Xbox One vs. PS4 - Decisions, Decisions.

I struggle where to spend my $500.

Here are the reasons to buy each machine.

Xbox One:

1. Xbox Live is far superior to PS Plus. Sony had always had trouble creating environments that are social and easy for everyone to move around in. Things like xbox avatars, inviting to parties, and just game updates are much more attractive than how Sony does things. Finding things in the PS3 menu environment is painful and ugly and just not well put together. I don't know how much faith I have that the PS4 will be comparable to Xbox Live.

2. Xbox controllers have always felt better in my hand. The headsets hook up easier and the mics just plug right into the handset that you're playing on. I remember it was painful hooking up the headset to the PS3. It required more time and wiring.

3. My son is on Xbox and he will probably go to Xbox One because all his friends will go there. Socializing with his friends and playing games with them is what sells him on it. Playing with my son from room to room is a plus.

4. The app. Xbox has an app that lets you access your account from the road. You can still message your friends and see what they are playing and change your avatar. There is no app for the PS3. I don't expect one for the future from Sony. Which means I can't use my phone to enter in these long email and passwords. Nothing is more painful than typing with a game controller.

5. Xbox gets DLC's first on games and sometimes exclusively. PS3 was unable to get the Skyrim DLC. Also, PS3 was unable to play my Disney Infinity. Then the patch came out for PS3 and it still could not play the game. So I exchanged it for xbox and was playing immediately. Having glitches and no playing games is why I left PC gaming. PS3 has given me reason to worry.

PS4:
1. It all comes down to games. PS4 has better exclusives. I love Killzone, Resistance, Uncharted, Beyond Two Souls, etc.  I play more of the PS4 exclusive titles than I do the xbox exclusive titles.

2. PS Plus give you new whole games for free. Once a month I believe. You just download it and play.

3. My brother will be on PS4 and we can play more together. The problem is that he has more time to play than I so there still will be limitations to this advantage.

4. PS4 is $100 less than Xbox One. Price is everything. I can get a PS4 and 1.5 games for the price of Xbox One. Not sure why Xbox priced it so high.

5. Sony is not trying to control your used game market, or monitor you. I am not a fan of the kinect being connected all the time with the NSA using any means possible to spy on Americans. That device needs to be disconnectable.

So as you can see my decision is a tough one. If money wasn't an issue, I'd buy both. But I don't want to spend that much money and I need to decide.

What are your Pros and Cons for each machine? Leave in the comments below. Thanks for assisting me on this big decision.

How To Launch Your Own Food Products

"Can you please tell me how to get my food products to the public?"

I get asked this question about 30 times a year, so I am now making a list of how to do this. It works with any food product. If you're not in the USA or are in rural USA, these steps can be more difficult.

Here are my credentials:
Sauces: http://TheBestSauces.com
Cooking With Jack: http://Youtube.com/jakatak69
Jack on The go Show: http://Youtube.com/jackonthego
Feel free to share this with anyone. It's the steps I do and have learned in my experience.

1. Find a food technician. Have her sign a NON DISCLOSURE AGREEMENT (NDA) which protects your recipe.  A food tech will bring you into a controlled environment and watch you make your recipe. She/he will measure and document each ingredient. Then will create your formula and give you nutritions list and ingredients list for your label. $200 - $500 an hour. should only take about 4-5 hours.

2. Find a Manufacturer. The term to search for is co-packers. These are the guys that make, label and box your product. Have them sign an NDA, then give them the formula and tell them the packaging you desire. Look through catalogs and pick something that is readily available to your co-packer so cost will be low for packaging.

3. Find Customers. Once you have a per unit price on your product you then need to go home and make a big batch of your product. Go store to store and sample it to the buyers of the store. Ask them if they would carry your product once it's made. MAKE SURE YOU SAMPLE TO THE PERSON WHO HAS THE POWER TO SAY YES AND NO  ONE ELSE. NEVER GIVE/LEAVE WHOLE BOTTLES.

4. Get Product Liability Insurance on your food product. If you can afford to Incorporate then do so. You want to protect yourself from someone dying from your product. (worst case scenario) My insurance is about $1000 a year.

5. Do the smallest manufacturing run you can once you have at least 5 committed stores. You should not make more than 70-100 cases. The shorter the shelf life the less you want to make.

6. Deliver to stores.

Here are a few more tips to marketing your product.

• Get more stores to carry you. Start with small independent stores and small chain stores (between 4-5 locations)
• Sell at the local flea market, swap meet or farmers market. We moved about 200 jars of sauce on a Sunday afternoon.
• Sell on a website. 
• Launch social media pages for your products.
• Get magazines, newspaper food reviewers to write about your product. Send them a sample.
• Get food bloggers to write about your product. Send them a sample.
• Never stop marketing your sauce. Wear hats, shirts and talk about it all the time.
• Best Tip: Wrap your car to advertise your product. No one really does this still and I get 8000 views a month on my wrap job. Cost of wrap: $1500. 8000 views X 12 months X 5 years live span = 480,000 views of your product. Worth every penny. I've sold enough product out of my wrapped car to pay for the wrap 3 times already.

I hope this helps someone. I am very blessed to be where I am at and I want to help as many people as possible. God bless!

The Day After Christmas

Even though you now have a bunch of new toys, the day after Christmas comes with a lot of mixed feelings. Jack Jr. even commented with a little sadness that it was all over and "now what?"

Some people are sad. Some people are depressed. Some people are glad it's over because they don't celebrate the holidays or they don't like holidays due to some unfortunate incident in the past. Whatever it is that you are feeling, there are a million others feeling the same way.

We build up the excitement so high that you have to come down from it at some point. My advice to you is look ahead. I don't mean look ahead as in a new years resolution. Those never come true. I mean look ahead to anything that excites you. let me give you MY LOOK AHEAD list and maybe it can help you make yours.

1. Playing with all my new video games.
2. New Year's Eve with family, games and food
3. Football Playoffs / Superbowl
4. Thinking up new cooking show ideas for next year.
5. Jack Jr going back to school
6. Going through the house getting rid of the old and making room for the new. 
7. Getting my tax return 
8. Getting my sauces into Walmart
9. Making more "F as in Frank" videos with my brother

Everyone needs a look ahead list. We all need something to work toward or to be excited about, even if it's something that is a year away.

So how does the day after Christmas make you feel? How do you handle it? What is on your LOOK AHEAD list.

What do I want for Christmas 2012

What do I want for Christmas

1. Facebook to allow us to delete & edit from the mobile app. 

2. For Youtube to give me profanity filters for video comments. 

2. Rock music to make a comeback. 

3. Non profits to have CEO salary caps

4. A "delete all text messages button" on the iPhone. 

5. Nintendo to realize they should just become a software company like SEGA. 

6. All future mass murdering gunmen start off by taking their own life, FIRST. 

7. Jerry Jones to stop running the COWBOYS ....... Into the ground. 

8. For all unions to go away so manufacturing can return to the USA. 

9. Education system to be destroyed and rebuilt from the ground up. 

10. For Kmart, sears, best buy, blackberry and groupon to go under and for the return of hostess, gumby, the unit (TVshow), $2/gal for gas and a funny Saturday night live. 

Please add your Christmas present wish to this list in the comment section.  

Youth Sports - Eternally Screwed Up

(I wrote this blog post in August and held off posting this just in case this year was different. it wasn't so I am now releasing this blog post with an update at the bottom)

     I'm not even going to talk about the parents of kids in sports. That is a blog post all on it's own. They are the worst people to be around or associate with. Parents promise to promote teamwork and to kee their mouth shut when it comes to coaching......until it comes to their little shining star of a son or daughter. Then all HELL breaks loose.

I am here to discuss the business/political side. Let's talk pop warner football as a great example, even though this blog relates to all sports.

For those of you who don't know what goes on, I will give you a peek at the insanity.

1. you pay anywhere from $300-$400 to play.  That includes your equipment which the last 10 years has been worn by pop warner kids and seriously needs to be burned and replaced. But the league continues to sew, tape, and screw back together the football gear. You also have to give them a $50 snack bar check, in case you don't do your snack bar duty.

2. you also are required to work the snack bar for two days, which raises money for Pop Warner. Pop warner works you, doesn't pay you and keeps all the money for themselves. Surprised the gov't doesn't grab on to that money.

3. you also must do 2 fund raisers which raises more money for Pop Warner. They don't pay you anything and keep all the money for themselves. At this point your asking what is the $350 I paid going toward if I am raising all this money.

4. your team is also required to get 2 sponsors for $250 each. Now this part I understand. This money is for the kids pizza parties, gear bags or jackets. This is totally cool, unless you get a coach that decides to keep the money and not spend it on the kids.

5. you also get to sit for 2 hours a day at practice and watch your son practice......Um......let me rephrase that. You get to watch the predetermined stars practice and your son either stands there and gets hit over and over or just watches plays he will never get to do.  Then your son gets yelled out for not paying attention to plays he will never get to experience.

6. Then the team schedules a a parents road trip to raise more money. Every kid's parent is required to pay in money even if they can't go on this trip, because......I don't know why. Sorry.

So now it's game day and if your president of the league or sit on the board or are a coach, then it's going to be a great day. Your going to see your son play the whole game in a position he may or may not know how to play well. The other kids are what we call "minimum player kids" This means that they have to play at least 8-12 plays depending on your league. Those are the kids that are not shown anything about football other than how to hit a player or how to avoid getting hit.

As in professional sports, you lose as a team, but when you win, it's a certain player that gets the game ball.

So if you are the parent of a minimum player you have spent about $1000 when it's all said and done and spent about 100 hours on the practice field watching your son practice to play 10 plays in a real game. Each play in a game is on average about 15 seconds long unless it's that special breakaway play when the guy runs the length of the field. So a minimum player plays a total of 25 minutes the whole season.

I know I don't have to write another word about this, but let's review:

$1000 + 100 hours of your time = 25 minutes of football for you kid.

go back a reread the above equation until your head explodes.

You swear it won't happen again next year and yet every summer your kids starts whining how he wants to play football, again.

So starting Aug 1st, 2012  if anyone needs me, I will be on the grass field, with my laptop, a mobile hotspot, and a TV tray blogging about how my son isn't learning a DAMN thing about football or how to play the game.

There! I said it and every parent feels it. What are your feelings or experiences with the insane world of unorganized youth sports?

UPDATE: 11/19/12:
So this year's football has come to an end and THANK GOD. Another year of the same crap. I thought it was different. I thought I wasn't even going to post this blog that I wrote months ago, but the same thing happened. The league is completely unorganized, they talk about teamwork and having fun and you still see the favoritism and it's all about winning. My son is so discouraged from standing on the sideline game after game being a minimum player. He never wants to do pop warner again. His team couldn't score 1 point in many of their games and yet for some reason they thought Jack was not good enough to play. My son can lose as good as any of those starters. LOL

If my son does change his mind like last year, I promise you I will not be apart...... okay, I WILL be apart of my son's life and support him in this stupid, unorganized, completely money driven and political event called Youth Sports.