slamboard

Modern lap-band surgery typically utilizes laparoscopic techniques and a state of the art patented banding device. While it is still an invasive procedure with all the risks associated with any abdominal surgery, JourneyLite’s lap band surgical facilities specialize in the safest weight-loss surgery available today.

LAP-BAND ® has been an option for so long that most people have an idea about how it works. JourneyLite has a great video that goes into detail. It is not gross, it is computer animation. Deciding for or against surgery requires drawing a sort of health balance sheet. Obesity has associated health risks. Surgery has health risks, but is generally more effective than dieting and, in extreme cases, could be considered life-saving.

Solar energy is free. It is abundant. It is largely untapped. Most of our food supply relies on solar energy. Some homes are effectively trapping it as a heat source. Google has decided that it wants to be a driving source in the effort to develop technologies and systems that can convert solar power to electricity at a lower cost that what we presently spend using coal. We aren’t there yet.

I hope somebody is working on making two way meters cheap and abundant so we can all invest in our own solar panels and offset our electric bills soon.

If you are looking for the lowest price on an entry level computer, you have to do more than just shop around for the best price. You also have to check all the different coupon codes.

Coupon Chief has savings on computers from HP and from Dell. You also have to keep in mind the computers available at WalMart.

There is a Walmart deal that gets you a HP 17in Pavilion Laptop PC with an AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor for $898.

A comparable Dell coupon nets you an Inspiron 1520 Notebook for only $749.

The HP deals include one for 30% Off any customized HP Pavilion notebook PC that costs over $1,000. That math is easy, you are talking about around $700.

Ideally, I would like to get everyone in my family a new computer for Christmas, but the reality is that they are getting socks. Please don’t spoil the surprise

I am spreading the word about an incident involving some very egregious customer service on the part of Primus. My friend’s father was on vacation in the Dominican Republic when he had a medical emergency that required surgery. His departure from that country was delayed and his son flew in from Canada to assist him. This unexpected adverse event required an unusual amount of telephone usage and a exorbitant amount of roaming charges. Shortly after this 75 year old man finally returned to Canada, his telecommunications provider contacted him about the abnormal charges and demanded IMMEDIATE payment.

His bill was not due and he insisted that he wanted to see the bill before he made any payment. Almost immediately after this exchange, they cut off his mobile service, his land line telephone service and his internet service. That’s mean. He made no indication that he was unable or unwilling to pay his bill, he simply wanted to see it in black and white first.

I am not going to make the argument that they can’t do this. They say in careful language on their TOS that they can. Here is the specific statement that seem to cover this situation:

I have to wonder if they have a policy of pulling this crap on customers that incur large bills because they are a group that is most likely to leave for another carrier. They may want to get that suspension fee before the customers cancel on their own. Cutting off a 75 year old man’s phone service without notice is not something that most of us would do simply because we can.

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Kimkins is optimized for search engines. The SEP work was carried out before Heidi Diaz came clean about her actual weight. If you search the term Kimkins on Google, you will see Kimkins.com at the top of the search. Below the site description are seven links to pages within the site. One of them is the old Who is Kimmer page. On that page is the fraudulent after picture and also the 198 lb weight loss claim and the text of the old interview with Jimmy Moore. This page should be deleted. I have to wonder whether it had been left up on purpose.

Edit: The page no longer accessible.

This is a good example of what NOT to buy this Christmas. I am posting from a PC with no speakers, so I don’t even know how bad this gadget sounds. If you want to add some seasonal music to your home or workplace, why not put together a YouTube playlist of music that actually sounds nice?

Here is a really pleasant bit of music that I found, two instrumentalists going through some variations of Greensleeves. This is actually the perfect music for December since some people will hear it and think of the Christmas carol that appropriated the melody and others will simply hear some really old music.

Most comment spammers don’t even try that hard to fool the smart people. This one does a stellar job of exploiting a common human foible known as vanity.

If there are any 8 year olds reading my blog, I would like to get in touch. I am going on vacation soon and it would be cool to have a guest blogger for a few days. I can’t pay much.

I doubt that there is anyone reading this post who can’t point to a moment when they experienced really bad customer service. I am pretty sure that we all told someone about it, too.

The last word in customer service is a slogan being used by a site called MeasuredUp.com where users can leave reviews of customer service experiences. I am glad to see sites like this. They are a great incentive for companies to try harder to provide good customer service. I think I recall a customer service instructor telling me that when you make a customer angry, they will typically badmouth you to 8-12 people in person. A site like MeasuredUp.com gives these PO’d people a lot more reach. I am going to come to the defense of the slagged companies just a little bit and advise people to moderate their opinions a little bit. Some of the criticism might be exaggerated a little bit. I would also be leery of any extremely positive reviews as well. If you are like me, you are able to reconize the kind of stuff that you just can’t make up.

Fat acceptance advocates’ positions have sparked criticism and mockery.

This is a very accurate statement in the Wikipedia entry for fat acceptance movement. I recently approved a comment on this blog that was hateful and derogatory towards fat people. I don’t approve of the comment, but I had said from the outset that I was going to publish all comments that were relevant to the Kimkins controversy. The comment made me curious about the two extremes of fat acceptance and fat hatred. When I went to the Wikipedia article for the Fat Acceptance Movement, it was immediately obvious that it had been vandalized.

You can see a screenshot HERE. There is some obscene language.

75% of American Christmas tree buying families opted for live trees last year. They spent an average of $40.50. That adds up to $1.2 billion in sales.

However, the sale of artificial trees has grown more than 25 percent in the last five years. Consumers spent $631 million on fake trees last year. A natural Christmas tree is a natural, renewable, recyclable product. I would encourage people to buy locally grown trees if that is possible. I used to get mine for free from my fathers woodlot. I one a cash door prize at my employers Christmas party one year and I splurged on a fancy tree from a local lot. I think it cost about $30 back then.

I worked on a Christmas tree farm as a teenager. The trees that I trimmed during the summer were cut, graded, wrapped, loaded and shipped by truck to Boston where my boss rented a sales lot. The growers in Christmas Tree Council of Nova Scotia donates the best big tree in the province to the city of Boston each year as a gesture of thanks for the relief effort that Bostonians offered to victims of the Halifax explosion.