VAX-D for Back Pain - What I Learned From Making An Infomercial & TV Commercials for a Chiropractor

My ad agency team was once hired to produce a 30 minute infomercial, TV commercial ad campaign, and new website for the Back Pain Institute in Florida.  Their specialty was VAX-D treatments for back pain.  Skeptical of the claims, I was given a tour of their facility.

I saw two patients lying on their stomachs on these tables, harnessed and holding onto bars above their heads.  The client had lined up some happy patients who would provide testimonials.  Hearing first hand from so many people how VAX-D changed their lives was impressive.  Nothing beats word of mouth, and there were plenty of people making claims that it changed their lives.  Seriously, no spin.

They could walk up stairs again.  A fireman could return fully to work and carry hoses up the training towers.  A mother could pick up her child again without wincing in pain.  All these activities many of us take for granted were a nightmare for these people.  One, a die-hard marathon runner, was able to overcome his backpain and run again.

Remember, these are unsolicited reviews, I get paid nothing for espousing these opinions.  I urge that if you are having back pain to at least look into the options of VAX-D treatments instead of invasive surgery.  After all, you can always get some disks welded together or get metal plates screwed to your spine later if VAX-D doesn't improve your condition!

The premise behind VAX-D is that it stretches and realigns your spine so slowly, unlike traction, your back muscles do not counter the pulling and allows your discs to open and draw in the nutrients from the body and slowly heal your discs.  That's the gist in super layman's terms, anyway.

If you are suffering from back pain, here are some of the commercials, snippets from the 30 minute infomercial at my YouTube channel:  http://www.youtube.com/aaronbelchamber.

VAX-D might not be for everyone, but I ran into A LOT of people who opted for VAX-D over surgery and were so glad they did.  VAX-D actually cures a lot of spinal and disk issues that I am not qualified medically to discuss or even understand.  If it worked for these genuine people, it might be a treatment option worth looking at more closely.  I have personally recommended it to a few of my friends and have had friends who have gone through VAX-D that would recommend it as a serious option.

The cost of these VAX-D treatments are definitely less than surgery, not to mention the minimized risks involved.  It may even be virtually a "free" back pain solution since it is accepted by many health insurance policies (as long as those are still around and not gobbled up by the government's upcoming and inevitable single-payer health payer system -- go post office-style health care!  Sorry, I digress....)   Look it up and consider it as a serious option if you have back pain.

The other bonus will be if you're in Southwest Florida, look up the Woottons.  Dr. Wootton and Barbara Wootton, who own and operate The Back Pain Institute, were great clients and wonderful people, you'll be glad to have met them.  Your back might thank you, too.

Disk Recovery: Don't Give Up Until You Give R-Tools Technology a Try

These are all unsolicited reviews, I get nothing for them, so know at least I have no incentive either way except to do my part and share my experiences with products and services.  I personally find reviews useful and I hope you will find my truthful, unskewed reviews helpful for you!

When Hard Drive Disaster Strikes, Think R-Studio

A few times in the past 20 years, I've lost a hard drive or two.  Like most, especially when the cost of data storage was prohibitively high and much slower, I was a little behind on the backing up of my data.  One time, it was a power outage while writing to a hard drive, another time I think a client of mine dropped the hard drive, another time, who knows what happened -- Windows could no longer recognize it.

What all of these scenerios had in common was they weren't just inconveniences, but real weeks worth of work were lost, seemingly instantly.... at least I thought.  With client deadlines looming and a bunch of video and web projects locked away in a mysterious maze buried in a pretty reliable external hard drive, crunch time was quickly turning into "panic mode."

Immediately, I played it cool and went online looking for a solution, a FREE software solution first, of course.  There was some albeit questionable freeware, or free trials of data recovery software I found.  I tried three different software packages that couldn't even find the hard drive, so recovery of any data was out of the question with these "solutions", of course.  One trial version made sure I wouldn't forget them anytime soon by sending me a proliferation of unsolicited spam emails.

A little more anxious, I finally stumbled upon R-Tools Technology Inc., http://www.drive-image.com/.  I downloaded their Windows drive recovery solution, "R-Studio", which came with a free trial that would give me a preview of all the files it found, a list of what it thought it could restore, and a limited capability of restoring I think 10 MBs.  I needed to restore NTFS, so there was an option for that particular need.

Please excuse the fact I do not have any screenshots, thankfully, I am using a fairly new computer on Windows 7, so I have not had the need for this product in a few years.  I installed the trial version and gave it a go.  Within 10 minutes, I had R-Studio installed and up on my screen.  The interface looked different than the other trials -- cleaner, intuitive, and easier to follow.  It looked and felt professional.  Still smarting from my previous 3 experiences from other software that made its way through what I thought was a pretty good "crap detector", I clicked a few buttons to recognize any hard drives R-Studio could find to scan and waited, expecting the same, helpless result.

Start the Marching Band -- My Data Was Recovered!

Instead, up popped the drive that none of the other software programs or Windows XP, could even recognize!  I think a parade began a marching song in the background, echoes of a choir could be heard singing "hallelujah!"  I clicked the drive icon and it began to scan its files right away.  Within minutes, I stopped the scan to see if any progress had been made -- sure enough, there were my folders and a list of all my files.  ALL of them!  I restored a few files and anxiously opened them.  One was an Adobe Premiere project file, the other files were video clips and a few Word files.  I loaded the files, opened them, looked them over -- PERFECT!  Not a missing pixel, not a sign of a glitch.

I wasted no time, I went to R-Studio's website, paid for the full version.  The total cost of this software lifesaver was a little less than $50.  They sent me a registration key and I unlocked my trial program to the full version.  I had about 400 GBs of data that needed to be restored and R-Studio recovered all of it to another external hard drive in less than an hour.  I can't say enough about the quality of this product and how much time and trouble it saved me.  Literally weeks of work and it kept me from missing some pretty important customer deadlines.  It even found some deleted files I had thought were lost but I had accidentally deleted.

I would recommend R-Studio and any of there products.  Their program simply stood well above the other solutions I looked into, some much more expensive than R-Studio. 

Best Data Recover Solution for Your Money

I subscribed to their product update emails, which I get no more than once every few months.  Their last email to me let me know of the improvements and updates their awesome software team had been working on:

New features:
+ Support for ReFS (Resilient File System), a new local file system Microsoft introduced in its Windows Server 2012.
+ Support for Windows Server 2012 OS.
+ R-Studio Technician: Integration with DeepSpar Disk Imager, a professional HDD imaging device specifically built for data recovery from hard drives with hardware issues. Such integration provides R-Studio with a low-level fine-tuned access to drives with a certain level of hardware malfunction. Moreover, it allows disk imaging and analyzing be performed simultaneously. That is, any sector R-Studio accesses on the source disk will be immediately copied to a clone disk and any other data recovery operation will be made from that clone disk avoiding further deterioration of the source disk and great reduction in processing time. Read more on our page Integration with Hard Drive Recovery Hardware http://www.r-studio.com/DiskRecoveryHardware.shtml .

To receive future newsletters about the latest software builds click on the following link to subscribe
http://www.r-tt.com/cgi-bin/Newsletter

The latest version of R-Studio (v. 6.2) can be downloaded from our Web page at
http://www.data-recovery-software.net/Data_Recovery_Download.shtml

R-Drive Image software and more information on website and forum:
Site: http://www.drive-image.com
Forum: http://forum.r-tt.com/r-drive-image-5-1-5101-t8378.html

Domain Registrars: Omnis.com for Registering New Websites

If you are looking to register a new website address (domain name), I suggest using Omnis.com.  Unlike Network Solutions that charges upwards of $35, Omnis charges less than $10 for most domain names.  It's the same level of service and their account user interface is easy and convenient to navigate.

You don't have to pay more for web registration.  I don't use Omnis for hosting websites any more, but have used them in the past.  I was very pleased with their server reliability and up times.  Also, Omnis' customer service has been helpful in the past.

Movie Review: "Lawless" Keeps Tension Entire Movie

"Lawless" came out in 2012.  I never heard of it, but it's packed with Hollywood A-Listers.  I'm glad we rented it, even though the pace and tension kept me on edge and made me felt uneasy throughout most of the movie.  So many people out to kill, steal or hurt so many other people. Who can you trust when the law is as lawless as the lawless?!

"Lawless" is a violent Hollywood gangster film starring Tom Hardy, Shia Labeouf, Jason Clarke, Gary Oldman and Guy Pearce.  It is about a family called the Bondurants in 1920's Virginia during the time of Alcohol Prohibition and moonshiners.  The biggest crime wave that ever struck the country was a result of misguided legislation to make alcohol illegal, as if making something illegal would mean people would no longer consume it and live a life of purity.  For those without an interest in our nation's history, think our modern-day government's War on Drugs and the failures, flaws and dangers it has imposed on our society.

"Lawless" brings you quickly into the Bondurant family's inner household, led by Forrest Bondurant, a charismatic, imposing young man, patriarch of the "indestructible" family, a man of few words, played by Tom Hardy.  Shia Lebeouf is the younger brother who seeks independence from the long shadows of his brother as he struggles in the dangerous world of making and selling moonshine in a brutal time where it's every man for himself.

I thought it was Guy Pearce as Charlie Rakes, the psychopathic, corrupt federal lawman that was brought in to "clean up" the area of crime, but I could barely tell.  He was so transformed into this despicable villain, I barely recognized him.  His character could make your skin crawl.  "Lawless" is also an excellent essay on the flaws of "good intentioned" legislation and the perils of careless, one-size fits all laws our country has used to polarize and fracture our society like a cancer these past 100 years.  Like alcohol prohibition, by pushing the drug market underground, it inflates the value of drugs, fosters violence, spreads and incentives corruption, victimizes many innocent bystanders, and exposes people to higher levels of risks as opposed to decriminalizing drugs, regulating, and taxing it.  There's a softer side to the movie, but their rare sparkles in a dark, gloomy, and dangerous world.

There are also some excellent side-stories, a bit of humor, and a lot of violence involving knife attacks and shootouts.  It's not for the weak of heart.  My favorite parts are Tom Hardy's character, Forrest, who seems to permeate a lot of likability paired with a determined, principled, and intimidating exterior.  Forrest Bondurant is the only moonshiner who stands up to the corrupt system and endures many different attempts on his life.  He's insensitive but caring at the same time, a great performance.

My only regret is LaBeouf, who tries a little too hard with his hillbilly accent as he partially narrates different scenes in the movie.  He also brings his ability to be the annoying little brother fully into play to add more tension.  You're pulling for his character, Jack, you only wish he'd get his act together and stop acting so arrogant.

Overall, I'd give "Lawless" 3 stars out of 4.  It does a great job of transporting you back to this "neck of the woods" and those dangerous times.  The tension and nervousness throughout the movie is sustained and the pace changes enough between a bit of romance, violent action, and satisfying character development.  I wish Guy Pearce's creepy character could have gotten a bit more screen time against Tom Hardy.  I hope these guys show up in a movie together again, they're both excellent at transforming into their characters.

It's definitely an 'R' rated movie, but it is a very good production reminiscent of the old gangster movies.  It mercilessly thrusts the audience into the Prohibition & Great Depression Eras and highlights this interesting part of our history and Virginia's part in these tumultuous times.

Movie Review: "Hop" The Movie a fun family flick, but leaps short of a "classic"

I thought it was a great idea, I mean, all those fun Christmas movies out there, why not start producing fun movies that could help us rejoice in Easter and wove itself into our culture as fun, annual Easter traditions?  Christmas has "It's A Wonderful Life", "Christmas Vacation", "Emmett Otter's Jug Band Christmas", "White Christmas, "Miracle on 34th Street", "The Santa Clause", "Elf", and the list goes on.  All top shelf Christmas movies that found their way into millions of families' homes as part of the Christmas festivities to help us get into that Christmas cheer.  Then, there's plenty of second tier, still entertaining, miss it one year, watch it the next, Christmas movies like "Christmas With the Kranks", "How The Grinch Stole Christmas", and "Jingle All the Way".

When will Hollywood start to exploit Easter in pursuit of profit for our own benefit of entertainment?  "Hop" attempts to start this trend in the under-served Easter holiday, realizing that Christmas is already pretty crowded.

"Hop", as an Easter movie, would be a second-tier Easter movie if there were more children Easter-themed movies.  Still entertaining, but not a "must see" classic, it's still fun, albeit about 15 minutes too long.  Another kind of sad fact lurks near the end when the Easter Bunny says goodbye and climbs into a vehicle that reminds you more of Santa's sleigh, and a farewell closely mocking that of Santa's "to all a goodnight" farewell, as if Hollywood screenplay writers couldn't spend the time figuring out something clever and original for the Easter Bunny to say, tearing pages out of Clement C. Moore's classic from over 150 years ago.  A rather sad fact, considering that it took years for Clement C. Moore to even admit that he had written "The Night Before Christmas."

Being a kids movie, you'd expect a few Easter-themed songs, or music, but there was no attempt at Disney-style embellishments.  Still, the movie and story line is entertaining enough.  The 3D animation, mostly composited over live scenes, is excellent.  The 3D characters, bunnies and chickadees are pretty adorable and colorful.  The acting fits the audience -- a little over the top.  James Marsden plays the part of a late twenty-something who'd rather live at home and play video games instead of working.  He embraces the part playfully self-deprecating in his immature state.  There's even an interesting side commentary of the state of the U.S. economy, as he lost his job a year ago because of the recession -- and the company he was working for was "downsizing".  Marsden channels his inner Jim Carrey with his own style of exaggerated facial expressions, physical humor, puns, and playful gags.  Obviously acting often in scenes by himself, you can sometimes tell his eyes aren't exactly meeting the imaginary 3D characters he is supposed to be interacting with.  I'm sure it's hard to do that kind of acting, besides, James had to go and shoot "Enchanted 2", so he probably didn't have a lot of time.

The live action and real actors probably get twice the screen time as the more interesting and entertaining 3D characters, which is this film's biggest fault, considering that the audience is 4 - 12 year olds.  I take that back, it has a bigger fault -- the movie's main antagonist, one of the Senior Easter Bunny's helpers, a plump yellow chick named Carlos, not only wants to supplant the Easter Bunny and take his place, perhaps banish him or something, actually wants to boil him, and James Marsden alive.  A bit too brutal and uncreative, you can have a villain in a children's movie, but a ruthless killer?!

The audience deserved a bit more sympathetic, less evil, and violent plot devices.  After all, Carlos was the Easter Bunny's faithful servant for many years, and suddenly he wants to kill him?  In the end, the movie felt a bit long, and simplistic extremes like Carlos going for the Easter Bunny's jugular seemed like the screenplay writers were just taking the easy way out and phoning in a good 30 minutes of plot, pulling pages out of other movies, seemingly from "Braveheart" or "Casino" so they could get paid and move on to their next project.

In the end, though, I think most kids will enjoy the lovable creatures, the gags, semi-low-brow humor, but I wouldn't recommend it for any kids under 8.  And I really wish for a holiday children's movie, they wouldn't have stooped to simplistic violence to keep the movie going.  Even the Grinch didn't want to kill anyone, and he was the Grinch, for crying out loud.  If only James Marsden and the other co-stars would have said, "this movie has lots of potential, but it's Easter and it's for kids, could we soften some of the 'kill the Easter Bunny' rhetoric and make the antagonist a little less evil and more like the Grinch?"