MousePotatoPower

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.