You've been told multiple times that I am not a "paid marketer." You are truly an idiot to keep running that lead balloon up. You've been repeatedly told that I maintain the Apple interest PING list on FreeRepublic. That's all. There are more than 700 members on that list who have ALL personally asked to be on that list. Many of them have validated what I do in these threads. YOU and your ilk are a itty-bitty, teeny-weeny (apparently like a portion of your anatomy) ignorant but noisy irritant who just hate Apple. There are, at most, about twelve of you members of the Anti-Apple Hate Brigade whose hobby it seems is to tag-team these threads to denigrate Apple and insult me and other Apple users.
Now, as for your latest SNARKY, insulting laden reply.
I've done many of things in my life, bolobaby. I will soon be 68. I've been called a modern renaissance man by people who know me because I'm interested in everything and can converse on any and every subject from Microbiology to Cosmology to archaeology to Theology to Theosophy to Philosophy intelligibly because I am informed on almost everything because I am extremely well read. I am a voracious reader and I retain what I read and learn. I also know how to cut through the BS and dig to the raw data and analyze that.
- In the mid-sixties, in high school, I was one of 100 high school students across the country selected by Bell Labs to receive a kit to make my own PNP transistor from a silicon wafer by successive chemical doping and plating of the wafer. I was one of 55 to successfully complete a working transistor.
- The following semester, Bell Labs again selected me to work on primitive voice creation circuitry. We were able to get tuned circuits with capacitors to make all five clear vowel and then combine them into dipthong sounds, quite an accomplishment for that period.
- I was also debate team captain and we came in 4th in the State (we got knocked out in that round because the judge gave us two demerits because one of our team was wearing "White Socks and athletic shoes", truth! She thought it was "disrespectful."), I got my High School letter in debate,
- My first job was as a kiddie ride operator,
- I've worked as a stock clerk in a TG&Y store, but wound up doing the assistant manager's duties, since he got drunk in the stock room every night.
- In college in Michigan, I was the movie projectionist in the theater where "Somewhere in Time" would later be filmed and was in charge of the world's second largest Movie Sound Stage connected to it where many of the indoor scenes were shot,
- I was taking computer programming by 1968 using Hollerith card punch machines to enter my code. My programs always went over and beyond what the specs called for.
- I was admitted to the Honors program where they were doing studies on the coming global cooling and imminent Ice age, using the same type of bogus data they are now using for Global Warming. . . and got myself a bad reputation for being to one who always disagreed, challenging the statistics, methodology, and interpretations. . . and backing up my assertions with evidence.
- I've been a musician since I was seven and soloed with symphonic orchestras,
- I've had my own group which performed paid gigs for audiences as large as 6,000 to encores and standing ovations (and no, they were not drunk),
- I've performed in San Quentin Prison and my picture appeared above the fold on the front cover of the San Quentin Prison Newspaper.
- I have a degrees in Economics and Finance,
- I've tutored in logic in college,
- I've been a lifelong business man, advancing to become a CEO,
- I've founded a large local charity which I ran for 26 years and was also CEO of that organization,
- I've written a full featured custom accounting software package including payroll for a client who had specific requirements.
- I've written a full featured client intake, volunteer management, and donation tracking database package that ran both locally and remotely from a server from twelve locations for twenty years with out a major glitch (it took two years of encounters with fools to make it "fool proof," though,
- Through the charity I founded, I with my staff, working with local media in our area, was instrumental in starting many of the national food drives you are probably quite familiar with,
- I've been the guest of honor and awarded so many dust collecting plaques and certificates (mostly associated with founding and running that charity) that I ran out of wall space — so I took them all down and started putting up photos of my two daughters and now my granddaughter instead as more valuable use of the frames and space on my walls in my home office. . . and much more satisfying,
- I've had personal friends from every societal strata including some from the charity who slept under bridges, and one who occupied the Oval Office (Ronald Reagan),
- I've sung in a large choral group as bass section leader,
- I've produced concerts for that group,
- I've sung Opera,
- I've sung with that choral group in Carnegie Hall for the Hall's 100th Anniversary Concert,
- I was the PR director of that choral group for seven years, and elected as a member of its Board of Directors,
- I've been PR director for a concert band.
- I've acted in plays where I've played a detective, a hell damned judge, the villain, a dead body, a violintriloquist (I had to pretend to be violin virtuoso and some in the audience thought I was actually playing the thing even though I haven't a clue about the fingering but I do know what the bow phrasing is all about), and the Moon,
- I've written a play and I seen it produced (Nah, it wasn't that good),
- I've been a property master who had to produce over forty swords that properly clanged and looked and felt like swords,
- I've done artwork (oils, watercolor, line art, print layout, magazine, advertising, flyer, and catalog),
- I've done custom cabinet work (I've even been paid for it), five kitchens from design to completion, and woodwork to my own design that won a nationally published magazine's award along with an article in the magazine for designing and building my own slate surfaced, leather pocket, oak pool table,
- I've designed and built under contract a custom spinning wheel for a client,
- I've designed and built several buildings (including the warehouses and offices for the charity I founded — I ran the fund raising drive and got almost all of the labor and materials donated, as well as negotiated the lease for the land from the city and paid the first ten years lease payment out of my pocket.— not so onerous, the lease was $1 a year, $10!),
- I then acted as the general contractor for the project and even manned the backhoe digging out the foundation for the warehouse and offices,
- I was appointed foreman of our County's Grand Jury by a panel of Superior Court Judges,
- I've been a published author, editor, and publisher of other people's work,
- I've managed two gun shops (collected antique Colts and Winchester rifles),
- I was certified as an expert in firearm identification and appraiser to testify in the California courts on guns and gun values,
- I worked for the United States Chamber of Commerce until I couldn't stomach their policies any more, but it did introduce me to most of the bigger business people in Northern California. . . and then I won a top award for sales and went to Washington where I met many luminaries such as Conrgressman Philip Crane, ate dinner with and had a great conversation with Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman and his wife, and quite a few others. I participated in some business roundtables with other politicians.
- I then worked for the National Federation of Independent Business where I met most of the smaller business people in three counties and got on good friendly terms with them (even the Liberal ones, a lot of whom I discovered in conversations with them only THINK they are liberal, but actually talk very conservatively, but vote Democrat for some insane reason. . . at least in these three counties! ),
- I am now a semi-retired independent contractor assisting the management of medical/dental/professional practices,
- I also own and manage rental properties.
That may be a lot to cram into a fifty year career, but I kept busy otherwise i'd have been bored out of my skull.
Do you see ANY need for me being a paid marketing agent for anyone in there?
On the other hand, there are some things I am not good at. . . for example, I have a black thumb as anything I try to grow dies horribly, and although I have built several museum quality wooden ship models, any model airplane I've built to try to fly, or off the shelf helicopter has crashed and been destroyed on the first flight, and although I was an excellent musician, and can arrange, interpret, and transpose music on the fly, I haven't an ounce of the ability to create a new piece of music. I can create prose, and have a great imagination for story lines, I am not good at writing poetry. Those are blind spots in my talents.
Now, "Moonlighting." Who's moonlighting? I have done graphic art work and was PAID to do it. I don't do many things for FREE. One of the few things I do do for free is manage the Ping list on FreeRepublic because my fellow Freepers have ASKED ME TO DO IT and I have agreed to do it, despite asshats like you.
I am a business man. I did the graphic art work as part of my cross platform consulting business for a client and I CHARGED money for my services (and yes, I got very well paid for my work!). I've taken art classes in college and one of my parody pieces on FreeRepublic was picked up and published in the book on bringing down Dan Rather with my copyright and credit. (The author of the book, one our fellow Freepers graciously gave me a signed copy of the book.) So what. It was not something I did full time for a living, but something I did as an adjunct of my business. Have you ever been in business? (Another question you have been dodging.) As a business person, you do what is necessary to keep your business going. When I was managing the two gun shops, I did the store displays art work and display ads for the newspapers. I also was the publicity director for the Choral group as well as a singer and did both the newspaper advertising display ads and programs, including covers. . . including the one for when we appeared in Carnegie Hall for the 100th Anniversary concert with the Manhattan Philharmonic Orchestra, I've also done wedding announcements and other small stuff for friends. I am talented and when people asked me to do it, I did it, sometimes for pay. When my business's graphics artist was on vacation, the artwork needed to be done, so I did the work. (Frankly, my work was better than hers.) The client was extremely happy. Again, so what?
Is there anything FALSE in the $1600 price of that Wacom Tablet and Wacom stylus? The one I used was less expensive because it was several years ago and prices were less. If I recall correctly, it was in the neighborhood of $900 or so and worked with one of our Macs. How does that impact the truth of what I wrote? I used it. I owned it as part of my business' equipment. YOU can't believe facts when presented to you because YOU would LIE, and do, to make your points.
I have not lied. You just cannot believe the truth when you see it. You are interpreting me to be "super rich" which I am not. I am comfortably well off. . . as is my girlfriend. That does not make us "super rich" except in your delusional, apparently LIBERAL, LEFT WING mind who cannot abide people who like me and my girlfriend have made a success in life and can afford the finer things. . . especially including Apple products. We don't have to lie about our CVs.
Now, about my girlfriend's jewelry. If it's any of your SNARKY business, sometimes it's worth more than $30K.
Hell, we went to the Vampire Halloween Ball in Roseville, CA, a couple of years with the them of Dark Shadows as Count Dracula and his Consort, Countess Katerina of Transylvania, and my girlfriend was wearing over $100K in jewelry. If you look, you will find us there among the attendees. Our photographs are there (#81 on Yelp). We just got her a Sapphire and Diamond pendant (2.07 carats of diamonds, 16 carats of matched sapphires, and 21 grams of 18K yellow gold) just last weekend valued at around $12,000 (we didn't pay that much for it. . . got it at quite a bargain!) while we were on a weekend trip to the Seattle area for the holiday.
Too bad you can't fly to SeaTac on a lark and buy such things. . . and are stuck buying junk costume jewelry. If you're ever in Seattle, you might want to check out the place where we got the pendant and pick up a gift for Mrs. bolobaby: Nique Design Jewelers, 201 Bellevue Way NE, Bellevue, Washington. The CEO of Alaska Airlines uses them exclusively and featured them in their airline's magazine in an article written by the CEO, he was so impressed by their unique pieces. We just sort of accidentally found it on Monday afternoon while driving around killing time before turning in our rental car. Hint, take lots of money. I don't recall seeing anything on display for under three grand. But then, we didn't look at the cookie cutter stuff, although they didn't seem to have to much of that kind of jewelry in this store.
Nice town, but wouldn't want to live there. Too many liberals. Like San Francisco, they don't allow left turns. Why? My theory is that the town is so liberal you simply can't go any further left.
Another strange thing. . . I think that during the four days we were there, I could count the times I saw these Liberal pukes use turn signals on the fingers of two hands. It seems to be a local aversion to that little lever on the steering wheel. Also the Freeway speed limit is 60 MPH everywhere. They seem to obey that one. No speeding. . . but I think they have speed cameras on the Freeways. . . and cameras for their Diamond lanes, too.
Had dinner at the restaurant in the Space Needle. Total bill with tip was $270 for two. Food was mediocre Cisco re-constituted microwaved crap, but service was great. . . and you are really paying for the view. If they would hire a chef, it would be packed every night and be worth it.
The Boeing Factory Tour is fascinating. . . and we went to the EMP to see the Science Fiction and LooneyToons museums. The RockNRoll section was a bonus. . . as was the exhibit of all the Star Wars costumes from the six movies.
My girlfriend collects original Erté (Romain de Tirtoff) Bronze sculptures, jewelry, and Serigraphs. He was the principle costume designer from the Ziegfield Follies and Folies Bergère and one of the primary originators of the Art Deco movement.
Erté's "Heat" — My girlfriend also owns the Serigraph of "Heat" as well
She did not know that many of the Star Wars costumes, especially the women's, were inspired by Erté! She was in seventh heaven.