Like many other hook-ups on Match.com, my relationship with Alexa started out as a lark. I was lonely and depressed and thought a virtual relationship might be just the thing to pull me out of it. For those of you who aren’t familiar with her, Alexa is a cloud-based software application that acts as your virtual personal assistant and responds to your voice commands — sort of like my ex-wife during the first six months of our marriage. In a nutshell, you use your voice to ask Alexa questions like, “How many nipples does a monkey have?” or “Is Betty White still a virgin?” and she’ll dutifully answer you. You…
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Billionaires in Space Sir Richard Branson becomes the first to complain about in-space food service and movies
Truth or Consequences, NM — After more than twenty years of planning and rigorous training, Sir Richard Branson became the first British civilian to fly into space today, onboard Virgin Galactic’s Unity22 spacecraft. But it didn’t come without its failures. “I knew things weren’t going right from the beginning,” said Branson. “I had to wait hours at the ticket counter because someone messed up my reservation. I mean, for God’s sake! It’s not like there are thousands of civilian billionaires going up into space on a Sunday morning.” And the problems didn’t end there. Evidently, Branson’s name was targeted on the Department of Homeland Security’s “No Fly” list. As a…
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10 Ways to Use LinkedIn to Leverage Your Exposure and Find Work The movers and shakers of the business world share their secrets for publicizing your brand and find work
After the close of World War II, thousands of veterans flooded job markets all over the country in hopes of building new lives. During the 1950s, looking for work was markedly straight forward. You found jobs listed in the classified ads in local newspapers. Or, you registered with your local Unemployment Office. Sometimes, you might even find a job posting written on a 3 X 5 index card thumbtacked to the bulletin board inside your supermarket. With luck, you’d compete against a handful of candidates and eventually be asked to interview. If you were lucky, you got the job. A lot has changed since those days. How the job market…
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Instructions 101 We all need a little help... even with toilet paper
For the past year and a half, I’ve woken up to a familiar greeting from my digital alarm clock. 12:00 12:00 12:00 12:00 12:00. Ever since the power went out, my alarm clock has been winking at me, hoping that one day, I’ll learn how to set its time. Fat chance. I don’t have a clue how to follow instructions. It’s not that I haven’t tried. One evening last week, I dragged out the user manual to try to figure out how to change the time from 12:00 midnight to the correct time of the day – which, as luck would have it was 12:00 midnight. Like most user manuals,…
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Space-aged, High Capacity Sports Bras How Madison Avenue got involved in high definition, titanium, see-through products
While rummaging through my old junk drawer, I came across one of my prize possessions: a space-aged ballpoint pen that writes upside down and was endorsed by NASA. In 1965, it was the must-have accessory of the times. Not only could you use it to write letters while lying in bed, you could draft a note in zero gravity, on greasy paper in a wide variety of temperatures – all while submerged underwater. For the life of me, I can’t think of a single instance when I’ve cursed to myself, “Dang, I wish I had a pen that wrote upside down, underwater and on greasy paper.” But, it probably would…