New Website!!

Boss It Up! has now moved to a newer and better domain! Introducing The BossItUp Post!

http://www.bossituppost.com/

This blog will still be used, so don’t delete your bookmark. More details on that later.

Have fun!!

Good News!

As I’ve mentioned earlier in one of BIUS’s Season 1’s episodes, I’m working on a huge project for the BossItUp Blog. The project is a new web domain, and some other goodies that will be added to that new domain. The site will start from scratch, but the content will be imported from here, because the new domain will have WordPress installed onto it.

Here’s a list on what the new site will do better than this blog:

• Instead of having multiple widgets on the sidebar, there will be a toolbar on the bottom of the page (that moves with your scrolling), that will contain every gadget you see on the current sidebar.
• Instead of only having YouTube videos on the blog, Flash will be allowed, so that I can post videos from other popular video hosting sites.
• Instead of being limited to HTML-only templates, I will be able to make the site a bit more interactive with the power of Flash and JavaScript content and widgets.
• Instead of the layout being all cluttered with text, it will be more compact, simpler, easier to read, and…better.
• The new site will also undergo a slight name change. Instead of being called ‘Boss It Up!’, it will be called ‘The BossItUp Post’. (Don’t worry, the acronym will remain the same. (BIU or BIUP)

The new URL, email address, and other features will be announced really soon. I might have the site ready before the beginning of March! I bet everyone will love the changes.

For up to date news about the new website, follow me (@idashur) on Twitter.

Password Tips

For your own security, you should remember the following tips for your webmail client:

1. Use a relatively complicated password (e.g., “ClearSkyL8@Night”

rather than “clearskies”). The key is to have at least a change of case and a number, or change of case and a special character, or number and special character – preferably a couple of each category – and to make sure it’s at least around 11 characters long if you can (but at the very least, 8 characters long).

2. Use different passwords for email and for bank accounts. There are all sorts of tricks you can use.

3. If you log into your email from another person’s account, change the password when you get home.

4. Make sure your anti-virus software on your home computer is up to date (which can prevent key loggers that can capture your passwords).

5. Never enter your password into a page you reached by clicking an email link. Just don’t do it. You’ll be happier that way.

2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver (BIUS EPISODE 2.1 — SPECIAL OLYMPICS EDITION)

Happy Valentine’s Day, Readers!

The 2010 Winter Olympics have finally debuted in Vancouver, BC, Canada! I live in Vancouver, and I can tell you, while it was all ‘Welcome athletes!’, and ‘Go World,’ it has been hell in Vancouver when it came to traffic, and transit, for the past month.

On Friday, instead of the one hour it usually takes me to get home from school, it took me two. The reason? There were no buses available, and the roads were jam packed with cars and trucks. After waiting for a good half-an-hour for the bus, I gave up and walked a ‘relaxing’ 5 kilometers to another busy bus stop. The point is, it was SUPER busy here. I think Vancouver’s attracting great attention! (besides those idiotic anti-olympic demonstrators, and the sad death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumartashvili)

I watched the Opening Ceremony on TV, of course, and it was the best one I had ever seen. However, when the hydraulic system failed at the end, I felt like turning the TV off. A real heart-stopping moment for everyone, there.

Enough of that. The Olympics are going pretty well so far. For now, I’ve only watched the men’s and women’s moguls, women’s hockey, figure skating, and luge. The Canadian women’s hockey team, as many of you know, beat Team Slovakia 18-0 on Saturday night, breaking an Olympic record. While l was happy for Canada’s victory, I still felt happy for Slovakia’s women’s team, for making their Olympic debut, and doing a great job. I still can’t wait to see the men play.

Moving on to men’s luge: I was feeling really nervous while I was watching the event because after watching the disturbing video of Nodar Kumartashvili’s death, I was scarred for the next two days. I couldn’t stop thinking or tweeting about it. Nevertheless, I now feel more comfortable watching luge. I was really impressed with the Germans and the Canadians.

*******

I’m taking two weeks off of school now, therefore I’ll be watching the Olympics almost the whole day every day. I’ll be tweeting about Olympic news a lot; just look for the #van2010 hashtag in my tweets. Please don’t expect professional-quality news equivalent to NBC’s or CTV’s; I’m just doing this for fun! =)

*******

JOKE OF THE WEEK!!!

An Illinois man left the snowballed streets of Chicago for a vacation in Florida. His wife was on a business trip and was planning to meet him there the next day. When he reached his hotel, he decided to send his wife a quick e-mail.

Unable to find the scrap of paper on which he had written her e-mail address, he did his best to type it in from memory. Unfortunately, he missed one letter, and his note was directed instead to an elderly preacher’s wife whose husband had passed away only the day before. When the grieving widow checked her e-mail, she took one look at the monitor, let out a piercing scream, and fell to the floor dead.

At the sound, her family rushed into the room and saw this note on the screen:

Dearest Wife,

Just got checked in. Everything prepared for your arrival tomorrow.

Your Loving Husband.

P.S. Sure is hot down here.

Misunderstandings are always annoying. But this joke was well written. One of my favorites.

That brings an end to this week’s media-less Special Olympic Edition BossItUp Series episode! Thank you for reading! I appreciate all the comments you’re sending me! Also, thanks a bunch for following me on Twitter.

Enjoy the 2010 Olympics!!

What should you do during an earthquake?

Just don’t hide under the table. Most of what they taught us at school about earthquake safety can’t be compared to scientific research.

My dad sent me an email the other day, that listed an earthquake expert’s directions on what to do when an earthquake strikes. I hope you enjoy it. Please pass it on to save lives!

*******

EXTRACT FROM DOUG COPP’S ARTICLE ON THE: “TRIANGLE OF LIFE”

My name is Doug Copp. I am the Rescue Chief and Disaster Manager of
the American Rescue Team International (ARTI), the world’s most
experienced rescue team. The information in this article will save
lives in an earthquake.

I have crawled inside 875 collapsed buildings, worked with rescue
teams from 60 countries, founded rescue teams in several countries,
and I am a member of many rescue teams from many countries…

I was the United Nations expert in Disaster Mitigation for two years.
I have worked at every major disaster in the world since 1985, except
for simultaneous disasters.

The first building I ever crawled inside of was a school in Mexico
City during the 1985 earthquake. Every child was under its desk. Every
child was crushed to the thickness of their bones. They could have
survived by lying down next to their desks in the aisles. It was
obscene, unnecessary and I wondered why the children were not in the
aisles. I didn’t at the time know that the children were told to hide
under something.

Simply stated, when buildings collapse, the weight of the ceilings
falling upon the objects or furniture inside crushes these objects,
leaving a space or void next to them. This space is what I call the
“triangle of life”.
The larger the object, the stronger, the less it will compact. The
less the object compacts, the larger the void, the greater the
probability that the person who is using this void for safety will not
be injured. The next time you watch collapsed buildings, on
television, count the “triangles” you see formed. They are everywhere.
It is the most common shape, you will see, in a collapsed building.

TIPS FOR EARTHQUAKE SAFETY

1) Most everyone who simply “ducks and covers” WHEN BUILDINGS COLLAPSE
are crushed to death. People who get under objects, like desks or
cars, are crushed.

2) Cats, dogs and babies often naturally curl up in the fetal
position. You should too in an earthquake… It is a natural
safety/survival instinct. You can survive in a smaller void. Get next
to an object, next to a sofa, next to a large bulky object that will
compress slightly but leave a void next to it.

3) Wooden buildings are the safest type of construction to be in
during an earthquake. Wood is flexible and moves with the force of the
earthquake.  If the wooden building does collapse, large survival
voids are created. Also, the wooden building has less concentrated,
crushing weight. Brick buildings will break into individual bricks.
Bricks will cause many injuries but less squashed bodies than concrete
slabs.

4) If you are in bed during the night and an earthquake occurs, simply
roll off the bed. A safe void will exist around the bed. Hotels can
achieve a much greater survival rate in earthquakes, simply by posting
a sign on The back of the door of every room telling occupants to lie
down on the floor, next to the bottom of the bed during an earthquake.

5) If an earthquake happens and you cannot easily escape by getting
out the door or window, then lie down and curl up in the fetal
position next to a sofa, or large chair.

6) Most everyone who gets under a doorway when buildings collapse is
killed. How? If you stand under a doorway and the doorjamb falls
forward or backward you will be crushed by the ceiling above. If the
door jam falls sideways you will be cut in half by the doorway. In
either case, you will be killed!

7) Never go to the stairs. The stairs have a different “moment of
frequency” (they swing separately from the main part of the building).
The stairs and remainder of the building continuously bump into each
other until structural failure of the stairs takes place. The people
who get on stairs before they fail are chopped up by the stair treads
– horribly mutilated. Even if the building doesn’t collapse, stay away
from the stairs. The stairs are a likely part of the building to be
damaged. Even if the stairs are not collapsed by the earthquake, they
may collapse later when overloaded by fleeing people. They should
always be checked for safety, even when the rest of the building is
not damaged.

8) Get Near the Outer Walls Of Buildings Or Outside Of Them If
Possible – It is much better to be near the outside of the building
rather than the interior. The farther inside you are from the outside
perimeter of the building the greater the probability that your escape
route will be blocked.

9) People inside of their vehicles are crushed when the road above
falls in an earthquake and crushes their vehicles; which is exactly
what happened with the slabs between the decks of the Nimitz
Freeway… The victims of the San Francisco earthquake all stayed
inside of their vehicles. They were all killed. They could have easily
survived by getting out and sitting or lying next to their vehicles.
Everyone killed would have survived if they had been able to get out
of their cars and sit or lie next to them. All the crushed cars had
voids 3 feet high next to them, except for the cars that had columns
fall directly across them.

10) I discovered, while crawling inside of collapsed newspaper offices
and other offices with a lot of paper, that paper does not compact.
Large voids are found surrounding stacks of paper.

*******

Don’t forget to pass it on!

Two Camels + One Car (BIUS Episode 2.0)

Welcome to the second season of the BossItUp Series!

I have a few funny videos that I’m going to show you today, and of course, I’ll also add in the Joke Of The Week. Are you ready?

Something that will make you laugh out loud is the thought of seeing two camels in a car. Imagine what that would look like! Fortunately, someone caught it on tape, and it’s going to appear here, on the blog.

Who’s smart idea was it to pack those lovely animals in such a huge car? The description explains that the camels were stuffed in that car so that they could be transported someplace. However, why were they so angry? They got a free ride!

*******

The next video I’m going to show you is of a dog doing what a puppy I used to own always did. Behold, the dragging canine!

Didn’t believe me when I said “dragging”, eh? Sheesh, thank God I replaced all my carpets with hardwood, otherwise my carpets would have stunk.

*******

Rawr…

Now look at that friendly bear!

I think that that baby thought that the polar bear is the same one that appears in the Coca-Cola ads. He has a lot to learn about advertisements later on in his life! They just look cute together.

*******

It’s time for the JOKE OF THE WEEK!!

At the end of the funeral service the pall bearers are carrying the casket out. When they accidentally bump into a wall jarring the casket. They hear a faint moan. They open the casket and find that the woman is actually alive.

She lives for ten more years and then dies. A ceremony is again held at the same place and at the end of the ceremony the pall bearers are again carrying out the casket.

As they are walking the husband cries out, “watch out for the wall!”

Now, I hate jokes that talk about dead people, but this one was actually funny! The man needs to get a life, though. Why would he want his wife dead?

*******

Thanks for reading today’s episode!  I hope you liked it! If you have any comments, suggestions, or you just want to say hello, feel free to leave a comment, send an email at theboss.ul@gmail.com, or tweet me @idashur! Any feedback is appreciated!

Until next time, enjoy your weekend and have a splendid week!

What’s going on?!

Good evening, Readers. It’s been a while!

This week was exam week, therefore I had to study for and write exams, beginning from last Sunday. That didn’t really allow me to post on BossItUp. However, I was able to tweet. As I’ve mentioned many times before, Twitter is my secondary blog. I use it to post when I’m really busy, and when I don’t have any time to go on WordPress and post. It’s just an iPod app away. But now, since I’m free once again, I’ll post more often.

Tomorrow is Friday, which means that a new episode and season of the BossItUp Series are coming out!

*******

Finally, before I go to sleep, I want to tell you guys that in a bit, BossItUp is evolving into a completely new site. As you’ve probably read on my Twitter page, I’ve bought a web domain. I’m currently installing WordPress onto it. The new website will bring many new features that are impossible to add here. I’m sure you will all love it! I’ll explain more about this project later.

Sorry for the short post, but you’ll hear more from me tomorrow and this weekend! Goodnight!!

Rusty wheels (BIUS EPISODE 1.9 — SEASON FINALE)

Hello Readers, and welcome to BossItUp Series’ Season 1’s final episode!

Are you bored? Are you thinking of something crazy and awesome to do this year? How about purchase a £400 ($672 CA) old car and start driving from London, UK to Mongolia with no GPS or backup? No? Is it just me? Ok, I’m kidding. However this Mongol Rally has really happened for the past few years. There are about 300 different teams who take part. It takes 12 months of planning, and looking for sponsors. Probably you’re thinking, “Sponsors? Why sponsors?” My answer? Look at the cars. There are logos everywhere.

The rally lasts about 5 weeks. The drivers get to drive through may different countries, try new food, etc. It’s well worth all the preparation stress. I have some other photos to show you:

The article is really long for me to cover in one episode. Therefore, I’m attaching a link so that you can read the whole thing, and take a look at all the great photos! http://bit.ly/mongolrallyonbiu

******

I’m going to show you a video of two thieves escaping on a scooter. However, their plans fail once they bump into this bystander. Actually, I didn’t really mean it in that way; the bystander bumped into them.

Ouch. I just love the way he took his bicycle and and hit them with it. You should have seen me laughing when I watched this! Tears were included too. 😀 Karma just comes back at you.

******

There’s this photo I found a photo of a cat on http://ICanHasCheezburger.com/. It’s trying to be a submarine!

I better run away because sooner or later, it might kill me. Those green eyes might have the ability to zoom…just like in a submarine.

******

JOKE OF THE WEEK!

Trust me, you’ll crack up.

This guy goes up to a bar located at the top of the Empire State Building in New York. It looks like a nice place, and he takes a seat at the bar.

“This is a nice place. I’ve never been here before,” he says to the guy next to him.
“Oh, really?” the other replies. “It is a nice place. It’s also a very special bar.”
“Why is that?” the first guy asks. “Well, do you see that painting on the far wall? That’s an original Van Gogh, and this stool I’m sitting on was on the Titanic.”
“Gee, that’s amazing!” says the first guy.
“Not only that, but you see that window over there, fourth from the right? Well, the wind does strange things outside that window. If you jump out you’ll fall about 50 feet before the wind catches you and you’re pushed back up.”
“No way! That’s impossible,” the guy scoffs.
“Not at all. Take a look,” the other man replies, and with that he walks over to the window and opens it. He climbs over the sill and falls out. He drops 10… 20… 30… 40…50 feet, comes to a stop, and whoosh — he comes right back up and sails back through the window. “See? It’s fun. You should try it,” he says.
“Try it? I don’t even believe I saw it!” the first man shouts.
“It’s easy. Watch, I’ll do it again.” And with that, he falls out the window again. He drops 10… 20… 30… 40… 50 feet, comes to a stop, and whoosh — he comes right back up and sails back through the window. “Give it a try. It’s a blast,” he says.
“Well, what the heck, I’ll give it a try,” the first man says, and proceeds to fall out the window. He falls 10… 20… 30… 40… 50…60…70…80…90… 100 feet and splat — he ends up as road pizza on the sidewalk.
After watching this, the second guy casually closes the window, heads back to the bar and orders a drink. The bartender arrives with the drink and says, “You know, Superman, you’re a real jerk when you’re drunk.”

Thank you for reading this season’s final episode! It’s been a great start to the Series! Season two is coming in a week or two!

Don’t forget: If you would like to submit something, PLEASE email me at bossitup.ul@gmail.com, or tweet me a link, photo, or video at either http://twitter.com/idashur or http://twitter.com/bossitup.

See you later! 😉

2010: BossItUp featured on Google!! (Happy New Year!)

Happy New Years, everyone!! I’m really happy that the new year and decade has finally arrived! I hope everyone enjoyed their holidays!

To start off 2010, I have some great news. Boss It Up! now comes up as a search result on Google if you search “bossitup wordpress”! A few sites also have added my site and my Twitter accounts to their search directory. However, on the other hand, there is something you guys should be aware of. A few other sites have used my username and my blog’s link in either comments or posts. So if you see a comment from the names “idashur” or “The Boss” which was posted before July 2009, then that is not me.

I took a screenshot of the search page. 🙂

Look at all those links!

Holy Cow! (BIUS EPISODE 1.8)

Hi Readers, welcome to this week’s episode!

I’d like to start this episode with an article that went viral a few days ago on a UK newspaper, The Guardian. Ever wondered why the nursery rhyme about the cow jumping over the moon was written? I think this is a reason:

Geronimo!!

The witnesses thought they were going mad!

“At first I thought that it was an illusion and that it was in the background and not really on the roof… But after a closer look I could see it was actually on the roof.”

That was exactly what I meant.

Here’s another piece of text that was written in that article:

The house owner in Blagdon, Somerset, called police after getting home to find her roof seriously damaged and smashed tiles as she feared a burglar had tried to break in.

Local PC Ray Bradley said: “This was initially recorded on my figures as a burglary so I am glad I can take it off.

“If it wasn’t for the door-to-door enquires and this photo we wouldn’t have found out it was a cow responsible.”

Imagine if the man took the cow to court. The procedure would’ve probably resembled to this:

Judge: “Sally the Cow, you’re being charged for burglary and property damage. Do you plead guilty or not guilty?”
Cow: *nothing*
J: “Sally, do you plead guilty or not guilty?
C: *still nothing*
J: “Sally!”
C: “Moooooo!”
J: “Forget it…”

Some people are just sad.

(Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/6831123/Cow-jumps-six-feet-on-to-roof.html)

Joke of the week!

Readers, I’m going to start doing this every episode. I loved what I did to Episode 1.7…

A woman gets on a bus with her baby. The bus driver says: “That’s the ugliest baby that I’ve ever seen. Ugh!” The woman goes to the rear of the bus and sits down, fuming. She says to a man next to her: “The driver just insulted me!” The man says: “You go right up there and tell him off – go ahead, I’ll hold your monkey for you.”

Thanks for watching this week’s episode of BossItUp Series! I’ll see you next week! Until then, Merry Christmas!

The First Million Digits of pi

Ever wondered how many digits there were in the equation pi? There are about a trillion! Fortunately, I got a hold of the first million digits. This will take a lot of scrolling. Click on the “Read More” link to read the whole post. Source: http://www.eveandersson.com/pi/ (Firefox froze when I pasted this onto here…sad)

3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510
58209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679
82148086513282306647093844609550582231725359408128
48111745028410270193852110555964462294895493038196
44288109756659334461284756482337867831652712019091
45648566923460348610454326648213393607260249141273
72458700660631558817488152092096282925409171536436
78925903600113305305488204665213841469519415116094
33057270365759591953092186117381932611793105118548

“Nom nom nom!” (BIUS EPISODE 1.7)

‘Evening, Readers! I know it’s been a really long time since I’ve posted, therefore I’m making it up to you this week. Today, I’ll publish this post, and probably a write another one about how crazy the weather has been acting here in Vancouver. There will be more details on that coming later.

After reading some of my posts, you’ve probably come to the conclusion that I’m a cat-lover. You’re right. I also really enjoy to watch videos of them doing really cute or funny things. I just can’t help but blog about anything amazing I find about cats on the internet. The following video I’m going to show you explains everything about my liking:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl5Pfc5TyO0 (currently embedding video)

As the cat is licking the sour cream (that’s what I think it is), you can literally hear it saying “nom nom nom,” the words most people post online (mostly on Twitter) when they’re eating something really delicious. If you’re sitting there and wondering, “What? What do the words ‘nom nom nom’ have to do with eating?” My answer is, try to remember something: if you watched Sesame Street when you were a child — I bet most of you did — do you remember Cookie Monster chowing down on his cookies? For the Readers who have never seen or heard Cookie Monster before, I did a little research on YouTube, and I found a recent song released by Sesame Workshop, the Sesame Street producing organization, starring the furry blue monster. The song is about the letter ‘C’ and how it’s the first letter of the word ‘cookie’. If you would like to quickly get to the point in where he says “nom nom nom”, skip to the time 1:23.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cqz9ZXUoUcE#movie_player (currently embedding video)

Ahhh, good times…. Woops, I almost forgot I’m writing a post. Kids shows that I used to watch make me really happy for some reason.

While browsing the web, I came across this image:

Aww, doesn't he look smart?

Tech weirdness (BIUS EPISODE 1.6)

Good evening (for the readers in the Pacific), and hello to everyone else! I’d like to start off by explaining why I didn’t write up an episode last week. The first term was ending at school, therefore I had finals. My apologies, once again.

This week’s episode is going to be full of images of technology glitches and parodies!

A photo of a so called “SafeSurfer” made me laugh when I found it on the Internet:

As you can see, instead of using a screen dimmer/protector, the man in this photo is wearing what I can call a “head sweater.” Also, did you take a look a the price?! 3 easy payments of $99.95. That just doesn’t feel right 🙂

Another photo I’m going to show you is a screenshot I took on my iPod touch of a game called Sheep Launcher ($0.99 or free demo). The goal of the game is to launch a sheep in the sky and tap it to make it go higher, and get it as high up as possible before you miss. You can even send the sheep deep into orbit! 😀
Recently, the makers of this game released an update for this application in Apple’s App Store. To celebrate the upcoming holidays, they temporarily replaced the sheep character with Santa Claus. However, they forgot to change something really embarrassing…

The Verizon + AT&T war still continues…

Remember yesterday, when I posted the episode about Verizon attacking AT&T with the “there’s a map for that” commercials? A while ago, AT&T filed a lawsuit against Verizon. The folks over at The iPhone Blog.com covered what Verizon said in reply to the lawsuit:

AT&T did not file this lawsuit because Verizon’s “There’s A Map For That” advertisements are untrue; AT&T sued because Verizon’s ads are true and the truth hurts.

This is probably only the beginning of this company war.

***UPDATE***

AT&T finally retorts with a brand new commercial. Check it out:

 

Explaining my two-week absence

I usually post a lot on this blog. Last month, October 2009, I published 11 posts: my personal best.

However, these two weeks, I only posted the two BossItUp Series episodes. Yes, quite disappointing. And if you’re wondering what happened, I’ll just tell you that I was really occupied with many things. There’s only two weeks left to the first school term, therefore I’m simply finishing up everything on my list before the term ends.

Hope that explains everything! If you have any questions or concerns, either leave a comment on the Suggestions page (https://bossitup.wordpress.com/suggestions), send me a tweet on Twitter at @idashur, or send me an email at theboss.ul@gmail.com.