My wife had brought up the idea of using a toaster (convection style) oven but I was dead set against this option. I remember the old toaster ovens like my mother had used and while they were ok for the simple things they used so much electricity that they were not worth the effort. But after talking with one of our neighbors who has one of these ovens and his high recommendation I decided to give in to my wife’s idea and give it a try. But which brand do you purchase.

My neighbor had an Oster brand and loved it. I knew this brand name and knew them to be good brands but also it was fairly expensive. So I started doing some online shopping. I found the same size in a GE brand which I also feel is a company that provides quality products. We settled on the GE Rotisserie Convection Oven model number 169220 53 .

The GE Rotisserie Convection Oven was the same size as my neighbors Oster but was about 25% less. It also had the added feature of a rotisserie where his did not offer this option. Since the amount of electric used was the major factor in our decision to purchase such an appliance I tried to find out which of these two models was the more efficient so far have not found any information or comparison. With what little we had to go on we opted for the GE brand.

Now granted I have not had enough time to find the bad qualities of using this type of product as a major source of cooking but so far I would have to say we are pleased. The unit provided the most tender and moist chicken I have ever eaten and appear to do the simple things like biscuits and breads with ease.

The summers here in the south are hot and humid which keeps the AC units working around the clock to keep your comfortable. With summer fast approaching and we continue to use this oven on a more regular basis I am sure I will have more to add to this review. And I am hoping that between the Bar-B-Q Grill and this new GE Rotisserie Convection Oven our electric bill savings will more than pay for the oven.

When you read the “How it works” section on the site you will read a nice explanation of how they pay $50 ($1000 bonus for 10 approved ideas) within 10 days of an idea being approved to anyone signs up at their site. And while there is nothing I found that states just how the approval process works they do list some very powerful and professional looking bio’s of the main people involved in this project.

Read the How it works section here

Read the About Us section with 4 powerful sounding bio’s here

Ok so far sounds good and they actually have a quote from Steve Jobs on the opening page:

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.
-Steve Jobs

With powerful bio’s that align each of the main characters listed on this site with companies such as Bank Of America, Fox Business and MSN Money they present an aura of respectability and I joined up, created my account and submitted my first block buster idea.

What was this great idea that was only waiting for the world to discover? My pickledpedia.com site. Regular readers of featureme2.com know that pickledpedia.com is a site created for those interested in the Baby Boomer era and this was my first submission as a business idea.

What was the results you ask? Approved and BAM $50 bucks credited to my account. Now please pay attention to the date approved.

Baby Boomer Pedia (Wiki) 01/30/2010 Approved $50.00 $50.00

WOW, I’m on a roll here with an approval on my first attempt so I try again. This time: “A Collection Agency For Those Business Who Fail To Pay Those They Hire?”. What was the results of this one: Not so good, my first rejection. Now it appears kind of ironic:

Paid Posting Employment Collection Agency 02/04/2010 Declined $0.00 $0.00

But never one to stop on a negative note I tried again for the 3rd time. A super duper idea if I do say so myself. What was it? “A Manufactures Coupon Card”. This card could be loaded with manufactures coupons in various ways to save both the manufacture money, save time at the resisters for store owners and makes it easier for the consumer to redeem them. What was the results of my idea: BAM again….APPROVED!

Coupon Card 02/08/2010 Approved $50.00 $50.00
Total $100.00 $100.00

So there you have it folks. That was 3 submitted ideas with 2 approvals which means $100 bucks in the account and I’m just waiting for my paypal account to be credited. Again let me stress the dates on the above approvals (taken from my account on their site).

The first approval was on 1/30/10. So payment date should have been no later than 02/09/10 if they took the full 10 days in which to pay. The second idea approval came on 02/08/10 which would have made the date for that one no later than 02/18/10.

Well folks here we are at 02/22/10 and not a dime has been paid to me for those idea. There have been 3 attempt to contact them regarding this matter:

On 02/15/10 I send them this email:

——– Original Message ——–
Subject: Idea Approvals and Paypal
From:
Date: Mon, February 15, 2010 4:39 am
To:

Greetings,

I had submitted a couple of ideas that got approved and saw that I would receive compensation within 10 days by paypal. I have never been able to find in my profile where to include my paypal info.

Thank you

And receive this reply 3 days later:

From: ideaarchitects@ideaarchitectsonline.com
To:
Sent: Thursday, February 18, 2010 8:14 AM
Subject: RE: Idea Approvals and Paypal

Please send us your PayPal email address, and we will send payment right away. Thank you.

My response to them the same day ( 02/18/10)

From:
To: ideaarchitects@ideaarchitectsonline.com
Sent: Thursday, February 18, 2010 9:59 AM
Subject: Re: Idea Approvals and Paypal

My Paypal is the same as my email –

*********(paypal info)******

I wait a couple of days and the money does not appear in my paypal. So I send them this email:

Dear ideaarchitects,

As you can see by the dates on this email and the dates in which my ideas were approved that your site is not correctly identifying itself at least to where you pay your clients is concerned. You state you pay within 10 days of an approved idea yet I have still received nothing and you have now been notified 2 times with my concerns.

I have some questions about this that I will be addressing in the reveiw of your site, your Terms Of Service and your payment policies. I currently operate 10 personal sites which deal with various aspects of working online and online employers.

I am curious as to why with all the impress Bio’s and supposedly high caliber people you have involved that your site contact address is listed with a “yahoo email” address and that a payment of only $100 somehow eludes your payment process.

While it is only $100 I will be including this amount and a reveiw of my personal experience with your company and site.

http://www.featureme2.com

And that folks is where we stand now. No money yet from Idea Architects Online although as you can see they not only promise to pay within 10 days on their website but also in an email to me in response to my concern.

Is this a SCAM? According to my paypal account it is. We are going on almost 30 days since the first approved idea and no money. And the old saying if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck it’s usually a duck appear to fit this website and business.

Doing a little research I did find this link where the owner of the site had been trying to solicit some feed back and opinions and several people told him that his site and idea sounded like a scam. But even had I found this first I would have still tried the site for this review. Read that info here: Warrior Forum Need Advice On New Business Concept

My overall rating on idea architects online : 1

*They still get a 1 because the site is a cool looking fast loading site and on the off chance my experience is an isolated case. But unless your just looking to part with some ideas that you want to help them with I’d wait to hear more stories about actually getting payments from them.

I had heard of McDonald’s of course but had never seen a real Big Mac nor tasted any french fries like they had. It was really cool! The best part was the french fries. They were so different. So hot and tasty. Not only that but each french fry was almost identical in looks to the one you just ate. I later learned that McDonald’s had spent some 1 million dollars developing that fry! Of course then all I knew was they were the best things I had ever ate and I could not get over how each one was almost the same as the last one.

Flash forward now to 2010 and McDonald’s Fries are nothing special. In fact there are many french fries at fast food places that beat them hands down. They no longer have that identical look. When you get an order of McDonald fries they could just as easily have been some great value brand frozen ones from your local grocer. They are no longer identical. One might be burnt while the other is ok.

In the world of fast food the McDonald Fries is now just another fry and it’s another icon from the past that appears to have succumbed to profit “vs” quality.

Overall Rating for today’s McDonald’s French Fries: 3

As stated in that review my wife and I are coffee addicts. We have a pot going all day therefore we do know a little about a good cup of coffee and several different styles and brands of coffee makers.

Another brand that I have always thought highly of was the plain old Mr. Coffee. They are inexpensive and generally brew a decent cup of coffee. The hot plate keeps the coffee at a nice temperature which allows you to enjoy the full pot without having it scorch or get too cool. And we use our Mr. Coffee as a backup in case of emergency or when we have a lot of company.

We recently replaced our old Mr. Coffee with a new one and while I am generally satisfied with the maker part the carafe lacks much to be desired. You can rarely pour a cup without having it land everywhere. I am not sure why the carafe has been changed from the previous wide mouth style but this one is incredibly hard to pour without spilling it everywhere.

Everything else about this Mr. Coffee is excellent as always but the carafe they are now using would prevent me from purchasing another one.

Overall Rating: 4

With products ranging from Curious George to the Nancy Drew Mystery series your sure to find many items that you remember enjoying as a child and will want to share your memories with your own children.

You can visit Small Flaw here and see what I mean. The site is user friendly and all orders are process by Amazon.

Now the fact is that I enjoy building websites and so this endeavor sound like a great opportunity to give me another site in which to fiddle while also getting out of the house more to do something Kay enjoys. Great but what about the site? I’ll need a shopping cart and store in which to feature all these treasures we find.

I spent a few weeks looking around to see just what was available and what would fit for the idea I have for the website. I looked at some of the most notable ones like Zencart, AgoraCart osCommerce, and PrestaShop just to name a few and while each of them have some great points and all are free to some extent they just didn’t float my boat. In other words I just could not get excited about using them.

Then I happened to find OpenCart. This shopping cart appears to me to be the Rolls Royce of shopping carts especially for the small to medium size business. Why? Well for one reason it is a very sharp looking system. Whoever has created this cart knew what the hell they were doing. OpenCart is not the boring, bulky looking cart that you find on many sites, no sir, this baby has some eye ball to it. And uploading it to your server and installing OpenCart is a breeze.

Like any piece of software or script there are things that you will need to figure out and I have already had to ask a question on the OpenCart community board. Here again OpenCart exceeded my expectation. Within minutes of posting my question I had an answer from a poster named “imaginetech” . Not only did I have an answer but it was clear, concise and to the point and correct. I don’t know if this imaginetech is the creator of this shopping cart or just one of the users of this cart there to help the newbie but it was very impressive.

So how much is this OpenCart going to cost you as a webmaster or site owner? Nota, nothing, zip, it is open source which means it’s FREE! Yup, Opencart is free to use although like many coders who spend a huge amount of time on projects like OpenCart they do accept (and rightfully so) donations.

Spring is still a few months away and so is our “treasure hunting” at the flea markets my new site is now under construction using OpenCart as the foundation.

Need your own shopping cart? You better included OpenCart in your selection process. You can visit the OpenCart website here

There was just something about looking out the window at the snow covered ground that made me think “pancakes!” . Now I am sure snow does not make everyone think of a pancake breakfast but today this is what happened to me.

Now me making breakfast is not unusual. In fact on my days off I normally will get the breakfast ready before waking anyone up. And being born and raised in the South a real breakfast usually always consist of some eggs, biscuits and gravy with some sort of potato. It had been ages since we had made pancakes.

I checked the cupboard just to make sure we had the syrup and sure enough there sat a bottle of Log Cabin just waiting for me. Now here is the point of this blog. I have tried many brands and flavors of syrup over the years but none compare with the original Log Cabin Brand.

What makes this brand so special in our home? I really can’t say. It just has the right flavor. The maple flavor is there yet not overpowering and since I add my own butter the original flavor is perfect. Log Cabin is not so thick that it won’t spread once it hits the hotcakes but also is not that think watery looking stuff you find in some of the lower quality brands.

For those who are value minded don’t let an old brand name like Log Cabin scare you off. Compare it to any of the “value” brands and you’ll find that it cost about the same and much less than some of the other names.

Log Cabin Syrup, try it, you’ll like it!

Like most everyone our household has to cut corners where we can especially in this economy but I am not sure it is worth buying a cheaper brand if your a real hardcore coffee drinker.

My wife and I both would be classified as being die hard coffee drinkers and there is always a fresh pot on the counter. (In another review I wrote about the perfect coffee maker read that here ) and today I am giving a big thumbs up to Folgers Classic Roast Coffee.

Now to be sure there are many brands of coffee that I have not tried and many of them may be very good. But for the money I can tell you that it will be hard to beat a simple cup of Folgers Classic Roast. On that same note I have tried several different Folgers Roast like the Dark, Special, and Morning Blend and have not found those to suit our taste like the original Classic Roast.

*A tip on making coffee without the bitter after taste – remove and discard the the coffee once your pot has been made. Those little drips contain a very strong bitter taste that can ruin a good pot of coffee

Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince was no exception. Much like a kid I waited for that day in Dec when it would be released to the public. In fact I was given this DVD as an early Christmas present and needless to say I did not wait until Christmas.

I was very disappointed. The first two Harry Potter movies were excellent and followed the books very close. Since that time it has seemed to me each one had a little less attention to detail and just didn’t have the same quality about them.

Sure it is worth a view and I am sure no real Harry Potter fan would have missed seeing it. But I was not at all impressed with movie and can say it will not be one that I watch over and over again like I do the Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone or Harry Potter and The Chamber Of Secrets.

As I watch the movie drag on I could not help but thinking that once again the corporate world turns and they know the audience for this series is now the true Harry Potter fans and they will buy the movies as they come out so no reason to put that little extra effort into them to make them something special.

Overall rating: 4 – The movie magic is just not there in Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince.

The Law Of Forgiveness

Thanks to our friends at FSB Media, we have a copy of The Law of Forgiveness: Tap into the Positive Power of Forgiveness — And Attract Good Things to Your Life by Connie Domino, MPH, RN to give away to one lucky winner.

Entry is fast and free! The book’s described as follows:

A ground-breaking book, The Law of Forgiveness will demonstrate how to:

# Learn to forgive while working through the cycle of healing
# Unleash the power of personal forgiveness—with simple steps
# Use it to manifest goals and dreams
# Use the technique to positively affect a difficult relationship
# Understand the science behind the forgiveness technique

The Cuckleburr Times is a free site dedicated to publishing new works by both the professional writer and the unknown authors. Check out this freebie here: Book Giveaway Contest