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’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.

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.

Recently, I needed a list of files in a specific directory on my computer. The list has to be editable so that I can sort it and search through it. There are tons of small utilities available online that claim to print a list of files from a folder/directory in Vista, many of them will create a text file (which is what I want). Some are free, some cost money, all of them can be downloaded from websites that I don’t trust.

Microsoft’s own Knowledgebase article doesn’t work with Vista, so I spent part of my evening searching for a free way to print a directory listing in Vista.

1. Navigate to the folder you want, but do NOT enter the folder
2. hold the shift key down and right-click on your desired folder
3. select Open Command Window Here (vista) or Command Prompt (XP)
4. in the Command Window type: dir /b > someFilename.txt
5. hit Enter to make your file listing
6. type exit to close the Command Window

Look in your desired folder, a new file called someFilename.txt will be there. It will contain a list of all the files in the same folder.

Let’s explain.

dir is an old-school DOS command called directory. It generates a list of files and directories and displays it on the screen.

/b is an optional switch that tells dir to use a bare format with minimal information. Switches customize the output of dir. Here’s a few other switches to use with our dir command:

• dir > filename.txt - this is the default format that dir gives
• dir /on > filename.txt -”/o” specifies a sort order, “n” makes it sort alphabetically

If you feel like you need to experiment more, techrepublic.com.com (no, that’s not a typo) has a pretty good article on Dir command options.

The greater than sign “>” redirects the results of dir to somewhere else. In this case, into a file called someFilename.txt

You can’t argue that Warren Buffet knows what he’s doing.  As of February 2008, Forbes ranked Buffet the richest person in the world, surpassing Bill Gates and Carlos Slim Helu.

Even though he is worth over $60 billion dollars, he only takes a salary of $100,000, lives in the same house that he bought in 1958, drives his own car, does not carry a cell phone, and intends to donate the majority of his fortune to charity when he dies.

Buffet regularly invites business students to visit his companies and gives them the opportunity to ask him questions, and ends the intensive day of learning with lunch at one of his favorite restaurants.

CNN has a great article about Warren Buffet.  My favorite question/answer out of the article is:

What advice would you give to someone who is not a professional investor? Where should they put their money?

Well, if they’re not going to be an active investor - and very few should try to do that - then they should just stay with index funds. Any low-cost index fund. And they should buy it over time. They’re not going to be able to pick the right price and the right time. What they want to do is avoid the wrong price and wrong stock. You just make sure you own a piece of American business, and you don’t buy all at one time.

Great advice from the Oracle of Omaha.

An Elevator Pitch is a short introduction or “sales pitch” for a product, service, or person.

By developing a personal elevator pitch, you could have the perfect answer to your next interview’s “Tell me about yourself” question. Or a charismatic way to introduce yourself at the next party or social event.

Before you read this elevator pitch howto, it will help to be familiar with a method of answering interview questions: STAR What is the Situation/Task you were faced with? What Action did you take? What was the Result?