In continuance of my house searching, I put an offer in on a house. This home came out of the blue and the situation seems like it is the correct move. Right across the street from me there is an identical duplex unit for sale (includes both units) each one is 1200 sq-ft with an attached garage. There are atleast 2 offers for the house including mine, but if I get it the plan is to live in one side and rent the other one out, essentially living for free. This concept is really novel to me, because I keep the same quality of living that I have right now except i now save a considerable amount each year. We will see what they say tomorrow, as my offer expires Monday @ 5pm CST.

Tomorrow morning at 7 am I am getting in my car and will not return until Sunday late next week, at which point I will have the love of my life Christina in tow. I have been somewhat quite about my relationship but Christina and I have decided to move in together and she is relocating from Buffalo NY to Jackson. This is a really big step for us and we are optimistic as we begin our life journey together.

I am excited and not one bit nervous about the changes going on in my life, and know that this week’s results will hold a forever impact on my life.

Somehow this seems relevant. Change the word lease to “purchase offer”

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Unless you have been living under a rock(in which case you won’t be reading this), you know that this past week has been very strange with the losses of 4 Celebrities. Ed McMahon known for star search and the tonight show, Farrah Fawcett for her work as an actress and model, Michael Jackson for numerous Pop Music hits and of course Billy Mays the ultimate Pitchman. While each of these people brought a different element of entertainment and contributions to the world I make the argument that the significance of the loss of Billy Mays is by far the worst.

In today’s society it is common place for us to put actors, musicians and sports stars in the spotlight, it is because culture likes to be entertained. While I am not bashing or saying that we don’t need entertainment we create such an importance on it due to the fact that we want to be distracted from our own lives. Many people get sucked into entertainment that they forget to live, watching endless sports games and movies; And while I indulge in this quite a bit, we as a culture should be focusing on the more important things in life.

People like Billy Mays and his “Pitchmen” counterpart Anthony Sullivan and their related direct response companies are one of the best encouragements to American society. I say this because many if not most of those products are the result of an individual entrepreneurs invention or efforts, just take a look at one list of products http://www.asseenontv.com/ . One of the driving forces which put the USA on top of the tech is our innovative products and inventive people. These days when people are concerned with the economy, shipping jobs overseas, and many issues to numerous to mention, we need to be encouraging people to go into their garages and workshops and try to invent something. While I don’t mean to downplay Billy’s personal life he stood as a public spokes person in an industry which promotes and celebrates innovation and invention. The American dream of coming up with an idea and bringing it to market in hopes of making money from your brain child is something I believe lives deep down within each one of us.

As someone who works for a big company that does product development I have become aware of how hard it is to bring something to market, and can further appreciate how much of enablers Mays and the direct response industry is. While there are many different programs which encourage the same ideals loosing a public figure can hurt this effort. I hope that people keep inventing and keep pushing themselves so that we as a country can stay prominent. I for one have lots of ideas which I would love to see products and I am sorry that Billy Mays can’t be my pitchman, but am hopeful that when I am ready there will be people who can help the little guy, like myself.

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you can click here  to see the full gigapan in a larger view

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Here are a beginning list of things I AM going to work on.

• Coaxial Swerve drive – my team wants to build one and convert the robot for IRI. I am waiting for the kids to start being proactive about this;as I am going to guide them, not design it for them.
• Robotic lawn mower – Last year my boss gave me a black & decker electric lawn mower. Cutting my lawn is up there as a thing I don’t want to do so it makes sense. I will design and build a chassis for it and start by converting it to RC then add sensors and other goodness as time goes on.
• CNC router – I have been interested in CNC for some time now and no matter how many times I have had things made for me I still don’t have much experience with it myself. So the net is filled with plans and ideas on DIY cnc stuff so building one for my garage would be fun, IMO.
• Underwater ROV – I have never done an underwater robot before and think it could be fun. We have this sketchy pond infront of work which seems prime to stick a robot in and explore. Also the cost factor with this one is low which makes it ideal for my garage.

I think that’s a good start. Also with these projects I am going to start developing the robot webcast show Botcentric I started on last year, these 3 things seems to be a good idea for a few episodes.  As always I am going to post project updates to this site, twitter, facebook, and any other tool a stalker could use to find out what I am doing. So if you don’t see updates poke me because that means I have either gotten lazy about the projects or am sucking at documentation.

Greg

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This video does a good job explaining some of the new features.

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“Producers for a Science Channel Game show are looking for contestants. Contestants can be a gonzo engineer/scientist or just a high-energy, creative, fun, builder! They are looking for garage warriors (builders, scientists, inventors, engineers, carpenters, welders, mechanics, architects, etc…) who love to invent new gadgets, build robots, racing power tools, weld together bizarre machines that drive, fly, climb, shoot flames or launch projectiles. This Game Show is for thinkers, dreamers and doers, who are eager to let their inner MacGyvers be seen and ready to collaborate with a team of other builders.”

So the mechanism which the producers are using for a casting call is a website called www.gotcast.com The Basic premise of the site is that you post a profile for yourself and add the casting to your profile. Then other users vote for you and they rank you within the people applying for the show.  Being in the top spot on the site does not guarantee that you will be on the show, but it supposedly gives your profile to the casting director in the ranking order.  All and all it is a fairly simple concept and good in concept but unfortunatly this site is a sham.

I first realized this about 2 days after I joined the site and noticed that some people were getting an extreme amount of votes as compared to me. Now I can accept that people maybe more popular or better qualified but that didn’t seem to be the case, infact it is just the opposite. Many of the people in the top 10 do not even fit the criteria for what the producers are looking for or have nothing indicating they actually want to be on the show.  That is one of the two major flaws with the site. The second flaw is that since this is voting based people will do anything to pimp themselves out to get votes, the most common method is voting for others.  Similar to the concept on Twitter that the more people you follow the more people follow you, the more you vote the more people vote for you.   Having realized this flaw I started doing just that, voting for everyone on the site everyday ( you can vote once a day per person).  Quickly I saw myself starting to rise in the standings and at the point of this post I am ranked #2.

So the question I have is why in the world would any casting director use this site? because the “ranked order” of people which is prepared by this website for casting is only going to be a popularity contest.  Additionally there is even a “pro” membership you can buy for 30 bucks a month which will automatically put you above everyone who is in the voting cue, so you can essentially buy your way into the sight of the casting director.

In reaction to these revelations I wrote this  email to the founder of the site with a few suggestions, but overall I will just play the game as it goes, so please go vote for me.

http:www.gotcast.com/gneedel

Email to Will Schroder

Will,

I wanted to drop you a message to give you some feedback about your site, while I like the concept I am not sure it will be putting the best people up for consideration. There seems to be a huge skew in the people at the tops of each list for people who vote for everyone else on the site (I have taken to this strategy now also) I think it would be more justified if you were limited to voting for only maybe 10 people per day.

The other thing, is that there are lots of people on the site that are applying for every entry regardless if they fit the description. While I see that you have code in place to fix the problem of location, etc but maybe for each listing you can have more stringent requirements for applying, such as filling out a form specific to what casting you are going for.

While I understand that you want to make it easy for people to apply, and you guys need the volumes of people so that you can sell your service to production companies, it seems to me that if your recommendations are not accurate then it will affect your long term success.

Also have you considered offering “pro member” access on a cast by cast basis. For example I am confidant that I am good choice for the Discovery channel show, but it is not worth 60 (30 per month)to be a pro member just for this one casting. I might be willing to do it if it was a 1 time 10-15 dollar fee. You might even be able to get more revenue this way.

Anyway, I am pretty sure your message was an automated one sent out to all new members, but I figured that if by some chance you actually read this you might get some real feedback for your site.

Feel free to contact me with any questions,

Greg Needel

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Sometimes that inspiration hits me after watching a movie, where something strikes a nerve in the plot and I am able to draw a connection to it. I find my self not reading books much but when I do I always get that feeling. Is it possible that is caused by the feeling of accomplishment? Seeing that I have done something that i know that i need to set time for? Or is this content driven like the movies where I project myself upon a character. Ether way I wish I could bottle that feeling.

There are hours upon hours that I waste everyday from watching tv or reading countless posts on various web forums. I am not sure if I am searching for an answer or just prolonging the length of time that I fall victim to procrastination. Regardless I am going to make a change.

As the new month is here, and I am starting to make the plans for my immediate future (new FIRST team, projects, etc) it is time for a change. When I write these blog posts many times I feel both hypercritical and hypocritical at the same time. Where I over analyze my situation and then somewhat lie about the results. I do feel as if I want to change my life I can. There is nothing so ingrained in this world that you can’t move it with a bit of effort. But it is that moment of inspiration that gives you the adrenaline rush which can let you move mountains. Fortunately I don’t want to move mountains only myself, so as I must dig down deep for the motivation to achieve sometimes I know that I can change. The baby steps that can really make a difference might come down to the little things in life how I get up in the morning, when I go to sleep, the clothes I wear and how I do my hair. These tiny changes might have the ability to change the world just as one small rolling rock can pick up enough speed to cause an avalanche.

Now I just need to figure out who I want to be and which small rock I need to turn over to see my future.

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One of my requirements when looking for a job was to find someplace I could wear jeans to work and it wouldn’t matter. DEKA was like this and I think that somewhat of the good environmental feelings of the place was because of that atmosphere. Now here at B&D things are “business casual” which basically equates to anything with a collared shirt and khakis, we even get to wear jeans on Friday. Needless to say that this works for me as most of my wardrobe falls into those categories anyway. The big thing that for some reason has become an issue is white socks. Now socks to me are in the same category as underwear, where if nobody can see it they shouldn’t matter. I think most of this comes down to the fact that I hate black socks. They are either too thin and feel like tights, or they are thick and fuzzy leaving black marks on my feet at the end of the day. This is not to mention the fact that black socks are normally twice as expensive at typical athletic whites.

So seriously why does it even matter? I seriously doubt that anyone judges me on more than a poor fashion sense because of my socks. Anyway just a rant and I don’t think i am going to be buying new socks anytime soon, at least not black ones. Maybe i will just start wearing my TJ^2 socks to work

Greg Needel

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The other thing I typically get into a fight with them about is re-directing my packages so they are left at the facility. For example today I have a package coming from mwave (a new graphics card) and I would like to have it so my computer is fixed for the weekend. If they would leave the package at the distribution center I could come get it at lunch. For some reason UPS’s system isn’t smart enough to do that. I can only tell them to hold it at the facility AFTER the arrival scan at that location. I don’t know about anyone else but the arrival scan always happens between 4:30am and 5:30 am and is on a truck for delivery within about 45 mins of when it arrives. By all accounts this seems like an efficient system but I am really required to sit at my computer playing the F5 refresh game just so I have to drive 20mins to go get my package they were paid to drop off at my door.

Seriously, what percent of UPS packages get brought back to the facility because nobody is there to pick them up. Think of all the wasted gas in those big trucks as they attempt to do this multiple times. You would think that if the address is marked residential in their system that most likely nobody will be there during the day.

So right now I am in that similar situation again, where there is a package on the truck on the way to my house while I am at work. I am trying the “post a message on the door” method to see if the driver will leave it or call me (I am only 5 mins away from work). But most likely he will hit me with one of those yellow post-its and by the time the package gets back to the hub it will be too late to go pick it up and I will loose this weekend for one of my projects.

Oh well, I didn’t want to be productive this weekend anyway. Thanks UPS!

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