Fingerless Gloves

Fingerless Gloves ~ $3.50 

My office is in the walk-out basement of our home. It is typically 60 to 65 degrees in the winter, but when there is a strong wind on the walk out portion of the house, it can get a lot colder. This isn’t to big of deal because I can usually just put on a sweatshirt, but I have to be able to type. These gloves keep my hands warm but let me still use my fingers. I wish I had of had these when I was getting my  undergraduate degree in music because it would have made early morning piano practicing much more comfortable and productive.

GPS Unit

GPS Units – $99 to $350

If you add a navigation package to a new car it will probably cost you thousands of dollars.  I’ve never understood why this is, when a typical GPS unit can be had for $100 to $300. If you are looking to get someone a GPS, you might want to consider units that come with lifetime map updates. My first unit didn’t have this and with map updates costing $99 I put it off for awhile and eventually just bought a new GPS when it kept trying to send us to restaurants and stores that were closed or moved. In addition to the lifetime map updates, some of the newer models include free traffic updates–something that you previously had to pay $20 per month to get. This will try to route you around road closures and congestion. It is particularly helpful in a big city.

One of the best deals I’ve found is the 5 inch TomTom XXL. It isn’t the newest GPS, but it does come with lifetime map and traffic updates for just under $100.

Amazon Kindle

Amazon Kindle ~ $79 to $199

While a lot of people will be getting the $99 Kindle Touch and the $199 Kindle Fire for Christmas, I wanted to point out some of the advantages of the $139 Kindle Keyboard 3G. It has the 3G support, but allows you to browse the web from the device over the 3G network–something you can’t do with the other devices. Obviously this is a horrible way to do general web browsing, but it is a great way to read longer form web content–particularly Wikipedia articles. So if you want to carry around something that lets you read live content from the web over 3G, this is probably the only way to do it without paying a monthly fee.

The 3G connection means you can look up things on the fly on the road. While most smart phones can do this as well, it isn’t nearly as comfortable to read on your smart phone screen as it is on the e-ink display of the Kindle.

Inspirational leadership quotes from Leadership501.

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The Tower

Chris Guillebeau from The Art of Non-Conformity has released a new manifesto called The Tower. You might be familiar with his previous Brief Guide To World Domination. The Tower is a beautiful PDF that is designed to be viewed on an iPad. (But in my experience looks very nice on a normal computer screen.) There is also a Kindle version available. It is free and at 23 pages it won’t take long to read. The ebook talks about what makes us happy in life and it is well worth the short time investment to read.

Cooking with Brett and Myke

Brett Kelly who blogs at Nerd Gap and wrote the excellent Evernote Essentials book. has started a Podcast where he and a friend just talk about tech stuff called Cooking with Brett and Myke. Cooking is the one topic they seem to avoid–other than mentioning that they are not talking about it. It is a very random romp through various tech and productivity topics–and I do mean random.

The best way to describe it is to imagine you are sitting in the back seat on a one hour car ride and in the front seat are two tech lovers talking about what they have learned in the past week. It is actually very entertaining, so if you hearing about tech/productivity check it out.

Clutter Free

Leo Babauta from Zen Habits and mnmlist has co-created a course and ebook called ClutterFree. I finished the ebook last night. It was a very good read and talked about everything from how to deal with Christmas gifts to cleaning your closets.

For me the greatest take away was just a reminder of all the benefits of NOT having stuff and it made me really think about what I keep and what I should get rid of.

Your Big Beautiful Book Plan

Danielle Laporte with White Hot Truth has co-created a massive 400 page ebook called Your Big Beautiful Book Plan. It is designed to show you how to create a book plan, work with agents and publishers, send query letters, etc. Particularly interesting are all the samples from successful book deals.  For example, in the section that talks about how to put together a book proposal, they print a bunch of real query letters that resulted in book deals.

Want to go paperless? Checkout the Paperless Office website.

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The winner of the $250 gift card is Jennifer Marie. She was chosen based on a random number from www.random.org.

So how did my shopping, turn out? You can read about it below.

My Dad

The local hardware store was offering a sale on “gear wrench” sets. These are wrenches with the normal open end on one side, but the closed end has a gear mechanism in it that allows it to turn the bolt in one direction, but it “slips” when you push it the other. So it lets you ratchet the wrench back and forth to turn the bolt without needing to take the wrench off and replace it.  I bought this the Saturday after Thanksgiving, so not only was it on sale, but I got the $25 credit from American Express as part of their Small Business Saturday promotion.

My Mom

My mom is a teacher and has an older MacBook that gets a lot of use. She has been saying that it seems to be slowing down. Whenever I’ve looked at it there were noticed dozens of programs open–something that its built in 1 GB of RAM just couldn’t keep up with. Crucial has a nice website for identifying what memory works in what devices. I bought her an upgrade that maxes her computer out at 2 Gigs. Now I’ve cheated just a bit here and gave her the upgrade as an early present and installed it of course. She said it has made a world of difference and she can actually use her computer again to get stuff done.

My Nephew (10 years old)

I got my nephew a small remote control helicopter. He had an AirHog, but it was nearly impossible to fly. I got him an Syma S107 because I have one and know it is very flyable. The biggest difference is that the S107 has a built in gyroscope to keep it from spinning unless you are trying to turn.  I looked at getting him the S110G which is a bit smaller, but I decided to stick with one that I know he will be able to fly.

My Brother-in-law

I got my brother-in-law a remote control helicopter as well. I think most guys wanted a remote control helicopter or airplane when they were kids, but the light batteries have just recently become available at a a low enough price point to put into toys instead of pacemakers. So while this obviously isn’t the most practical gift, I’m hoping he’ll find it very entertaining.

My Niece (13 years old)

What my niece likes to do is go shopping. I considered getting her some gift cards by redeeming some Membership Reward Points, but I’m not really a big fan of giving gift cards as Christmas gifts. My sleuthing revealed that she is really enjoying her art classes, so I got her a nice set of colored pencils, a set of pastels, a set of sketching pencils along with a case to keep everything in.

My Sister-in-law

She reads a lot of business books, so I got her several of my favorites:

• Anything You Want
• E-Myth Revisited
• Four Hour Work Week 

Luggage Tags

A few weeks ago I ordered a new dog tag for our dog.  Since the shipping was more expensive than the tag, I went ahead and ordered a few “dog tag” style with my name, address and phone number on them to use as an id tag on my laptop. It turned out pretty nice so I thought I’d get some as small gifts for family members who could use them, three tags that they could use for their keys, luggage, laptops case, camera case, etc.  When I got ready to order them, I realized that it was going to take me quite a while to build the order up by adding the addresses one at a time. Instead I just copied the addresses into an email and sent it off to American Express Concierge asking them to order it for me.

Benefits of Using a Credit Card

I’ve written about some of the benefits of using credit cards before. But lets look at some of the specific benefits in this shopping experience. By using my Platinum American Express card all of my purchases are protected against theft or damage for 90 days. In addition, if a gift turns out to be the wrong thing, but the merchant won’t let me return it, I have coverage through the card for that as well. The purchases are also covered by an extended one year warranty.

Your credit card probably has at least some of these type of benefits and it is worth taking a look at some of the fine print so you know what benefits you have if you ever need them.

Thank You To American Express

A big thank you to American Express for sponsoring this giveaway.

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Manvotionals

The Art of Manliness has launched their second book, this one is called Manvotionals. Christmas is coming and it might be the perfect gift for a man in your life.

Executive MBA Online Fair

The Economist is holding an Executive MBA online fair.  Executive MBAs are generally aimed at people who are mid career and follow a schedule that allows busy professionals to complete their MBA degree while working full time. They are also doing on for Traditional MBA programs as well. The fair allows you to visit virtual booths and talk with staff and alumni from each college.

Even if you aren’t interested in pursuing an MBA, it might be worth checking out just to see how people are using the internet to hold events that have been traditionally held as physical events.

Write On Glass

Write on Glass is a webservice / browser extension that lets you add notes to a virtual glass surface on any web page so people in your “group” can view them. It could be very useful for communicating with a team if you are doing a website design or something similar. You can share with a team or participate in public discussions and the “glass surface” lets you add videos and other rich media elements in addition to text.

Asana

Asana is a web based task manager that recently launched. It is free for up to 30 users on your team. Their goal was to make it as fast to enter tasks as it would be with a text editor while minimizing the number of clicks and offering collaboration features. It looks nice, fast and clean.

Mail Slayer

Mail Slayer gives you some add ons for Gmail that let you take notes on individuals and conversations. It also gives you “snippets” which let you inject prewritten text with a click of a button. The snippets look like they could be very helpful if you find yourself writing the same thing over and over again.

LifeTopix 3.0

Light Arrow is announcing their 3.0 version of LifeTopix–an IOS app that is basically a “life database”. It has some interesting features and I thought the health metrics was a particularly interesting idea.

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The contents are short essays by many famous business authors. There are three sections: Focus, Courage, Resilience. The contents of the book are great. They are all short and you can pick it up and randomly read any page to get something out of it.

What most impressed me though was just the idea for the project. It is a great example of how creative thinking and a little organization (ok maybe a LOT of organization) can bring people together to make the world a better place. The proceeds (at least $20 from each book) wil go to Malaria No More which has a mission to eliminate death from malaria in Africa by 2015. It is a big goal, but with projects like this to fund it, they just might do it.

Everything you wanted to know about money from the Debt Free Dude.

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If you see something that you like, be sure to let the author know in their comments or in the comments here. As someone who does a lot of writing, I know first hand how encouraging it is to hear from a reader.

• Managing Expectations Begins with your Members and Clients – William Biggs works as a communications consultant and has been a long time reader of Productivity501. This is an article he wrote about working with donors for non-profits. Much of it is relevant to the for profit sector as well.
• Don’t Focus on Customer Spending – Saj Karsan’s article takes issue with how much we focus on customer spending as an economic indicator and suggests that productivity may be a better measure of long term economic health.
• Top 10 Android Apps for College Students – Cody Jacob listed his favorite Android Apps for students. Interestingly I use quite a few of them, so the list is definitely not limited to college students.
• How To Use Evernote – Cameron Plommer has done a series of screencast video tutorials on how to use Evernote.
• 6 Ways to get in the Zone – Jon Giganti talks about his methods for getting into the “zone” — that place where you do your optimal work.
• How to be Lazy, Productive and Successful – Matt Heinz looks at how being lazy can help make you highly productive–if you do it right.
• Eliminate your Department’s TPS Report! (pdf)  - Joseph Kern calls on businesses to eliminate work that adds no value from departmental procedures.
• Turn your Adversities into your Greatest Strength - Subhorup Dasgupta’s blog post describes his process of turning a weakness in writing into a strength.
• 13 Questions to ask Before Hiring a Web Designer – Wayne Mullins created this info graphic to get some tips on selecting a web designer.
• Rationally Selfish Q&A: Learning to Concentrate - Diana Hsieh talks about how she learned to concentrate on audio lectures in the car and how to concentrate in other areas of life.
• A Superior Goal Setting Model: Moving Beyond SMART - Loren Pinilis’ blog post details an advanced goal setting method.
• 10 Secret Killers that Destroy Your Personal Productivity - Dries Cronje writes about some of the hidden traps that can steal your productivity.

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The gate next to ours was supposed to be heading to Chattanooga and every 15 minutes they would announce that the plane was still being repaired and that the flight had been delayed yet again. When we boarded our flight, the plane to Chattanooga still hadn’t pulled up to their gate. We got our luggage stowed and the kids settled in. Katy our 4 year old had the window seat and Benjamin our 22 month old was sitting on my wife’s lap in the middle seat. Even after spending two hours watching the planes from the airport, they were still fascinated with the ground crew as they prepped the other planes.

This would be the first leg of our flight which would put us in Memphis. An hour later our second plane would take us to Panama City Beach.  Traveling with kids sure is a lot more work. We had carefully planned what time we put them to bed the night before in order to make sure the youngest would be tired enough to take a nap on the drive up to Kansas City so he’d still be relatively happy when we made it to Florida and took a taxi to the condo around 9pm–about 2.5 hours after he normally goes to sleep. So far everything was going according to plan.

Everyone was seated and the crew was getting ready to close the door when there seemed to be a bit of confusion.The stewardess went to talk to the pilot and after a few minutes the pilot came on the PA system.

“Dispatch just called me and said that this plane isn’t going to Memphis. I tried to get them to let us take it, but we are going to have to get off.”

That seemed a little odd. It also seemed like we weren’t getting the whole truth. But with all the airline security issues, I figured it was best to just get off quickly and orderly and then just get on whatever plane we were supposed to be on.  As we got off the plane, they changed the sign to say Chattanooga and loaded up all the passengers who had been waiting for the broken plane. “Good for them,” I thought. Although I did wonder how they could have been delayed for hours when their correct plane was sitting right there and no one noticed. Since we had an hour layover, I figured a 15 to 20 minute delay to board our plane wouldn’t make too much of a difference.

I asked a stewardess what had happened, and was told that we had been boarded on the “wrong plane”. This seemed pretty odd because it would have required a huge number of errors from a very large number of people. They would have had to pull the plane to the wrong gate in the first place. The pilots would have needed to overlook the fact that it wasn’t the plane they were supposed to fly. The technicians would have had to  overlook that it wasn’t the right plane. The plane would have had to be the exact same type or the seat numbers wouldn’t have matched up, etc. The chances that an airline could make that many mistakes without having serious safety issues elsewhere is pretty much impossible.

The more I thought about her explanation the more nervous about the safety of flying Delta at all. We were supposed to get on the “right plane” in a few minutes with an airline that had just told me they couldn’t keep track of which plane went where.  What if someone got confused again and only put half the amount of fuel on the plane thinking it was headed somewhere else. What if they accidentally got the water truck and the fuel truck confused and the bathroom sink was now dispensing jet fuel?   What if they took off and then realized that the “pilot” was actually a bagage attendant who and momentarily forgotten his job and thought he was the pilot?

I wasn’t sure if I felt very safe putting my family on this next plane that they were getting ready to direct us to.  That should happen any minute right? Well no. Somehow our plane was now broken and the mechanics didn’t know if or when they could fix it, but instead of leaving at 3:45, the soonest we’d be leaving was 7 and that was looking unlikely. The new time strangely matched the time the people waiting on the broken plane for Chattanooga had been last told. Then I realized what had happened. Some computer had shown the airline that it was going was cheaper to bump and re-route everyone on our flight than to try to re-route the people on the Chattanooga flight. That way the airline wouldn’t have to put all of them up in a hotel. That made me feel a bit better about the safety of the airline, but not so good about our chances of making it to Florida on time.

Evidently the computer had said that our flight was one where they could put the fewest people in a hotel because almost everyone could reach their destination through other flights that afternoon. There was one destination that they couldn’t reach–Panama City Beach where we were going. In all fairness the people who helped arrange a hotel for us were courteous and friendly.  They gave us our tickets for the next day along with vouchers for the hotel and a few meals. I carefully checked the tickets to make sure we were all sitting together and discovered there were no seat numbers. I was told the seats would be assigned the next day.

After an uneventful (but not particularly restful) night in the hotel, we checked in our luggage and got our seat assignments. Unfortunately the person making the seat assignments decided that the best place for us to sit was in the very back–where the engine completely covers the windows and the kids can’t see out at all.  Maybe I didn’t adequately explain that yes we all needed to sit together and yes the ability to see out was somewhat important–something I had put a lot of effort into earlier when selecting our flights.

We finally did make it to the beach a day late. It was a nice week spent talking with family, watching dolphins, playing in the waves, making sand castles and swimming in the pool.

So back to the “wrong plane” thing.  Either the airline told us the truth and they had accidentally put us all on the wrong plane or they lied and it was just cheaper to have us get off and put other people on that plane. I am almost certain that it was option 2 because if they did make all the mistakes that would have been necessary to put everyone on the wrong plane, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t admit it. Mistakes of that magnitude would require a huge number of people to do the wrong thing at a scale that would mean the airline would probably have planes running out of gas in mid-air and bumping into the terminal.

So assuming that we were on the “right plane” until they decided they wanted to use it for something else, why would they make up a lie that made them look horribly inept? Imagine this exchange between a police officer and a thief who stole money from a vending machine:

Police: So did you steal money from that soda machine last night?
Suspect: No.
Police: What were you doing last night from 8 to 10 pm?
Suspect: I was murdering someone.

In this case:

Me: Did you make a business decision that will make us miss a day of vacation?
Delta: No.
Me: Then why is the plane I was on headed somewhere else.
Delta: We have no idea where are planes are or where they go. Our employees don’t even check to see if a plane is the right one or if it is at the right gate.
Me: Are you sure it wasn’t just to get the most people to their destination?
Delta: Yes. It definitely was caused by a general state of confusion about what plane goes where.

Assuming it was a business decision, I can understand what Delta did. Now I think they should have made the decision before we all got on the plane, but it is understandable even if I don’t like how it change my family’s plans. But I can’t at all imagine why they would lie about it–particularly with something that makes them look far worse.

I propose that Delta needs a CLO–chief lying officer who can oversee that any lies being told don’t make the company look worse than the truth. The first thing this person would be tasked with is creating a lying handbook or maybe some type of online employee portal where you can select what the situation is, and it will give you a list of lies to tell that don’t make the airline look worse than the truth and a list of lies that you aren’t allowed to use.

For example if a plane is grounded because of maintenance, unacceptable lies would be:

• The FAA has grounded all of our flights because our planes are held together with rubber cement and twisty ties.
• Three of our pilot’s pet rattlesnakes got loose and we haven’t been able to find them. We think they escaped on this plane, but it could have been any of our planes.
• The plane is infested with bloodsucking cockroaches and will need be radiated for 5 months before anyone can enter it.

Note: If someone from Delta wants to set me straight and say that the flight going from KC to Memphis on August 13th was somehow pulled up to the wrong gate, prepped without anyone noticing it, boarded by the pilots and crew without anyone noticing that they weren’t on the correct plane until right before they closed the door, I’d be happy to update and clarify that I was wrong and we were told the truth.

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Google Plus is starting to offer games on their new entry to social networking. However, they still haven’t figured out how to let Google App users (you know, the people who pay google to use Gmail on their own domain) join the service. It seems odd to roll things out to you paying customers last.

Are Ebooks a Good Deal?

I’ve seen from several sources that students are buying ebooks in record numbers.  I can understand the advantage of ebooks, but the economics are usually pretty poor. If you buy a real book, take care of it and sell it to someone taking the class next semester, I think you’ll have a hard time justifying the cost of ebooks. Of course if everyone switches to ebooks, you won’t have anyone to sell it to.

Thoughts on Presidential Campaigns

Anyone that wants the presidency so much that he’ll spend two years organizing and campaigning for it is not to be trusted with the office. ~ David Broder (source)

Zen Koans and Programming

A koan is a story or question where you can’t logically deduce the meaning, but using intuition you can figure it out. It is a part of the way Zen Buddhism is taught. It turns out, it is a very effective way to teach programming languages. Programming language koans generally consist of an ambiguous question or statement followed by a line of code that is broken.  You have to fix it somehow and the ambiguous statement provides clues, but not the answer. If you are looking to learn a programming language, trying searching for a set of koans for it.  Here are a few.

Khan Academy

If you haven’t seen Khan Academy for awhile, you really should check it out.  It covers the bulk of what someone would learn through high-school in easy-to-approach 5 to 10 videos.  They have added a number of exercises–particularly on the math side of things along with video game style achievements.

American Express Concierge

My experience with Amex Concierge has been a bit hit or miss.  I recently asked them to deliver a book for me to a foreign country where it needed to be there by a certain date. They told me it would get their two days ahead of schedule, but it didn’t end up arriving until several days late. This might not have been their fault because it was in an area where street addresses are a bit non-formal. Anyway while talking to the person who called to apologize, I learned that they often get called on to retrieve articles left in foreign hotel rooms.  This guy was telling me about how difficult it was to get a diamond ring back out of India because of their laws on shipping valuables out of the country.

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• Non-Profit Donations – Most people are involved in some type of non-profit organization.  This post lists some of the options available for accepting donations online.  The good news is that it is a lot easier than it used to be.
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• First and last shuttle launch – This is a picture of a father and son at the first and last shuttle launch. It is kind of hard for me to believe there won’t be any more.
• Stravinsky’s opinion of Mozart – I ran across this quote the other day. Best I can tell Stravinsky though Mozart was a monkey. (And Victor Borge was anti-violin and viola.)
• Weird people search for time travel – This is a post I wrote about the “proof of time travel”. If you checkout the comments you’ll find that many of the people who look for time travel related terms are….well a bit different.
• SMS Polls – This site lets you do simple polls by letting people send their response via SMS. Its free for classroom sized polls.
• Khan Academy – Lectures and exercises on a significant portion of a highschool education.

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When you find  a recipe you like, Gojee gives you a link to the original recipe site.  It is a nicely designed site and each recipe has a picture for people like me who have a hard time visualizing from a recipe. If you avoid trying new exotic recipes because you don’t like buying a bunch of ingredients you don’t already have, this is the perfect way to add some variety to your meals while making good use of what is already in your cupboards.

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From what I understand, FEMA is going to pay for 90% of the cleanup if it is done by early August. The city will be responsible for the remaining 10%.  However, volunteer hours count toward the city’s portion.  So if you are in a position to go help, you’ll be helping in more than one way.

We spent half our day clearing a bunch of trees from a neighborhood near the hospital that was hit.  We’d cut up the downed trees with chainsaws and then move them out by the road.  There was a large semi with an open topped trailer and some sort of device with a claw that would pickup the debris next to the road and haul it off.  A few of the houses in that neighborhood were being worked on, but a lot were still waiting to see if it was going to be worth trying to salvage them.  The house across the street belonged to a doctor and while we were there he sold it to someone who runs a construction company.  The insurance company had said it wasn’t going to be worth fixing it, but the construction worker thought he could get it back into shape.

We ate lunch at a large church and then headed out to another site.  This was a small house one story house that had a huge tree on top of it.  We cleared a lot of the debris from the yard and put it out where the city could pick it up.  The cable company was coming through putting in new wires and the telephone poles that looked like they had just been put in.  They were also picking up all the scrap wire that was all over the place from the previous cable install.

The house had been shifted on its foundation and it looked to me like it might need to just be bulldozed and rebuilt from scratch.  We found a lot of pictures of kids in the yard that we put back in the house, but they could have come from anywhere.

The people who had chainsaws went to help the couple across the street who were trying to fix up a house that hadn’t been hit quite as hard.  They owned several houses in the neighborhood and were trying to get them fixed back up so they could rent them out again. Housing is in short supply so every place helps.

Most of the organizations are staring to focus on specific things.  The church where we ate lunch is working mainly on distributing food and supplies to people  in the area.  They said the hard part is to get people to take what they need because many of them want to leave it for “someone who really needs it.”  Other organizations have equipment and are sending people out to do some of the bigger clearing jobs.  If you want to go help, I’d suggest finding an organization that is doing something you are good and and trying to work with them.

The local animal shelter is swamped and they have been adopting out animals without any type of fee.  Response has been good and lots of people are coming from all over to adopt dogs and cats.  You don’t really think about how many pets are displaced in something like this.

A day or two after the tornado, a local youth minister decided to take some kids down to help. They didn’t really have a plan but headed down with a van of teenagers.  They tried to hook up with another organization, but there didn’t seem to be anything for them to do, so they found a house and started clearing stuff.  The house had been marked that it was checked and no one was in it.  They picked up a piece of a wall and found a storm shelter.  When they got the wall off there was a very grateful family trapped inside.

There are still a lot of needs in Joplin, so if you have thought about donating time or money, I’d encourage you to find a local organization that you can help.

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To be great is to be misunderstood.

Since Self-Reliance is old enough to be out of copyright, you can easily find a copy from Project Gutenberg or other online resources. The Domino Project has printed a nice hardback edition that they were kind enough to send me.  The right hand pages contain the essay while the left hand side contain highlighted quotes from the work as well as from others.

While it is hard to beat a nice printed hardback book, it is also hard to beat FREE. For the next few days, you can get the Kindle Edition of the book at no charge from Amazon. On May 27th, the ebook price goes back up to $7.  The free edition is being sponsored by Ibex Outdoor Clothing. Ibex and Domino are running a giftcard giveaway for Twitter users as part of the promotion as well.

At the very least I’d recommend you snag the free version of the book. If you like it, you might want to pick up physical copy for yourself or as a gift for someone else.

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Bright White Dots are Telomere Caps

Not only does the telomere data make sure that the data copied contains all of the information to make a new healthy cell, but it also makes sure that the DNA can’t accidentally fuse with other DNA in ways that would cause mutation.  In fact, the body will destroy cells that have been created from DNA with depleted telomere regions because they are dangerous and have abnormalities that could reproduce like cancer. The reasons we have cancer cells is because sometimes mutations occur in ways that prevents the cells from being destroyed naturally.

Basically the shortening of the telomere region results in a built in self destruction clock and places an upper limit on the number of times cells can duplicate.  This is referred to as the Hayflick Limit and is the reason why human life expectancy falls within a fairly narrow range.  While some people may live to be more than 100, we don’t occasionally have outliers that are hitting 200 or 500 years.

The obvious question is if we can slow down the shortening process or not.  The less telomeres shorten in each replication, the longer your body will continue to repair itself.  Research seems to indicate that people with long life spans have genetic traits that slow the shortening of telomeres during cell duplication. There is an enzyme called telomerase that can slow down the telomere shortening and in some cases actually lengthen the telomere regions.

Long term intensive exercise over several decades has been shown to activate telomerase and slow down the shortening process. This is one of the reasons that people with healthy exercise-rich lifestyles often live longer–they simply don’t age as fast as their sedentary counterparts.

Scientists have looked at using telomerase to help extend the number of times a cell can divide. In theory, it might even be possible to reverse the Hayflick Limit by extending the telomere region of your DNA.  Unfortunately this has an unwanted side effect. The body is constantly destroying cells that were created from DNA that has mutated. If we were to extend the telomere region of DNA it would benefit not only healthy cells but also cells formed from mutated DNA.  So telomerase therapy might result in high rates of cancer.  Some of the promising cancer research actually looking for ways to deactivate the telomerase enzyme in order to prevent cancer cells from multiplying.

It doesn’t appear that exercise will increase the risk of cancer through the activation of the telomerase enzyme.  This is probably because it occurs in small enough quantities over decades and small amounts offer a very small benefit to healthy cells without benefiting cancerous mutations.

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I disagree with my friend’s assessment, but it made me wonder why I value college education so much. Surely there is something to be said for someone who enters the workforce and learns everything then need to know through on the job experience. Is my belief that getting a degree is better rational or is it just because that is the path I took?

According to this article the actual wage for people without a college education dropped by 23% over the past 23 years while the actual wage of college educated individuals grew by 20%. Now I’m sure that there are people who didn’t go to college who are making millions, just like there are people who went to college who are flipping hamburgers. However, I, for one, would rather be in the group that does better statistically.

If the next 23 years are like the past, following my friend’s advice will result in an average drop in income of 13%. I hope the student in question listens to his mother.

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What is a professional email address?

A professional email address is something that you feel comfortable giving out to someone who might want to offer you a job.  1hotgirl@hotmail.com is NOT a professional email address.  A professional email address looks best when it is from your own domain.  So sue@suesmith.com looks very professional.  However, using gmail or another service can look professional as well.  Something like sue.smith@gmail.com or sue.a.smith@gmail.com is a good option.  Be aware that the email service you use says something about you as well.  Generally Hotmail and Aol accounts aren’t the best thing to use if you are looking for a job working with technology. While their services may work just fine, they have traditionally been slower to adopt many features that technical people want.

How can I make an electronic signature?

You need to understand how digital signatures work.  A scanned signature is simply an image of your signatures on a transparent background that can be added to documents.  A full digital signature using encryption is a way to mathematically prove that a document has not been altered since it was signed and usually includes cryptographic capabilities so people can send you a document and know that you are the only person who can read it.

Why shouldn’t I use a credit card?

If you have poor financial discipline, a credit card is probably a very big risk that you should avoid.  There are some advantages to using a credit card, but it doesn’t take very many mistakes to make the advantages disappear.  Using a credit card may not be a good idea for you personally even if there is nothing inherently wrong with having a card.

How can I memorize better?

The key trick to memorizing better is to practice recalling information–not just practice reading it.  Anything you can do to put yourself in a position to recall the information is going to help you remember it.  Creating exercises that allow you to practice this without letting you practice mistakes is a key part of memorization practice.

Why is IMAP better than POP3?

IMAP allows you to keep the inbox on your computer synchronized with the inbox on the server while POP3 only allows you to download (and optionally delete) the items.  For example, IMAP will let you have multiple computers looking at the same inbox.  When an item is deleted off one computer, the server will synchronize that change to all of the computers that are using that mailbox. (Gmail supports IMAP, but you have to turn it on.)

How can I organize my desk?

The key part of desk organization is to put things where they can easily be found, but aren’t in the way and cluttering up your work area.  Your desk organization needs to be based around how you use your workspace, not what other people do with their workspace.

Why is college important?

College is important because it provides you with the social and technical education you need to succeed in the world.  That isn’t to say you can’t succeed without a college education, but college helps make sure there aren’t any (or are very few) gaps in what you know.  College also is one of the primary attributes employers use to filter job candidates, so having a degree can significantly increase your chances of getting called in for an interview.

How can I remove superglue from my skin?

Petroleum based products will break down super glue.  Vaseline is a good option to use.  It takes a little bit, but rubbing Vaseline into your fingers can help get the hardened super glue out of your finger prints.

Why do people waste time?

Sometimes people waste time because they are trying to do something that really isn’t important to them in the first place.  Procrastination is often your subconscious saying “This is not valuable to you–why are you doing it?”

How can I improve my focus?

Make sure you are working on things that really matter to you.  Also make sure you are working on things at the optimum time for that particular task.  Doing a very challenging mental task right after lunch probably isn’t the best use of your time.  Doing a brain dead task during your peak hours of alertness is also going to be a waste of your precious high performance hours.

When is the best time to look for a job?

The best time to look for a job is when you already have one.  If you are part of a group that gets laid off, some employers are going to wonder why you were laid off and not someone else.  It makes sense that they might be more interested in hiring the person who still has a job–or at the very least they might be interested in offering the currently employed person more money.  Knowing that you don’t have a job may make them offer you less money than you’d’ get otherwise.  Also it is easier to perform well in an interview and salary negotiations when you can take it or leave it.  It is much harder to hold out for a larger salary when you are worried that the bank may be foreclosing on your home if you don’t start getting a paycheck coming in.

How can I look smart?

The best way to appear smarter is to actually become a smarter person.  That said there are many things you can do to appear smart or at least appear more intelligent by doing and talking about things intelligent people do.  This can include things like forgoing television and instead attending cultural events like museums, ballets and operas.  It can also include reading materials that are not targeted at general mass market culture. Many of these type of activities will not only make you look smart, but will actually make you a smarter person and upgrade your brain.

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