Off Cell Phone for Past 5 WEEKS!

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If you think that you need a cell or smart phone to do business THINK AGAIN!

Yes as an experiment I took myself off the smartphone from StraightTalk and what a BLESSING it has been to NOT hear that thing going off!

I have also INCREASED my business without using it! I sent email to all my clients that during this experiment they would have to EMAIL me and all agreed to do it. Actually I have found that because they are SO overwhelmed with phone calls that I get QUICKER responses by email! So email is NOT dead for business!

DO this yourself and see what happens!

Hugh Simpson

Updating My Life

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It has been a good time since I have blogged here since I have been blogging at other site below:

USA Roadhiker

This site is describing my exciting journey beginning now it looks like in mid-March instead of my birthday March 4th. I am slow jogging A1A from Key West to Maine/Canadian border supporting USA Made companies you see at the web site. Also I will be showing people how important it is to eat correctly and stay fit so they can have the fun I will be having on this 1800 mile plus journey!

Hugh Simpson

Another Smart Phone Update

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Well it has been almost a week now since I got my StraightTalk smart phone,

Do I like it? Most of the time. I definitely like the capacitive screen. I like that it uses Google Play apps just like the ones on my Android tablet. I like that I can switch the MicroSD card from phone to tablet.

I am disappointed that I can not use the Bluetooth mini keyboard that I am using right now on the Apple I touch with it. I am not wild about the phone`s virtual keyboard. The backspace is too close to the letter “m”. It does do a good job of realizing the word you are in the process of typing.

I do believe between my I touch and smart phone I will be able to do most of my business from my shirt pocket!

Keep you updated!

Hugh Simpson

Finally Joining the World of Smart Phones

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Yes I gave myself a late Christmas present by purchasing a StraightTalk Huawei Ascend. Sitting in our McDonald’s learning to use it. Since I already own an Android tablet the learning curve is not too bad.

I like that I can sync it’s microSD card with tablet.

Hate the internal virtual keyboard so hope my Bluetooth keyboard works with it!

Fiscal Fitness

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Today we are returning to another type of FITNESS – FISCAL fitness and recently I discovered one of the BEST MUST read books on that subject – Soul Currency by Ernest Chu. Ernest has a very interesting background as he is a former 30 year veteran of Wall Street including being an allied member of the New York Stock Exchange, an investment banking executive and a capital markets expert. He is also a very ssuccessful serial entrepreneur having been on the founding executive team of NINE companies and raising over $150,000,000 for these companies and other clients.

While he was on Wall Street, Ernest became very interested in spiritual abundance and after teaching courses at the Center for Spiritual Living, he was finally ordained in 2006 and has become the Center’s assistant pastor.

Ernest is a man after my own heart and passion – social entrepreneurship – and in his very informative, teaching handbook Soul Currency he shares some wonderful stories of several of our mutual friends – Richard Schulman, one of America’s premiere New Age musicians and composers and Matt Bacak, one of my mentors in the world of Internet Marketing. He tells the story of Mo Siegel, who founded the multi-million dollar Celestial Seasonings, who was mentored by another one of my mentors – Marshall Thurber, creator of the Berklyn School of Entrepreneurship, Money & You and Mastery in Manifesting. Marshall also was the right hand man to the incredible futurist and inventor, Buckminster Fulluer, who created the geodesic dome. It was through my two year mentoring with Marshall that I became passionate about domes and learned to build them as you will see at ILoveUSAMade.

Ernest does not write the usual “touchie-feelie” New Age wealth abundance psycho-babble but gives numerous examples of how Quantum Physics fits into the pursuing of wealth. We know for a FACT that ALL matter is composed of sub-atomic waves and particles and that includes MONEY. Money is just a form of ENERGY. Research from prestigious educational institutes like Princeton University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science have demonstrated over and over again that there are NO accidents in the Universe and that EVERYTHING is INTERCONNECTED including MONEY!

Here is what Ernest shares: “One condition or choice affects another, which affects another, and then what you experience as tangible ‘reality’ emerges. Our power to affect reality in specific ways is magnified by the clarity of our thoughts and the intensity of our feelings…Quantum physics has shown that the field of intentionality is part of a unified field of consciousness.”

He gives a formula for Spiritual Capital that Ouantum Physics certainly would agree with: Spiritual Capital = Focus + Intention + Spiritual Assets multiplied expotentially by LOVE.

Next time we will discuss Spiritual Assets and tell you of the RealWorld Bank we are setting up to share your Spiritual Assets!

StraightTalk Update

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Well it is the day after Christmas and I am now checking my StraightTalk phone’s Call Timer.

If you will remember I am using another 1000 minute card. So if my math serves me right you take 1000 minutes and divide it by 60 minutes to get the number of hours I should have available.

1000/60 = 16.667 hours or 17.06 hours.

My Call timer says that ALL calls is currently at 11.13.34.

The last I time I checked 11.13.34 was LESS than 17.06!

Yes I am still able to talk!

Hugh Simpson

My StraightTalk Test

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If you read the previous blog post you learned that I was shortchanged 300 minutes with my StraightTalk $30 card.

StraightTalk corporate in Miami confirmed my suspicions and replaced my shortchanged 300 minutes; however then I was amazed to find that I was AGAIN shortchanged another 30 minutes!

So in the video below you will see that I purchased another $30 card and reset the Call Timer.

Now we will see if I am shortchanged again!

By the way I also alerted Clark Howard.

Is StraightTalk Phone Company Short Changing Customers?

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I have been using StraightTalk since almost their beginning. In fact I was a beta tester and have basically been a very satisfied customer UNTIL now! I am a former CBS News consumer investigative reporter therefore I am no novice with Consumer Affairs.

Two months ago I bought a $30 1000 minute StraightTalk card instead of my usual $45 unlimited card. I noticed on the first card my 1000 minutes sure seem to run out quickly. While searching through my phone menu I found the Call Timer. So when I purchased my second $30 card I re-set the Call Timer so I could see if I was really going through those 1000 minutesu that quickly.

I discovered that I was not going through them that quickly and that myo math of 1000/60 = 17 hours and 7 minutes. I showed on my Call Timer being short changed approximately 150 MINUTES! I called StraightTalk and began what turned out to be a 1 HOUR around the world discussion that went through the foreign based outsourced rep and her supervisor before I got to Grace in the StraightTalk corporate office in Miami. Thank goodness Grace spoke and understood ENGLISH!

I explained to Grace for the third time the situation and my math calculations. She agreed to check on her computer with my records. Yes, StraightTalk has your entire calling history and about 15 minutes later she verified that I was correct for both months and reloaded my account with 300 minutes that I had been short changed!

Well tonight I go to make a call to find out that I am again out of minutes! I had reset the Call Timer when I received the 300 minutes. Now I find that I have apparently been short changed about 30 minutes by my calculations! Grace is a day timer so I will wait and call tomorrow.

I don’t know if there is a glitch in their software or they are seeing if they can get by with short changing not just me but possibly MILLIONS of $30 card users every 30 days! This could save them MILLIONS of dollars!

However they have screwed the wrong guy! You see one of my previous investigations for CBS News led to the closing down of the largest transmission repair company in the US in the late 1960s. I also caused supervisors for what is now called Verizon to stop their continuous run-around they were feeding my business partner in regards to a claim. They had fixed the claim within one hour of my calling this supervisor who came to my friend’s home with the repair crew. He also had trouble with some IKEA furniture that was shoddily installed and I had that resolved in ONE call to their PR person!

I plan to share this with not only my friend Clark Howard but also my former CBS News colleague Steve Croft now at 60 Minutes. Also will share with CBS affiliate in Miami and the Miami Herald.

If you also have been using a StraightTalk $30 card and feel you have been short changed then contact Grace during regular business hours and ask her to recalculate your pass several or more months of calls. If she finds you have been short changed please then contact me here on this blog.

Thanks and feel free to share with me any consumer related problems and I will see what I can do.

Hugh Simpson

Enjoy Nature!

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When you are doing your BRISK walk or bike ride PLEASE enjoy the NATURAL sounds and sights instead of listening with your Ipod/Nano or talking on your cell phone. I’m sure that Apple and other makers of these devices are not going to be happy with this recommendation.

You want to immerse yourself in the NATURAL surroundings and it could also save your life! I constantly see people riding on their bikes with the ears covered with earbuds. If they have the sound turned up to levels where you can hear them when they pass by, then how can they be aware of emergency sirens!

Further more I will tell you as a short lived but former radio DJ my colleagues would blast the music through their headphones for their entire shift! They were setting themselves up for now wearing hearing aids like my members of the American Legion who were in Vietnam. LOUD music DESTROYS the sensitive interior ear hairs that you must have!

I hate to say it but the profession of being an audiologist in the hearing aid industry is going to BOOM for the next 50 years or more! I was shocked to find that some of the new high tech hearing aids go for upwards of $7500 or more!