My wife, who is 5′ 1″ and a few pounds overweight (which I personally love),  ended up being a “Balanced Oxidizer” (so did I) and she was told to comsume 1200 calories per day. I was also a Balanced Oxidizer and told to consume 1600 for my 6′ 1″ frame (seems a bit low but whatever).

Nothing earth shattering here. Just eat right, and exercise. If you create a calorie deficit, you lose weight. Simple stuff.

But that wasn’t enough for me. After reading Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle, I was curious about the meals, so my wife and I sat down and started analyzing the ratio of carbs, protein and fat. And you know what? It was 40% protein, 30% carb and 30% healthy fats (no trans fats). Hell, every single meal is exactly 40-30-30. This is the same type of ratio that Tom Venuto talks about. Except, well, Tom also tells you how to get past “plateaus” by cycling calories while explaining how to boost muscle, boost metabolism and well…everything else.

After chucking up a good $52 for this program (that I can’t get back), I recommend spending the $39.95 for Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle over JillianMichaels.com all the way. The only real benefit I saw at Jillian’s website was the pre-created meal plans and grocery shopping list. But that’s not too difficult to figure out. The knowledge you’ll gain from Venuto, however, is vast.

Good luck!

7. Incompatibility. The first reason to avoid Windows Vista is the most obvious. If you have old applications, you take the risk they will not work correctly. And this problem is not exclusive to applications, it also affects drivers. I for example, had a problem with a driver for FireWire. I simply could not get my computer to recognize a driver for my HV20 camcorder.

6. Developers don’t care. The results are out and developers do not care about Windows Vista. There was a recent study performed by PC World. In this study, it was found that only one in 12 developers were actively creating software for a Windows Vista. Not good. Even the developers know, this operating system is not taking off.

5. Annoyance. Every single time you try to launch an application, you are asked for permission. It could be the simplest application, or it could be an installation routine. Basically, Windows has created an environment where you are prompted for nearly every single action. This has proven to be very annoying for regular users. Sure there are ways to disable this, but who wants to do that in an operating system. Let us install our own viruses and spyware without intervention.

4. Resource hog. In order to run Windows Vista, you need 2 GB of memory. Those 2 GB of memory are the minimum requirements, and they are not enough. In order to get Windows Vista to run efficiently, you need a top-of-the-line computer and you need tons of memory. But this presents a new problem. Windows Vista would only recognize up to 4 GB of memory in a 32-bit operating system. So right off the bat, since 2 GB is not enough, you are running a normal installation with 4 GB with no option to upgrade unless you move to a 64 bit version. Sure there are ways to optimize your operating system so that it does not use so many resources, but once again, who wants to do that with a brand-new operating system. I just want my operating system to work perfectly the first time I installed it.

3. Graphics. Honestly, this should be part of number 10. Windows Vista requires a minimum of 256 MB on its video card. That is a really expensive video card and most old computers will need to purchase expensive upgrades.

2. File Organization. Windows Vista installed an excellent search feature, but the ability to find programs can be difficult. Even worse, is the way everything has changed with folder and file organization. Before, we had a my documents folder. Now this that has a very strange directory structure under a user folder. For example, let’s say you backed up your Windows XP file directory and now want to transfer it to Windows Vista. Once you have finished transferring the files, you will have one big convoluted mess. The move from Windows XP to Windows Vista is not seamless.

1. It will soon be obsolete. Bill Gates has alluded to the fact that Windows 7 will be out by next year. This is not a good sign and is very reminiscent of the poor Windows ME release.

You will have the output in a csv file in the path specified. Open that in excel and do the formating as required.

This happened to me on LiquidWeb. Basically, I was moving my site and FTP’ing Joomla files from another server but LiquidWeb was not assigning the “nobody” group to them. This made my Joomla Administrator backend untouchable. Below is the way to fix it.

SSH in as root. Then run the following commands.

cd /home/your_account/public_html
chown your_account:nobody configuration.php
chmod g+w configuration.php
chgrp nobody administrator/backups
chgrp nobody administrator/components
chgrp nobody administrator/modules
chgrp nobody administrator/templates
chgrp nobody cache
chgrp nobody components
chgrp nobody images
chgrp nobody images/banners
chgrp nobody images/stories
chgrp nobody language
chgrp nobody mambots
chgrp nobody mambots/content
chgrp nobody mambots/editors
chgrp nobody mambots/editors-xtd
chgrp nobody mambots/search
chgrp nobody mambots/system
chgrp nobody media
chgrp nobody modules
chgrp nobody templates
chmod g+w administrator/backups
chmod g+w administrator/components
chmod g+w administrator/modules
chmod g+w administrator/templates
chmod g+w cache
chmod g+w components
chmod g+w images
chmod g+w images/banners
chmod g+w images/stories
chmod g+w language
chmod g+w mambots
chmod g+w mambots/content
chmod g+w mambots/editors
chmod g+w mambots/editors-xtd
chmod g+w mambots/search
chmod g+w mambots/system
chmod g+w media
chmod g+w modules
chmod g+w templates

Basically, I changed into the directory of the web site. Then I changed the owner to ‘your_account’ and the group to ‘nobody’ for the configuration.php file. Then I made sure that configuration.php was writable by group with the last command. The rest fixes the group ownership and permissions explicitly for the functionality of Joomla.

Just log into your Active Directory server, open a command prompt and paste the following:

dsquery user -limit 0 | dsget user -ln -fn -email >employee-list.txt

This will put all your information into a text file called employee-list.txt. You’ll find it waiting for you in “C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator“. Then just import the file into Excel and separate into columns using Fixed Width. Enjoy.

The Catches
There’s always a catch. Any company you switch to will have a catch. That’s why I’m telling you all the catches up front in the spirit of full disclosure.

• $10 Monthly Fee (waived if you make a minimum of $10 in calls/month) Basically, you’ll need to call your loved ones in Trinidad and Tobago for a minimum of 76 minutes each month (1 hour, 16 minutes). Or, all cumulative long distance calls need to total up to $10. It’s $0.05 cents a minute for state to state calls in the US.
• It’s $0.13/min to Trinidad Landlines and $0.15/min to Trinidad Cell phones. Still a huge savings.
• $1.50 Local Connect Surcharge per month. They made it up. Sorry.
  
• $1.00 International Connect Surcharge per month. They also made it up. Sorry again.
• $0.99 Payphone Use Charge if you originate calls from a payphone with one of their optional calling cards. I doubt many people will do this.
• $2.00 for One-time web payments or telephone payments. In other words, sign up for auto bill or mail a check.
• $5 fee to cancel.

In a Nutshell

If you make a minimum of 76 minutes in calls per month to Trinidad and Tobago and mail a check, you will only be paying $2.50 a month plus $0.13/min or $0.15/min for long distance calls to Trinidad and Tobago. I don’t know about you, but that’s pretty damn cheap. My last Long Distance bill would have been cut in half, dammit!

Switched Voice Service

One last thing. It’s a switched voice service. That means it is NOT Voice Over IP. So your chances of echoes are nearly eliminated.

Want to know the company? There’s a catch.

If I tell you, please tell them I referred you. Fairs, fair. I’m saving you money on long distance every month and saving you from hours of research online. All I ask is that you help me call my mom more often by telling them I referred you. Email me and I’ll happily send details and the PIC code.

Update on April 24th, 2008

We’ve been using the service consistently for the past 3 months. Calls always go through, voice quality is clearer than Bellsouth and the bills are so low! We are so happy!

• February:  $26.66 for 161 long distance minutes to Trinidad.
• March: $73.85 for 469 long distance minutes to Trinidad.

A:   You are right, it is through link tracking. First, you have to track all the links in your email, like this:

?utm_campaign=spring&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_content=June07

(remember, if you already have a dynamic url and therefore, already have a question mark in the url, you should start with a & sign)

You probably want to replace *spring *with the name of your campaign. You could skip the content part and just make the utm_source=newsletterJune07, depending on how you want to see the data.

Email campaign data will appear in a number of reports, depending on how the links are tagged.

The Traffic Sources > Campaigns report will display the campaign name used in the link tag.

The Traffic Sources > All Traffic Sources will display the source / medium that was used in the link tagging.

You can also choose ‘medium’ from the ‘Show’ drop down box on the All Traffic Sources report. If you’ve used the same medium for your email campaigns (which you should!) then all the traffic from emails will be rolled up into a single line item.

If you’re unfamiliar with link tagging here is a good primer.

1. Create a System Restore point just in case. 
2. Temporarily disable Windows Defender or any Anti-Virus program you may have running.
3. Download and install the the Wacom 5.05-7(RC) Vista drivers from the link below.
   http://www.wacom.com/productsupport/drivers.cfm?os=Vista&product=CTE4
   DO NOT REBOOT YET!
4. Next comes the Registry hacking. Please be careful here… 
5. 1. Click on Start, then Run, then enter RegEdit in the Open textbox and click OK. In Vista, click start and in the Search box, type ‘Regedit’.

   2. Click KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE then SYSTEM then CurrentControlSet then Services then TabletServicePen then PARAMETERS.

   3. In the right-hand window pane, right click, then click New and then DWORD.

   4. In the new dialog that opened, type WTKernelBypass, then click somewhere else to let it fill in.

   5. Close the Registry Editor.

   6. Reboot, then run your program. Everything should work ok..

Compatibility with Players
At first, I was skeptical. I’ve used NetFlix for a while and although the results and experience were great I had reservations about audiobooks. My main concern was that the media may not be able to play in my radio. Well, after testing the regular audio CD in nearly 12 different players ranging from car CD players to portable solutions, I found it to be extremely compatible with everything I threw at it. So far so good. These were normal, everyday CD’s as far as I could tell.

Packing, Shipping and Returning Audio Books
Next came my concerns about Simply Audio Book’s packaging and shipping time. My audio book took exactly 2 business days to arrive and the same packaging it arrives in can be easily flipped over to create a return package (ala NetFlix style). Plus it’s postage-prepaid so all I have to do is drop it in a mailbox and forget about it. The packaging is secure and small enough to fit into any average mailbox. Another great benefit since my mailbox isn’t exactly large.

Benefits
Well, once I got over my concerns, the only thing left to speak about are the benefits. Frankly, there are many. For one, I’ve grown tired of listening to the same music over and over again. Stories help spark my imagination and they help me cope with the traffic in South Florida. The voices in most Simply Audio Book CD’s are very pleasant and easy to listen to.

Furthermore, a 20-40 minute hellish driving commute now becomes a pleasant learning experience. Yes, believe it or not SimplyAudioBooks.com carries titles in Business and Self awareness that can help many people tackle many business and life issues and become overall better individuals. My first 2 rentals, “Who Moved My Cheese” and “The Richest Man in Babylon” are both testament to this.

Saving Money
Then of course comes the savings factor. One book nowadays already costs nearly $20 shipped from Amazon. Plus you need to actually read it. I personally have many books lying around that have yet to progress past the halfway point. I’m sure there must be others like me, no? (gulp) Well for simply $19.95 a month you can rent out as many audio books as you like. You’re dispatched 2 audio books at a time. Once you return the 2 titles, you get the next 2 on your Bookshelf. “Bookshelf” you say?

Online BookShelf
SimplyAudioBooks.com sets up a great Bookshelf that you can use as a wishlist of sorts. Everything in the list is organized by number and is shipped out accordingly. The list is cusomizeable and you can cram as many books in there as you like. A big convenience if you don’t visit the site often or are simply too busy.

Amazing Selection of Titles
The winner for me was the selection. I was especially impressed with the fact they carried Anthony (Tony) Robbin’s “Personal Power II”, “Awaken the Giant Within”, “Giant Steps”, “Lessons in Mastery”, “Live with Passion” and “Unlimited Power”. All of these are abridged except for Personal Power II but it’s a whole lot better getting them from SimplyAudioBooks.com rather than paying $200+ for some of the titles. Another big author they carry is the Dalai Lama and Stephen Covey. As a matter of fact, Stephen Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” should be required reading in High School. They also carry his other popular titles listed below.

• 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families [uab]
• 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens (Upd… [uab]
• First Things First
• Beyond The 7 Habits [uab]
• Focus: Achieving Your Highest Priorities [uab]
• Four Disciplines of Execution [abr]
• Living the 7 Habits [uab]
• The Power of the 7 Habits [uab]
• Principle Centered Leadership [uab]
• Passion For Life [abr]

These titles alone are reason enough to justify your subscription to SimplyAudioBooks.com. And with 2 weeks free to try it out, why not give it a try today. It may be the very best investment you’ve ever made in yourself. Please use the link below to sign up. I get a small commission and I would be ever thankful.

Sign up for your free 2 week trial.

Click on the images below to learn how some people have incorporated cheap materials and great ideas to produce stable and steady movies and videos.