Business – i am sarah kohl

Ditch the Trainings, Team Build Through Board Games

Even though I grew up with three siblings it was like pulling teeth to get anyone to play board games with me as a kid. Thankfully, that’s changed now that we’re older and the selection of games to choose from is nearly endless. Card games, cooperative games, free-form story games, we’ve really come a ways since the days of Monopoly and Clue!

There are some games with widely accepted benefits. Chutes and ladders, for example, has been shown to increase a child’s ability to count and understand numbers. But why stop learning just because we’ve grown up? [More]

Developer Week 2017 in San Francisco

sarah-kohl-silicon-valley-SF-developer-week-2917

This was my first time attending the Developer Week Conference and I’ll be honest, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I attended a handful of talks and walked around the show floor and was overall pleasantly surprised.

I should start off saying that I’ve always found virtual reality (VR) to be a bit too gimmicky. Often applications that are released are focused around video games. While that may be fun I’ve never understood why Silicon Valley has been so in love with the technology until now.

Two specific events at this show helped me to make the jump from VR skeptic to VR advocate. [More]

42 USA: The Free Coding College

42_usa_coding_school_free_sarah_kohl

The past month I’ve been learning to code in Silicon Valley as part of the application process for the no-strings-attached free-tuition school called 42. If you’ve been following my twitter, you might have noticed one or two posts about the application tests and process. The owner of the French telecom network free founded the college in Paris, and this year they opened their second campus location in California. The college has no teachers, no accreditation, and has just started to build it’s reputation, but the draw of a free education that leads to a good paying job seems to be attractive to people from all walks of life. [More]

What is MIT’s Project “Solid” And Why Should You Care About It?

tim berners lee mit labs project solid

Tim Berners-Lee gave us the gift of the Internet without patents, copyrights, or trademarks. Unlike the giant tech companies we know today, Tim Berners-Lee provided global value to society without putting his own self-interest first. Now this genius wants to revolutionize his creation with “Solid” and the team at MIT’s lab.

Solid stands for “social linked data” and somewhat represents the block chain system we see being used for crypto currency. The end users would store their personal information in personal online data stores, or “pods,” and access to this information would only be aloud by applications that have the authority to do so. [More]

There’s No Luxury on a Cruise Ship

why you should never go on a cruise and why cruise lines are evil

Let me start off by saying I’ve never been on a cruise ship. I’ve heard stories, seen pictures, and understand the appeal, but I have no desire to be on a cruise ship. It seems that, unlike everyone else, I can’t see the luxury others find in a cruise.

The idea of a cruise is great. I love boats, meeting people, and being lazy. To make it all better, a cruise is generally cheap. At face value, you can’t really go wrong. In fact, most people who tell me about their cruise vacations come back ecstatic and rave about the fantastic time they had. [More]

Netflix is Officially More Expensive Than Amazon Prime

netflix price increase means amazon prime is officially cheaper than netflix

Do you remember Netflix way back in the day? Before it was primarily a streaming service, their tiered plans revolved around how many disks a month you could order. You might also remember their marketing practices were horrible. They used misleading banner ads, hid the terms of your account billing, and made it so that no matter when in the billing cycle you canceled your account, your access was instantly shut off and you received no refunds. There goes that free month you got when you joined!

Yeah, for those of us who remember, Netflix has never actually been a, “good” company. [More]

How to Buy Products Only Sold in the USA

sarah kohl travel blogger tips to buy in the USA and ship internationally

Being a US citizen I hardly ever think about “not” being able to order something from a site. Once in awhile I’ll see a retail site in the UK that claims they won’t ship to the United States, but pretty much, everyone is willing to ship here.

Sure, I had seen the text, “only ships to the continental United States,” or something like it before while checking out, but it never impacted me so I didn’t pay it much attention until I started dating a Canadian.

This guy was well off, but maybe not the most educated person. He adamantly believed that a weird cocktail of supplements in fruit juice was the magic bullet that could prevent or cure any flu, cold, or unidentified sniffle. [More]

Tips for Getting Sleep While Traveling

Getting sleep is important regardless of where you are and what you’re doing. The benefits of a good night’s sleep range from maintaining overall health to an improved mood. As difficult as it can be to get rested at home, it’s even more challenging to get sleep while on the road.

Changing time zones and red-eye flights aren’t the best way to ensure you get your beauty rest, but I have a few travel tips that should increase the chances you’ll stay healthy and rested while you’re on the go. [More]

Spend Your Rewards Points!

Too many people save their rewards points like a dragon hoarding gold, but why? Rewards points aren’t money. There is no reality where a company will increase the value of your rewards points over time, but there is a very good chance that they will decrease the value of those points!

There are a lot of programs that have rewards points, credit cards, airlines, grocery stores, gas stations, movie theaters; almost anywhere you go, there’s a rewards program. So it’s easy to loose track of how many points you have and what you can get for them. [More]

Venture Brothers Season 6 Sponsored by NY State Taxpayers

I love New York and I love the Venture Brothers. If you’re keeping up to date with the show (no spoilers) you might notice an image of New York State and some text fly by in the end credits. Most people probably wouldn’t know what it’s for, but after working for the local Economic Development Center I can spot those logos anywhere.

The Venture Brothers is just one of the many TV shows produced in New York, likely for some of our juicy film credits. The program known as Governor’s Office for Motion Picture & Television Development is part of the Empire State Development program. [More]

Get Your Money’s Worth From Amazon Prime

I’ve had my Amazon account for 10 years. In that whole time, I’ve never subscribed for a Prime membership despite all of the tempting offers Amazon’s made. This year I caved. I finally needed something so soon that it made sense to get Prime, but not soon enough that buying next day shipping made sense. In agreeing to subscribe I decided I would make the most of my new Amazon Prime membership though and really make sure that I got my $100 worth of value from it.

Most people don’t really know all the benefits of Amazon Prime. [More]

Send Phuck-In-A-Box When You Have Nothing Good to Say

One of my readers contacted me the other day telling me about his latest humorous project. Jay is a writer and had this whole idea while working on a segment of dialog for one of his characters. In an obviously negative tone, one of his characters exclaimed, “If I were to give you a gift, it would probably be a fuck you in a box!”

Let me pause a moment to mention that there is no shortage of ways to tell someone to fuck off. You can do so as directly as shouting it with your middle finger in the air or as discretely as spitting on their lunch when they aren’t looking. [More]