Do You Want To Bet?

By Joshua Clayton

Some of the greatest change in the world came about in "stupid" and unusual ways. So when I ask a question like "do you want to bet?" in my title, I am writing about the most unusual changes in existence happening in the most interesting ways. Think about this, then, if you initially cannot put your mind around the reality of drastic and genuinely original change. This is what status quo type realities and overt normality is really made for: Change.

In the book "Using Your Brain For A Change" author Richard Bandler uses the change factor I am writing about. He calls it the "instant swish", and a few other names, but it is the same factor in all the things he calls it, just plain "time for a change".

Last night my Mom and I had an argument over the laundry, and she kept singing "Only I exist!" every time I would come up with a counter argument and I responded with "okay, whatever, I will get it done" as my argument as I went about my way doing what needed to be done. I got finished with the laundry well and everything, but that got me to thinking about the realities I am mentioning in this article about change, that is how change happens: You have one argument, then a counter argument or a little back and forth, and then reason resolves it all in the form of change. Is that not how it always goes in one form or another, or do you want to bet that something different will happen?

Sometimes we wish it would go some other way than needing extreme change, but when it is time for change, it is time for change, right down to the need for an unstoppable revolution in whatever form it may take. Listen to the full Jimi Hendrix song "Castles Made Of Sand" with an intuitive ear and you will know exactly what I mean. The change could be a simple wake up call or seriously wild change for better or worse, but it happens indeed. In life, we all get one or another to wake us up to our "other selves", deeper mind and all of that. In fact, I end with a few of the lyrics of Jimi Hendrix to further underscore my point:

And so castles made of sand slips into the sea, eventually."

My name is Joshua Clayton, I am a freelance writer based in Inglewood, California. I also write under a few pen-names and aliases, but Joshua Clayton is my real name, and I write by that for the most part now. I am a philosophical writer and objective thinker and honest action taker. I also work at a senior center in Gardena, California as my day job, among other things, but primarily I am a writer.

The Embodied Brain: Hypnosis and the Gut

By William T Batten

Your brain exists outside your skull. Clusters of nerves are everywhere throughout your body. They speed up reactions, enhance motor control and even process emotions. The enteric nervous system lines the walls of your gut, playing a role in your daily experience and the hypnotic process.

This gut brain is a fascinating piece of your puzzle. How many common experiences come from here, from gut instincts to butterflies in the stomach? Our language is spot on here. It turns out that the enteric nervous system handles a lot of our unconscious thinking.

The question is: what kind of thinking goes on in the gut?

Some of it relates to balance and reflexes. The enteric nervous system halves the distance from your feet to your head brain, speeding up reactions. This might be why body language experts say that our legs are more honest than our faces. For example, if someone looks interested but their feet point towards the door, then they want to leave. Letting them go earns instant kudos.

The legs are also critical in the freeze, flight or fight response. When danger looms, either you go very still or you move very fast. You don't even consciously think about it.

But the gut brain does more than keep you safe and balanced. Despite having about 0.5% the number of neurons your head-brain does, it produces half your dopamine and almost all your serotonin. A happy, balanced stomach leads to a happy, balanced human.

If you want to enter a hypnotic trance, then don't neglect the abdomen. Deep diaphragmatic breathing massages your internal organs. Allow yourself to release any tension in your core muscles. Keep an upright and relaxed posture to improve the flow of nerve signals and nutrients.

You can do any of these within minutes. To improve your overall gut health; change what you put in it. Everyone is different but your mood depends on what you eat. Choose fresh, whole and nutritious ingredients. Include probiotics and prebiotics in your diet. If you want your brain to work for you, you have to look after it.

As a hypnotist, this gives you things to watch for. Do they breathe more in their chest or their abdomen? Notice the rate and depth of their breathing. Breath-rate and thought-rate influence each other - slowing one usually slows the other.

Hypnosis doesn't require a relaxed subject, though it certainly helps. This is one of the reasons why - when you think throughout your body, you want information to flow. Eliminating tension and keeping yourself aligned improves all of your bodily functions, including going into trances and doing amazing inner work.

The hypnotic arts are holistic. They draw on everything you have to offer and enhance everything inside of you. This is why it's one of the most effective therapies around. All of your problems arise from your body and mind, which means the solutions are hypnotic.

Personal growth is a journey, which is why I offer Awakened Thought as a subscription. Its value develops over time, just as you do. Take charge of your progress today:

   https://guided-thought.com/awakened-thought/

Customer Service at Its Best

By Laura M Schroeder

I do not participate in online service surveys because they are stupid. The worst example of a prompted speech was when we bought a car in Maryland. The salesman was horrible and extremely rude to my husband and me. Then he had the nerve to tell us to give him a ten on an online survey. Just to be nice I gave him an eight but explained in the comments his shortcomings.

The salesman then called and harassed me by phone for not giving him a ten. After that, I made a complaint and he was fired.

Today, I got the best example of customer service. I will be sending a thank you card and notifying the appropriate person of my gratitude.

We probably can't name companies so I will just describe the scenario. A few months ago, I bought four new tires and purchased the warranty. I few weeks ago, I went to get the tires rotated included in the plan at the chain but a different location. They broke the necessary piece but sent me away without fixing it.

This morning, I got a flat tire and had to call for roadside assistance three times. I was so glad I have that membership. I had them tow me to where I bought the tires. After a long day, and trips to multiple locations, the manager was awesome. I explained the situation. He said the other location should have done the right thing. He pulled up my warranty, sent me to a repair shop for the damaged piece then fixed and replaced the tire. We made sure there were no other problems. My adventure began at 11:30am and ended at 6:30pm. The manager stayed late to see it through. All parties involved were awesome from roadside assistance to the repair shop to the tire shop. We got it all done in one day without having to rent a car or go in debt for something that was the chain's error to begin with.

I won't return to the location that caused the problem but I will be a return customer to this one that corrected the problem. I will be renewing my roadside assistance membership and will go to the repair shop when I need them. All three parties today gave good service without asking for anything. That's customer service at its best. I am a happy consumer. Thanks guys.

Beanie Baby Trading Cards Are The Lost Collectible From An Age Of Popularity

By Jim Allan

Beanie Baby Dolls

Beanie Babies started producing in 1993 and went into full production in 1994. They had no real popularity until the second half of 1995. In 1996 "Miniature Beanies were released with McDonald's Happy Meals. Everyone even mommy and daddy had them. Their popularity got to the point that even immigrants inside the U.S. were peddling Beanie Babies at swap meets. At the beginning of the craze they were being sold for 10 times what they were purchased for at retail stores.

Beanie Babies from 1996 to 1999 were being purchased by collectors for resale and it got to the point where they were no longer a valuable commodity to make a good return on an investment in them. By December 31st 1999 Ty had to shut down their production because of the over-saturation of them on the second hand market. Nobody wanted them anymore. At the height of the their popularity 10% of eBay sales were, "Beanie Babies".

Jan. 2nd 2000 Ty started up production of Beanie Babies again two days after they stopped production. Some say the restart was due to demand and others say the restart was due to an economic strategy by Ty. I can say safely that the second hand market was flooded with Beanie Babies to the point they couldn't be given away, "not even if you begged someone to take them". Ty restarting production Jan. 2nd of 2000, two days after they ceased production was in limited quantities so people could not put them up for sale the same day they purchased them and saturate the second hand market to the point of value collapse.

Beanie Baby Common Cards

* 1st Edition, Series 1 November 1998

* 1st Edition, Series 2 March 1999

* 2nd Edition, Series 3 July 1999

* 2nd Edition, Series 4 November 1999

Beanie Baby Cards did not appear until November 1998 and were dead on arrival until early 1999 when it was announced that the cards were being retired. After the cards were retired the remaining inventory of them sold out quickly. After the announcement of them being retired which brought on a quick sellout Ty released the series 2 cards in March of 1999.

Beanie Babies Cards edition 1 Series 1 had 504,000 boxes produced at their beginning Nov. 1998 and the cards were not that great looking. They were just pictures layered on pictures which was old technology. In 1994 the sports card industry were producing trading cards that went beyond the simply design being produced by Ty. My guess is this is why Ty trading cards died on the shelve until of course they were retired.

594,000 boxes of the 1st edition series 2 were produced and released in March of 1999 and sold out before they hit retailer store shelves. The cards that did hit the retailer shelves had purchase limitations on them and higher prices. The 1st edition series 1 cards were poorly designed on the cheap and have no appeal and you can see in the 1st edition series 2 cards the same poor design quality was kept because of the popularity of the physical dolls.

In July of 1999 the 2nd edition series 3 cards were released. 751,332 boxes were released. The graphics were updated and more pleasing to the eye. This series of cards is very pleasing to the eye and most likely will be a more desirable card to the average collector. If you're looking at design quality the 2nd edition series 3 cards are where you want to be. The backgrounds are not so blurred out and the text is 3D outlined. Series 1 and 2 are a great disappointment as to the design technology being produced in sports and comic book cards in the second half of the 1990's.

November of 1999 saw the last release of Beanie Baby trading cards. The 2nd edition series 4 released 620,000 boxes of cards into the public. These cards continued with the same design quality as the 2nd edition series 3 cards. As stated above in December 1999 Ty announced the end of the Beanie Baby dolls and with that came the end of the cards too. Even though Ty did produce limited quantities of Beanie Babies in Jan. of 2000 the cards to this day have never came back.

Beanie Baby cards still can be gotten for $1.00 to $5.00 apiece on eBay, Ecrater and other card marketplaces depending on the seller. These cards are very undervalued due to the lack of desirability that was caused by the over production of Beanie Baby dolls. At the time of this article going on eBay to find these cards will produce very few results for each individual card wanted. You would expect to encounter hundreds upon hundreds of these cards on eBay from a variety of sellers but that's just not the case. Either people gave up on trying to sell the cards they have or they just don't have any to sell?

These cards, all series were only produced for 1 year. November 1998 though November 1999 is it for all past and present Beanie Babies animals. Sports cards, Comic book cards can have each player or character produced each year for many years. Not that way for Beanie Babies. These cards are a one year only production collectible of an extremely popular Ty product. There are many small trading card sets on the second hand market that were only produced one time and because of lack of popularity they get no play.

Will these Beanie Baby cards ever reach the popularity of the dolls that made the cards possible? If I had to speculate on this I would say these cards will one day come close to the popularity the dolls have. Will it happen in my life time? As for anything collectible this question cannot be answered. Popularity is something that happens through the thought of each individual person multiplied into many. The only realistic thought that can be formulated is based on past collectible items of popularity that have gained today's popularity and that a day in the future will recognize these trading cards as a picture of a past popular item which will bring value to the cards when they are recognized. Jim Allan's Sea Dogs Beach

3 Common Mobile App Performance Problems and How to Avoid Them

By Jacek Grygiel

Black box

Let's assume that an application is a black box. For now, let's ignore the question of its category (games, business, education, lifestyle), as it's not really important at this point. Moreover, let's assume our application is written natively for a given mobile platform (e.g. iOS - Swift, Objective-C, Android - Java, Kotlin) with the use of the best software practices and project templates. I believe that if you're considering software efficiency it's pointless to go into the details of cross-platform solutions as e.g. Xamarin or hybrid ones using HTML5. That's even if, in the case of simple software, we can assume that the efficiency of a solution based on Xamarin will be comparative to the native language.

I'm aware of the fact that I won't be able to discuss all aspects of efficiency of mobile applications and factors shaping it. However, I'd like to focus on the most important ones.

Devices

The first and probably the most frequently forgotten factor concerns the devices themselves. Depending on the platform and version of available software, it's useful to put together a list of devices on which the software will ultimately be installed.

Those devices not only determine the user interface, but mainly how particular software layers will operate on older mobile devices. These can include devices with worse units (weaker processor, less RAM). You should also consider the availability of the devices, especially those older ones. Most frequently, programmers use simulators, additionally one or two mobile devices. This should be a warning signal for testers to start their tests with the oldest devices. Negligence can lead to expensive rewriting of functionalities which operate incorrectly on particular devices due to efficiency reasons. In any case, this doesn't justify the programmers, who often copy the wrong project templates out of laziness, and start the applications only on the newest devices - ones that deal with processing complicated operations without any problems. In such cases, we usually learn about efficiency-related inconveniencies from the final user.

Networking

Another point comprises networking and, in particular, when and how often the application uses the Internet connection. The most frequent errors directly affecting performance result from the app asking the server for data too often, or a bad structure of storing the data in cache. Here, the best solution turns out to be planning generating data well, whenever it is necessary, and caching server answers.

Data-generating operations should be executed asynchronously - by not blocking the main thread, which is responsible for rendering the user interface. While downloading images, one should remember two things: to save them on the hard disk and about proper compression.

Moreover, it's also worth ensuring that the application operates well offline, unless it's not required in the specification included in the documentation. From my experience, problems sometimes occur due to a lack of explicit information that the application is to operate o��ine. Sometimes, re-developing an already complex application can be very risky, as this can generate additional errors (which are difficult to solve). I think that this problem concerns developing the layer of communication with the server in business more so than in games, which, as can be assumed, should operate o��ine. By 'offline' I also mean a poor Internet connection, such as 3G or EDGE, which isn't always 100% sufficient.

We should also consider the effectiveness of the server's communicative layer. It's particularly important when our application generates a high traffic of questions regarding the server part. The problem can be further complicated due to e.g. audio or video streaming. Unfortunately, in this case, we don't always have a direct impact through ongoing development. Nevertheless, I think it's good to have this in mind as well.

Third parties

The third point involves the use of libraries of external companies. This has become very popular recently. Anyone who's dealt with a large project that involved libraries which weren't updated on an ongoing basis (especially the open source ones!) will know what I am talking about. They facilitate the development process and accelerate it, especially if they're complex. They provide functionalities that would usually take a lot of time to be written by a programmer from scratch.

The development itself can be supported with additional devices. These can enable proper monitoring - of the efficiency of application, occurrences of breakdowns and an app's sudden closing, or additional logging of application's events. Such devices include e.g.: Fabric, Crashlytics, Flurry, HockeyApp, AppDynamics, New Relic. They should be added and used from the beginning of the project.
Summary

To sum up, we should remember that all elements listed herein make a whole and ultimately determine how the application is seen by the final user. The efficiency influences user interface as well as their general feelings related with using the application. Therefore, we should not let them feel the need to immediately uninstall our newly developed software or, even worse, feel that they have an old phone and they should replace it.