Friday, September 30, 2011

Banking in the United States

When one tries to open an account in a bank, in the United States, the first question might be: which is a safer one? There might be many criteria to answer that, but ranking can be a quick reference.
The New York Job Source has The Largest Banks in the U.S., also Largest Bank Holding Companies in the U.S.
If the bank of interest is not even among the top 50, or if one wants to look for a bank in certain states, Yennik Inc. gives an comprehensive list of "US Banks on the Internet". usbankslist.com also has a similar list,  all sorted by states.

As to how many banks there are in the United States, answers.com has the answer as below. Give or take the changes, over 9000 in tatal! One must have never realized there are so many banks out there, healthy or not.

Chart 4. The title is "Number of U.S. Banks by Size Category"

A bar chart. 4,893 banks or savings institutions have more than $100 million in assets; 3,517 have $100 to $500 million; 859 have $500 million to $5 billion; 150 have $5 to $50 billion; and 22 have more than $50 billion.

4883
3517
859
150
50
=====
9459 banks with $100 million or more.

Although a sane mind won't even bother to think about, there should more payday loan, pawnbrokers or credit union loans type of financing business. The payday loan is legal and regulated only in 37 states though.

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Things Not To Say During Sex

  • I have to poop.

  • Smile for the camera!

  • Get off me, I'll do it myself!

  • This is your first time...right?

  • You're almost as good as my ex!

  • When is this supposed to feel good?

  • I thought YOU had the keys to the handcuffs?!

  • I was so horny tonight I would have taken a sheep home.

  • Keep it down, my mother is a light sleeper.

  • Hey! My friends were right! You ARE good!

  • On second thought, let's turn the lights off.

  • I'm sobering up and you're getting ugly!

  • But everybody looks funny naked!

  • Do I have to pay for this?

  • No! You're too fat to be on top. You'd kill me!

  • Actually, your sister 'likes' it like this.

  • What's your name again?

  • Hold on, let me change the channel.

  • It's nice being in bed with someone I don't have to inflate.

  • Uhhh...I think the condom broke 10 minuts ago.


Talking about rankings, TopTenZ.net is a very interesting site, listing up all kinds of top 10, from bizarre, entertainment, food, health, history, humuor, music, people, podcast, politics, religion, sports to travel. The problem is, it often gets "Error establishing a database connection". Maybe it is because of maintenance. From there, I found one of the weirdest phenomenons I have ever known: the rat king (Top 10 Rare and Important Archeological Finds).

Aneki.com has a more straightforward top 10 list. While some information are no longer true, most of them are still true or quite close, and fun to read.

top-10-list.org is also a good place to go, covering the topics of Auto, Business, Education, Entertainment,Featured, Health, Mis, People, Sport, Technology, Travel, Video etc. From there, found a picture on fotomage, creative in a stupid way.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Stuff for Nerds - News, Gedgets, Reviews and Stuff

According to Wikipedia, "Nerd is a term that refers to an intelligent but single-minded person obsessed with a nonsocial hobby or pursuit. Nerds are generally considered to be awkward, shy and/or unattractive by most. Thus, a nerd is often excluded from physical activity and considered a loner by others, or will tend to associate with a small group of like-minded people."

On-line dictionary of Oxford has a much simpler definition: A nerd is "a foolish or contemptible person who lacks social skills or is boringly studious".

Whatever the definition is, it is often quite fun to just surf around anything entitled nerd something.

Nerd Approved has news about gadgets and gizmos whatsoever imaginable, and hot in the media.

Nerd News has all news, rumors and reports about new technology, gears, nerdy news and so on. The LOL session, while not being updated frequently, is especially fun to read, if just for killing some time.

Topless Robot specializes in start wars, transformers, batman, impressive nerdy arts etc.

Nerd News and Reviews is more into video games, books, comics, movies, music, TC etc.


Saturday, September 24, 2011

VMware Workstation unrecoverable error: (vcpu-0)

I love VMware, VMware player to be specific, not only because it is free, but also because it gives me the ability to use different operating systems on the same computer, without bothering which boot manager to use, or worse, whether any of my operating system on a partition get corrupted.

But nothing is perfect, once I got the error of "VMware Workstation unrecoverable error: (vcpu-0)", when restoring my suspended Windows XP (I love XP! Why using the heavier and full of useless tasks 7? And don't even bother the coming Windows 8!).
Getting panic, with great fear of having lost all of my precious data in it, I started finding to rescue solution. Without much difficulty, I found it.

It's nothing of a rocket science: just do a disk check (see VWMare's help page).

Anybody familiar with command window, type "chkdsk c: /r" and hit the return key. "c" is the drive where the image file of VMWare is located. Wait until it finish, play the same image gain, there it goes!

Below is part of the original message.
VMware Player unrecoverable error: (vmx)
Exception 0xc0000006 (disk error while paging) has occurred.
A log file is available in "C:\VMWare\MB3CORE\vmware.log". A core file is available in "C:\VMWare\MB3CORE\vmware-vmx-3404.dmp". Please request support and include the contents of the log file and core file.
To collect data to submit to VMware support, run "vm-support".
We will respond on the basis of your support entitlement.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Top Ten Reasons to Date a Photographer

Found this on PhotoQuotes.com, posted anonymously and very grown-up oriented.
  1. They work well in the dark

  2. They’re used to funny smells

  3. They make things develop

  4. They work well on many settings

  5. They know how to focus

  6. They can make big things look small and small things look big

  7. They work well from many different angles

  8. They zoom in and out. And in and out and in and out and in and out...

  9. They shoot in many different locations

  10. They can find the beauty in anything

Monday, September 19, 2011

Emoticons and smileys for Google Talk


Here’s a list of utterly new emoticons/smileys:
Classic
Round
Square
Type this

Cowbell

Cowbell

Cowbell
+/’\

Crab

Crab

Crab
V.v.V

Devil

Devil

Devil
}:-)

Equal sad

Equal sad

Equal sad
=(

Equal slant

Equal slant

Equal slant
=/

Equal tongue

Equal tongue

Equal tongue
=P

Nose sad

Nose sad

Nose sad
:-(

Smile

Smile

Smile
:)

Wince

Wince

Wince
>.<

Nose tongue

Nose tongue

Nose tongue
:-P

Pig
Pig

Pig
:(:)

Broken Heart

Broken Heart

Broken Heart
</3

Kiss

Kiss

Kiss
:-x

Kiss

Kiss

Kiss
:*

Mustache

Mustache

Mustache
:{

Beneath are emoticons from my previous post. For reference I am again displaying them here.
Classic
Round
Square
Type this

Heart/Love

Heart/Love

Heart/Love
<3

It’s a monkey!

It’s a monkey!

It’s a monkey!
:(|)

Rock out.

Rock out.

Rock out.
\m/

Shocked

Shocked

Shocked
:-o

Grin

Grin

Grin
:D

Frown

Frown

Frown
:(

Angry

Angry

Angry
x-(

Cool

Cool

Cool
B-)

Cry

Cry

Cry
:’(

Equal Grin

Equal Grin

Equal Grin
=D

Wink

Wink

Wink
;)

Straight Face

Straight Face

Straight Face
:-|

Equal Smile

Equal Smile

Equal Smile
=)

Nose Grin

Nose Grin

Nose Grin
:-D

Big nose wink

Big nose wink

Big nose wink
;^)

Nose wink

Nose wink

Nose wink
;-)

Nose smile

Nose smile

Nose smile
:-)

Slant

Slant

Slant
:-/

Tongue

Tongue

Tongue
:P
(Copied from gtricks.com)