Mishmash Musings

Don’t look now, but I’ve become the mean neighbor in my building! We live in a condominium complex that has about 40 units and one thing that I’ve always liked about this place is how quiet it normally is (inside the building, at least). Most of the people living in here are married and have youngish children, so we never get anyone having parties all night long or blasting music at odd hours.

The individual units are well-built and nicely insulated, which means that we also never hear the “daily routine” noises from our neighbors, like when they run hair dryers, dishwashers, showers, or the television. That’s a good thing, because I’ve lived in some pretty cheap apartments where you could hear practically every little noise from next door, and that was unbearable for me.

Even so, I’ve still complained to my neighbors about noise several times over the years — over their children practicing musical instruments! They weren’t even playing the instruments early in the morning or late at night. Just in the middle of the day. But I still complained because the noise was pure torture! Imagine an 8-year-old trying to practice the trumpet, like the kid downstairs from me. Or the junior high student who plays the SAME song on the piano over and over and over again for nearly an hour straight, like the girl upstairs. Or the kid next door who plays the recorder (block flute) until my ears bleed. I can’t stand that stuff, so I complain. I give them 30 minutes (which I think is reasonable) and then I bang on the door and tell their mothers that I’ve had enough. They usually stop for the day and often don’t play again for a couple weeks after that, at which time we go through the routine again.

I think I’ve developed a reputation as being the “mean neighbor” because of these complaints, but I don’t care. I try to block them out (I wear earplugs, I close all my windows even in the summer, etc.) but that noise gets through the walls even though nothing else does. And I don’t think I should have to suffer through anyone else’s music practice — especially when they’re not even any good!!!

I went out to lunch with my husband last week, and before we left, I took a quick walk through his office to say hi to some of his co-workers that I’m friends with. My husband has been working at the same company for 11 years, and I don’t think they’ve purchased a new piece of furniture for the offices in that entire time! Things are looking pretty shabby in there, which certainly isn’t the impression they should be giving to prospective clients. I think an upgrade is definitely in order over there.

For example, the desks that they’re using are ancient! The surfaces are scratched and scarred from years of wear and tear, and the desks in the room don’t even match each other. It looks like such a ragtag operation in there! They really need to look into getting some nice modern desks that will spruce the place up a bit.

I don’t know… I just can’t stand it when businesses don’t seem to care what kind of impression they make on customers. That should be one of their main concerns, especially when a good part of their bottom line revolves around sales!

One of the problems with working from home is that it’s hard to take time off. My computer is always here, obviously, so whenever I get some free time, I always feel that I should be working. This could mean blogging, writing or answering e-mails, networking, looking for more writing gigs, or whatever. As a result, I often end up working up to 10 hours per day, seven days per week. This is a recipe for burnout, if you ask me!

So what I’m going to try to do is give myself at least one day off every week, a day where I don’t do any computer work at all. Right now, either Friday or Saturday seems to be a good choice, so I’m going to aim for unplugging on at least one of those days next week (and beyond).

This should be a good move and hopefully will help keep me sane!

I just bought my current keyboard about a year ago, but it has already crapped out. I guess that’s what I get for buying the cheapest one I could find! The space bar doesn’t work (I have to really bang on it in order to get a space to appear when I’m typing) and the ‘A’ is sticking. If I was having problems with lesser-used keys, then I would probably let it slide and try to make the keyboard last as long as possible. But having to fiddle with the space bar and the ‘A’ all day long is really slowing me down.

I think I’ll pick one up today when I’m out running errands.

A friend of ours runs a successful business that involves packaging and selling produce to area restaurants. He recently opened a brand new packaging plant after operating out of rented warehouse space for many years, which means that now his main offices and the plant are separated by a couple of miles. The distance is negligible in terms of travel time, but it’s very inconvenient in terms of communication.

So right now our friend is looking into intranet software to solve the bulk of his communication problems. An intranet setup is not just for large organizations anymore, so I think our friend is on the right track. After all, a company intranet would give his employees email, scheduling, and messaging capabilities while improving overall productivity.

I did some quick searching online and learned that Epazz.com is offering a 30-day free trial on their intranet software. This would be a great way for our friend to see how much of a difference a company intranet would make, and he’ll be able to make a more informed purchasing decision. He’ll know exactly what to expect from the software, which means there won’t be any surprises later.

If you find yourself in the same situation and think that intranet software could be the solution to your organization’s communication problems, contact Epazz to get started with a free trial.

My husband and I love being online. We’re not total computer geeks or anything like that, but we do have three desktop PCs and a laptop that we regularly use in our home. Sometimes we even have all four machines fired up at once as we’re doing various things on the Internet, like blogging, playing games, emailing friends, or checking out YouTube. All I have to say is thank goodness we have a wireless Linksys router to help us keep all of our machines online! We probably wouldn’t be able to preserve our sanity if we had to share the same computer and wait for each other to finish our individual web activities like that!

I have a problem that I’m not sure how to deal with. I’ve been a volunteer with the e-Buddies program since about 2003 or so. The volunteer requirements aren’t too terribly taxing: I just have to send one email per week to my “buddy,” an adult with intellectual disabilities.

The problem is, I’ve had the same buddy, “K,” for over two years now and find that we’ve pretty much run out of things to talk about. This has been an issue for several months, so I’m just basically going through the motions in each of my emails to K. My messages are completely superficial and barely worth reading.

I would like to take a break from the program for a while, but can’t come up with a good excuse for doing so. It seems like one email a week (which takes 5 minutes max) wouldn’t be that big a deal, but since I’m writing the same crap each time, it starts to wear on me.

So what can I say to back out? I’m too busy? Again, just five minutes isn’t much to ask. I don’t have anything in common with my buddy? There’s a screening process in place that matches participants based on interests, so theoretically, K and I should be a good match.

No matter what I say, I’ll end up sounding like a selfish schmuck. So does this mean I have to participate until I die?

I’ve had an entrepreneurial spirit ever since I was a kid. For example, when I was in high school, most of my friends were making minimum wage by working at fast food joints and clothing stores. I wouldn’t settle for that and instead started my own house painting service with a couple of friends. We set our own hours, got to hang out together all summer long, and always had lots of cash in our pockets. The other kids were pretty envious and a good number of them regularly asked if we wanted to hire any extra help.

This entrepreneurial spirit continued in college. I had to accept a work-study position as part of my overall financial aid package, but I really wanted to do something that would bring in more money. My roommate and I looked into buying a vending machine route because we’d read how profitable they could be, but we couldn’t scrape together enough seed money to get in on the business.

Now, I still occasionally think of how great it would be to have a vending machine route, particularly with the types of machines that are available today. For example, multivend is one of the leading vending machine manufacturers in the country and they’ve got a product called the Vendstar 3000 that can help boost profits to their highest levels yet. The machine is technologically advanced and easy to configure, so this could be precisely what I’ve been looking for. Maybe becoming a part of the Multivend family is in my future!