as seen on tv

There are several "As Seen On TV" ads out there. I'm sure you've all known someone that has fallen victim to the Snuggie Cult (Is your life shrouded in a cold blue haze? Do arrows with $ symbols appear when you try to raise the thermostat? Is your blanket slightly too small? If so please join us, the Cult of Snuggie) or known someone that has longed for a Shamwow to clean up those messes that require the unholy offspring of a sponge and towel. But these things are actually popular items that have seen great success from a relatively simple idea marketed in such a way that it seems like you must be dumb. What about those spectacular ideas that don't seem to fit into that mold, whether they have poor marketing, a terrible or strange idea, or all of the above and so much more? Well here are a few of my favorites from over the years of youtube videos and countless hours of late night television:

magnescribe

Do you constantly realize the shortness of your arms when tossing pens under your bed? Do you need to constantly wear a clock that is awkwardly around your neck so it makes it obvious to other people that you are bored when you look at the time? Do you want your kids to have something close by to impale them if they trip on their way home from the school bus? then boy do we have the pen for you!

electronic abs (ab energizer, abtronic, etc...)


So you want to lose weight whilst being lazy, eh? well the good thing about this setup is that the electric shocks will definitely motivate you to stop trying to cut corners and just do the work out. This is essentially the equivalent of you flexing several times a minute because any weightrainer can tell you that resistance is how you build more muscle. If this actually worked by flexing the muscle then preteen boys trying to show off in the mirror would be the buffest of us all.

easy toothbrush

Does you toothbrush feel like steel wool? Does its shape also have absolutely no relevance to what this commercial is talking about? Well we crammed both those things into one jam-packed fantastical toothbrush!
Brilliant!
Lesko

You may remember this man as a riddler impersonator trying to get you free money from the government. His attitude towards everything was great as I could not believe how ridiculous he was. I did end up finding his books online. So I "borrowed" them and everything single piece of information was actually freely available by the government itself. Who knew.

In a post-apocalyptic world, cheap auto insurance will be the last of your worries

Sure the apocalypse may be coming but you can't just prepare for the worst. You have to keep looking forward. yes, I'm talking about the post-apocalypse. Are you truly prepared? When was the last time you checked your auto insurance on that land behemoth? You wouldn't want it to be repossessed before the coming post-judgement day scenario. It might be worth it to go check freecreditreport.com or some other auto insurance website to make sure you aren't in danger of losing your future home, transport, and first line of defense.

There are many things that you will want to take into consideration as you prepare. The first question you will have to ask yourself is what kind of conditions you will be in. For brevity, I will just go with three of the most discussed scenarios: zombies, robots, and nuclear fall out. Then I will go through some different vehicles and how they stack up against the threats.

For the zombie scenario, you are going to need a vehicle capable of fending off the undead hordes while staying on the move. For the robot scenario, you will be in a different game as fighting is not your best option so you will need to be more discreet and able to go off road in order to help disrupt their (hopefully) mal-adapted all terrain sensors. For the nuclear fall out scenario, you will mostly need a contained area that can store extra food and hold out against the harsh climate and possibly mutated animals/people.

Here is a list of a few examples of good automobiles and their respective categories:

1. the Track T-800CDI
The only motorcycle on the list is this Track T-800CDI built by a Dutch company named EVA. They managed to cram an 800cc turbodiesel engine built for a small car onto the frame. They also modified it to run on any vegetable type oil you can throw at it. So once the gas stops flowing around the country you can just fill up with french fry oil at any one of the 20,000+ abandoned mcdonalds all across the U.S.
Zombie score: 3/5 sustainability is good and it is quick but it provides no shelter or storage
robot score: 5/5 ability to get around tight spaces fast and offroad ability are a big plus against the mechanized scourge
nuclear score:1/5 this isnt the auto for you unless you plan on wearing a radiation suit all the time but lets face it, that would just look silly

2. Sandcrawler
Equipped with magnetic cranes, energy furnaces, workshops and lots of living and or storage space, sandcrawlers were perfect as mobile headquarters, shops, and homes for the diminutive junk scavengers.
zombie score:5/5 you can roll over anything that gets in your way
robot score:1/5 you are the biggest target around. Sure it can survive against the elements and some tuskan raiders but if this cannot survive an attack by a small squad of imperial soldiers, what chance do you have against the robot hordes?
nuclear score:5/5 you can hole up inside for years

3. Landmaster

The Landmaster from Damnation Alley is a perfect example of post-apocalyptic ingenuity. A twelve wheeled monster that is steelplated, 12 tires that only need to be rotated if one goes flat, machine gun turrets on the front, rocket pod on the top, and it can operate fully submerged in water. This bamf is too good for conventional steering so it has to have a hydaulic midsection that twists when needing to make it around corners.
zombie score:5/5 Its the Landmaster
robot score:4/5 while a big target, it can defend itself well enough to escape into water where most likely a new set of robots will have to be organized to try to go after it
nuclear score:5/5 come on, its the Landmaster
4. EM-50 Urban Assualt vehicle
The Urban Assault Vehicle from the film Stripes, this unnassuming motorhome can pull down the metal shutters in the blink of an eye. It has a cannon, machine guns, flame-throwers and many other infantry weapons. Its blending in ability is a plus when discreet might be your best bet.
zombie score: 5/5 You could park this near any group of undeads and unleash hell before they knew what was going on and slip away discreetly back into the jungle of abandoned cars
robot score: 3/5 it is well equipped for a battle but is still a sizable target
nuclear score:4/5 space to carry supplies for a while.

5. El Camino
Gentlemen, we're forgetting the one vehicle that says "rugged individualism" with a firm undertone of practicality. A car that'll get you laid AND carry a mattress in the back. I give you America's forgotten freedom. I give you the El Camino.
zombie score: 5/5 This won't look remotely enticing for a zombie
robot score: 4/5 It can be moddified to be taken offroad the only problem is you might lose the mattress in the back :(
nuclear score:4/5 chances are that you arent going to stay near the cities or high risk targets if this is your choice of car so you arent in direct danger as long as you have a permanent shelter

Depending on your needs, you will look for different vehicles in the coming troubled times. Just as extra insurrance, I would recommend picking up a copy of autotrader sometime and glancing over what they have to offer. Maybe if you will get lucky then you might find a Landmaster. Or even luckier if you are able to grab that el camino before anyone else does.

potential hard drive recovery tool that might save your life

So you went off to college, congratulations. And you decided that you might need a new state of the art computer(cheap laptop) and it has been working just fine. That is, until the night before that big paper is due. You do something seemingly innocent like restarting the computer.

BIG MISTAKE.

All of a sudden, your computer tries to start and BAM! Fail!

Your computer won't boot up anymore and you absolutely couldn't have done anything to cause it (Its all your fault). But its ok since you backed up everything on a regular basis right?

...

For those of you that believed it would never happen to you, don't you just feel silly? But fear not! there might just be hope. I'm going to walk you through the back door of turning your hard drive into a secondary or slave drive (temporarily) the easy way so you don't have to take out that tempting eloan you have been eyeing for a while to splurge on a brand new computer (another cheap laptop).

1. you will need a linux live cd. My favorite two are from both Mandriva and Ubunutu. All you do is download the disc image from their website and burn it on to a cd.

2. As soon as your computer starts, you must open up the cd drive and put your newly (or oldly) acquired linux live cd before the windows splash screen appears (lets face it, you probably aren't having this problem on a mac and you definitely aren't having this problem if you are already using linux).

3. Hit the F8 or F12 key, whichever allows you to go into different boot options.

4. Tell your computer to boot from the cd and once you are in the linux options, choose to try out the operating system without making any permanent changes.

5. Once it loads up be sure to notice how clean looking and aesthetically pleasing everything is. Don't you wish this was your operating system to begin with?

6. Now plug in your novelty pez drive and open up the C: computer files and move whatever documents over that you want to make sure you have.

7. There is even a microsoft office compatible program on each form of linux called open office which you can use to finish that paper thats due tomorrow.

It is always good to have a cheap insurance plan that could potentially save your data in the result of your computer failing to boot. Now that you have backed up and possibly finished the paper, you can actually contact those nice people in India and ask them how to fix your state-of-the-art (p.o.s.) dell computer.