspect of their businesses very personally. Entrepreneurs often style themselves as frank, no-nonsense individuals, and they can at times have thin skin. But whenever you negotiate, remember that it pays to stay calm, to never show that a absurdly low counter-offer or an annoying stalling tactic has upset you. Use your equanimity to unnerve the person who is negotiating with you. And if he or she becomes angry or peeved, don’t take the bait to strike back. Just take heart: You’ve grabbed the emotional advantage in the situation. Now go close that deal.
Did we miss a great negotiating tip? If so, let us know; post your feedback in the comments section below.
Written by brainz.org
I blame the History Channel. It used to be just the kooks who believed that extraterrestrials were responsible for anything in humanityâs past, or that amazing advanced ancient societies on islands disappeared leaving only a handful of artifacts in their wake. Now, with a supposedly fact-based network backing them up, a whole new generation of people are falling for the same old BS. Here are 15 mysteries that just arenât so mysterious.
Just because you can see a shape from the sky doesnât mean that aliens were involved. The Nazca Lines are honestly one of the most amazing pieces of land art that still survive, but no one thinks that Cerne Abbas giant in England has anything to do with extra-terrestrials. Maybe thatâs because of its immense cock. Why is it so hard to imagine that the Nazca people made these sigils because they had religious significance to them, not because they were trying to signal passing UFOs? Yes, itâs a mystery exactly what they were used for, but so is a surprising amount of archaeology, especially regarding extinct religions. Itâs an incredibly arid region, so thereâs a pretty good chance that they were used for some sort of rain ritual. And all the cry about how you couldnât have planned them without aerial help? BS. Thereâs evidence that stakes were placed at the ends of lines, and its been shown that these immense shapes could be made by just small teams using basic tools and knowledge.
For a long time, people were utterly bewildered by the colonisation of the Pacific, and how the whole area could have been inhabited in such a relatively short time period. Iâve seen some snake-fucking crazy explanations for how the islands were settled â from the lost tribes of Israel to the Egyptians. Hereâs a much better and simpler explanation: the native Pacific Islanders were amazing fucking sailors. Itâs what all the evidence points to. They started as the aboriginal inhabitants of Taiwan, and from there spread over the entire goddamn Pacific, until they eventually stopped when they ran out of Islands: Hawaii, New Zealand, and Rapa Nui. Iâm sorry Thor Heyerdahl, it was not the South Americans which colonised the Pacific. All the evidence shows a migration from the west.
Once again, another classic âprimitive man could never have done this!â spiel, which demands outside resources or alien help. Look, ancient people werenât stupid, they just had different knowledge and tools. Yes, the Pyramids are incredible feats of engineering, and no, we donât agree on the specifics of how they were built. However, there is ample evidence â historical and archaeological â to show that the Egyptians didnât need no stinking ETs to do their work. They had tens of thousands of skilled workers â not slaves â either hired specially or else doing labor as a way of paying tax. They had mathematicians and architects. They had levers and machinery to help move the blocks. And most of all, they had decades in which to build them. There are few problems that canât be solved just by chucking more man-hours at them â just ask China.
There are no sunken continents. You know why? Continents donât fucking sink! Thatâs now how they work. Small volcanic islands? Yeah, they can sink â but not entire bloody continents. Not only that but this whole Atlantis thing is a pile of crock. It pops up in Platoâs Timaeus and Critias. Theyâre both filled with parables, stories, and outdated views on the world. The whole Atlantis thing is a story of a story of a story, and is anachronistic with much of the rest of the work. Nobody goes around saying Plato was right with his four elements views of the world, so why do we still cling to Atlantis?
Sungods in Exile was a book published in 1978 under the name David Agamon, alleging that the Dopa people of Tibet had extraterrestrial origin, and that the Dopa Stones had coded messages from the aliens. All the usual whackadoodles jumped on board, saying that these people must be aliens. Except the whole thing was a hoax, published under a psuedonym. None of the researchers exist, and the whole trick was just to pull the wool over peopleâs eyes. Anyone with even a lick of sense would notice the immense plotholes in the stories, such as completely fictitious Chinese names of researchers, photographs of artifacts that donât match whatâs being described, and the general scent of bullshit.
Around the 700BCE mark, the Kingdom of Israel got its ass royally handed to it by a number of invading kingdoms, who proceeded to take over the land and kick out most of the people. Because of this, 10 of the 12 acknowledged tribes of Israel kind of fell off the map, dissolved by slavery, death, and deportation. Now, there are plenty of far flung Jewish groups in Asia, Africa and around the world who believe they are descended from the lost tribes, and thatâs all well and dandy and the validity of those claims is not mine to raise. Rather, itâs the fact that all through the 19th and early 20th Century, whenever some explorer found out about a new group of people or a monumental archaeological site, they automatically said âoh, itâs the lost tribes of Israel!â The lost tribes did not colonise the Pacific. They were not the Native Americans (sorry Mormons). They were not the Scythian, Kurds, Japanese or Irish. They probably moved and were absorbed into local populations, preserving their traditions wherever possible.
This 900 year old skull from Mexico is said to be a human/alien hybrid. Let me reiterate Occamâs Razor, âwhen you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not unicorns.â See, there are a bunch of medical conditions which can cause severe malformations in skulls of children: hydrocephaly, brachycephaly and Crouzan syndrome all spring to mind, and all of which can make the head of a child look distinctly abnormal. Not only that, but DNA analysis shows that the skull was completely human. Hmmm…letâs see, which is more likely, a well known birth defect, or a secret ancient human alien breeding program?
What is this odd thing spotted on the sea floor of Cape Horn in 1964? Why that upright shape, those protruding arms, it must be some sort of antenna! Are the reds spying on us? Is it alien technology? The remains of an ancient technologically advanced race? Time travel? Or, itâs something strange that lives on the bottom of the sea. Face it, the ocean is filled with weird and wonderful creatures, all of which are perfectly natural, which are happy to blow our minds without requiring paranormal explanations. This is a Cladorhiza concrescens, a carnivorous sea sponge, which admittedly looks pretty odd, but so do many deep sea critters.
I will happily admit that the Klerksdorp Spheres are some of the coolest things imaginable. Found in a 3 billion year old rock deposit, theyâre often claimed as the perfect example of an out-of-place artifact, and that anything that smooth or regular must have been made by human hands! Unfortunately, no cigar. Theyâre actually extremely old concretions, weird build-ups of sediment and ash that expand radially, sometimes growing in to one another. Similar things are found in ancient deposits in New York, Australia and Utah. Much of the descriptions of these are blatantly false, which lead many to believe that they must be crafted: claims that theyâre made out of a non-natural alloy, or that theyâre perfectly spherical. Theyâre natural, incredibly cool, and I wouldnât mind getting my hands on one. But theyâre not that mysterious.
Another typical âout-of-place artifactâ example, easily explainable by science, but completely misrepresented by the wingnuts. Spotted in 1961 by a man hunting for geodes in California, he cut into it looking for crystals, and found a man-made object! Given that geodes are near half-a-million years old, how could something like this have existed 500,000 years ago? Except for the fact that itâs just a 1920s Champion spark plug, commonly found in the Model T and Model A Fords, with 40 years of concretion and crap built up around it. As the plug rusted, the iron bonded with materials in the soil around it, forming a hard shell. Oooh…mysterious!
Anytime you hear about a big runestone found somewhere in North America, chronicling the arrival of viking explorers, theyâre almost always fakes. Anyone with a linguistic background in runes always manages to dissect them and show that theyâre complete BS, filled with anachronistic language and improper construction â but that doesnât stop people from clinging to them. I donât understand why people are so taken by them. Itâs not like we donât have solid evidence for pre-Columbian contact in North America, especially in parts of Canada, they just didnât stick around long enough to have a proper settlement. The Kensington, Heavener, AVM, and Elbow Lake runestones are all fake, sorry. You know what is cool, though? Thereâs some pretty good evidence of pre-Columbian contact in the form of Basque fisherman, who came to America to harvest the incredibly cod schools. They just didnât tell anyone about their trade secrets.
The Ica Stones popped up in the 60s from Peruvian physician Javier Cabrera, who claimed that these archaeological stones showed ancient peoples riding dinosaurs and using advanced machines. They caused quite a stir, and were used frequently by creationists to say âlook, see, dinosaurs and humans living together! Flintstones…I mean The Bible…was right!â Except it turns out it was all a heaping pile of triceratops shit. The stones were all being provided by a farmer looking to turn a quick buck, who made the engravings on river stones then baked them in dung to make them look old, before selling them on for a huge profit. Every piece of analysis performed on the hundreds of stones he crafted shows that theyâre all modern, and show none of the wear something thousands of years old would have.
Fucking Gavin Menzies. His stupid book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World is nothing but an expansive pack of lies, built on the back of supposition, a complete lack of understanding of archaeological evidence, and just bold outright bullshit. The ancient map? Itâs from the 1700s, and not a copy of an older one, itâs filled with too many anachronisms that couldnât have been used in the 1400s. Pretty much every piece of evidence Menzies tries to use is bullshit, and only supported by crackpots, and a complete missing of the point of what actually happened in any of the locations that he cited. He also fails to account for the fact that in the 1400s, China was the largest and most efficient bureaucracy on the planet which obsessively recorded EVERYTHING. Yet they only recorded this so called voyage as far as Africa â coincidentally as far as the evidence actually shows the fleet went.
Sorry Lucas, sorry Speilberg, sorry Akroyd â the South American crystal skulls are not pre-Columbian. They were not made by some lost ancient art, nor are they alien. They do not demonstrate heretofore unknown ancient carving traditions, nor are they an unknown crystal type otherwise never seen. Crystal skulls do not feature in Mesoamerican mythology. What they are, is incredibly interesting pieces of crystal, carved in 19th century Europe, and sold to gullible antique collectors for a huge sum. You know how we know? The teeth were all carved using a modern rotary drill, which we can tell from the grooves it left. The crystal has also been sourced to a type that is only found in Madagascar and Brazil, of which none has been found in Mesoamerica. Where it is found commonly is the jewelry workshops of the German town town of Idar-Oberstein, renowned in the late 19th century for their work with this stone.
Finally, lets finish up with something that isnât mystical, isnât alien, isnât magical. Something that turned out to be exactly what we thought it was â namely one of the most badass pieces of ancient engineering ever discovered. The Antikythera mechanism. Dated somewhere between 150 and 100 BC, this ancient calculator was an astronomical clock, used to calculate solar, lunar and astronomical cycles, as well as when the next Olympics were due. Itâs a piece of unparalleled work, with stunning miniaturisation, exactingly made cogs with perfect teeth, and an accuracy that blows my mind. The ancient Greeks didnât need time travellers or aliens to make this. They needed incredibly dedicated intellectuals and engineers who created a machine of incomparable beauty and design. And that is exactly what they had.