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Tony Robbins and Chet Holmes

It has officially been 7 days of owning IMeye. Although my review process didn’t go as planned mainly because I felt I didn’t have enough to say and would hold it to the end.  So here it is the Grand Finale of my review… are you ready? I sure hope so ;o)

You probably won’t be that impressed with it like you would with the 4th of July fireworks display but I hope to pass on some valuable information which may or may not determine if you will go boldly as I did and make a substantial purchase, subscription even, or not.

Day 3  and 4 were like all my other days, part time with IMeye, but even more so because they were weekend days and I had to split the time with work and family and IMeye was pushed to the side – I do have priorities believe it or not ;o) These two days were spent playing with the program and re-watching the videos and playing some more. I feel that you really have to do this before you invest any further money i.e buying a website, marketing etc..

It was time well spent and I learned a valuable lesson in doing so. I learned not to be too dramatic with the parameters. Although it would be great to find keyword or keyword phrases that has 1,000,000 searches a month with only 10,000 competing pages it is highly unlikely you will find this nugget (I guess it could happen) and if this is all you’re looking for you will likely never find value in this tool as the odds are a 1 in a million that you will stumble across these. To sum up these two days – don’t set unrealistic parameters and work a little harder sorting through 10 pages or even 25 pages of realistic results to find profitable keywords.

Day  5 was the most exciting as I settled into IMeye and started to understand what I should be looking for and even created a process that accelerated my research once I had 20 pages of results. To the point that I feel within 2 hours I can find 4-6 golden opportunities that could be right for me! That is really a big deal because if you go back to my Day 1 review you may remember me stating that it used to take 1 day minimum (6 – 8 hours) for me to find an okay keyword or two and even then I wasn’t necessarily confident with  my results. IMeye effectively saved me 24 – 36 hours of straight work and I hope that the results are at least 50% better than my old process!

Day 5 was the day that I purchased a domain name which was not only word for word but contained no hyphens, no extra words or broad terms which matched my keyword phrase… it was spot on! I’m excited about the potential of this find and as you can probably guess the remained of my days have been building this website, which I hope to have results that come close to paying for my subscription each month.

Day 6 and 7 revealed a big  person problem. Since I am NOT a full time IM’er and my old process used to take SOOO long to find a good keyword or keyword phrase considering I don’t have but a few hours to play online each day and 8 hours of work is basically 4 days, 5 if I choose to do anything else online, it would be the weekend before I would be able to buy the domain and the weekend belongs to the family. Monday would then roll around and my focus could easily get lost. With that loss of focus I found out that I’m not nearly as good with the website creation and SEO that I used to be when I was really into this. In fact this was really a big part in why I stopped making websites about 6 months ago that were worth a darn. The nice thing is the few sites that I did make, which were profitable, are still to this day providing me income that has kept IM’ing of interest to me.

Now with IMeye I should be able to start a project on Monday and have 4 days to knock out the website. Once I get fined tuned (again) I could do 1 site a week, but that will take some time, so for now it is a process that I will refine and hopefully with the motivation and focus leading me I will find my process and reach that goal. The truth behind all of this is that IMeye has given me an opportunity to regain my momentum  that I didn’t realize that I had lost. That alone is worth the price of admission.

It might not seem like a question as to weather or not I will stay with IMeye by reading this but yesterday was a huge push to stick with it. I received an email from Tim and Steve (the creators or IMeye). It basically said; They were amazed that so many “new” IM’er had purchased this product as they thought only the veterans would jump on it at this price point and that they realized they had to do more to get everyone of their members up to speed. To the point that they are giving away FREE “Mining Money Online” which is there “beginner’s product” which “should level the playing field and give everyone the background in Internet marketing to take full advantage of all IMeye opportunities”.

Think about this fact alone. Tim and Steve didn’t say – what we give you with IMeye is all that you get, but rather, we are going to give you more because we realize that you may need it to be successful with IMeye and we want you to be successful. If you’re a pessimist you will say they mean we want your money and so you don’t get overwhelmed and walk away here is something more for you too look at, but I disagree with that reasoning.

The email also stated  they “will be doing a series of VERY detailed examples of how we use IMeye, and posting these once a week” which was one of my complaints during my day 2 review. This is awesome and is respected as they have put a lot of time and effort into IMeye and so many who create a product, come launch time, they want nothing more than to cash checks rather than re-creating their training.

The final item I will note here which is a big deal with the email was the reiteration of the price raise due to hit the product, possibly as early as tomorrow. If you really think about this they didn’t expect such a huge rush in membership and if they really want to make this exclusive going forward they may increase the price greatly to slow down membership and find their target price / membership enrollment. Fortunately for me and all the others who come in at the lower pricing is we are locked in. So if you’re on the edge and don’t want to try it out for more than it costs today I would suggest you get in now while the getting is good. Your choice totally by my choice is to stick with it and see what I can do, as IMeye seems to really be a big answer to one of my biggest problems I have had in t he past.

I may do a summary post a little later on with another follow-up but for now to my readers I hope this was of value to you and that I have helped in some way to better your buying decision of IMeye.

I’ve got to be honest, my IMeye Day 2 Review almost didn’t happen. Not because I’ve gave up but rather I’m working some long days and haven’t been able to really dig into IMeye as much as I would have liked to at this point. However I’ve given myself the challenge of doing an updated review each day until I decided it’s not right for me or  after7 days which ever comes first. With this goal in mind I’ve got to put in some serious time when I just don’t have much available… with that being said on to the Day 2 review.

If you missed my Day 1 review click HERE and read it first (just makes sense to me)

My second day with IMeye I’ve decided to stick with the research theory I usually stick to and adapt it to learn, learn and learn some more. I spent some time watching the 5 training videos (which is all that is on the membership side at this point). I was satisfied for the most part with the videos but some were better than others.

I would have liked to hear less of the “creating a how-to video on IMeye is like having to create a how-to video on a hammer” and more “yes there are so many ways to make IMeye work for you but in this video we are going to show xx ways to accomplish a task”. Just because there are a lot of abilities of the program I don’t need to hear that all the time… show me the basics or what you think is best and I’ll figure out ways to adapt it to my needs. ANYWAY that is a minor annoyance to me and the videos did help me out a lot BUT there is one video I felt robbed on. The “Domain Name” video was so short. Almost like they thought hey we need a video about this but I’ve got to wash my new car so I’m going to spend 5 minutes slapping a sub-par video on the site. The biggest complaint is that this video seems to have started from the middle of the how-to. I felt like I missed something and although it doesn’t do it justice it does provide some very basic info and some explanation.

I’ve played with IMeye and I have been so tempted to jump in create a website but one thing I haven’t mentioned is that with IMeye you also get (for FREE) “Keyword Blueprint” and “Traffic Travis Pro” both of which are a great compliment to IMeye. These two products will take a little bit of playing with so I can really utilize the tools to make a GREAT decision before I make my first move of creating a website. I like getting things for FREE but I don’t when they pull me off course of my original goal and these products don’t pull me off my goal, rather increase my focus and effect-ability (I hope). Both are very relevant to IMeye and compliment it well! For these two HUGE freebie’s I say THANK YOU!!!

If you pay for either of these tools on a subscription basis (not sure how they are sold) and you want IMeye then you can save some dough and cancel them as you get them for free now. There is one product though that they give away for free titled “the 6 super affiliate secrets that could revolutionize your business this year” which I choose not to download, one because I have to join another list to get it and it sounds too much like a freebie that will take me off course and I will deal with not revolutionizing my business at this point because I don’t (for all intents and purposes) have a business with IMeye tactics yet… I’m still learning.

To wrap up my Day 2 review I will say this: The training area in IMeye could be improved, yes but I’ve also seen much worse and feel that the training provided adds value and I would expect in the coming days and weeks for more training and improvements of the current videos to happen as this is only Day 2 of the public doors being open for IMeye.

Tomorrow I will write Day 3′s review but once again I’ve got a full day’s work ahead of me away from IMeye (yes on Saturday).  Until tomorrow evening I will let some of this sink in and oh yeah didn’t tell you in the review I did tweak one thing on one of my websites using IMeye tactics and will report if I see any results, I don’t expect to get much if any because it is a minor tweak but also because of the time between making the change and reporting results is less than 24 hours but you never know.

IMeye sold me after viewing one video one time, in fact the only video currently on their website which isn’t usual for me. I’m the type of person who will wait until a product launches, wait about 3 months and research, research and research some more. So why didn’t I do this with IMeye?

The primary reason is the video was SIMPLE and was NOT full of promises, in fact just the opposite. I don’t remember hearing how much money I could make that was relevant to me. Although Steve Clayton did mention Ad-sense potential, it has NO benefit for me because I don’t use ad-sense. You maybe thinking I’m crazy but stay with me.

In addition to the simplicity of the video it gave me insight on how the product worked as I got a chance to see it in action during the video. Although keywords are blacked out (this is obvious why it was done) I felt like there was NOT a huge learning curve I was going to have to deal with. I thought of  IMeye like a spreadsheet and since I know how to sort a spreadsheet I should be able to master the technical part of this product rather quickly.

Finally the product is unique to what I have seen when it come to finding keywords. Not only do I NOT have to spend hours finding a keyword phrase to market a website; I also do NOT need to feed it a starter word for it to find keyword phrases which ties into it.  This is a big deal – why? Because it basically reverse engineers the process of determining what website could be profitable to build and market and does it quickly.

The process that I usually take when developing a website is first to find a highly searched keyword or keyword phrase and then I research the competition of that keyword. So much time is spent on these two items that often I will rush through this and end up setting myself up for failure. Once I “think” I have a good match (highly searched with minimal competition) I skip crucial steps to success and visit GoDaddy and search for that exact keyword domain name, which usually isn’t available, so I start adding dashes, other words like THE or STORE or SHOP etc… and end up with a domain name that I’m not really happy with. If I do this in a day then I’m happy but anyone that knows what I’m talking about is laughing right now as that process is VERY flawed and as such my sites SUCK.

With IMeye I reverse engineer the whole process. I don’t worry about the keyword or phrase. I set a threshold on search volume, competition and can even say I want a domain name which is word for word of my keyword which isn’t purchased. This should take me about 15 seconds! Then I can scroll through the keyword list and find something I like.  However if I do this I may come back with a better website name then I have in the past but that’s about all. IMeye is inviting to me because I can add more filters, see if people are marketing products to my keywords and more. With a few extra seconds of time I will have a keyword list that I can spend my time looking at rather than spending my time getting to this point and repeating the process before I’ve even written the first line of HTML.

If you’ve read this far into my blog you understand I’m not a professional writer and if I was I would be an extremely low paid writer ;o) but hopefully that gives you the idea of my Day 1 experience and now that I’ve purchased this product with less than 30 minutes remaining in the day I’m going to spend some time over then next 24 hours watching the tutorial videos and playing with the product to see what it REALLY does at this point. Hopefully I made a good purchasing decision, but if I didn’t I have 7 days to request a full refund… off to work and I hope you’ll stop by again to read my future reviews of IMeye.

If  you’re like me and tried Net Nanny but has decided to cancel your license (subscription) the follow the directions below for the way that I personally did it.

1) Log into your account

2) Click on the “My Account” LInk toward the top of the page.  *Note Don’t select anything form the drop down box – click the words my account.

…. post moved to “http://howtocanx.com/how-to-cancel/net-nanny/” see the detail there!

This review is for Currie Technologies Ezip Coastline bike and their service based on my personal experience. Nothing more, nothing less.

There are two parts to this review. It isn’t an extrememly detailed review I will admit but I feel that Currie Tech deserves positive feedback so here it is.

I was in the market for an electric bike. I live 22 miles from my work and wanted to ride my bike to work but didn’t want to die in the process or show up soaked in sweat all day. An electric bike seemed like the best option. I could get a bike that had pedal assist so that if I ran out of steam the bike would do the work and get me where I wanted to go.

After shopping around for a good month I decided to order the EZip Coastline electric bike as it offered a 10 – 15 mile per charge trip and had the ability to add a 2nd battery which should have extended my trip to 20 – 30 miles on a single charge. Additionally they had a payment plan that would allow me to make payments over a 4 month period so I could spread out the cost of the bike.

I ordered the bike, it arrived timely and it was easily assembled as Currie does most of this for you. I just had to throw on the handlebars, seat, front wheel and charge the batteries. This is important because you can order bikes from Currie from the WalMart website and so many reviews talk about how hard it is to assemble and damage that occurred when they got it home. Not me – no issues when I received the bike from Currie Tech, although a little more expensive.

I put my Coastline bike together quickly and charged it overnight (both batteries) as the directions state. I can tell you this a few things stood out. First the bike looked GREAT – clean lines and nice colors. I didn’t feel odd riding it around. Second it was great FUN – I’ve never had an electric bike but it did as advertised. The pedal assist was great and I cruised up and down the street with no issues and flew along the road. I LOVED it.

What I came to not like about the bike was that this damn thing weights a ton (okay about 100lbs with two batteries) and if I had to carry it up any stairs (which I didn’t) I wouldn’t have been able to do it. So if you need to take this thing on a bus, up stairs to your apartment or carry it any distance, think twice – it is a BEAST.

Finally I realized that the battery didn’t take me 10 – 15 miles, at best it did 6 miles which is 12 miles AT BEST with two batteries. This would never make it to my work – 10 miles on a 100 pound bike powered by me wasn’t going to happen successfully. So I decided to return it. But before I talk about the customer service I’ve got to say that you aren’t supposed to drive it in the rain or wet roads and it was a good 2 week before I could test it out because we had crazy rain in NJ when I received it.

I don’t think I mentioned that Currie offered a 30 day try it program to return the bike without a restocking fee of 15% (ouch).

Needless to say by the time I got a chance to try the bike out and ship it back, due to the weather, it was well over the 30 day mark.

Finally I sent the bike back, I had UPS come and pick it up, but had to wait until it wasn’t raining becuase it would need to sit outside all day in the pooring rain and then I was worried I wouldn’t get anything back and the beast of a box would be soaked and torn up and UPS might deny the delivery… so on a clear day I sent it back.

Currie didn’t have an RMA process the customer service lady said “Just send it back”, which had me worried but in the end it worked out. The only problem I had with the return was that 10 days after they signed for the bike I received another charge on my credit card for a payment and had that money set aside for a payment on my house. I was on vacation and was tapped more then usual so I called up Currie and talked to customer service and told them that I need the last payment refunded immediately 100% and would take the hit on restocking on the initial part. I was transefered to the General Manager. I was blatantly honest with her and told her my situation.  Basiccly if I didn’t get a refund in 7 days I would have bounced a house payment (NOT GOOD) she made no promises but said that if anyone could get my refund through the accounting department as fast as I needed it she could and gave me her word to do her best.

Lo and behold the GM really did give a damn about me. I was refunded the money 24 hours prior to my house payment going out and even received a courtesy call stating that everything would be okay and it WAS.

It is GREAT to know that a company still gives a damn about thier customers, even when the priduct is returned and follows through. It really made me feel good!

My overall rating of the EZip Coastline is a 8 out of 10.

PROS: Looks great, works well, handles very well, quick bike and FUN to ride

CONS: Batteries are lacking from the advertised charge length and it is heavy.

My overall raiting of Currie Technologies as a company is 10 out of 10.

They really cared about me as a customer and former customer and they are true to their word. This is something that is rare in the fast paced business atmosphere which we live in. I say give them a shot because they did what they promised when they promised!

If I get the name of the GM who helped me out I will publish it here, but like I said I was on vacation sitting on the beach when I was making the SOS calls to the company and failed to write her name down.

THANK YOU CURRIE TECH and if I’m ever in the market again I will look no further then CURRIE TECH for an electronic bike.

This is a review of AutoPartsWarehouse.com – This review is based on my personal experience with Auto Parts Warehouse nothing more and nothing less.

I own a 2006 Ford Focus and my alternator went bad. I took my car into the shop and it turns out, like other repairs, that my Focus has some of the highest cost parts that I have ever had to pay on a vehicle I own. The alternator held true to this statement as the alternator was going to cost me $350 installed. I was in shock when I heard the replacement cost and tried to buy the part myself and have my local mechanic fix it as he reccomended that I do this becuase his cost for the alternator was around $250+. The lowest price that I could find was just under $200 at the Auto Parts Warehouse (refereed to as APW going forward).

I was eager to get my car out of the shop so I did my best shopping around online but didn’t check reviews on the website (which I would normally do). Before I purchased the part from APW I got a hold of their online customer support via online chat (I was at work) and gave them my vehicle VIN# and they told me the part I needed. I ordered it and was happy for the most part. I was happy with the price but not with the shipping as I knew it was going to take 4-5 days as it shipped from CA and I live in NJ. So I waited patiently (car was up on a lift at the shop) and 7 days later I had the part in my hand. Again the shipping took longer then I was told but frankly after 1 week I didn’t care, I wanted my car FIXED!

I took the part to the shop before work, went to work and waited on a phone call to tell me the repair was done. I recieved a call and I was told that not only was my car still down but they had shipped me the wrong part – I was upset to say the least. After work I went to the shop and they showed me the part I had ordered and the alternator I was replacing and they infact weren’t the same part. Red faced I went straight home and called up APW.

I spoke to a sales person who took my information again and this guy said “That isn’t the right part what you need is part number xxxxx”. I was sitting at my computer and pulled up the part number he told me was correct and he gave me a part number to a starter. Still on the phone I was like I didn’t ask you for a starter I asked for an alternator **side note. at this time I should have told APW to forget it and give me a refund because they were clueless… Like a dummy I said I need an alternator not a starter and they gave me a different part number.

SO now I said, look you’ve shipped me the wrong part, we’ve confirmed that, I want to trade this part sitting next to me for the replacement and they stated that they couldn’t do that. I would need to RMA my old alternator and wait for them to approve it, ship me the packing slip (free shipping back) and then wait another week for them to ship me the correct part. Needless to say I couldn’t wait 2 weeks for them to make this right so I ordered the “correct” alternator for another $200 with express shipping (3 day) and had them start the RMA process.

At this time I had over $400 wrapped up in alternators and no workng part in my hand. So I waited and 3 days later I called up APW and asked where the hell my part was and what the status of the RMA was and they said it is being shipped tomorrow and the RMA was in process.

WTF!!! Almost 2 weeks into this deal, my car still on a lift at the shop and no parts in sight I demanded a refund on the 2nd part and told them not to ship it. I got a straight attitude back from APW and they refused this. I demanded a refund right now or I would take this to my bank for a charge back. After this they said “You can’t do that” and when I asked to talk the the supervisor they hung up on me. I WAS PISSED!!!!!!

5 minutes later I called my bank (USAA) and told them the deal, they apologized for my situation (which they had nothing to do with) and they put in a claim to master card for my second part charge back and gave me the money back in my account same day – USAA rocks!!

The next day I got the RMA via email and sent it in which was refunded about a week later. By this time (3 weeks after my car broke down) I had to purchase an alternator at a local store (autozone for $300) and had the car fixed.

At this point I had a repaired Focus and never recieved the 2nd part from APW, but the charge back from USAA made it right. In the weeks following I would get the story that APW said they shipped the 2nd part but I never recieved it and they were saying UPS screwed up – THEY WERE WRONG.

If I can press anything on to you, it is NOT to EVER deal with APW – EVER! I understand that if they ship you the right part in a timely mannor you may disagree with me, but wait until they screw up and you could end up just like me.

Well over a month later AWP said they shipped the 2nd part, UPS denied that claim, Master Card went in my favor for the refund and I will never, ever go back to APW for ANYTHING – EVER!

Steer clear – go somewhere else!

*Update – I’ve ordered a part for my ford focus from AutoAnything.com and received excellent service and will use them again – a review will be done shortly on their service.

I received the following email recently about snopes, but before I paste the email I personally look to snopes for these chain letters, political emails, virus emails and/or any scare tactic type of email that you see floating around the web – which by the most part get sent to me by friends and family who consistently lean one way or another either politically or find it amusing to send out the email that will make them richer when they forward an email to 10 people etc…

Here is the email as I received it and I will conclude with my opinion of this whole thing:

For the past few years www.snopes.com has positioned itself, or others have labeled it as the ‘tell-all, final word’ on any comment, claim and e-mail.But for several years people tried to find out who exactly was behind snopes.com. Only recently did Wikipedia get to the bottom of it — kinda makes you wonder what they were hiding. Well, finally we know. It is run by a husband and wife team — that’s right, no big office of investigator sand researchers, no team of lawyers.

It’s just a mom-and-pop operation that began as a hobby. David and Barbara Mikkelson in the San Fernando Valley of California started the website about 13 years ago — and they have no formal background or experience in investigative research. After a few years it gained popularity believing it to be unbiased and neutral, but over the past couple of years people started asking questions who was behind it and did they have a selfish motivation? The reason for the questions — or skepticisms — is a result of snopes.com claiming to have the bottom line facts to certain questions or issues, when in fact, they have been proven wrong. Also, there were criticisms the Mikkelsons were not really investigating and getting to the ‘true’ bottom of various issues.

When I saw that Snopes had falsely claimed that Obama’s Birth Certificate had been properly validated, I realized something was wrong with either their research and/or their credibility. It seems something is seriously wrong with both. Then a few months ago, when my State Farm agent Bud Gregg in Mandeville hoisted a political sign referencing Barack Obama and made a big splash across the internet, supposedly the Mikkelson’s claim to have researched this issue before posting their findings on snopes.com. In their statement they claimed the corporate office of State Farm pressured Gregg into taking down the sign, when in fact nothing of the sort ever took place.

I personally contacted David Mikkelson (and he replied back to me) thinking he would want to get to the bottom of this, and I gave him Bud Gregg’s contact phone numbers. Bud was going to give him phone numbers to the big exec’s at State Farm in Illinois who would have been willing to speak with him about it. He never called Bud. In fact, I learned from Bud Gregg no one from snopes.com ever contacted anyone with State Farm. Yet snopes.com issued a statement as the ‘final factual word’ on the issue as if they did all their homework and got to the bottom of things. Not!

Then it has been learned the Mikkelson’s are very Democrat and extremely liberal. As we all now know from this presidential election, liberals have a purpose agenda to discredit anything that appears to be  onservative. There has been much criticism lately over the internet with people pointing out the Mikkelson’s liberalism revealing itself in their website findings. Gee, what a shock! They were also big supporters of both Clintons and used Snopes to “debunk” any criticism of the Clintons without checking the validity of the item.

So, I say this now to everyone who goes to snopes.com to get what they think to be the bottom line facts: Proceed with caution. Take what it says at face value and nothing more, and understand their liberal agenda. Use it only to lead you to their references where you can link to and read the sources for yourself. Plus, you can always google a subject and do the research yourself. It now seems apparent that’s all the Mikkelson’s do. After all, I can personally vouch from my own experience for their ‘not’ fully looking into things.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snopes.com

Looking at this email at first glance it is a hit on snopes being a valid source for information, run by a mom and pop and used only to spread it’s liberal word to the rest of the world… I wouldn’t disagree with this 100% so lets really break this down – snopes style ;o)

 ”For the past few years www.snopes.com has positioned itself, or others have labeled it as the ‘tell-all, final word’ on any comment, claim and e-mail. But for several years people tried to find out who exactly was behind snopes.com. Only recently did Wikipedia get to the bottom of it — kinda makes you wonder what they were hiding. Well, finally we know. It is run by a husband and wife team — that’s right, no big office of investigator sand researchers, no team of lawyers:

If you visit the FAQ page of Snopes you will find that it actually states:

Q: How do I know the information you’ve presented is accurate?

A: We don’t expect anyone to accept us as the ultimate authority on any topic. Unlike the plethora of anonymous individuals who create and send the unsigned, unsourced e-mail messages that are forwarded all over the Internet, we show our work. The research materials we’ve used in the preparation of any particular page are listed in the bibliography displayed at the bottom of that page so that readers who wish to verify the validity of our information may check those sources for themselves.

So we know from their own FAQ section that they are showing sources to their claims and you can see this in most if not all of their posts if you want to do your own research on the facts they present.

Next the first paragraph says that Wiki finally got to the bottom of this. If you know anything about Wiki.org this is a silly statement – why? Wiki.org is in-fact a community website, meaning that you, me or anyone else and their mom can register with Wiki and write/add/delete any part of their website. SOOO what that means if you are knocking on snopes becuase it is run by two people, then don’t say that Wiki is any better because the fact the matter is Wiki is written by anyone and everyone. Please understand that Wiki has people who moderate, validate and try to ensure that what has been posted is well referenced and if it isn’t then they make a change on the website – again you can do this too.

Finally on the first paragraph it says Wiki uncovered that this is run by two people – if you care to look at the FAQ page of snopes they make this same statement and don’t hide it – so did Wiki uncover anything or just post the facts already stated on the snopes website. http://www.snopes.com/info/faq.asp

 It’s just a mom-and-pop operation that began as a hobby. David and Barbara Mikkelson in the San Fernando Valley of California started the website about 13 years ago — and they have no formal background or experience in investigative research. After a few years it gained popularity believing it to be unbiased and neutral, but over the past couple of years people started asking questions who was behind it and did they have a selfish motivation? The reason for the questions — or skepticisms — is a result of snopes.com claiming to have the bottom line facts to certain questions or issues, when in fact, they have been proven wrong. Also, there were criticisms the Mikkelsons were not really investigating and getting to the ‘true’ bottom of various issues.

This 2nd paragraph is also much of the same – you can find this out on the snopes FAQ page so I don’t need to say anything on that. What is key here is they are trying to dis-prove snopes as valid when again they do post their references to what they are proving or disproving on their website – could the snopes posts be  wrong? Absolutely, but again the Internet has so much information and if you want to research something your going to get a TON of information and picking through it to find the truth is very tuff – why? Because everyone has an opinion or a direction they lean and the media is no different. This fact alone is why emails get forwarded without research and why wiki and snopes are popular becuase for the most part some sort references are given which is where they pull their facts from to draw a conclusion.

 When I saw that Snopes had falsely claimed that Obama’s Birth Certificate had been properly validated, I realized something was wrong with either their research and/or their credibility. It seems something is seriously wrong with both. Then a few months ago, when my State Farm agent Bud Gregg in Mandeville hoisted a political sign referencing Barack Obama and made a big splash across the internet, supposedly the Mikkelson’s claim to have researched this issue before posting their findings on snopes.com. In their statement they claimed the corporate office of State Farm pressured Gregg into taking down the sign, when in fact nothing of the sort ever took place.

The 3rd paragraph is getting more specific becuase it references “When I saw that…” okay who is the “I” in this statement, this email neither contained any source information of who wrote it (most emails like this do not) and probably never will… so if I’m lead to belive that the “I” was the person who sent me this email then I’m hitting delete becuase I know the kind of emails that they send and don’t believe that they did some great undercover research to find out all the facts – but I (Jason Archer, the owner of this blog) will move on.

As for the rest of this paragraph I’ll point you to snopes and why they said the birth certificate was valid… again look at the sources – http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/birthcertificate.asp  and http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/citizen.asp

If you find their results as false then that is your choice – but to me this is something that clues me in that this email is being sent out by those that are against Obama and want to think that he has made it past all checks and balances that the US has and somehow became president on false documents and rights. If this is the case then I can think of no one else better to run a country if he is infact this slick and powerful he could have taken over China using the same techniques and they could be invading the US right now and literally running over each and every defense we have with just pure numbers using table spoons as their only weapon… come on people!

I personally contacted David Mikkelson (and he replied back to me) thinking he would want to get to the bottom of this, and I gave him Bud Gregg’s contact phone numbers. Bud was going to give him phone numbers to the big exec’s at State Farm in Illinois who would have been willing to speak with him about it. He never called Bud. In fact, I learned from Bud Gregg no one from snopes.com ever contacted anyone with State Farm. Yet snopes.com issued a statement as the ‘final factual word’ on the issue as if they did all their homework and got to the bottom of things. Not!

The 4th paragraph is much of the same becuase we still don’t know who “I” is but we have some names and a quick check of Bud Gregg on snopes leads us to the following link – http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/chicken.asp and on it’s page it does agree that they never contacted Bud to get the “Truth” so what it’s saying is that Bud Gregg knows the real truth and we know this because he puts statements above his state farm sign saying things like “A Taxpayer voting for Barack Obama is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders” – to me this sounds like a very level headed, fact based individual who is NOT putting his personal opinions into his statements (what is it this email says at the end of this paragraph)… Not!

Now trying to research Mr. Gregg; if you google it you will find this email and his sign but what I found most interesting was searching for him on the state-farm website I couldn’t find him… http://online2.statefarm.com/b2c/sf/AgentLocator – maybe he isn’t in Texas anymore or maybe he is so damn good he isn’t on the agent locator because he was fired?? Haha either way I don’t care but I can’t find info on statefarms website which leads me to draw a self-serving conclusion that even if David Mikkelson did contact State Farm they likely wouldn’t support his claim to fame or he would be still working for them… or maybe he got hired by Geico – I dunno… moving on.

Then it has been learned the Mikkelson’s are very Democrat and extremely liberal. As we all now know from this presidential election, liberals have a purpose agenda to discredit anything that appears to be  conservative. There has been much criticism lately over the internet with people pointing out the Mikkelson’s liberalism revealing itself in their website findings. Gee, what a shock! They were also big supporters of both Clintons and used Snopes to “debunk” any criticism of the Clintons without checking the validity of the item.

The 5th paragraph points to the Mikkelson’s personal agenda to take over the world with Snopes. Yet again it references  that all the Clinton posts on snopes show no references to validate the claims – I don’t have the time or inclination to pull all of these up but with a simple search on snopes you can find this out for yourself.

 So, I say this now to everyone who goes to www.snopes.com to get what they think to be the bottom line facts: Proceed with caution. Take what it says at face value and nothing more, and understand their liberal agenda. Use it only to lead you to their references where you can link to and read the sources for yourself. Plus, you can always google a subject and do the research yourself. It now seems apparent that’s all the Mikkelson’s do. After all, I can personally vouch from my own experience for their ‘not’ fully looking into things.

The 6th paragraph is probably the only thing closes to good advice this whole email has – but falls short in of itself.  First it shows that the person who wrote this – the mysterious “I” – has always been the type to take everything on the Internet as face value, up until now where they realize that they should “proceed with caution” and now recommend that others do the same. Well how about that”I” – you can teach old dogs new tricks. Additionally “I” recommends that you search for facts yourself – NOW STOP THAT… what kind of an idea is that? If you were to do that I wouldn’t get half the crap I receive via email because people would fact check themselves? WOW glad “I” FINALLY figured this one out.

The paragraph concludes with the famous “I” having personally found Snopes doesn’t look into things fully… if you define fully as knowing all the facts before you open your mouth, send out an email or blog about something then even I wouldn’t have this blog posts because knowing all the facts is IMPOSSIBLE.

To conclude on this whole LONG post. I read this email and conclude the same thing I conclude every time I see things like this. First – do your research, yourself. Don’t depend on Snoopes, Wiki, My blog, your BFF’s email or anyone else as the only truth. Draw your own conclusion but don’t do what you despise and send it out as the FULL truth  to all of your friends or you might as well say an incantation before hitting send and add “Send this to 10 of your friends and you will get a phone call from your dead cousin telling you the meaning of life and where to find the lost city of Atlantis”.

Hope you enjoyed because if you didn’t and you read this entire thing those are 15 minutes of your life you will never get back.

Jason