MousePotatoPower

I just finished the 2nd week of the hundred pushups training program. So far, it has been easier than I thought. Here are a few things that I learned.

• don’t forget that day 2 and day 3 of each week allows for a longer rest period between sets
• the whole program is made of S.M.A.R.T. goals.
  • specific - # of pushups, frequency, lots of details
  • measurable - you can see each day and each week how you are progressing
  • attainable - we’ll see if this one applies
  • realistic - according to the website, at the end of week 6, you should be able to do 100 consecutive pushups. Throughout the program, the most consecutive pushups that you do at one time is only 42-56 (depending on which track you are on).
  • timely - if 6 weeks isn’t timely and specific, I don’t know what is.
• For the first 2 weeks, each session should take less than 10 minutes.

I recently found OpenCube.com and their fantastic CSS menu system called QuickMenu6.  The options that can be selected, the configuration interface, and it’s compatibility with different web browsers is fantastic.  It is composed of unordered lists and in my book is SEO-friendly, it can even provide a working multi-level menu with javascript disabled!

Well, OpenCube offers the menu system for free and it is available for download directly from their website.  QuickMenu6 may even be worth the $149 price tag.  OpenCube has a “piracy prevention counter-measure” embedded in the javascript.  The unfortunate part about this is that their security involves spitting out a pop-up window in Internet Explorer that says “This copy of QuickMenu has not been purchased“.  The funny thing is that the pop-up doesn’t work in Firefox.  This brings back memories of monkeys who think that using javascript to disable right-clicking on a webpage will really protect their stuff.

Javascript is plain-text and isn’t very complicated when it comes to copyright protection.  Although I have not been able to find a published solution on the web for getting rid of the copy-protection code, my feeble programming skills include the ability to recognize obfuscated javascript and I was able to find a few hints online about QuickMenu’s code.

The end result is that found what I was looking for and have been able to successfully remove the copy-protection code from QuickMenu’s javascript.  I was worried that I didn’t remove enough semi-colons, but the script continues to work and there are no more pop-ups on my website.

Hopefully you have heard of the official M&Ms website and know that you can order M&Ms in 22 different colors.

But did you know that you can get custom messages printed on your M&Ms?

How about getting a custom PICTURE printed on the back of your M&Ms?

Do you know a business that wants to do some sweet advertising?  M&Ms even has the option to imprint logos and messages for you.

I wonder how long before they offer custom flavors?  Or mix your own colors?

I’m a numbers person.  I like Excel.  With a decent set of data, I can amuse myself for hours making lists, charts and pivot tables.  Anything past algebra is beyond my comprehension, but I can easily calculate a 15% tip when I eat out.
Some of the people that I know aren’t as mathematically-inclined when it comes to percentages and fractions, but after a recent conversation with a few friends, we came up with a 2 easy ways to calculate an appropriate tip.

#1) Let’s assume that you are going to tip 15%.  Figure out what 10% of the bill is (move the decimal point one digit to the left.  Figure out what half of 10% is and add those 2 numbers together.

#1a) If you had bad service, stick with a 10% tip.   Just do the decimal point trick from method #1.

#1b) If service was excellent, leave a 20% tip.  Start with the decimal point trick from method #1 and double that.

#2) This method will vary depending on what the tax rate is in your state.  In Hawaii, it is currently 4.712%.  Find the tax amount on your restaurant receipt and multiply that by 4.

If all else fails, pull out your cellphone.  It’s got a calculator, doesn’t it?  Do the math with your phone.

The general image of a mouse potato is a geek/nerd with less than optimal strength and physical fitness.

In my wanderings of the Internet, I came across a website that claims “Anybody can learn to do 100 push-ups in 6 weeks by following this SIMPLE exercise plan”.

I did the initial test and found myself in rank 2.  The exercise schedule seems easy enough.  I’ll re-post once a week and let you know how it goes.

One of my favorite types of blog posts are lists.  They don’t require much reading and they get to the point very quickly.

BusinessPundit.com has a list of Ten Books on Investing Recommended by Warren Buffet.

I like the idea and efficiency of investing, getting money to work for you. It’s a lot better than trading hours for dollars at a job.

• Take on the Street: What Wall Street and Corporate America Don’t Want You to Know. What you can do to fight back
• The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns
• Speculative Contagion: An Antidote for Speculative Epidemics
• Benjamin Graham on Value Investing: Lessons from the Dean of Wall Street
• The Theory of Investment Value
• Where Are the Customers’ Yachts? or A Good Hard Look at Wall Street
• The Intelligent Investor: A Book of Practical Counsel
• Paths to wealth through common stocks
• Bull: A History of the Boom and Bust
• Security Analysis: Principles and Technique
• Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits

MarkAndAngel.com have a nice, long post about things that you should learn.

These are some of my favorites.

• build a fire
• use google effectively
• drive manual transmission
• change a tire
• travel light
• learn to type

It’s a surprisingly good post with links to get you started. All of the skills on the list are useful and can keep you busy for quite a long time.

I seem to remember always being told that your resume should be no longer than 1 page. For just about every job that I applied to, I have always tried to compress the details of my work experience to a single sheet of paper.

Compacting my work experience in this way has made me think about what I accomplished at each job and concentrate on shortening each job duty and achievement and packing my resume with colorful adjectives. It often leaves me with a sense of “my resume looks like an infomercial”. One page is simply not enough to convey my job skills and abilities.

TheJobBored.com posted an article about Busting The One Page Resume Myth. The general consensus of the posting and the reader’s comments is that your first resume (right out of high school/college) probably doesn’t need to be more than 1 page.  For most people, up to 2 pages is acceptable.  These are rules of thumb and can be broken if necessary.

The Internet is all about free. Most of the time the shared information is created and meant to be shared for free, sometimes it is not. Cheatsheets are documents that contain useful reference information for applications or programming languages. Here are some of my favorite cheatsheet websites

• edocr (searchable repository containing single-page cheatsheets all the way up to small books)
• CustomGuide (a training website that offers free cheatsheets for different version of MS Office applications)
• ilovejackdaniels cheat-sheets/ (cheatsheets for programming and web development stuff)
• Mashable (a list of keyboard shortcuts for web apps. Mashable also posts awesome lists every so often)

While I was living in Japan, I wondered why Japanese housewives were such good cooks. My mind wandered through other topics like “why are most American housewives such good cooks”, “why can’t a lot of men cook”, etc…

When the light bulb went off in my head, I was positive that it was simply because of practice. If you are a Japanese housewife and you make breakfast for your 2 kids and husband each day, pack a lunch for the same 3 family members, then prepare dinner every night for 10 to 20 years, how can you end up being anything except GOOD?!

This is an old article about the secrets of greatness, I have seen links to it twice from different sources, so it’s about time that I share it with you. Everybody speaks with envy of “naturals”, individuals that just seem to have been given extreme talent without having to work for it.  The truth appears to point in the direction that there aren’t very many people born with prodigal talent.

People like Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, and Warren Buffett weren’t born as geniuses. They practiced. Then they practiced some more. After everybody else quit, they probably practiced more. Even though they became the greatest in their field, they did not stop practicing.

Naturally, prodigies exist. There are very real instances of people that are BORN with superhuman skills, but they are few and far between. Have you ever wondered why prodigies are well-publicized when they are kids, but then you never hear about them continuing to be successes as adults.

Some researchers believe that practice really does make perfect (or at least it can hone your skills). If you practice enough of ANYTHING, there is a good chance that you will become great at what you do. The bad news is it may take 1o years.

“The ten-year rule represents a very rough estimate, and most researchers regard it as a minimum, not an average.”

There is hope for the rest of us…the normal people who were not born as prodigies.

The critical reality is that we are not hostage to some naturally granted level of talent. We can make ourselves what we will. Strangely, that idea is not popular. People hate abandoning the notion that they would coast to fame and riches if they found their talent. But that view is tragically constraining, because when they hit life’s inevitable bumps in the road, they conclude that they just aren’t gifted and give up.

Maybe we can’t expect most people to achieve greatness. It’s just too demanding. But the striking, liberating news is that greatness isn’t reserved for a preordained few. It is available to you and to everyone.