Mishmash Musings

I dragged my husband out to see Penelope tonight. It was playing at the theater in the mall, so we went a little earlier to have dinner in the Food Court and do some shopping. As we were walking around, several people with clipboards approached us and asked if we would like to participate in a quick market research survey for a national company. The survey would take about 20 minutes and we’d each get a $10 mall gift card for our time.

We totally would have done it if we weren’t going to see a movie, but we didn’t want to risk being late, so we had to pass.

At any rate, Penelope was ok, but not as good as I hoped it would be. I was disappointed that Reese Witherspoon only had a minor role in the film because the trailers made it look like she’d be in a lot of scenes.

Oh, well — it was still fun to be able to go out on a date with Jerry!

I have so many different email accounts that it’s not even funny. I don’t like getting all my mail in a single account because I find that it’s simply too much to go through in a single day, so I try to separate things as much as possible.

For example, my main email account (which I refer to as my “business” account) is one that I try to use for important things such as my freelance writing gigs and contacts, as well as my online banking and financial records.

I also have an email account that I use for all my personal correspondence with friends and family. I don’t want these going to my business account because a lot of it is forwards, pictures, and other stuff that I don’t want to sift through on a daily basis.

In addition, I have an email account that I use strictly for signups at message boards and websites that require a login, an old email account with my maiden name on it that I keep just for the sake of nostalgia (and that I have to sign into every so often to keep active), a job-search email account that I keep for updates from job boards, and of course Contact Me email addresses at all of my websites.

It’s so time-consuming to have to check into all of these, but I can’t stand email clutter and don’t want all of this crap going to the same account.

Still, I’ve got to do something to cut down… maybe I’ll try merging a few of my lesser-used accounts together this weekend and let a few go.

I was talking to a friend of mine earlier today, and he passed along an interesting job-hunting tip that I’ve never heard before. He told me that whenever he goes in for an interview, he’ll scan the company’s parking lot to see what other employees are driving. If he sees a lot of nice cars, then that tells him the company must offer pretty decent salaries. If there are a lot of beaters in the lot, then he gets the opposite feeling.

I asked him what he meant by “nice cars”. Was he talking about rides with custom wheels, spoilers, billet grilles, and in-dash DVD players?

No, nothing like that. He just meant newer cars that are well maintained, with no visible signs of rust or damage.

Well, I’m not sure how much stock I would put in this particular test, but I guess my friend has had pretty good luck with it. Maybe I’ll check out the parking lots of a few companies around here to see if I can gauge how well the employees are paid!

When I was in high school and college, I was extremely interested in politics. I read several newspapers each day, and subscribed to a magazine called National Review. Yes, I was a conservative back then, though things have changed a bit now.

One of my favorite thinkers of the time was the editor-in-chief of National Review, William F. Buckley, Jr. I loved reading his articles in the magazine, as well as all of his “On The Right” pieces that found their way into mainstream newspapers. He wrote eloquently, articulated what I felt but could never express myself, and challenged the way I thought about the world at large. In short, Buckley did what so many of my school teachers and professors never bothered to do.

I guess that’s why I was saddened to hear of Bill Buckley’s passing today at the age of 82 — even though it’s been a good 15 years since I’ve picked up a copy of National Review or tuned into Firing Line. I feel as though I’ve lost a mentor today.

God speed, Bill.

When I was in school studying for my business degree, I had a particularly progressive professor who stressed the importance of networking, mentoring, and coaching. She believed that career advancement and success is a lot easier to come by when a person has a solid support system to rely on.

Though I didn’t stick around the corporate world long enough to put any of my old prof’s advice to work, a number of my classmates did. I still keep in touch with a lot of them, and am not surprised to hear that business mentoring plays a large role in their careers. Almost all of my former b-school buddies have had a mentor at some point, or have used the services of a company like ActionCOACH.

I’d heard about ActionCOACH before, but had never looked into their services prior to today. I spent some time reviewing their website, and was impressed by the amount of information available. Unlike other companies that I’ve dealt with in the past, ActionCOACH spells out exactly what they can do for your business. They not only identify reasons why you need a business coach, but also show how their experts are uniquely qualified to get the job done.

Out of curiosity, I decided to try to find an ActionCOACH in my area. After just a few clicks, I found a list of seven coaches that fit the bill. Each one is located within a reasonable driving distance from where I currently work, and each has a nice biography posted on the ActionCOACH site. If I were truly in need of a coach right now, it would have been a simple matter to read through the biographies to select the expert whose business philosophy most closely resembles mine.

If you’re considering finding a business mentor or coach, you would do well to check out the ActionCOACH website today. There’s a wealth of information about the ways in which ActionCOACH can help businesses of all sizes, so I’m sure they’ve got the right coach for you!

I’ve totally been slacking as far as these weekly projects go, so I have to give myself an easy one today to get back on track.

Remember how I have that out-of-home consulting job that I go to a couple days per week? Well, I have two requests for recommendation letters from former employees sitting on my desk that I haven’t gotten around to yet. I’ve had these things for two weeks now, and their respective due dates are quickly approaching, so my project for today is to write the letters and mail them out.

Simple, right? It should only take an hour or two, which means if I start right now, I’ll finish them before I even sit down to breakfast.

Let’s get going!

I see evidence of the sluggish housing market every single day around here. In my neighborhood alone, there are at least 12 “For Sale” signs scattered across lawns up and down the street, which is the definitely the most there has ever been.

I noticed that one real estate agent is handling three of the sales himself. I can tell because he uses custom Signs with his name and picture on them instead of the generic stuff that his competitors seem to prefer.

Personally, I think the custom signs make this particular agent stand out from the crowd, so that definitely seems like the right way to go. It made me wonder why other agents aren’t using custom signs as well, so out of curiosity, I decided to check and see how much something like this would cost.

I visited the BuildASign.com website, and was surprised to learn how easy — and affordable — it is to create custom signs, banners, and magnets made from quality materials. You can use upload your own images and customize your sign right there on the site, preview the product, and place your order in five minutes flat. Very cool!

Anyway, if you regularly use signs and banners to promote your business, sports team, or favorite political candidate, be sure to take that extra step and customize the products to make them more effective!

I came across this blog called Five Things while I was surfing this morning, and thought it might be fun to try out a few of these lists on my own. I won’t do a list every day; maybe just once a week or so (or whenever I get stuck for other post ideas!).

Anyway, since everyone’s talking about the Oscars today, I figured I might as well make my first list about Five “Best Picture” Winners I Hated.

1. No Country for Old Men — loved Fargo, hated this
2. The English Patient — haven’t liked anything by Anthony Minghella
3. West Side Story — most boring musical I’ve ever seen (and I usually like ‘em)
4. Titanic — couldn’t stand DiCaprio or the long-ass running time
5. Gladiator — thought this was incredibly overrated

I’ve been working from home for three years now, and can’t imagine ever going back to a full-time office job. Yes, I still have a consulting position that requires me to be in an office two or three times per week, but that’s a far cry from being the paper pusher I once was. I don’t think I could handle 8-hour days of filing, typing, answering phone calls, providing quotes for life insurance rates, or dealing with angry customers.

Thank goodness my private business ventures are profitable enough to allow me to continue staying home for the time being!

I was looking through some 60 Minutes video clips from earlier this month, and saw a snippet from an interview with Bill Gates. The interview was about what Gates will do now that he has stepped down from his day-to-day role as CEO of Microsoft. Gates talked about how he’s going to focus his energies on the charitable foundation that he runs with his wife.

The interviewer also posed a question along the lines of what kind of untrue things have been written about Gates that really bothers him. Gates replied that one journalist was speculating about what kind of prenup Bill had Melinda sign before they got married, and went so far as to list clauses that were in the document.

Bill then said that he and Melinda never had a prenup, so the guy was full of crap.

I have to admit that I was surprised to hear that Bill and Melinda didn’t have a prenup, especially with that much money on the line. Or maybe that’s why Bill felt he didn’t need a prenup. After all, when you’re worth $40 or $50 billion, will your life be substantially different if you’re suddenly only worth $20 or $25 billion? Probably not!

I’ve been saying forever that I need to get some kind of investment portfolio going soon. I have nothing saved up for retirement (beyond my husband’s meager pension), so I’m very worried about what the future will bring.

Even so, I haven’t taken any steps to rectify the situation — mostly because I simply don’t have the money to do so. Sure, I wish I could afford to pay $500+ per share of the hottest tech stocks, but that’s impossible right now. I would barely even be able to create a decent portfolio of penny stocks, so I can definitely forget about all the blue chip options.

Anyway, if any of you have suggestions about cheap investments that offer a decent ROI, please let me know. I’m pretty much open to anything right now!

I had my monthly orthodontist appointment yesterday, and was in the chair for all of five minutes. The only thing the guy did was tweak a wire and change the elastic on my bottom teeth. Then he charged me the regular $52.50 for the visit and sent me on my way.

I don’t understand why I get charged the same amount whether the ortho spends 45 minutes working on my teeth or just 5 minutes like yesterday. Shouldn’t the rate go according to a sliding scale that actually reflects how much work is being done? Sheesh.

Anyway, there’s not much else to report. The ortho mentioned something about changing the archwire on my bottom teeth at my next visit, and mumbled something else about keeping my t-wires in until the end of summer. I guess things are pretty much moving according to schedule here….