Friends, take a few moments to enjoy some absolutely wonderful shots of the undersea world taken by a high school friend of mine, Bobby Berenson. Not too much I can say, the pictures speak for themselves. Just go to BobbyBerenson.com, sit back and enjoy.
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TWITTER So the first thing I did was unfollow most of the contacts, getting my list down to about 10 people that I was truly interested in following. This isn’t to say that I won’t increase the list of people I follow but I’ll do it more selectively in the future. One consideration was the fact that I do not have a smart phone, so there is a limit to how many tweets I can receive on my phone; I’m limited to checking them out on my PC at night, and that’s OK for now. I’ve lost a few followers when I stopped following certain folks, but I figure that’s OK — quality over quantity. FACEBOOK It’s been great for getting in touch with long lost friends, sharing funny stories and proud stories of my kids. I’ve learned things about friends I didn’t know, like a co-worker who’s a pretty good singer. My advice if you aren’t using it: just dive in, post something, react to friends’ posts, behave and have fun. PINTEREST I”m a fan of martial arts movies and lately I’ve been mining Netflix for what fare they offer. Just a few days ago I watched Merantau, which features an Indonesian style of fighting called Silat Hiramau. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about the Silat style of fighting: “The term Silat is an “umbrella” term, like “Karate” or “Gung Fu” and a lot of individual systems fall under that umbrella. “Silat” is used in many parts of Southeast Asia. It’s not inconceivable to think that there might be a thousand or more systems of Silat throughout the region. Silat systems run the gamut of the martial arts. For any aspect of martial arts, there are multiple systems of Silat that specialize in that aspect. Some specialize in striking, some in locking, some in weapons or in a particular type of weapon. Some specialize in ground fighting, some specialize in sweeps, takedowns and throws.” The Hiramau style shown in Merantau seems to be one that specializes in sweeps and throws. Whatever, it’s a good action flick with some typical scenes — one guy takes down an army of enemies who can only attack him one at a time — to some innovative sequences. I consider it a good flick if it’s something I haven’t seen before and Merantau fits the bill. Here’s a quick clip from an fight in an elevator that’s over almost as soon as it starts.
Jeff-Harrington-Tango_Milonga_for_Clarinet_Cello_and_Piano If you like this, you can hear more by going to Jeff Harrington’s page of original music. When you start a business the capital required comes from your personal resources, family, friend or venture companies. As long as you do well and your business continues to grow, you will continue to need credit. Unless you have very high profit margins and minimal expenses, you simply will not be able to grow your business without credit from vendors or lenders. The good news is that vendor or lender credit is much less expensive than venture investor credit. With venture credit, the person with money is essentially gambling on the uncertain future. He is betting that your company will not just grow, but grow quickly enough that the investor will see a very significant return in a very short (2 – 5 years) time. There is no safety net for the investor—if you fail, he will lose his entire investment. Consequently, this type of financing is very expensive. Vendor or lender credit, however, is often secured with a business asset, and is only granted after you have proven your ability to produce a consistent and predictable stream of cash flows sufficient to pay back the debt and leave you with enough profit to support the continued growth and existence of your company. Additionally, you may be required to secure your financing with specific assets, which gives the creditor an additional source of repayment, thereby lessening the risk and cost. Essentially, you are using future streams of income to secure the receipt of cash today. Accounts receivable and inventory are the assets most commonly used and there are different financing methods for each. With accounts receivable you can borrow against current receivables (those less than 90 days old) or sell your receivables to a factor. Using inventory, you can have a lender advance funds based on a percentage of the value of the inventory, or you may be eligible for a floor plan financing program, where the lender pays for the inventory and is repaid as you sell the merchandise. This is a brief summary of how you can use financing and credit from others to grow your business. To learn how you can profitably extend credit to your customer to increase sales, read Create a Credit Policy That Creates Profits on Credit Info World. A few days ago Google announced a major change to its algorithm for website ranking, designed to ensure that search results would put quality sites near the top of the ranking. Apparently, there are many websites out there where the content is not insightful, does not offer anything new, and is only very obvious information built around specific keyword phrases. Of course, where there is stupidity, satire is sure to follow, and indeed there are two sites I’ve come across that really stick it to the useless content sites and Twitter. The first site, which pokes fun at the useless content sites, is called The Content Farm. Some of my favorite articles: How To Know What Leaves Are Made Of, How To Tie Your Shoes, and How To Have A Good Day. The second site, which satirizes, Twitter, is called FakeAP Stylebook. The URL is http://twitter.com/fakeapstylebook, and you can find such wisdom as “Conjunction Junction – The intersection of two eye infections. Rinse with saline solution and see your ophthalmologist.” Enjoy. So this weekend, while the wife and daughter were out camping, I checked out two movies I’ve been waiting to see for a while. The first is Red, which I’d see just for the great combination of the cast – Helen Mirren, John Malkovich, Morgan Freeman, Bruce Willis, and Mary Louise-Parker. Sure, the action is a bit over the top, but not too much so, and each character is cast just right. A fun movie from start to finish. By the way, if you find yourself trying to figure out where you’ve seen the CIA bad guy, Cooper, before, he played Bones in the latest incarnation of Star Trek. Here’s trailer for the movie: Second recommendation is Unstoppable, with Denzel Washington — always one of my favorites — and Chris Pine, another Star Trek actor; he played Captain Kirk. This movie deals with a train that has no driver and a cargo of lethal chemicals, and of course a populated town in danger of extinction. The action is great and, as always, Denzel Washington does a great job with his character. A good 2 hour thrill ride well suited for a big screen. YouTube won’t let me embed the trailer, but click here to see the Unstoppable trailer on YouTube. A few years ago I was searching the internet for information about PowerPoint to use in a lecture for a business class I was teaching. I came across a really funny video on how not to use PowerPoint. It was by a comedian named Don McMillan, who has a very interesting background. To quote from his website Technically Funny: “Don McMillan graduated from Stanford University with a Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering in 1982. (He has a BSEE from Lehigh University) He went to work for AT&T Bell Laboratories where he worked as part of the team that designed the world’s first 32-bit Microprocessor. He then moved to the Silicon Valley (San Jose, California) where he worked at VLSI Technology as a computer chip designer. During his 6 years at VLSI he designed more than 50 Standard and ASIC Designs many of which are still out there today. After winning the 16th Annual San Francisco International Stand-Up Comedy Competition in 1991, Don turned in his chips for a microphone. He went on to be $100,000 Grand Champion on “Star Search” in 1993. He’s had numerous television appearances including “The Tonight Show” on NBC, CNN’s “The Larry King Show”, MTV’s “Half Hour Comedy Hour”, and A&E’s “Evening at the Improv”.” Here’s the first video I ever saw with Don McMillan. It’s called Life After Death by PowerPoint: He has another video that I watched for the first time today, called The New Office Math: Enjoy. More videos are on YouTube and McMillan’s website, Technically Funny.
It started off with a summons to jury duty. It wasn’t the first time I’ve been called; I guess I’ve been summoned about six times. I’ve only served twice, once in federal court for a case involving stolen checks, and today, in county court in a case involving a minor traffic accident. The federal case involved hundreds of thousands of dollars, while the county case covered less than $1,000. The federal case lasted four days; the county case took 3 hours. Although the cases were completely dissimilar, and I disliked receiving the summons, I didn’t mind being chosen. Aside from the fact that I would get a glimpse of how our judicial system really works—and it is not exactly like you see on TV—I was glad to have a chance to participate. Two things set us apart from many countries—the right to vote and the right to have a trial judged by a jury of our peers. It’s one thing to know that, but to actually exercise these rights… well, I’d be lying if I denied finding it a bit thrilling. So participating in the jury was the first event. The second was the fact that the plaintiff and defendant were immigrants, one from India and one from China. When you consider all the violence and strife that occurs in so many countries simply because someone is of a different race and religion, how wonderful it is that people can come here from other countries and be so integrated in our society that their dispute is over something as relatively minor as a fender bender. On top of that, the matter is not resolved by violence, but by a civil trial. The final event occurred as we were handling administrative matters before the trial started. There were about 50 people in the room and the bailiff asked all the veterans in the room to stand up. About 6 people stood and the rest of us broke into genuine, spontaneous applause. There was a tangible sense of pride and gratitude among us that all of these people had devoted part of their lives to serving our country. I was impressed how many there were — more than 10% — and the diversity of jobs the people held. The jobs included military policeman, air traffic controller, engineer, finance clerk, airplane mechanic and artilleryman. These were from the Korean War all the way to the current Iraqi and Afghanistan conflicts. Turns out the one of my fellow jurors was the mother of an Army Ranger who had just returned from one tour of duty and is scheduled to go back again soon. So though I missed a day of work, it doesn’t seem to matter at this moment. It’s a very small price to pay for the privelige of living here and being able to exercise the rights that many others envy but will never enjoy. |
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