UK Horse Groove Competition

More Credit Card Company Immorality

Another great clip from Dave.

http://watermark-productions.com/josh/ccc-immorality.mp3

Music Piracy and the Future

Man, if you have a good 20 minutes you need to read this. I think he's right.

Got Identity?

Identity theft. It's the fastest growing white collar crime today. In the "identity underground" various identities are being sold for about 89 cents each. Some are useless (protected) and some are wide open for the crook to use freely.

What can you do to protect your identity? Glad you asked.

1. Check your credit bureau report once a year. More if you don't have protection. Federal law says you can do it free once every year. Sadly, you need to be careful when doing this. Why? Because there are numerous organizations that will sign you up / charge / steal from / etc when you hand over your precious social security number. There are three places that I know are safe. (Recommended by Dave Ramsey.)

TransUnion (http://www.transunion.com)
Experian (http://www.experian.com)
Equifax (http://www.equifax.com/home/)

2. Pay attention to your junk mail. If stuff starts coming in the mail that makes it look like weirdness is going on - it's because weirdness is going on. If you didn't ask for it, don't immediately write it off. Do a little more than thumb through it. Pay attention to what kinds of things are coming through.

3. Ensure your drivers license # is NOT printed on your checks or elsewhere that may be convenient to you from time to time. Rest assured, it's way more inconvenient to have to clean up a stolen identity.

4. The final thing you can do to make sure your protected from identity theives is of course to get protection. Zander Insurance (zanderinsurance.com) will do various things to prevent it from happening but the major thing they do is in the event it is stolen, THEY assign someone to your case and THEY clean it up, not YOU. The average person spends 600 hours trying to clean up their stolen identity. You don't owe anything when it happens, but I can think of a few things I would rather be doing in those 600 hours.

Finally, I'll leave you with the most whacked statistic that I'll put down for you today. 80% of identities stolen were done so by a friend or relative of that person.

Red Bull: The Art of Can

If you're like me you like art. Occasionally in order to finish the art you're working on you develop a need to like Red Bull. Enter "Red Bull: The Art of Can".