Villy Customs

Villy Custom Bicycles on Shark Tank

Season 3 - Episode 13 - Update

Fleetwood Hicks and DeVille on Shark Tank Show

 Villy Customs has a successful story to tell like no other I have have covered on the Shark Tank thus far. The owner and inventor of the Villy Customs Bicycles, Fleetwood Hicks and his best friend and mascot Deville, have been on one wild ride in the past few years. What started out as renting a cruiser bicycle on a business trip soon developed into a full time opportunity that even Fleetwood could never imagined where it would take him. Villy Custom first began in 2008 as a pure play brick and mortar business that took Felt Cruisers and Hawk Classic Cruiser bikes and fitted them with stylish personalised accessories. The idea kept growing til the point you can now custom design your own bike with unlimited possibilities all from the comfort of your computer. (and now even on an I-Pad that was just reported on the Villy Customs Blog)

 Pre Shark Tank Days

Before Villy Customs was featured on the Shark Tank Show
Read More Here-->>>

The Millionaire's Handbook by Vicky Oliver - Book review

The Millionaire's Handbook

How to Look and Act like a Millionaire, Even if You're Not

By: Vicky Oliver

Published: November 1, 2012
Format: Paperback, 288 pages
ISBN-10: 1616084146
ISBN-13: 978-1616084141
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing











"This book describes eighteen separate aspects of looking and acting like a millionaire even if you aren't one", writes success coach and award winning author Vicky Oliver, in her transformational and very practical book The Millionaire's Handbook: How to Look and Act like a Millionaire, Even if You're Not. The author describes how being a millionaire is very much more a way of thinking and behaving, more than it's a number in a bank account.

Vicky Oliver understands that not everyone is born wealthy, or provided with the initial advantages so often associated with wealth. To counter these oversights of birth, the author presents a complete course in looking like a millionaire, acting as a successful person, and being treated as an individual of importance by society. Vicky Oliver demonstrates that anyone can present themselves as a successful brand, regardless of their current financial or social circumstances. Through dressing for success, behaving in a manner suited to the manor born, and showing the confidence in that successful image, anyone can achieve success. With the look, actions, and attitude in hand, the rise in social status and increase in the bank account numbers will soon follow.

Vicky Oliver (photo left) recognizes that people make fast judgements of a person's wealth and status based on outward appearance. With that estimation in hand, a more comprehensive analysis will follow based on the person's speech, choice of words, tastes, knowledge, and other often obscure signs of success. The author shares time tested strategies for not only adding several zeroes to your perceived level of wealth, but many points of perception based IQ as well.

The author provides eighteen chapters of useful and wealth perception building advice. Those eighteen chapters include the following:

* The ten laws of material success
* Skimp on the items no one will notice
* Covet they neighbor's catalogs
* Amass a $64 million dollar vocabulary
* Everything you need to know to get on the A-list is in a proverb
* The body of a millionaire
* Hairography for heir and heiress wannabes
* Develop an obscure hobby
* Blend in to stand out
* Shake the accent, and other elocution tips
* Your personal brand
* Millionaire skin
* Never ask for recognition if you're on the board of a charity
* Show some class
* Name yourself if you have to
* Foster an eccentricity
* The miracle of dating up
* You, only richer

For me, the power of the book is how Vicky Oliver provides very practical and status elevating ideas in a clear and entertaining manner. Combining sound advice with good humor helps to remove the resistance that many readers may feel toward the concepts. The author offers real change in thinking, and along with that proposed transition to a different worldview, may come some opposition to applying the pointers to one's own life. Vicky Oliver presents a comprehensive course in moving on up, and sound advice on the reactions of those already in the upper echelons to an individual's arrival, appearance, and actions.

The author makes clear that in the wider world, people make decisions quickly, and that perception becomes their reality. By adopting the mind set of change, and of being a wealthy person despite the shortage of real cash, one becomes wealthy in the eyes of the world. Vicky Oliver offers an enjoyable route to the upper echelons of society, with a more full wallet to follow soon thereafter. At the same, a person still remains themselves, only that they always arrive in their very best personal version.

I highly recommend the rise to success oriented book The Millionaire's Handbook: How to Look and Act like a Millionaire, Even if You're Not by Vicky Oliver, to anyone seeking to break the code at the office or the country club, and become an accepted member of the elite circles. This book will get you in the door at the most exclusive places, and provide you with the hands on tools to be remain their successfully

Tackling The Veterinary Terminology: Suffixes (-scopy)

Remember the Spelling Bee? Big words are easier to tackle when you understand how they're put together. Veterinary terms are composed in the same way. Just like with other words, the main parts of a veterinary term are a prefix, a root, and a suffix. The difference is that they typically come more directly from Greek or Latin.

The suffix is the bit that will tell you about what procedure, condition, disease or disorder you're dealing with.

-scopy [skəpi] from Greek - to examine, observe

In general words ending with -scopy indicate viewing or examination, typically with an instrument ending with -scope. Figures, doesn't it? In general sense, this includes instruments such as a microscope or a telescope  too.

An endoscope

For our purpose, though, we're talking about procedures using a thin optical instrument inserted into a cavity through a small incision, called an endoscope.

These days, -scopy doesn't just mean examination. The same instrument can be equipped with an attachment to perform a biopsy or a surgery.

Some examples are  laparoscopy (procedure within intra-abdominal or pelvic region), thoracoscopy (examination of the lung surfaces and pleural space) , arthroscopy (examination or surgical procedure in the joint), etc.



Compare with laparotomy, which is surgically opening the abdomen.



Related articles:
Veterinary Highlights: Laparoscopy, Thoracoscopy, And Endoscopic-Assisted Procedures 
Veterinary Suffixes (-itis)
Veterinary Suffixes (-oma) 
Veterinary Suffixes (-pathy)  
Veterinary Suffixes (-osis) 
Veterinary Suffixes (-iasis) 
Veterinary Suffixes (-tomy) 
Veterinary Suffixes (-ectomy) 

A Failed Congress

 

By Alan Caruba

This is for all those who voted to reelect Obama or those who stayed home on Election Day 2012 because they found Republican candidates who talked about unemployment and the need for more jobs unappealing.

The blame falls on the Democratic Party that controls the Senate and the White House. The blame falls on the Republican Party that needs to grow a new backbone instead of looking for ways to compromise with an administration bent on the destruction of the nation.

What awaits Americans in 2013 is the largest tax increase in the history of the nation and it is not because the Republicans in the House of Representatives did not propose and pass one plan after another to avoid it.

What awaits Americans in 2013 is the result of the failure and refusal of Congress to reform a huge and horrible tax code that even Certified Public Accountants and IRS bureaucrats cannot fathom and, unless an alternative minimum tax "fix" is quickly approved, the IRS has notified Congress that up to 100 million taxpayers will have to wait to file while it overhauls its computers.

Failing to act on the recommendations of the Simpson-Bowes Commission to reduce government spending, reform the tax code, and save the “entitlement” programs, and ignored by the President, resulted in a “sequestration” program of automatic, draconian reductions that will cut the defense budget at a time when it is our primary deterrent to attacks on the homeland and  the protection of our interests around the world.

 

Across the board cuts will impact all aspects of life in America; reductions in government spending that should have been introduced in a sensible, reasoned manner.

Remember George W. Bush who Obama insisted was to blame for the economy he “inherited”? The roll-back of the Bush-era tax cuts will impose increased taxes on families making between $50,000 and $75,000 that are estimated to take $2,400 from them according to one non-partisan study.

 

Investment taxes will increase as well. The capital gains rate will increase from 15% to 20% for investors. Dividends would be taxed like regular income, affecting decisions to purchase stocks that aid the growth and expansion of corporations large and small.

 

An estate tax will impact families seeking to pass on their properties and savings to the next generation.

The Congressional Budget Office predicts the nation could lose 3.4 million jobs in 2013. Meanwhile, jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed are set to expire next year. The maximum 73 weeks in state and federal benefits will fall to 26 weeks, affecting two million jobless Americans now receiving them.

The U.S. has functioned without a budget for the past three years and one that was submitted by the President was soundly rejected by Congress.

Millions of Americans who saved for retirement and those on fixed incomes will suffer as these tax increases occur.

 

Millions of employers will put their workers on a “part-time” status to avoid Obamacare mandates, reducing their income.

 

Obamacare was judged to be a tax by a Supreme Court that failed to give weight to the requirement that Americans must now purchase health insurance whether they want to or need to. This directly contravenes the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. Some twenty states have refused to set up the insurance “exchanges” required by the law. Others struggle under the current Medicaid mandates.

This is misfeasance—the improper and unlawful execution of an act that in itself is lawful—by a Congress charged with the governance of the nation.

Politics has always been understood as reasoned compromise between those elected to office, but as we have seen in the weeks leading up to the so-called “fiscal cliff”, the President has refused to negotiate in good faith or to compromise. No doubt he plans to blame the Republicans for the ills of the nation.

As a result, Americans will keep or spend less of their earnings and millions more will be thrown into unemployment.

Most are unaware of these realities. While all this occurs, the nation’s debt of $16 trillion continues to grow in a nation whose Gross Domestic Product—the earnings from all its goods and services—stands around $14 trillion. This is unsustainable and it threatens the future of the nation whose credit rating is likely to be reduced.

It is a perfect storm.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Adam Lanza Killed Christmas 2012

By Alan Caruba

Adam Lanza didn’t just kill twenty children and six teachers and staff on December 14^th. He killed Christmas 2012 with his dark shadow of insanity and evil. He killed the zone of safety that we ascribe to elementary schools when we send our children there. He made us all afraid for our own safety.

Lanza’s act sparked a dash to gun stores and shows across the nation to purchase guns and he gave all the gun-grabbers an excuse to propose still more laws against gun ownership that fail to protect people in the moments when they are threatened.

In the week that followed, during the media coverage of Christmas Day, and around the dinner tables of America as families gathered, his deranged act took away some of the joy of the holiday. For the families of the victims, it turned Christmas into a day of mourning.

There will be many more Christmases to come and this one in 2012 will fade from memory, but this one, when recalled, will be done with a shudder; a reminder that there is incomprehensible evil in the world and a constant need to be armed against it.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

The Night Before Christmas

The Night Before Christmas graphic produced by Pet365 and Dogorama. Click here to view the original post.

Clement Moore - A Visit From St. Nicholas read by Lorne Greene

Clement Moore - A Visit From St. Nicholas (Twas The Night Before Christmas) read by Lorne Greene