I’m really not a Wal-Mart hater. But I have never heard anyone have any luck with fish from Wal-Mart. I got fish at Wal-Mart before and they didn’t last very long, they got sick, yadda yadda, it just didn’t work too well.

I was told that when leaving Wal-Mart with your happy new fish that you must lift the bag above the security gate. These theft deterrent systems create a magnetic field that you must walk through when leaving the store and that your fish must also go through. These fields don’t affect us, I’ve never died after leaving Wal-Mart or anything other retailer with such device. But fish are totally different from us!

I stumbled across an article that tested the effects of the magnetic fields from electric lines on fish. The results were that the fish died. I find this interesting. [article] Maybe there is some fact for magnetic fields and fish death. In the article the fish died 1 to 2 years later, but she was not using magnetic security gates, which I feel would be much stronger.

I don’t know for certain if there is a correlation between fish death at Wal-Mart and security gates, but I think it is an interesting question to pose.

local6.com out of Orlando is reporting that Wal-mart is going to sell Jesus, religious action figures. From the article, “more than 420 Wal-Mart stores nationwide will begin carrying the faith-based toys that include Jesus and Samson action figures“. Yes, that’s right, religion + retail = greatness. /* END SARCASM */

I feel a bit uneasy about faith based toys being sold at Wal-mart, but anything to make a buck. When I was a kid we had G.I. Joes and Transformers. Are toy companies out of ideas? I guess so.

I’m not sure about the credibility of this story, because the company One2Believe has a webstore, but it is a Yahoo! store front [here]. A company with a Yahoo! webstore that is selling to Wal-Mart? I just don’t know what to think, their mission statement includes the following: “to find a way to help children learn vital Bible lessons via Scripture and to ultimately come to faith in Jesus”. Are toys the way to salvation? And bundle this with the religion + retail. Interesting to say that least.

From the article.

“Girls who complain about their problems at greater risk of developing anxiety and depression”

I’m definitely not making this up! Good read though. This is pretty interesting because boys who complain to friends do not develop these problems. I’m not a psychologist but I think all women are nuts. Kidding!

I think this has a message for all of us though, don’t dwell on your problems.

I have been way busy that past 15 or so days! Unbelievable. Believe it. At work we are doing a MPLS network rollover so that has been enjoyable. Also we are opening another branch, so I have been busy running network cables and such. Good times.

In the little free time I have gotten I’ve been listening to twit and diggnation; my favorite podcasts netcasts; I am definitely for changing podcast to netcast. I digress. Twit is really cool. I would really like to do a netcast one day with my views on technology and the world around us.

So here are some links on how to make your own PODCAST/NETCAST

A nice beginner tutorial
Cnet Guide In-depth
Podcast Alley podcasters
Little overview of podcasting

Audacity seems to be the program of choice for podcasting/netcasting in the Windows/Linux world. I have used this program before to record music off a PA system and it works really well. Open source is great. I will look into this more. Again I think a podcast/netcast would be a very fun thing to do.