six sigma training
Running a business is becoming increasingly difficult in these tough economic times. And with things slowing down it is more important than ever to increase and maintain your business' bottom line. The real question seems to be how to keep up with the growing changes in the industry these days. The answer I truly believe lies in the employees and the culture and climate of your business. I believe that there is nothing more important to running a business then to keep your employees happy and keeping them up with all the latest information, classes and seminars. I include all my staff in every bit of training we do, even the cleaning people. That may sound a little odd, but they need to know what we do as well, who better to talk up our business. We are a team from the ground up and every one of my employees contributes something to my business and every one of them is important and worth educating.
I recently started my employees in the Six Sigma training program developed by Motorola, and this thing is beyond anything that we have done before. I took an overview of the course myself, and gathered a bunch of info from the web and from other businesses that were implementing it, and found that it was a great way to make our diamond in the rough shine. My employees have been working online on the program for about 2 weeks. They do it during down times and I also have a schedule set up, kind of like a break schedule, except it is an online schedule. So far the employees seem to be finding it interesting and valuable. I have been doing it along with them, so I can talk to them about what they are learning and also have a better understanding of it myself.
I know this is a great opportunity for my staff to become Six Sigma certified and will probably help them down the road as well. This program has been created by a large corporation and used by many other businesses with excellent results. I have spoken to some of the top people at these companies and they couldn't be happier with the investment they made in getting their employees Six Sigma certified. They say that Six Sigma training is one of the best investments you can make in your employees and your business.
Auto insurance quotes online?
I opened up my mail the other day and found my auto insurance rates had shot through the roof. I was upset at this to say the least being as I haven't even
used my auto insurance once in my life. I called a couple of local agents and was digging through the phone book when my friend Ben told me about extending
my search on the internet. Auto Insurance quotes online? I'd never thought of it before but to save money on car insurance I was all game. I did a search on Google
for Auto Insurance Quotes and a number of websites came up. I went to one of the sites and read about the different types of information they had available on the
subject and I was surprised. I had no idea there were so many companies on the market today that offered auto insurance quotes. The key is to getting several
different quotes from different companies. This increases your chances of saving money dramatically by going to multiple sources where the car insurance companies
essentially bid for your business. These prices can vart dramatically so trust me when I tell you it's best to shop the market...i had no idea that auto insurance
companies varied so greatly on their rates. Some were just out of the park while others were beating what I had been paying literally for years. I ended up saving
about $400 per year off what I had been paying before my auto insurance increase and that made me feel wonderful. FYI, I did my search for auto insurance quotes
via google so happy hunting and I hope you find the right auto insurance quotes that you find affordable for you and your family.
promotional pens
I found that I needed a new and innovative way to start generating some new business and I looked at a lot of different avenues, but decided that promotional items were a good way to encourage repeat business while thanking my current customer base for their continued support. I even got the idea online to start giving my employees some incentives and promotional items really seem to do it. I gave each of my employees a t-shirt with my business logo on the front and their names printed on the back. Then I made Friday jeans and t-shirt day, and they just love it. Friday is a great day to do it too, because we have a lot of young girls who work for us and they go out after work to a local place to hang out. It is free advertising for me, and they love getting to wear jeans to work on Fridays. This idea has made everyone happy and has even boosted moral around the place.
For my customers I purchased some promotional pens and promotional umbrellas and a few other goodies I found online. I didn't realize there were so many great promotional items available and the best thing about them is they aren't even very expensive. The promotional umbrellas were a hit, but even better than them were the travel mugs with my logo on them. Now, many times when a customer comes in they have their travel mug in hand. It is really neat to see my logo and business being advertised all around me. The great thing is that they are advertising for me and they don't even realize it.
I remember the first time I suggested these promotional items to my business partner as being a good business building tool, he looked at me kind of cock eyed and said, so you think that if we give away some t-shirts, travel mugs, umbrellas, and pens that this is going to build our business. He laughed, but now I am the one who is laughing. I smile every time I see our logo traveling around town.
This month we will be holding weekly raffles for other promotional items that I have purchased duffle bags, shopping bags, sports bottles and so forth. Each customer who comes in that week gets entered in the raffle and business is beginning to pick up again. Everyone is really into these free items and they are actually starting to talk about us all over town. Great way to spread the word about our hair salon!
auto insurance
When putting your new teenage driver on the road, there are some things that you can do to keep the cost of your auto insurance down. Although there are not many things for a teenager that don't cost an arm and a leg, whether in high school or college, your student getting good grades will help. Just as with adults and their credit ratings, insurance companies use a student's GPA to consider whether or not they will be a responsible driver. In their minds, students with good grades are more responsible then those with less than a B average. So yes, those grades will pay off and not just for college, but for their insurance rates as well.
Also, when insuring your new driver you can shop around for insurance, but a lot of times, it is simpler and cheaper to insure them under your policy. If they are a minor and living under your roof, then either way you will be held responsible for their actions. Plus your insurance company already knows you and if you are a responsible driver they are more than likely going to think that a child of yours who will be emulating your behaviors will be a better driver also.
Cheap auto insurance however, is not really what you are looking for because if you purchase a cheap policy for your new driver that does not cover them fully, then you could really have a big mess on your hands. Let's face it, we do the best we can to raise our kids and teach them right, but they are still kids. When push comes to shove, they will still make bad judgment calls, will still use their cell phones while driving, will still listen to the music and pay it more attention then the road and so on and so forth. Amazingly the only cure for this is time and maturity and with the average legal driving age in this country being about 16 years old, you have to figure that it will be a few years for most before their clouded judgment begins to clear. Be sure that you and they are fully covered because accidents can happen, even to the best driver. Don't allow your teenager and yourself to fall victim to a too good to be true rate quote that leaves you standing there to pick up the pieces.
football picks
I have one question that has just been burning up inside of my brain. What is it about sports that get men so riled up? I mean I can totally understand that it helps them to bond with other guys and to get out some of that testosterone, but sometimes it seems like they manage to use their love of sports to get out of everything. Any responsibility or job can be put aside when the game is on. Money can be spent and lost on games because they had a poor hunch but if I even buy a pair of shoes I have to hear about it like it's some kind of addiction I have. I mean I realize we are not really in an age of equality here, but there has to be some kind of middle ground on an issue so mundane as the minuscule differences between us.
My boyfriend is one of those guys who I am describing here. He is the kind of guy that knows every statistic and fact about football you could ever possibly not want to know. He memorizes the sports schedule before the season starts so he knows who his team is playing all year long. In the summer he spends his time setting up his fantasy football picks. Then I have about three months of listening to him gab about his great NFL picks before the actual season turns him in to an animal.
Now I don't want it to seem like I don't like the guy because I really do love him. I just wish that we could see eye to eye on the logistics of our own personal interests. This is not all on him because obviously I don't understand something that is going on in that man's head or else I would have no problem chatting with him about linebackers and field goals. At the same time though I just wish he could see that I buy clothes for all situations and not just for legal reasons. He is of the breed that feels clothes are just a restriction and not an accessory. I don't know if we will ever agree but here's hoping.
dinner cruises
What better way to celebrate your 50th wedding anniversary than with a romantic dinner cruise? That's what my family thought when my grandparents had their 50th last month. We all pitched in and got them a dinner cruise for their anniversary. I'm not sure whose idea it was at first, probably my Aunt Karen's, she seems to take everything to the extreme, but we all kind of just rolled with it and jumped on board. So keeping in mind that my grandparents don't like to travel far, we got them cruise tickets to a dinner cruise in Chicago, which didn't go far at all. We looked into every detail and found out that there is a lot for them to do on it besides the dinner part. They had live entertainment (which my grandparents absolutely love for some reason, even if it's super corny). And then after dinner there is a stroll under the stars where you take your drinks upstairs onto the deck.
When we gave them the tickets you could tell that they were both excited and nervous, but after their 'trip' they had such a good time they planned to do it every year. I on the other hand have a different experience with a cruise ship. I have been on cruises, but not any dinner cruises which were fun, but we went on a cruise ship by navy pier after our prom senior year of high school and it was terrible. The food sucked and we were all tired because the prom was from 6 p.m. until midnight then the cruise was from midnight to 3 a.m. (and the next day we were planning on getting up to go to the lake house for the weekend) so I'm not sure if it was a bad cruise or if we we're all just tired and cranky, but it seemed like the longest three hours of our lives. We thought going to the upper deck would make it more fun, but instead of the wind being refreshing and keeping us from falling asleep; it was blowing people over and knocking their drinks. One girl had punch spilled all over her light yellow prom dress. The band was super loud and you couldn't even hear what they were playing to see if they were good.
I think I'm taking my tiredness out on the cruise, if we had gone on the cruise earlier or a different day I'm sure we would have had a great time, so I'm definitely not cutting out the possibility of another one in the future.
gift baskets
In the modern business world where the faster you work and better your technology, the better you are at what you do. Despite the level of customer service your company maintains, it really isn't that big of a deal in the new business model. What we see today are companies that are spread out between CEO and customer by light years. Personally I think that at some point we are going to have to realize that everything is not going to be solved by technology. Though systems and figures make efficiency seem better, what people on the ground really like is having the contact with humans that makes life possible.
The old tactics of business have to be integrated back in to the modern model if we hope for any more growth in the system. Though the old days of person to person sales calls may be sliding quickly in to the deep mirky waters of the past, it is these types of tactics that people really do desire today because business has become so impersonal. This is not such a problem for the smaller local businesses which understand that their customers want to know them by name when they by their paper, or vinyl siding. The old days of giving gift baskets and rebates to their local customers are still around on the local level. I would wager that no one has gotten a corporate gift basket from a big box store in quite a while now. For the big corporations it doesn't matter to them if people know anyone within their entire company's name. For them it is all about sales and statistics. This is what needs to change and it's not just about the corporate gift baskets.
What we need to see is just a little bit of compassion from the giant box stores. When I get out in to the world of sales and work for one of these big stores, I want it to become a new standard to know my customers. Though sales requires a lot of indifference to the individual, that person thinks otherwise when they are choosing where they buy their products from.
Maryland chiropractic
My first experience with a chiropractor left me wanting more. As time went on I learned more and more about the field of chiropractic and my own feelings about it began to develop. I loved it so much I became a chiropractic assistant and then an office manager in a chiropractic office. It was a rewarding experience; however, I still wanted more, so I began to pursue a career in chiropractic. I had met many chiropractors and had experienced a wide variety of chiropractic techniques. I really felt that I had a grasp on what chiropractic was about and began taking my undergraduate courses to go to chiropractic school. The joke is that science has never been a strong subject for me, but I tried and succeeded at the many science courses that were put in front of me.
While home on break from doing my undergraduate work I decided to look up one of the many Maryland chiropractors in my area and go to get adjusted. While I was there I was still learning more about my home state rules and regulations. It seems that in Maryland chiropractic is more difficult to get into then in other states. Many chiropractors do not go and get a full bachelor's degree before finishing chiropractic school and then they are not eligible to practice in Maryland.
I was not really thrilled at the idea that it was going to be more difficult for me to practice in Maryland than in any other state. No pain, no gain so I decided I would have to really get on the ball if I were going to practice in MD.
Well, I met a really great chiropractor on that break and he taught me a lot. He even offered me to come and do an internship with him at the end of chiropractic school and said that if I wanted to spend some time learning the ropes during one or all of my breaks to just come on and he would be glad to show me the ropes.
Honestly, through chiropractic I have met some of the nicest human beings on the face of the planet. They will really help you, if you are interest in joining the profession. They don't seem to be afraid of competition at all, instead quite honestly they seem to welcome it.
security scanner
My brother is fresh out of college and looking for a job. Unfortunately, he can't decide on what to do, and is looking into everything from teaching English abroad to working as a consultant to starting his own business. This third option, starting a business, involves buying a website and running his business through it. He wants to provide services through his own website so that his customer base will be unfettered by geography or store hours. We started to discuss one of the main hurdles to his business - what is he going to sell? We bounced some ideas around before moving on prematurely to advertising, which is the trade off concern that attends owning a web business.
I learned that he recently bought a website domain name last week and was thinking of moving forward with it when one of my computer savvy friends warned me about website security. I had never thought about this issue beyond the basis: my brother should use firewalls, password protect everything on his site, and not do anything crazy like give open access to his website infrastructure to the public (which, if you knew my brother, might not be too far fetched of a scenario.)
I started to look things up and came across the usefulness of using a security scanner for your website. At first the idea sounded strange, but what it basically does is that it checks your website for any security loopholes. Almost all website owners nowadays use basic precautions like firewalls, but many don't know of more sophisticated attacks such as sql injection. Sql, or structured query language, is present on many websites, especially those that allow outside users like customers to access their website to check their account or make purchases.
Hackers can use sql injection to query the main database and gain access to information beyond just the online shopping cart or message forum. This is why a security scanner is so necessary. I told my brother about all this and at first he didn't believe me until I showed him some news articles I dug up about recent sql injection attacks on high profile sites that could have been prevented had the websites used security scanners to look for security leaks on their websites. He took heed and said he would look into it. Of course, after we figure out this security issue, we still need to figure out advertising. Oh, and we also have to figure out what he is going to sell!
debt consolidation
Ring! Ring! Ring! If you don't have the luxury of caller id, you might be inclined to ignore that phone call for fear that it is just another creditor asking for money that you just don't have to dole out to them. A lot of us have been this situation and a lot of us continue to live in this situation. Trust me on this -- ignoring the debt does not make it go away. It doesn't even make it go down just a little. Maybe it is time to face the music and do something about your financial situation before you are facing bankruptcy. Debt elimination could be your answer.there is a way to eliminate your debt!
Credit counselors are out there by the thousands. What would it hurt to give one a call and discuss your financial dilemma with them. They are in the business to help people out with just these kinds of problems and they can advise you whether or not debt consolidation is your best option. And believe me, they have heard stories much worse than yours.
In addition to stopping those intimidating telephone calls, they can help with lowering your interest rates and they can help you set up a debt consolidation plan that will fit your personal needs. They can assist you in keeping within a budget and show you ways that you may not have previously considered to save a little money here and there. If you are really in a desperate situation, a consultation can only help you out.
The minimal fees you may wind up paying are just a drop in the bucket compared to rising interest rates and accumulating late fees or heavens forbid, attorney fees if you are stubborn enough or just foolish enough to let the situation get that far. Many of the credit counseling services out there can help you work in their fees so that you will barely even notice it in your monthly payments. They have different ways available to you to pay for their services.
So now that you have decided that you must do something or you'll just go crazy with worry or be so depressed that your life becomes one big pity party, give a credit counselor a call. Heck, give several a call. There is an answer out there for you and you are certainly not the only one in the world dealing with financial distress in today's world. Get that debt taken care of. You'll be so glad once you have a plan in force to consolidate your debts. You may be tempted to answer that phone again -- unless of course you suspect it's your mother-in-law.
smart lipo
After my high school graduation, we were taking pictures outside of the field house where the ceremony took place and I overheard a fellow classmate of mine turn to her parents and say "can I go get my present done now". Obviously I was confused, how do you go get a present done? After hearing it, I of course turned to my friends and repeated what I just heard. Most were as confused as I was, but one of the said that they had heard that this girl, Liz, was getting smartlipo as her graduation gift. I was shocked, as were almost everyone else standing near us. Liz was pretty thin and I thought smart lipo seemed like a pretty expensive gift for an 18 year old. (I got a laptop and I thought it was a big deal). It turned out though that 3 other girls in our class were getting the same thing done for graduation. It seemed like everyone was altering their images for college. Whether it was lasik surgery (which a lot of my friends got), implants or smartlipo cost plus, my classmates were determined to leave as completely different people. While I was still stuck on going to the gym and wearing contacts, others were getting what I thought were completely unnecessary procedures done. I know college was supposed to be a place where you could reinvent yourself and be whoever you wanted, no matter what you were like in high school, but I planned on doing that by going on a shopping spree and a diet. It made me wonder if this is going to become a common gift. When my sister graduated in three years from now or my brother in seven would implants or smart lipo cost be the replacement laptop gift. Would this be normal? Why did everyone feel the need to change so drastically? And was I supposed to follow suit? I felt that I was one of the only people that thought this was crazy. If I asked my parents for lipo for my birthday or graduation that would laugh thinking that I was totally joking. Never in a million years would they think that I was seriously requesting that.
Times have changed though it seems. Years ago, cosmetic surgery was only done if completely necessary. People got implants when they has breast cancer and had to have their own removed. Now its an everyday thing and no one thinks twice if someone were to tell you they were getting it done. It just makes you wonder. If this is how far we've come, how far will we go in the future?
promotional gifts
Every spring our school has the largest career fair of the year. Hundreds of employers from all different sectors and industries converge on our student union and try to recruit their next generation of employees. They have rows and rows of folding tables covered by colorful banners, stocked with brochures and well-spoken representatives, and mobbed by eager students. Some people even use these fairs as a sort of preliminary interview process and come completely dressed up in interview clothes and holding resume pads and pens. I don't have much of an interest in these things though. Well, I did earlier, but once I already had a job, these fairs were important for one reason only: promotional items.
Next to the brochures and stacks or submitted resumes, almost all the companies also have a nice pile of business gifts and other promotional products. These gifts are often things like mints, pens, and bottles that sport the company's logo. Sometimes, however, the companies offer better promotional gifts. One of my favorite is the USB memory stick, often given out by tech companies or bigger businesses that want to impress. These gifts are so handy and can be very useful for students. Sometimes they also give out cool leather folders and writing pads that look quite fancy, except for the logo on the cover. But the logo is sometimes not too conspicuous, so it's not too bad.
In any case, these promotional gifts are great for people like me who like free stuff. At first I was a bit shy approaching the company tables only in order to get these gifts, but I got bolder and bolder after each successful acquisition of business gifts. I guess in the big picture, companies want and expect to give away this free stuff for, well, free. Even if I may never ever want to work for a certain company, they might not mind giving away their ultra-cool company USB memory stick for someone like me since they're expecting some scavengers to take their stuff anyways. It's probably really good advertising too, having all this free stuff that is literally covered with company logos and slogans. I think this is especially true for company mugs and cups, which tend to accumulate in cupboards and become indispensable for your morning coffee or mid-day drink. These promotional cups just seem to become such an integral part of your life.
doctor job description
My new job for the career services center on campus is so great. I am an accounting major and love to do paper work and filing types of tasks. It makes me feel good to get an assignment and organize a whole office worth of paper to make the job more efficient. I spent the first semester doing just that. They told me that I was to help them design and then implement a new system for the paperwork to make the non digital processes go faster and minimize the glitches that were becoming more and more common. I spent the first month discussing and figuring out the causes for all of those glitches that they had been having so much trouble with. Then once we decided to implement, it was my job to do the inventories and actually do the nitty gritty paper sorting that I like so much. It took me the rest of the semester before I felt that it was up and running as planned. Since then there have been four whole months without one problem and the various paper required processes we do in the office have become twice as fast.
My next assignment is something a little more challenging for me personally. Part of the work that we do here in the office that is reserved for the professional counselors is to help students figure out what degrees they need to pursue to complete their career goals. For each degree we have the generic and some more specific jobs that have been or are becoming bigger in the world. With each job listed we need to write job descriptions for each one to give the student a better idea of what kind of work goes along with that career. Right now I am doing a complete write up of all of the jobs listed within a hospital. So for instance I will look at the whole doctor job description folder and break it down in it each specialty with their own descriptions. It may seem like a huge bore for some people, but for me it is like a dream job.
Dallas SEO
The world of marketing has certainly changed with the internet. Now in addition to radio, tv, print, you must budget for online marketing. There are advertisements, banner ads, commercials you can get, but online marketing is so much more than that. Search engines drive the internet now, and businesses want to buy ads there too. You can buy ads on the sides, that is called pay per click advertising, but that is a subject for another day. The best is to come up in the results in search, and you cannot pay the search engines to put you higher there. That is called natural search, and the search engines have complicated algorithms that determine who gets to come up highest for any given term.
This type of marketing has its own field, it is called Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. And this field is really big, there are certain methods you should use to come up higher in search results. I find the entire field fascinating, all of the different tips and tricks that really make a difference. My best friend is interning with a Texas SEO company, and she was showing me some of the training manuals they use (of course online), it is mind boggling how much there is to do. No wonder people hire companies to manage it. This particular Dallas SEO company handles some really big clients who come up in searches all the time, so I guess they know what they are doing.
For example, you have to first decide what keywords are important to your site, what words you want to come up higher in search for. Even this seems easy, but it can be tricky too. Say you sell dog food online, then dog food or organic dog food would be good words. But also “buy dog food” or “dog food online” would be more targeted to people SHOPPING for dog food, not just looking to learn about dog food.
Then you make sure your page has that word on it a lot, plus you try to get it in your URL, and also in your behind the scenes coding (tags). Plus you have to have good links pointing to your site, I didn’t even know that mattered. There is a lot more, that is just some of the basics that really make a difference.
The field of search engine optimization seems very intuitive and tricky, a lot less cut and dry then “buy a billboard” or “put an ad in the local flyer”.
credit report
I absolutely hate those free credit report commercials. There are two though that really get on my nerves. The first one is a guy playing the guitar in a seafood restaurant and he is singing about how he should have used the credit report of that certain company and he wouldn't be working that job to repair his credit. It is catchy and they do have a point, but the singing and the lyrics are just too annoying to watch for more than five seconds. The other commercial is a guy and his buddies driving a lemon basically because he found out when he went to buy a new car that his he had bad credit (due to identity theft) and now because he didn't check it through the free credit report, he was screwed over. This commercial is slightly less annoying than the first, but still hard to get through.
The point though, is that identity theft is growing more and more and it could be happening to you without even knowing it. By checking the credit reports you can save yourself from debt and probably a lot of money towards a shrink from all of the anxiety that you'll go through. I read an article once about people stealing your identity as a baby, because there would be no reason for a 6 year old to check their credit score, so it's a lot less suspicious and they have a greater time period to not get caught. This is scary to me. As a student who will be going out into the real world and having to buy my own car and home one day in the next decade or so, I need to know that my credit is in good standing. By using the free credit report, your credit can be monitored so that you will not run into problems later that could have been intercepted. Knowing that there are places out there that can help to monitor and preserve my credit history puts me more at ease. People always read about identity theft but they never think it's going to happen to them, but it could happen to anyone and you need to look out and make sure you don't become a victim. And if you did, closely monitoring your credit could save you a lot of trouble in the future, including credit repair. I don't want to be that guy pulling out of the dealership with a beat up car.
Schumacher Homes
In shopping the different home builders, I found their websites to be varied levels of helpfulness. My preference was a website that is extremely detailed and helpful for anyone looking to build. For example, the good ones have a "tour" virtually by looking at photos of their work in the past. This helps to get a feel for what exactly you are looking for in your home, as well as how they have preformed in the past. You can also request a free DVDs for the major builders, and brochures to further look into it. One of the Ohio home builders, Schumacher Homes, even has a guide that is fabulous: "Ten Steps To Your Brand New Home" and they list out almost a checklist for you to follow. I also felt most reassured by sites that offer live chat.
Building a home is a huge deal and can be extremely overwhelming. From there on you can search floor plans and pricing. Ohio home builders for instance, select the Ohio state on the map, then narrow it down by county. From there you can browse through the appropriate floor plans. Another helpful tab is the "How Much" tab. This is really what it comes down to most of the time with home building. People want to know up front what exactly they are getting into money wise. By being straight up and getting to the point with money, people know they can trust your companies work and know that their value their clients.
Most require a deposit to help you with your floor plan, but a company that will work with you when just shopping, this shows that this is a company that has had success in the past and is confident in their work.
Building a home is a huge step in your life and with more and more people out there building instead of buying there seem to be more options than you know what to do. This company has gone above and beyond to help their clients by giving them step by step guidance. When you are doing something as important as building a home that you will live in for maybe even the rest of your life, you want someone to work with you that you can trust and rely on. Websites by far offer the most convenient way of researching builders and saving time.
memory stick
For my major I am required to take two classes in computer science or technology of any kind. Being a pre-pharmacy and biology major, just seeing the names of the classes as I was making my schedule confused me. So last semester, my sophomore year, I decided I would conquer one of these classes. I signed up for the easiest one CS 104 and hunted down everyone I knew for their notes. This is what I learned in the class: That she only took attendance every other day, you could get away with reading the paper if you were on the left side and that her 15 year old daughter was a world of war craft fanatic. So it came to my surprise when I got the final exam study sheet full of vocab words that were foreign to me. I threw it in my bag and didn't look at it again, of course, the night before the final. So that night I looked up word by word on wikipedia and the online dictionary and hoped that would be enough for the final. Three of those words (which are still foreign to me) included: memory stick, memory cards and SD cards. WHAT IS THE DIFERENCE? Why can't they just have one card for everything. After looking them up with much confusion I still don't really understand the difference. I learned that a memory stick is Sony's brand of memories cards and Sony can not use SD cards (which is a flash (non-volatile) memory card format that is used in portable devices). They all have different sizes and speeds (which means nothing to me). I could just imagine the look on one of the best buys geek squad members as I was muttering all of my questions out loud to myself. Why can't they just make one that works for all speeds and sizes? For memory cards there are at least 21 different formats. Ranging from the memory stick with a 50.0 × 21.5 × 2.8 mm form factor to the SD card with a 32 × 24 × 2.1 mm to the intelligent stick with a 24 x 18 x 2.8 mm form factor. What do these numbers even mean? Do you have to be a computer genius now to use a digital camera or a camcorder? Or do you just have to trust what the people at the technology stores are telling you hoping that they aren't screwing you over? I think I'm going to stick to letting other people take the pictures and I'll just work on my chemistry homework.
debt consolidation
This summer I really have one big goal in mind, debt consolidation. I know it sounds weird for a college student who still has a year left to go already considering their finances as if they had to pay them off right now. I am obviously not your average college student. My family grew up with very little in the way of money and opportunity. The experiences of government welfare and various instances where disappointment from our social status really hit me hard. I never want to be put in the position of my parents when they had to tell me I couldn't play sports as a young kid because they couldn't afford it. I want to have kids within the next five year or so and this is exactly why I want to begin the process of trying to eliminate debt now. I am really still learning all of the particulars of what I need to be doing to get my finances on a quicker track. I have stepped up my work schedule for the summer and it seems like when i figure all of the variables like my school schedule in to the mix for the next year, I think I can make a significant dent in to my total level of debt. I don't want to say that I will have any clear solution because I simply can't make thirty thousand dollars this year while still getting the grades that I expect of myself. At this point though I feel that any way to consolidate debts I do now and any effort I make to fill in the financial hole I have dug will make me better off. My estimates, which are very general, show that I will save myself a total around three thousand dollars in interest by working and paying as much as I plan to for this year. So no I may not be your average college student trying to just enjoy myself and get by, which on some days or weeks I am. I am totally fine with sacrificing a loose senior year for some real financial stability when it comes time to have kids and buy a house.
dating service
I have never really been a fan of online dating. Using a dating service to me seems very impersonal. I was watching a show that was talking about singles and how hard the dating scene has become. I guess I really hadn't thought about how many people of all different ages were out there now. With so many people getting divorced and separated, I guess I thought it would be easy enough to find an eligible person who was available.
The thing that online dating provides is the opportunity to prescreen people to narrow the dating down to just those people who have similar likes and dislikes as you. I guess this reduces the number of times that you have to date someone who is just truly not compatible. Dr. Phil even promotes online dating, so there must be something to it. He does caution however, about exhibiting caution when setting up to actually meet these people face to face. He says you should always meet them in a public place, and be sure that someone knows where you are and who you will be meeting in case something goes wrong.
I kind of need to meet people face to face to get a feeling for who they are and what they are about. I also am skeptical enough to not trust any pictures that people send you online. Let's face it, if you are hideous looking are you really going to put up a real picture of yourself. I also worry about the weirdo's who are out there looking for victims. I think for the most part the people on these sites are legit and are really looking for love or at the very least a hook up. It helps to get an idea of what and who you are looking for, and helps you get specific about what is important to find in that someone special.
In any case, this form of meeting people online and dating them, has actually worked out for a lot of people. Many people have made good solid matches through these sites and even moved across the country to move in together. Others have actually married the people that they met through an online dating service. I think that if you are really having trouble meeting that special someone, than you should try it. After all if you are careful about it, what do you really have to lose?
gift baskets
I have started my new job now that the summer has started and classes are done. When classes let out I didn't realize that there is much less need for waiters at the restaurant I worked in. Midway through finals week they the manager told me he wouldn't need me the next week until the fall when classes start up again. I was a bit shocked since I had planned on sticking around here and saving up some funds to pay off some tuition debt before fall starts and I get more debt. That news gave me some things to think about and a search to commence. I applied at every store on the main drag in town and got one call back. It was from this little gift and flower shop right downtown. I started without any training and they just started giving me orders right off. The manager is one of these people who doesn't fit his role in life. Here I am taking orders about gift baskets and how to arrange california flowers properly to balance a color palate from a guy who looks like he should either be a pro football player or a used car salesman. He has a mind as quick as lightning and eyes like smoke but somewhere along the lines I think he must have missed out on something that wasn't ever coming back. The employees are all women in the store beside the man and myself which creates this weird air of nonstop secrets. They keep to themselves and form this little click while I am left afraid of both groups. All the while I have to figure out how to put these funny little baskets together that I don't think anyone I know has ever bought but might be cool too receive if I wanted to have a basket full of cheese and flowers or hot sauce and breads. I hope I can make it through this summer with my sanity because this job pays well and I don't think I am leaving till I have to. I will probably end up running back to my old job when students flood back in town and they lose me in that first storm surge.