Welcome to Something for Nothing

Taking a break from some of my usual topics, I decided to talk about a web project my dad is working on. I think it’s really interesting that he’s working on a web project when his idea of working on a computer is browsing Google Earth and flying a flight simulator (I still need to show my dad the flight simulator in Google Earth).

Well, my dad has started a website to help people with something called Life Settlements. I don’t understand all the details of the process, but it’s basically where you take a life insurance policy and cash it out now. Here’s an example of what my dad could possibly do with a Life Settlement

Male Age: 68 with a $100,000 policy was told by his insurance company that if he surrendered the policy they would only give him $110. After working diligently, we were able to secure $28,000 to add to his retirement. That made a huge difference.

He’s offering a free life settlement appraisal of what your life insurance policy could be worth. A pretty interesting concept when you no longer need your life insurance policy.

This is a little late, but today I came across the Wade Robson routine he danced and choreographed on Dancing with the Stars. Pretty interesting stuff. I’m amazed that Wade was allowed to work on Dancing with the Stars and So You Think You Can Dance. I guess So You Think You Can Dance will need to get better contracts in the future.

I should have added this list of videos that will be initially available on my previous post about Hulu, but here’s the pretty extensive list. Granted, a lot of these videos were already being streamed on NBC.com, but nothing to this magnitude.

Videos Initially Available on Hulu

* 24
* 30 Days
* 30 Rock
* The A-Team
* Adam-12
* Age of Love
* Airwolf
* Alfred Hitchcock Hour
* Alfred Hitchcock Presents
* American Dad!
* Andy Barker P.I.
* Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?
* Arrested Development
* Back To You
* Battlestar Galactica
* Battlestar Galactica Classic
* Big Ideas for a Small Planet
* Bionic Woman
* The Blues Brothers
* The Bob Newhart Show
* Bones
* The Breakfast Club
* Breaking Away
* Buck Rogers
* Buffy the Vampire Slayer
* Bulworth
* Chicago Hope
* Chuck
* The Comebacks
* Conan the Barbarian
* Cops
* Death Sentence
* Doogie Howser, M.D.
* Dr. 90210
* Dragnet
* Family Guy
* Firsthand
* Flipping Out
* Fox Movie Channel presents “Casting Session”
* Fox Movie Channel presents “Making a Scene”
* Fox Movie Channel presents “World Premier”
* Friday Night Lights
* Heroes
* Hill Street Blues
* House
* Inside the Actors Studio
* It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
* The Jerk
* Journeyman
* K-Ville
* King Of The Hill
* Kitchen Confidential
* Kitchen Nightmares
* Kojak
* Las Vegas
* Late Night with Conan O’Brien
* Life
* The Loop
* Lost in Space
* Lou Grant
* The Mary Tyler Moore Show
* Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
* McHale’s Navy
* Miami Vice
* Monk
* Murder One
* My Bare Lady
* My Name is Earl
* Night Gallery
* October Sky
* The Office
* Over There
* Picket Fences
* The Practice
* The Pretender
* Prison Break
* Psych
* Queer Eye
* The Riches
* Rob and Amber: Against the Odds
* Saturday Night Live
* Scrubs
* Sideways
* Simon & Simon
* The Simpsons
* Solitary
* St. Elsewhere
* Stacked
* Standoff
* Talkshow with Spike Feresten
* The Tonight Show
* Vanished
* Weekend at Bernie’s
* WKRP in Cincinnati
* Woody Woodpecker

Today I read on techcrunch about Hulu finally being launched into Beta. I must admit that I hadn’t been interested in Hulu before, but I think it was because Techcrunch’s previous coverage was entertaining, but crappy. Techcrunch should have just said that this is NBC’s and Fox’s method of streaming their TV shows. Essentially competing with ABC (and many others) that are using Move Networks’ technology.

Anyway, I went and checked out Hulu. I hope they release this into beta soon, because everyone knows I love streaming TV on my computer. In fact, I think I’m almost to the point where I watch more TV on my computer than I do on my TV. Just today I was thinking that I need to find a way to connect my computer to my TV since it’s more fun to watch it on my TV.

The latest Hulu blog post has an embedded video of The Office. Here’s the full episode of The Office streamed online

This is going to be pretty cool to watch. Techcrunch said the following about content on Hulu

As for the content on Hulu, TV shows will come from Fox and NBC, and over fifteen cable channels including Bravo, E!, FX, SciFi, Sundance, and USA. Movies will come from Fox and Universal, and following a deal signed just this Friday, from Sony and MGM as well. Hulu says many of its short clips will come from independent content providers, and it’s also signing licensing deals with others such as Smithsonian and the WWE.

That’s a pretty powerful lineup. The video streaming is really interesting too. I don’t mind watching a bit of ads in order to get free tv streamed online.

I think that you all probably know that Amazing Race is my favorite reality TV show of all time. Although, I must admit that Rebel Billionaire is pretty good and so are all the dancing shows. However, Amazing Race still is the best since I just love to travel.

Today I read that Amazing Race 12 will be starting on November 4th on CBS. I just checked my TV schedule and sure enough it’s on the schedule. That’s pretty exciting, because I had read that it wasn’t going to start until the Spring season. I guess the spring season is starting soon for CBS.

Here’s a youtube video of the Amazing Race 12 racers

Yes, finally something else to watch on Sunday nights. I’m so excited!! It does conflict with Extreme Makeover Home Edition, but ABC is now streaming Extreme Makeover Home Edition online.

From the looks of the racers, it looks like there’s going to be plenty of drama along the way. I think I’ll be laughing every week at the LA Blondes. They are not the barbies that I love so much. They are going to put blondes back on the map.

Latin night was very nice with a ton of great music for latin dancing. Here’s the list of songs from Dancing with the Stars.

Marie & Jonathan danced the Samba to the song Crickets Sing For Anamaria sung by Astrud Gilberto

Jane & Tony danced the Rumba to the song Breathe Again sung by Toni Braxton

Mark & Kym danced the Samba to the song I Dream Of Jeannie sung by The Hit Crew

Sabrina & Mark danced the Rumba to the song Me and Mrs. Jones sung by Michael Buble

Jennie & Derek danced the Samba to the song Cosmic Girl sung by Jamiroquai

Helio & Julianne danced the Rumba to the song Apologize sung by Timbaland featuring One Republic

Mel & Maks danced the Samba to the song Spice Up Your Life sung by The Spice Girls

Cameron & Edyta danced the Rumba to the song I’ve Got To See You Again sung by Norah Jones

See other Dancing with the Stars Music:
Dancing with the Stars Music Week 1 night 1
Dancing with the Stars Music Week 1 night 2
Dancing with the Stars Music Week 2
Dancing with the Stars Music Week 3
Dancing with the Stars Music Week 4 - October 15

I know this music is a little late, but better late than never no? As always, all the music from Dancing with the Stars has links to purchase the music from iTunes also.

Mark & Kym danced the Viennese Waltz to the song Mr. Bojangles sung by Robbie Williams

Sabrina & Mark danced the Paso Doble to the song You Spin Me Round (Like A Record) sung by Dead or Alive

Jane & Tony danced the Viennese Waltz to the song Piano Man sung by Billy Joel

Floyd & Karina danced the Paso Doble to the song Captain From Castille sung by US Air Force Band of the Rockies

Mel & Maks danced the Viennese Waltz to the song Breakaway sung by Kelly Clarkson

Cameron & Edyta danced the Paso Doble to the song Superman Theme sung by Original Soundtrack

Marie & Jonathan danced the Viennese Waltz to the song Can’t Help Falling In Love sung by Elvis Presley

Jennie & Derek danced the Paso Doble to the song Because We Can sung by Fatboy Slim

Helio & Julianne danced the Viennese Waltz to the song Iris sung by Goo Goo Dolls

See other Dancing with the Stars Music:
Dancing with the Stars Music Week 1 night 1
Dancing with the Stars Music Week 1 night 2
Dancing with the Stars Music Week 2
Dancing with the Stars Music Week 3

I recently saw a jump in my stats for people searching for Allison Holker from So You Think You Can Dance fame. She was booted off early, but honestly between her and Benji no other So You Think You Can Dance contestants have a better following.

Anyway, because I saw all the searches for Allison Holker, I decided to search for some videos of her dancing. Here’s a great montage of a ton of Allison Holker. It even has some behind the scenes video of Allison Holker.

While I’ll openly admit that I’m not a “green” person and I normally don’t follow or like to read about the green things that people are doing. Sure, I think it’s good to be nice to the environment. However, I guess I’ve just seen too many “green” things that don’t really do anything.

Ok, so now that I declared my point of view openly, I must admit that I found the BP Solar Decathlon to be absolutely fascinating. Although, not because it’s green. Probably because I absolutely love technology. I’ve watched something similar to this on TV one time. While I was happy that technology was able to help the environment, I must admit that I was even more interested in seeing how this technology (that was environmentally conscious) could also help me and the US to have renewable energy supplies which would continue to lower costs. I’ll be the first to admit that the idea of Hydrogen power is completely fascinating and I can’t wait until it or some other technology frees us from the grips of the oil giants.

What an impressive list of universities that are involved from all over the world. I think these events in college are quite amazing and really show the great sacrifices that students will often make during college. It utterly amazes me.

I also think it’s cool that BP is a sponsor of the event. Sure, it definitely seems like a PR move for BP, but I don’t care about why they do it. I care more about the fact that they are doing good. I’ll give them props for really trying to do things like this. Of course, I’m sure they want to be part of it so that if someone does break the energy technology barrier, then they’ll want to be apart of it.

Either way, it looks like a very interesting event and I hope that the BP Solar Decathalon blog is updated frequently with what’s happening. I love following events through blogs.

I’m trying out the new Youtube/Google customized video player to see how it works. I’ve given it the targeted keywords of Dancing with the Stars. We’ll see how it works. I wonder if I’ll really need to make this either a static page or possibly in the sidebar to get much value out of it. I also wonder how it will report revenues on the Adsense pages. I haven’t seen a category on reports for video, but I expect it’s just a matter of time.