Maybe I’m the only one.

David Haselhoff riding a unicorn running through a care bear

I have a friend… well, for the sake of being honest, let’s call him an acquaintance.

At any rate, the man has phenomenal artistic abilities. This afternoon I asked him to draw a picture of something completely random. I suggested the first three things that came to mind:

David Hasselhoff, riding a unicorn, running through a care bear.

Around 3 hours later he wandered over to show me what he’d churned out.

As you can see the man has more talent in his pinky than Chuck Norris has in his round house.

want to know what the worst part of this story is? Despite my immense pressure to convince him that he is sitting on a veritable internet gold mine, he has 0 interest in pursuing a blog featuring random crap churned out from his awesome mind and all-powerful hand.

“My hand hurts!” is his terse and insistent response.

Don’t waste this awesomeness! if you enjoy this mans work, let me know! I must pressure him into churning out more high quality randomness.

I was recently given a broken first generation iPhone. The headset assembly had a torn ribbon cable that made the phone unusable. Attached to this ribbon cable was the vibrator, headset jack, volume and mute controls, and the power button.

I shopped around online for apple part # 821-0449-A. Unfortunately, it is a pretty rare item that looks like it’s only sold from a few mom and pop operations. No large retailers like Amazon or NewEgg carried the assembly that I needed. Since it was a first generation iPhone, it made it even harder. The few places I did find it varied in price and reputation… anywhere from 7$ all the way to 49.95$.

After looking around, I finally decided I would try to order the part from FlexQueen.com since it was only $8.50. However, I was skeptical about this online store as it had absolutely 0 reviews online. I decided to call the phone number on the website. If they answered and didn’t sound too suspicious, I’d run it through my Credit Card and Paypal… figured I couldn’t lose.

I called FlexQueen and they answered after a few rings. No phone system, just a good old fashioned phone. I spoke with a gentleman who confirmed they stocked the Headphone assembly I needed.

I Placed my order online at 8:27 AM… received an e-mail shipping confirmation at 1:58 PM. My order arrived exactly two days later via USPS. It was well packaged, and exactly as ordered. What actually did surprise me is that the item was OEM. I’m not sure where FlexQueen got an OEM Apple part, but I’m not complaining.

I had to borrow a screwdriver set from a neighbor because the Philips screws that are in the iPhone are incredibly small. I mean… small. You have no idea how small.

After some ridiculous finagling we were able to get the assembly in, except for the power button which had been ripped to shreds by the previous owner. I was totally bummed because I wasn’t going to be able to finalize my reassembly until I could purchase a new power button. However, I did cheat and powered the unit on using the compression switch on the headset assembly without putting the phone back together and sure enough… Power! That means I repaired an iPhone by hand. Oh, the pride.

Naturally I went right back to FlexQueen’s website to order a replacement part. To my heart’s delight, they had a the power button at a fairly reasonable price. (It was $3.50 for a button smaller than a dime.. but still, a hard to come by button..) Unfortunately, shipping on this button was a whopping $7.50!

After some thought, I called FlexQueen and explained my situation. Octavio immediately offered to send me my new part for regular price plus a nominal shipping fee. The additional shipping charge was essentially cost + a few pennies just because rounding and adding wasn’t worth the time.

I ordered my button from Octavio at 2:00 PM Friday and the button was in my mailbox Monday morning in a hand addressed envelope. I think Octavio was unable to fulfill the order using the normal ordering system, so he took it upon himself to complete my order by hand!

Needless to say, I was incredibly impressed with FlexQueen’s fulfillment of my order.

Why did I write this review?

But one question remains… Why did I bother to write such an indepth and stellar review of an online company that is smaller than this blog (Seriously… my blog has a higher Google Page Rank than FlexQueen)?

The answer is simple. Inside of my first order was 4 things:

• My ordered headset assembly
• Packing material
• A receipt
• A hand-signed note note

This note was a hand-signed plea from what I can only assume was a proprietor of FlexQueen.com. It read in part:

We sincerely hope you are fully satisified with your purchase and if so please give us a good review. Good reviews are the only way we can compete with Asian distributors that have overhead costs that are so much lower than ours.

So there you have it. FlexQueen gave me a great price on hard to find cell phone parts, shipped it very quickly, and went the extra mile by giving me a reasonable price on additional products I needed that were associated with my original order. In addition to that, they recognized their ‘small-time’ circumstances and sought out positive feedback.

I don’t need cell phone replacement parts very often. In fact, this is only the second time I can think of… but I can guarantee that if and when the occasion arises, I will order from FlexQueen again.

To Octavio and my new friends on FlexQueen/OCESA Manufacturing: I hope this positive review is an adequate ‘Thank You’ for your honest and prompt service.

He had been working with a vendor from a very large and well known company for a little over a month. Over this month they’d had a few phone calls, exchanged a few emails, and held one or two ‘online demonstrations’ of the new product, in hopes of getting Thomas to make a purchase. I think it’s important to point out that I’m told Thomas in no way ever led this guy on to believe a sale was going to take place. There was no paperwork, no PO’s, no commitments.

Thomas had a particularly busy week at work, and had to put purchasing on the back burner. Apparently letting some sales calls go to voicemail was a poor decision on his part:

It kind of makes you wonder what he’s been telling “management” that’s got him so worked up. Good luck with that!

I’d also like to point out that I work in a professional office building. In a very conservative State in the Union. So while I myself am no stranger to tattoos, I was definitely surprised when I saw this one!

While some people may consider it gutsy, I asked the young lady if I could take a picture of her tattoo. More specifically the conversation went like this:

Me: Excuse me miss!

Her: <Incredibly weird “why are you talking to me” look>

Me: that is the most awesome Tattoo I have ever seen. Would you mind if I took a picture with my phone?

Her: Sure.

Me: Thanks!

And that was the end of our conversation. Here now I share a censored version with you.  Click the thumbnail above to see the picture I took.

Caution:I wouldn’t let my kids see this tattoo if I could help it! With that being said, I still saw it in my office building.

Personally, I’m not sure what would possess a person to get any kind of tattoo. At all. Part of that is my own personal life-long philosophy; some of it probably has to do with my beliefs;  Mostly my thoughts revolve around: ”What the heck is that thing and why would you want it on your arm?!?!”.

What do you think?

Employers and Internet Service Providers will still know that you’re using the Google Search for something, but the theory is that SSL will protect your search terms, and the search result list you get back. Keep in mind if you follow links from Google out into the interweb, those sites may not be encrypted.

To make Encrypted Google Web Search your default search, follow the simple steps below!

Encrypted Google Web Search on Chrome:

1. Click the Tools menu.
2. Select Options.
3. Click the Basics tab.
4. Click Manage in the “Default search” section.
5. Click the Add button in the “Search Engines” window.
6. Enter “Google SSL” in the Name: field.
7. Enter “ssl:” in the Keyword: field.
8. Copy the following URL and paste it into the URL: field.
   1. https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=%s
9. Click the OK button.
10. Select “Google SSL” From the Search Engines list.
11. Click the Make Default button.

Everything you search on using the Google Omnibar will now use Encrypted Google Web Search!

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If the first few dates were going good, he would take the unusual step of trying to meet the girls family. More specifically, he wanted to meet her mother to evaluate what the younger girls Fat Potential might be, based on how her mother’s appearance has panned out over the years.

If the girl appeared to be at a high risk for FP, he would frequently end the relationship within a couple of days thereafter.

Fortunately, someone was kind enough to make a ring tone of it, which you can get here. Or, for a later part of the video, try this one.

Thanks to Chris Crutchfield for his awesome remix!

In my own life, I find it difficult to understand my position until I understand the opposition.