I have a rather interesting assignment for you to try. Using your computer or cell phone, and using an application such as Google, type in these words: “CHICAGO UNIT ACQUISITION LLC”. See what you can find about this company.
Posted May 19, 2021
It is never has been my interest or motivation to recommend to my readers any charity because that is not the main purpose of this blog. This blog is to inform, not to sell. But, this issue of child poverty, in my mind, is very important to us all. I, therefor, have tried to research any possible solution that we, as a population of public, can think about adopting to improve this situation. Our politicians should work toward resolving this issue. While waiting for them to act typically takes quite some time. The faster solution is for all of us to consider what we can do to help. The easiest solution is to throw our money at this problem. So far, here is my rather short list for you to consider. I have attempted to only offer, to you, highly recommended solutions. I will only show very high score operations, by Charity Navigator, and I reject religious affiliations. I am sure there are a lot more solutions for you to consider:
The above list is still being expanded when time permits.
See also: Political Problems From Child Poverty
It appears that the Republican Party is in the process of rejecting Democracy because the party has failed to gain power through that normal political process. So now it appears they only seeks to win elections by changing the state primary voting rules to gain power for little purpose other than welding power for their plutocracy backers. The United States political problems came from vast child poverty.
I plan to try to prove to you that the problem is not just the Republican politicians but also the American public. I will attempt to prove to you that income inequality leads to poor education for a vast number of our citizens. Then those under educated citizens might fail to comprehend what is really taking place in the political sphere.
For example, the Republican Party is failing badly for a number of factors:
A possible significant factor is that the public have not received a significant education so they can properly understand the democratic process. Let’s attempt to present to you some proof of this happening:
The need for civic education in 21st-century schools:
“… limited civic knowledge of the American public, 1 in 4 of whom, according to a 2016 survey led by Annenberg Public Policy Center, are unable to name the three branches of government.”
Let me show you an example of what happens when education really hits rock bottom:
So what exactly causes a lower level of education?
In the chart above, only five countries perform worse than the United States: Latvia, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey and Mexico.
The best and worst performers on child well-being
“… every other country that outranks the United States on the PISA test, have in common: lower rates of child poverty. And poverty is a major factor in how well students perform on the tests.”
Summary: The American public embraced one of the worst presidents in history and many still do follow Donald Trump. Why? One possible reason is that a vast number of the American public have been disadvantaged by poverty. Studies have shown that the United States has one of the highest rates of income inequality. Individuals and families with low income seem to be getting a poor education as a result. Studies seem to have proven that students who suffer from having low income do poorly in school. Doing poor in school then might set the individual up for possibly a less paying job and then:
This then results in a lower educated voting population that may fail to understand the advantages of having a Democracy over having a dictatorship. There seems to be a current threat that the United States may be shifting away from being a true Democracy.
Recommended Reading:
Posted: May 15, 2021
Updated: May 20, 2021
This blog article is actually three separate stories but all related.
Please be advised that the information I am providing you here worked for the vehicle I currently own. I have come to realize that Toyota, in my opinion, provided me incorrect Owner’s Manual information. Thus, my solution might not work for your model RAV4. It seems to me that every Toyota RAV4 year model sees changes in fuse locations. Be careful! My advice right now is look carefully at the your car fuse container lid to see where the correct fuse is and question what the owner’s manual tells you.
In the year 2020 I inherited my sister’s 2009 RAV4 car due to her passing away. The RAV4 had milage in the low 30,000! It was a great car to drive. But, I encountered a very frustrating problem in 2001. I had to buy a car starting device to get my son’s Toyota 4Runner started so we could donate it to a charity. I purchased a Audew car starter battery.
I had done a lot of research and chose this device. It worked perfectly. It worked perfectly as soon as we discovered a very small switch labeled “BOOST” in the main power plug which we had to press to get maximum power (see image below).
I was so happy with this purchase! After donating the 4Runner I decided that I wanted to keep the Audew Jump Starter charged for future use.
The RAV4 has 2 power outlets. One is inside the flip up storage container between the driver and front passenger seats. It looks like an arm rest but it can be flipped open and inside is a power out connection. The second power connection is on the driver side of the vehicle just inside the rear door. I made the mistake of using a volt ohm meter to find out when the power connectors provided power. My mistake must have been causing a short and I blew the fuse for the user power connections. I then purchased this next device. It shows when power is provided by the connector and the voltage and also supplies two USB output connections.
The Audew, jump starter, also gives you a USB cable for charging it’s own battery but also this cable can charge your cell phone or any other device that can run on USB power. My idea was to keep the Audew in my RAV4 and keep it charged with the power connector near the rear door. I reasoned that you never know when you might come across a person who needs a battery jump start so I wanted my unit to maintain a constant charge. The USB cable that comes with the Audew is a bit short. I do not want his battery sliding around inside my car so I added a much longer cable so the Audew could be placed into a very convenient storage spot.
I already had a much longer cable and used it to place the Audew inside a pocket provided inside my RAV4.
But, I needed to find the blow fuse in my RAV4. Let me tell you that Toyota was absolutely no help! The 2009 Owner’s Manual that came with the car was awful, a piece of crap for solving this problem. Pages that were to show the location of fuses were wrong. I called my local dealership parts office and they were no help. I spend hours on the Internet, plowing through YouTube videos from wonderful people sharing how to solve finding RAV4 fuses but for me every one was in error.
Another problem was the location for the blown fuse panel. It was located on the driver side near the driver door under the instrument panel.
It was awful getting light up into that space. It was simply awful to pull the fuse cover plate off. I had to lay on my back with half my body sticking out the door to work on this panel. It was damned awful to pull and replace any fuse for testing and replacing. I hated this problem.
The solution that worked for me was to remove the fuse cover plate and scan the image on that cover and printed it out. I put copies of the pages into the owner’s manual. I was to discover that this cover plate seemed to be quite accurate. Next, I provide to you the image I scanned for both of us to use (see image below). I found out that a single fuse, number 27, a 15 Amp, PWR OUTLET, had blown. I replaced it and now both power outlet connectors are working. It seems that in later models of RAV4 there seems to be separate fuses for each of these two power output connectors. On my RAV4 one fuse supplies power to both power connectors.
I plugged in the small Jepsen volt meter and it showed power at both power ports. I keep the Jepsen meter inserted into the rear connector all the time so I can quickly confirm that I am charging the Audew Jump Starter. I do have to make sure nothing slides into hitting this meter when driving.
I connected the Audew car starter battery to the rear power connector and using a long USB cable put the battery into a nice storage slot over the rear driver side tire location. Every time I run the car, this battery should be charged.
My view of Toyota cars has diminished as a result of the large number of problems I had solving what should have been a rather easy problem to fix.
What I learned from this experience is the following:
Posted April 25, 2021
I had been buying Starbucks drinks for each of my two children, myself and occasionally for my wife for quite a few years. I had experimented buying different Starbucks drinks that I liked. I finally found that the grande size zebra really worked for me. It has coffee, 5 pumps of dark chocolate, 5 pumps of white chocolate, steamed milk, and a dollop of whipped cream. I also ask the Starbucks barista to heat the drink up to a very high temperature. I like to drink my coffee slowly.
If you have a zebra drink often, you should consider going to a gym to work off the calories.
One day I decided to see how much I was spending on buying Starbucks drinks and food items. I viewed my billing for one month and took that amount and multiplied it by 12 to get an approximate value for the year. I came up with almost $6,000. Ouch. I shared this with my daughter, that I was spending way too much money for these coffee drinks. In a few days she went out and purchased a Keurig machine. I had never considered this option. She then went out and purchased a variety of pods that you need to feed into this coffee machine. The Keurig is a very clever device. I recommend it.
My next problem was to find a way for the Keurig to make me a zebra coffee drink. Here is my solution for getting close to a zebra using a Keurig:
I ran an analysis of how much I spend at Starbucks in 2021 and the total now comes out to be roughly $2,100. I have not calculated my costs for the Swiss Miss pods, Starbucks Via Instant coffee.
Posted: April 17, 2021
My sister passed away April 2020 and I soon discovered that not only did I have to prepare my family taxes but also my sister’s. My sister’s attorney’s recommended using a tax person who lived quite a distance away from where I live. I had the choice of putting all the tax documents together in a neat order and driving for hours to deliver the documents to the tax person or scan the documents and use an Internet drop box that the tax person offered. I chose to scan the documents. I looked around in my home and found that I had three devices that claim to scan documents. My dual purpose printer and document scanning machines produced pretty awful scanned images. I had a very old CanoScan 8400F which was first made in the middle of 2004. My unit was not that old but pretty close. When I connected that scanner up to my Macintosh computer, it would not function. I did an Internet search and tried out VueScan by visiting this web site: https://www.hamrick.com/
They allow you to try the VueScan software out before you pay them any money. My tests worked so well that I purchased the software. For me, the software is fantastic. It is so simple to scan any document. And, by the way, the CanoScan 8400F is a very impressive scanner. I have scanned well over one hundred documents using this setup and no problems.
CanoScan 8400F =. Highly recommend.
VueScan Software =. Highly recommend.
Posted April 11, 2021
