August 13, 2008
XXXXXXXXXX
Apt #1208

Dear (He Who Shall Remain Nameless),

I’m writing you this letter with regards to a complaint we’ve had from one of your neighbors. This neighbor states they are frequently disturbed by noises coming from your apartment. These noises are not music, slamming doors, stomping, or others of that nature. The Resident claims it is constant banging on the wall and other noises that seem to be associated with intimate activities.

The Resident feels awkward about the situation and therefore has not wanted to knock on your door and discuss it with you. They said this has gone on for quite a while, and they have made comments to management before, but now they feel too uncomfortable and have asked us to address this with you.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

XOXOXOXOXO
Community Manager

By buddy was especially proud of this part, “they are frequently disturbed”. Unfortunatly, he tells me that they definitely got the wrong apartment! Damn.

None Found

So, if you want to join us, either click on Cali’s gorgeous picture above, or go here for all the details! Gee, that’s a hard choice huh…

None Found

Well, maybe not. I actually have no idea what we are going to discuss! But what I do know is, if you stop by http://www.ustream.tv/calilewis/ you’ll be able to watch live, and if you click “Go to Show Details and chat”, you can choose a username (no password necessary) and join in the conversation.

I’ll be taking questions from anyone and everyone on religion, politics, abortion, war, famine, disease, and Michael Jackson. I might not answer any of those questions… but I’ll certainly take them! Otherwise, I imagine we’ll probably talk a little about Woopra, Layered Tech, OMB and other geeky stuff. So mark your calendar and come on by!

None Found

Dear The Man,

I’m a broke ass college student. And by broke I mean not only don’t I have any money, but I’ve probably already spent about 2 years worth of my expected salary after graduation. And that’s if I DON”T go to grad school!

What should I do?

Your fan,
Broke Dope

Well Brokemeister, don’t worry. Lots of people incur mountains of debt while attending school. Some of them even actually do it on tuition and books! But regardless of what you’ve blown it on, there are solutions for student consolidation of debt.

First of all, be wary of web sites promising “Best Consolidation Loan Student”, “Federal consolidation Loan”, “Federal Loan consolidation”, “Student Loan Consolidation” and more. Heck, that ain’t even proper grammer! Those are just keywords that people are loading into a page in order to get their search results up to the top of the pack (just like this one!). You see, college loan consolidation is a serious business and student loan refinancing attracts unscrupulous lenders.

So, if you’re going to consolidate student loans you need to stick to the big reputable sites. And here is the main list:

• Sallie Mae’s Federal student loan consolidation
• Bank of America’s Federal student consolidation loans
• U.S. Department of Education’s Direct Loan Program
• Federal Student Loan Interest Rate and Consolidation Fact Sheet
• Don’t forget Wikipedia’s entry on Federal Student Loan Consolidation

PS – For my regular readers, this page was not a real question, but is a search engine test… If you’ve got a blog and could link to this page to help test a theory it would be fantastic.

None Found

There are so many “make money online” ads…can you recommend some? I have a blog and I’m using Adsense, but I’m not making any money on it (it’s really new, so not much traffic). There is so much info out there, it’s overwhelming!

Yes Arlina, you’re right. There is a lot of information out there, most of which is very misleading, and it’s hard to know what are reasonable expectations for advertising revenue as well as where to turn to for actual advertising dollars. So, I’ll try to answer your question by at least pointing you in the direction of some of the biggest Google Adsense alternatives out there. And hopefully this is one time when our fairly large and vocal reader community will chime in and share their cumulative knowledge as well.

• To start with, you might want to watch this video from WordCamp 2007 in which Jeremy from b5media shares some of his advice.
• Google’s AdSense is the standard for text and some image advertising in general, but don’t forget to check out the Yahoo Publisher Network as well.
• AdBrite is another large and trusted source. The last time I used them my results weren’t so great – but it was a long time ago.
• Read ProBlogger’s Find a Sponsor for Your Blog article.
• If you write about products that can be sold, look into Chitika, Amazon’s affiliate program.
• If you happen to know someone, and that is a big IF, perhaps you can get into BlogAds.com. But even I’ve never gotten an invitation, so I wouldn’t hold my breath…

That is a pretty good starting point, so now we’ll open things up for comments from everyone else. So, if you’ve had success with any ad networks other than what I’ve listed please share your experience. The only thing I ask is, do NOT post affiliate links. If you like an ad network enough to recommend it, great. But we’re not sharing tips to try to make money off people on this post.

None Found

I have just purchased the whole set of Katana knives plus a few extra to fill the block. My question is, how the heck do you use that steel properly to keep them as sharp as they were out of the box? Is that even possible? I have ran several of them on the steel at the recomended 22 degrees and it seems to change the edge. Don’t get me wrong, they are still very sharp, but they don’t pop hairs off my arm as they did right out of the box.

Great question Kirk, and I’ve got a rather complex answer for you. As far as sharpening the Katana knives – or any other knife for that matter – you need to know that, just like everything else on Earth, there are varying degrees of cost associated with higher levels of performance. So, I’m going to give you a ton of information here, and you can then make a decision as to which way to go based on your budget and willingness to put in some elbow grease.

First we’re going to start out with a quick video from Alton Brown. He kicks ass. This video is going to go over some of the basics, but then I’m going to point out a few things I’d disagree with slightly.

• Alton doesn’t recommend sharpening a knife at home, but I’d say that you can do that if you’re willing to pay the piper. Read on to get the details.
• Did you see Alton run his finger over the edge of the blade? DON’T EVER, EVER DO THAT! If you did that with one of my blades you might need stitches.
• “Price is not important.” Um, I highly disagree. A cheap knife simply won’t hold an edge. You need a decent piece of steel to make it even worth sharpening.

Now, we also saw the use of a belt grinder and a buffing machine in the video – but they are not at all necessary to achieve a razor sharp edge. In fact, those tools remove a lot of metal very quickly, so it’s better (especially for amateurs) to use a slower more precise process.

The cheapest process (generally speaking) involves the use of a sharpening stone. Here, Seth from Cosmo Knives demonstrates the technique. In order to do this at home you’ll need a bench stone and a strop.

This is something that everyone can easily learn to do at home and see fairly good results quite quickly. It’ll make cutting meats and veggies with that old knife a joy again.

Now, if you’d like to avoid all of that manual labor altogether, I highly recommend the Warthog V-Sharp sharpener for under $100. I have one of these in my kitchen and I use it constantly on my high end Calphalon Katana knives. Here is how it works, and boy does it work… (Here is a complete review on BladeForums.com.)

Finally, when absolutely only the finest piece of equipment will do, the best sharpening system in the world is the Edge Pro. You can pick up the Apex model for under $200, and it is a great kit (I started out with one of these), but for the finest sharpening system money can buy you’re gonna want the Professional model (my personal tool of choice). It’ll run you about $500 complete with all the options.

Now, when I sit down to really sharpen a blade with my Edge Pro it will take me about half an hour. I take my time and do it right, but by the time I’m done I can slice through leather like it was butter. The Edge Pro is manufactured by Ben Dale, one of the nicest guys you’ll ever care to know, and a man you can trust to deliver an unmatched quality instrument. He makes every Pro model by hand, and even personalized mine especially for me.

Here is the training video that demonstrates how to use this unique tool. It takes a little practice, but after about 30 minutes I was an old pro. I’ve used it a hundred times and my friends and family, for whom I’ve sharpened blades, brag about the results to everyone they know.

One last little detail. People in these various videos keep mentioning different angles to sharpen at. First of all, the only systems here that have precision with these settings are the Warthog and EdgePro; however, for the sake of getting the correct info out there, here is what Ben recommends – and I completely concur.

• 13 ° – Very thin flexible knives. Roast slicers, fish fillet blades, etc.
• 15 ° – Thin kitchen knives. Lowest you can use with a cutting board – extremely sharp.
• 17 ° – Most medium duty kitchen knives.
• 19 ° – Thin pocket knives and heavy duty kitchen knives.
• 21 ° – Pocket and thin hunting knives.
• 23 ° – Hunting, chopping and thick pocket knives.
• 25 ° – Very thick blades such as cleavers.

If all of that information still leaves you wanting more, hop on over and read this Sharpening FAQ and it will leave no stone unturned for you.

As always, if you have questions just let me know and I’ll handle them in the comments.

None Found

Before we get into the meat of this question (mmmm… meat), its worth noting that I enjoy writing. On top of that, I wrote a lot in my previous life as a corporate executive, so I’ve had plenty of practice (translation – I raise BS to an art level). As a result of my experience, I recommend that all Bloggers examine two fundamental questions:

• Are you really a good writer? If you know you are weak in this area then you need to get some help. (Tip #1) Take a writing course at a community college, or at the very least have someone proofread your work before posting it. A poor writer can make the most interesting topic boring, while a great writer can turn the most mundane task into a true joy to read. (Example: Dr. Seuss on morning breakfast.)
• Do you enjoy writing? Trying to be a Blogger without a fundamental love of writing would be like trying to be a dentist who finds halitosis repugnant. These things just don’t go together, and eventually you are going to quit.

And while we’re just getting started, I will say that I worry that the reason people are asking this question is really because they are searching for a “quick and dirty” source that will make this whole thing easy. I’m sorry to disappoint, but I spend as much time doing this as most people do at their full time job. So if there is an “easy way”, I don’t know it.

But I digress…

Philosophy and Methodology

Back to the topic at hand,

“Where do you come up with the ideas for all of these articles?”

Let’s see, in the last year I’ve written nearly 750 articles, so I suppose that I’m “prolific” in terms of writing frequency. Of course, this is in line with one of my most important personal goals – consistency. (I also appreciate regularity, but that is a different topic.) My readers expect me to deliver at least one new article each day, and no matter what – I do so.

It’s also interesting to note that I broke all the rules by having a blog that doesn’t concentrate on just one specific topic. Frankly, I’d get bored with that. Plus I didn’t start my blog to make money, I did it to share information with family and friends as well as document things for myself to remember and reference later. I’m guessing that these underlying characteristics have played a significant role in the incredible growth it’s seen. (Tip #2) And frankly I’d recommend that everyone else expand their focus a bit if you’re feeling too boxed in.

Many of the articles on One Man’s Blog are completely original content. I’m not sure what the percentage is, but I’d estimate at least 30%. However, I couldn’t fill up my schedule with original content alone because I wouldn’t have time to write that much. (Many of my original articles take a full day or more to write). So in between original content I fill in with interesting things I find elsewhere, or current news events. But I don’t just re-post other people’s content. (Tip #3) I always try to do a little more research and add to the original story with additional information or at least my thoughts on the subject.

Now, if I were to sit down each day and try to come up with something off the top of my head I’d be hard pressed to do so. On average I spend about 3 hours on each article I post. That means that whether it is something original I’ve authored, or something interesting I found elsewhere, 3 hours is the minimum. Problem is, I don’t always have 3 hours to spare.

(Tip #4) For this reason I always have several mostly-complete articles sitting in draft mode. With 15-30 minutes notice I can put out a quality article. If I can’t put out something that I’d want to read, then I’ll put out nothing.

One other thing, I’m always blogging – even when I’m not at my computer. (Tip #5) When I’m not connected, I make notes. Lots of them. Reminders of URLs I heard mentioned on TV or by someone in passing. News that I heard on the radio while driving. Topics of interesting discussions I have with people which are intellectually stimulating. (Tip #6) There are note pads and pens in the armrests of my cars, and I try to keep a little pad of paper in my back pocket at all times. I guess I’m just like a reporter in this sense.

(Tip #7) If I’m reading a magazine and come across an article that inspires me I rip the page out and keep it in a folder. I’ve got hundreds of pages, and if I need inspiration I can search through the folder until I come across something I feel like writing about.

Sources

I don’t go searching specifically for content on the Internet. I just read a LOT, and part of the reason for launching my blog in the first place was so that I’d have a place to catalog the most interesting stuff I find while surfing so that I can find it again. (Tip #8) A few of my favorite places to read include:

• Digg
• StumbleUpon
• Google News
• Thoof
• …And the Blogs of visitors that stop by my site. (You do get to know your visitors don’t you?)

I don’t just read online, I also read more magazines than anyone you know. I love magazines. The writers are usually quite good, and they’ve been facing the same issue as Bloggers since the first editor asked “…great story, now what are you working on for next month”? We can also learn a lot from their writing style.

(Tip #9) Some of my favorite periodicals include (I read 2-3 times this many magazines each month):

• Popular Science
• Popular Mechanics
• Men’s Health
• Men’s Fitness
• Smart Money
• PC Magazine
• Forbes
• Maximum PC
• Fast Company
• National Geographic Adventure
• Conde Nast Traveler
• Ornamental & Miscellaneous Metal Fabricator
• Food & Wine
• Wired
• Car & Driver
• Automobile
• Budget Travel

(Tip #10) Inspiration for some of my articles come from products I use. For example I try to review many of the things I buy, especially if they are expensive or risky purchases, because I know other people search for things like that before they make purchases. Of course, I don’t write the reviews to try to get traffic. I do it to try to help people get an accurate assessment of what the product is like from a real consumer. Google will bring them to a well written article (that’s another subject altogether).

Some examples of my product reviews include:

• My New Canon XH A1 Camcorder
• Creative Zen Vision W Review – 60 GB Personal Media Player
• Review: Netgear WNR854T Wireless Gigabit Router
• Review: VistaPrint.com Business Cards
• PlasmaCAM Part 1

(Tip #11) I also read a lot of catalogs and sometimes write about things I haven’t purchased, but think would be cool to have. Heck, sometimes it’s just something a friend told me that he bought.

(Tip #12) In addition to product reviews, I try to put up as many travel related reviews as possible (have you read about Lorelle’s travels). Travel decisions are very hard to make, and if someone has a great vacation I’d like to read all about it – in detail – so that I could duplicate it. Unfortunately most people don’t document their vacations the way I typically do. Here are a few of my travel reviews as examples:

• Courtyard Marriott Springfield, VA
• Travel Planning to Kona, Hawaii- A Tutorial
• Night Photography of Washington D.C.
• Weekend in Denver
• Sunset in Santorini

Summary

To wrap things up I’d just like to make a few quick points:

• (Tip #13) If you will note, in all of the sample articles I’ve provided there is extensive information, hyperlinking and multimedia. Emulate this style and ensure that your articles are authoritative enought that people really don’t have to go anywhere else to learn more.
• (Tip #14) There is no wrong topic to blog about. As long as you take your time to write an article that is complete and authoritative someone is going to appreciate it. In fact your readers will probably welcome hearing a few “off-topic” stories on occasion, and it makes you more “human” to them.
• (Tip #15) Let’s not forget, the more quality content you have on your site, the more search engine traffic will come your way. As your content grows you will eventually reach a critical mass which will allow your site to sustain an actual community. Keep plugging away and you’ll get there!
• (Tip #16) You must allow comments without requiring registration on your blog. Comments add content, and content brings search engines as well as readers. On my blog people enjoy reading the comments as much as the articles. But you must police the comments and delete useless ones.

As a final note, I’d like to point out that my family is unbelievably patient and tolerant of my dedication to the blog. They realize that I really love doing it, and allow me to stay up half the night, or sit in my office for hours on end. So, if you’re like me I hope you remember to let your loved ones know how much you appreciate their tolerance.
:-)

None Found

I just purchased a 37″ Sharp Aquos. Is there somewhere on the Internet that I can find the best settings for picture/voice quality — or do I just have to go through it all via trial and error?

Well, Steve. First of all congrats on your new Aquos. I absolutely love my 42″ version and I think you’re going to love yours. Now, to answer your question, there is some personal preference involved with tweaking your audio and video settings, but there are a number of tools to help you with the project.

To start with, C-Net has a Quick Guide to TV Calibration which you might find useful.

There are also a number of vendors who sell Video Setup DVDs. Essentially you purchase one of these DVDs and it walks you through the setup and tweaking of all your on screen video settings as well as every channel of your surround sound audio system.

Three of the most well known DVDs are:

• Digital Video Essentials
• Sound & Vision’s Home Theatre Tune-up
• HDTV Calibration Wizard

Now, let’s say that you’d like to run through some tests, but don’t want to lay out the cash for a full blown DVD. In that case, here’s a free How to Calibrate your HDTV video from PC Magazine.

A few other links that you might find to be of some use:

• CNet Weekend Project, Calibrate your LCD television
• Best Buy’s Magnolia Professional Video Calibration in case you want to pay a pro to do it.
• Popular Mechanics’ Troubleshoot Your HDTV
• Yahoo Tech’s Adjusting the HDTV Picture

I hope all of this helps. Please drop me a comment to let me know. ;-)

None Found

Can you recommend a good hard drive sweeper? I need to clean up my PC at work… been surfing the net a little too much.

Well yes. Yes I can…

There are lots of good reasons to clean up your computer’s hard drive and usage tracks:

• If a hacker ever gained access to your machine, some of your juiciest information is stored in your Web browsers cache. There is enough in almost every browser on earth to engineer a social breach. In other words a hacker could gain access to your personal data and then use it to pose as you.
• You may be working in an environment where your boss frowns on Internet use, even though it actually helps you do your job. In these cases you need to clean up after yourself because any third grader can see what you’ve been doing the moment you log off the machine.
• Finally, you might be doing something morally or ethically “challenged”. Need I say more?

If someone was going to do a forensic analysis of your machine to determine what you’ve been up to, you can bet they are going to start with the following areas:

• Temporary Internet files, Web site cookies, browser history, and index.dat
• Typed URL history
• Saved passwords and form auto-complete information stored in your browser
• Recent Documents
• Usage history of: Start/Run, Search
• Temporary directories on the hard drive
• Items contained within the Windows Registry
• Deleted items contents
• Media player history

And that’s not all… So you can see how it would be difficult to keep all of your private information protected, given that it’s scattered all over your machine in places you’ve never even heard of.

Here’s what you can do about it. First, use one (or more) of the following tools to automatically erase all of the things on the list above. And by the way, all three of these offer Secure File Deletion, which makes the deletions unrecoverable:

1. Clean Cache – Looks like this domain is gone. Thanks to John Williams for catching this for me!
2. CCleaner
3. Privacy Eraser

After you delete all of that stuff, you’re going to notice that Web sites which you used to go that recognized you don’t anymore. This is because the cookies have been deleted. Also, any of your saved passwords are gone, and that might make things a little less convenient. Don’t worry… you didn’t think I would leave you inconvenienced did you?

Now what you need in order to have a safe, secure and pleasant browsing experience is RoboForm. This is a little program which builds itself into Internet Explorer, Avant Browser or Firefox and which saves all of your login data to your favorite sites, but does so in an encrypted format so it can’t be snooped!

You can read more about RoboForm on my previous post about protecting your digital secrets. If you have an iPhone or Android device it will even sync all of your data to it so you can take it all with you everywhere you go. If you’d like to download it without having to navigate their web site here is the direct download link for Windows.

You should also review my article entitled How I’d Hack Your Weak Passwords.

Be safe.

None Found

Hi,

I just got myself a Zen W last X-mas. I think it’s fantastic as well. I bought the 30gb instead of the 60gb thinking I could probably upgrade the hard drive to a higher capacity eventually.

Do you think it’s possible or know what kind of hard disk format they have in those machines?

Thanks One Man!

No, thank YOU for the question! As far as the answer is concerned, there’s only one way to find out… crack that puppy open!

Disassembly

What you will need to open the device:

• A Jeweler’s Phillips head screwdriver (you know… the really tiny ones).
• The smallest tweezers you can find (the screws are really small)
• Nerves of steel and hands like a surgeon (OK, maybe not those two)

What I discovered:

The Creative Zen W utilizes a 1.8″ hard drive with the following specs:

• The drive, made by Hitachi, is a 3.3 v, 1.8″ Travelstar C4K60 Slim.
• The 30 GB drive is 5mm thick, the 60 GB drive is 8mm thick.
• These drives use the ATA-7 interface and a Zero Insertion Force socket. ZIF is a rare interface used only on devices like this, so it’s difficult to work with.
• The data buffer is 2MB, it spins at 4200 RPM and has average latency of 7.1 ms.
• If you need a replacement or an upgrade you can search Froogle.
• If you’ve got a 30 GB model you might consider upgrading to the 60GB Hitachi, or you might wait as this 100GB Toshiba should start production in Jan 2007.
• If you’ve got the 60 GB version, there is no good upgrade path yet.

How to get at the Hard Drive

Step 1) Remove the battery.

Step 2) There are 6 screws that need to be removed underneath the battery. One is behind a tamper-resistant sticker which, if removed will void your warranty.

In order not to void my own warranty for the purposes of this exploratory surgery I simply used a very sharp pocket knife to gently pry up the sticker so it would be replaceable.

Step 3) Remove the Compact Flash slot screws.

Step 4) Gently pry the back cover off the device. This is the tricky part since you don’t want to break anything. Take your time!

I discovered that the best way seems to be to start on the end with the compact flash slot and begin by squeezing the top of the device together a little to try to release the little plastic hook on the inside. Hopefully the image will make clear what you are trying to get at.

After releasing that hook there will be enough room to use a pocket knife or some other thin flat piece of metal to slip between the cracks and gently leverage the rest of the device apart.

Step 5) Loosen (or remove) the four screws holding the hard drive cover on, then remove the cover.

Step 6) In order to remove the hard drive, peel back the tape covering the ZIF socket and gently unplug it.

Step 7) Take a beer break and admire what you’ve already accomplished!

Optional

Now that you’ve got it disassembled you can learn How to Upgrade to a Larger Drive.

None Found

Since you’re The Man… Kindly grace us with your Top 5 Consumer Electronic “Must Haves” in the $600 to $1,000 range?

I’ll do you one better! Here are a bunch of my top “must haves” in a variety of price ranges. Not all of these are totally “electronic”, but all of them would definitely fit the description of gadgets. Anyway, here we go:

Less than $100:

1. ThinkGeek.com offers the Kill A Watt electric usage monitor. This little $30 device plugs in between electrical devices and the wall socket to tell you exactly how much power they are burning while on, or even at rest. Use it to find your high use appliances and replace them to save $$! Another alternative is the Power Angel from SeaSonic.com which you can do a Google search for.
2. The Waring Professional Bar Blender has only two speeds, hi and lo. But the singular purpose of this machine requires nothing else. If you take your entertaining seriously, you owe it to your guests to get one of these.
3. Hand crank emergency radio $40-50. During an emergency information can save the lives of those you care about. Get a radio / cell phone charger that isn’t dependant on the public electric grid.
4. Air Hogs Aero Ace remote controlled Bi-plane, $30 at Target or Toys r Us; or the Micro Ultrix biplane online. These little remote control planes are for absolute beginners and are crash-proof. After about 30 minutes of practice I was flying like a pro. And I’ve never been a fan of remote controlled airplanes before, but this little sucker is plain addictive! (No pun intended.)
5. It being the nuclear age and all, every man needs a CDV-720 Portable Radiation Detector. Even though you’ll most likely be killed in a nuclear event, having one of these around the house is just plain cool. And it’s only $60.

$100 – $250:

1. Cuisinart Mix It In Soft Serve Ice Cream Maker. This soft-serve ice cream maker will have you eating frozen treats in under 30 minutes. Only bad news… you have to pre-freeze the bowl before using. See the Supreme below if you’ve got the money to go pro! $129.95
2. The APC Back-UPS XS 1200 Universal Power Supply is not just a backup battery for your computer. It is also a line conditioner, which smooths out surges, spikes, brownouts and other equipment-destroying electrical problems. Every computer and high end A/V system in your home should have one of these connected. They’ll even make your picture and audio look and sound better. ~$125
3. Are you still using an inkjet printer? Wow, that’s sooo 2005. I’ll tell you what… do this: 1) unplug your printer. 2) throw it in the trash. 3) Get a Konica Magicolor 2430 Dl. This color laser printer, for $250!! will save you more than it’s price in the cost of ink alone. Plus it’s faster and has better print quality than your old inkjet. I own one.
4. Netgear’s RangeMax WNR854T wireless router is the next generation of Wireless Access Point for your home network. This is the first product to actually achieve wired networking speeds wirelessly, and incorporates Gigabit Ethernet switching to ensure the fastest network performance available. This $179 product will speed up your network, web surfing and downloads. It’s also great looking, cool running and highly rated.
5. The Cuisinart Supreme ice cream maker has a built in compressor and mixer so all you really need to do is pour in the ingredients and sit back. No messing with rock salt and ice, no pre-freezing of containers, and it only takes about 30 minutes to reap the soft frozen goodness! $249.95 at Williams Sonoma.
6. The Braun 360 Shaver is simply the best on the market. I’ve used one for years, and they keep improving it. The best thing about this electric shaver is that it cleans it’s self with an alcohol based solution whenever you put it in the base. This thing just works great. $170 at Target.

$250 – $500

1. Bose QuietComfort 2 or QC3 noise cancelling headphones. I’ve owned the first and second generation of these headphones and they are worth every penny of the $300 price tag if you do a lot of traveling. They eliminate the engine noise on airplanes and the sound quality is just impressive.
2. If you’ve been waiting to get a home audio system for ANY room of your home, wait no more. Sony has released the HT-7000DH (currently $437 at BestBuy.com) which includes a 5 disc upconverting DVD/CD/MP3 player, 5.1 channel surround receiver, 5 satellite speakers, and subwoofer. It also does HDMI video switching so you can use your new Plasma TV as a monitor and let the stereo switch between your TiVo and DVD players. I’m not going to claim that this is the best system you’ll ever hear, but for the money it sounds very good!

$500 – $1,000

1. The PPC-6700 cell phone/pda is the finest all-in-one communication device I’ve ever used. It’s available from many carriers in the US, but my experience has been with Sprint. Read my complete review here: Sprint PPC-6700.
2. If you don’t have a GPS system built into your car, you should really consider a portable TomTom GPS unit. It offers touch screen navigation, spoken driving commands, real time traffic, and millions of built in points of interest. Never get lost again!
3. You may call it a watch, but Suunto calls it a wristop computer. And with good reason; the Suunto X9i is equipped with GPS, a compass, chronograph, altimeter, and barometer. If you travel, regardless whether you’re hiking, climbing, skiing or heading off for a fishing trip this is an essential piece of gear.

None Found

Dear Mr. Man,

I’ve been at my job for a long time, and everyone loves me, but I keep getting passed up for promotion. What should I do?

Sincerely,
Sponge Bob

Well SB, that’s a tough position to be in. So before I answer, let me share my personal philosophy.

Yep. That’s it. Let’s face it, I’d rather hang out with my friends than most of the people at work. And I guarantee I can find better things to do than listening to a customer give me hell over a problem caused by someone else.

What’s the point? Well, your boss, and more importantly your bosses boss, looks at you in terms of your value as a resource to the organization. It doesn’t matter if everyone loves you, or is ambivalent towards you. What matters is, do you get the job done and do you inspire others to perform?

Your job is not the place to socialize or win a popularity contest. It is there to serve the purpose of meeting your financial obligations. The faster you move up the chain, the faster you’ll move towards financial independence and being able to walk away from work altogether.

So, focus intently on finding ways to make the organization richer (monetarily as well as in non-monetary ways) and clearly express interest in taking on greater responsiblity up your chain of command and you will be half way there!

PS – This is not a license to make people hate you. Being friendly and moving up the chain are not mutually exclusive.

None Found