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Today is Earth Day! Over one billion people in 192 countries are participating… so what are you doing?

What strikes me as funny is the belief that we have that one change can't possible make a difference in the grand scheme of things. For example: you're probably reading this now, rolling your eyes, waiting for the "we all need to recycle" speech.

Don't worry, I'll spare you that.

The best Earth Day lesson I've ever received came from my daughter when she was in 1st grade. She came home from school with all of these Earth Day facts and point blank asked me, "Dad, what are you doing to help the Earth?" Not save, not protect - help. When you start thinking with the perspective of "helping," your mindset will change. Do I drive a hybrid? No. But I try (keyword: try) to recycle my plastic bottle or can when I'm done with it. I turn off the water when I shave. I try to take shorter showers. I think about the most efficient route when driving. Most importantly, I try (keyword: try) to set a good example for "helping" for my kids.

Yeah, sorting the family garbage, trying to get as many recyclables into the green can instead of the trash can before putting out the garbage for pick up isn't going to stop our landfill from overflowing but change has to start somewhere.

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I love my daughter. She's in fourth grade and she is SO her mother. Last night while watching TV, she turned to me and said, "Dad, I have to tell you about some drama at school today." With everything that's been going on in the world this week, you can imagine what came to my mind. Thankfully, what's important in the life of a ten-year-old girl involves her immediate friends and who's not talking to who these days.

Like a police investigator, I tried taking notes of this story that involved a bunch of new names and people I haven't heard of before. At one point, I asked her to get her class photo so I could keep track of things. Apparently "the drama" started at gym with her friends.

I'll spare you the details of this story that stretches about fifteen minutes in length, skipping to her main point: she wanted to know if she could buy something. Funny how dads are always the first step in the permission to purchase - we must be the crash test dummies of life knowing what mom will say. My daughter wanted to buy a book called "Sticky Situations," which is part of the Discovery Girls series for tweens when it comes to dealing with drama in their life.

I was checking out their website this morning, which is free, and found the content to be a good source of info for young girls. I remember when I was in the fourth grade, books like "The Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing," we all we had to get advice from. When I suggested going to the library to checkout the book for free - I got the look.

That's when I gave her the age old Dad line, "go ask your mother."

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Stop signs are like police, they never around when you need them and always around when you don't.  You know what I mean. Who hasn't turned down that one residential street where at the end of every block there's a stop sign? You get out of second gear long enough to come to a complete start and start all over. Frustrating.

Then there are the neighborhoods where there's like one stop sign and people drive down the street like it's the backstretch at the Daytona 500. As a parent, you feel like you have to stand with your kids in an orange vest with a whistle every time your kids are playing outside! Equally frustrating.

If you're a fan of the show "Modern Family" on ABC, you might recall the episode where Claire, the mom on the show, ended up running for a town office after asking her local planning board to put up a stop sign on her street. That was the first thought that came to mind when I read this story of a group of neighbors in the San Diego area who were tired of speeders and converted Yield signs to STOP signs.

It seems to me the people have spoken.

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Fitness.

What's the first thing that came your mind when you read that word? Did you picture a body builder flexing? Perhaps an athlete at a game? A group of runners? Maybe a sweaty person toweling off?

Thanks to the Vent Fitness Challenge, when I think of fitness, the picture that comes to mind now is someone who is healthy, happy, and who can push their body while knowing their limits. Every week when my team meets a list of three exercises are posted that have to complete in a certain amount of time. For example: do as many pushups as you can for two minutes, perform as many sit-ups as you can in one minutes, and stand in the "tree pose" for sixty seconds. The cool thing about the Vent Fitness Challenge is that you can take as many classes as you like during the week, workout at the gym, or follow the guide at home - but every week you must complete the individual challenge.

The Vent Fitness Challenge is more than a weight-loss contest or exercise competition. Here's how: no matter what your fitness level is, you will be challenged to push yourself to the next level. In my case, I entered the challenge as guy looking to lose some body fat and add some "kick" to my weekly gym workouts. Within a week I was already doing exercises that I would have never tried on my own, pushing myself to reach new personal goals.

It's amazing to see the transformation on my teammates as well.  Every week I'm amazed to see the determination in our group workouts and the friendships that have formed between sweating and catching our breath!

Personally, I kinda suffered a bit of a set back last week. I had shared earlier that I was down to 206 pounds, after weighing in at 212 pounds. Well, when I saw 203 on my bathroom scale, I couldn't believe it! I asked my Team Captian, Holly, if she wouldn't mind weighing me on the gym scale. The bad news: my bathroom scale was wrong. I'm only at 210 pounds. But… I have lost 3% of my body fat since the challenge started. And here's another cool accomplishment, after five years, I can now do "hanging windshield wipers!"

I'm getting in the best fitness shape of my life, I'm making new friends, and I've got a new exercise goal - master the double wave move on the rope workouts!

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Call me crazy but I love job interviews. They are like part sport and part showcase showdown for me. On one hand, my goal is to get the interviewer off of the prepared, scripted, "tell us about yourself" questions and into a "real" conversation as quickly as possible. The other goal is to get the job offer.

I've had a couple interesting job interviews. One was for a company in Allentown where the hiring manager put me on an interview circuit throughout the building with all of the department heads. I spent ten minutes or so in each managers office before ending up in the general manager's office for the final interview. It was cool to learn all of the different aspects of the company but was very confusing when trying to remember what each manager told me.

Another odd interview tactic was the "group interview" I had when I applied to work for Apple. Anyone who's been through this process understands how sitting at a table with three or four other applicants talking with one interviewer can really throw you off your game. What was cool was that through each interview session, the group, like a reality show, got smaller until the final interview with the head manager where I got the job offer.

Personally, I prefer interviews that are more like conversations than "Q&A sessions." Lunch meetings, talking over coffee, or a conversation at a park is welcomed too. But driving to a prospective employers house and going out to dinner after hours of conversation… well that is more than a little weird. Read the story of this job seeker in Minneapolis whose job interview felt more like a date!

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How many times have you pulled up behind a car at a red light and spent time trying to figure out what the heck their customized plate means? We're lucky if we can solve the letter puzzle before the light changes. I've always thought the Vanity Plates game would make a good game show!

There's a cancer survivor in Oklahoma City who has a customized plate that is pretty easy to figure out and it's causing some problems for him. His plate says, "F CANCR," he says the 'F' in question stands for fight. After some motorists have complained about the 'F' in question, the state Tax Commission has asked that he change the custom plate.

Nick Williams is a 32-year-old cancer survivor and says that when he had his surgery to remove his cancer, "they got 60 percent of it. The other 40 percent was entwined in my brain." He says that he's still fighting for his life, a battle that has already taken it's toll for about two and half years. Nick has had surgery, chemotherapy and countless visits to the hospital. But giving up is not an option: Nick is also the father of 5-year-old Kameron.

Nick plans to keep his plate, and his save his effort to fight cancer.

Nick, if you had that phrase on a T-shirt, I know a few folks here in the Capital Region who would be proud to support you!

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DogTV is coming to DirecTV on August 1st. After watching this promo clip, I'm still tying to figure out if this channel is for dogs or their owners…

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I fell in love with this show after it was off TV. Thanks to Netflix, I was able to "catch up" on the Bluth family and have become a cult fan. I'm pumped for the new season and the potential movie!

This week Netflix released promo posters for the new season. Each character gets a dedicated poster in the marketing campaign for Netflix's new season of Arrested Development (premiering May 26). Prop-driven prints, created out of Ignition Creative, reference the history of the show, from Buster's grape juice to George Sr's love affair with his ice-cream sandwich.

To see them, click here.

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I like hot food. Let me correct that, I love SPICY food. The problem I run into is that some cooks think SPICY means that my tongue needs to feel like its on fire and my throat burns. What I want is food that has a little kick and a lot of flavor. The problem is, people who like HOT food have taken over the kitchen. They started adding pepper's to dishes to make them so intense, the flavor is gone.

I grew up in Arizona, the home of AMAZING Mexican food. While I enjoy hot sauce and have insulted quite a few salsa makers by telling them their blend tastes like ketchup, I know my limits. Recently I was at the Saratoga Salsa & Spice Company on Broadway. The store had some samples on the counter, I skipped over the "mild" offerings because, to me, they would be like tasty tomato sauce. I asked for the "hot" jars. The guy behind the counter looked at me like a challenge had just been thrown down. He presented three jars in ascending heat order containing: Habanero peppers, Ghost peppers, and Scorpion peppers.

Before I go any further, a quick science lesson on why peppers taste hot. Peppers contain a chemical called capsaicin that causes our nerve cells to react as if they have been burned, though without doing any actual damage. The amount of capsaicin in a pepper is measured on a scale of Scoville units. Ghost peppers, which held the Guinness world record between 2007 and 2011, hit about 1,001,000 on the Scoville scale. But in early 2012, a new variety of scorpion pepper was accepted into the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s hottest.

With that said, I was able to handle the habanero and ghost with no problem. The scorpion pepper left a burn in my mouth that stayed with me during my dive home to Clifton Park. I'm a spicy food eater and I know my limits. That's why when idiots who take "Hot Pepper Eating Challenges" and FAIL - they make me laugh. Espcially when there's video… Enjoy!