My mom lectured me about smart financial moves today and though I was tired and didn’t really want to think about it, she makes a good point.   I can save a lot of money if I take advantage of tax breaks, save and invest wisely, and limit my spending.   At this point, I don’t really want to think about it and plan for it, but it really is the time to start as I get a steady paycheck.  Unfortunately (and despite one of my majors being Economics), I’m not really interested in the financial field and have little patience for all the complexities of it.   At the same time, I can save a lot of money by knowing how to handle my money smartly and not pay a financial advisor to figure that out for me.

It’s a bit of a dilemma because I just don’t have the interest, but the stakes are pretty high and the ultimate benefits do warrant a closer look.  As of now I’ve been letting my Roth IRA money sit there, whiling away, but what I need to do is invest it in a somewhat aggressive mutual fund or index or something.  There are many other things to do, such as figure what areas of tax avoidance I can take advantage of (note that that’s not the same as tax evasion, which is illegal).  I need to put in a lot of time and effort into this area, but I just don’t have the interest.  I wish I could just let someone else handle it, but why spend good money on something I can learn myself?

At least if I start early in my working life (like now), I’ll be setting myself up for a better future that will be able to ride out the periodic financial downs.  I just wish it wasn’t so complicated.

If you’ve had your laptop or desktop for a few years and the fan is having trouble cooling the device like it used to, it’s more than likely you are the victim of a massive dust bunny.  It’s a fun adventure to take apart your computer to clean it out and help lengthen its life.  After all, you don’t want it overheating and oftentimes, that can be caused by these dust bunnies!

The little devil knows how to block air flow.

The dust bunny inside Panda's laptop. No wonder his fan was having trouble.

When I was up in Ojai for a lovely weekend away, my boss from the internship with Opportunity Green called me “Technolo-Mary” during dinner, which struck something in me.  He had been referring to how I seem to know all the newest gadgets and services out there.  It made me realize that I really am a great resource for many new technologies that have come about in the past couple of years.  I liked that someone as techy as he (he got a degree in engineering and is awesome at all things related to building and maintaining websites) found my knowledge useful enough to consider me a valuable go-to person.

I do like to stay on top of things, whether it’s things like Google Voice, Dropbox, and reQall or more of things like new social media forums, mobile technologies, and many more.  I’ve always loved to learn more about technology, so anything new captures my attention and I like to spend time learning more about it.  If I like what I see, I’ll usually go on to become an adopter and even spread the word.  That’s what I’ve been doing with CauseWorld, which is a great app for your smartphone that allows you to choose where sponsors’ money is donated.

I really enjoy troubleshooting (for the most part) and solving problems through logic and trial and error.  Also, it’s rewarding to discover the best technical solutions for everyday issues, like streamlining processes.  Whether it’s organization, documentation, or retrieval, there’s probably a better way to do it than the one you’re doing now.  I’m all about efficiency and effectiveness, which is probably also why technology fascinates me so much – it solves a lot of our problems and saves us a lot of time and effort!

Perhaps I should start a help line called “Technomary” – not “techno Mary,” but “tech-nom-ary.”  A play on technology and Mary AND -ary as a suffix that means “having to do with.”  It’d be a fun name for a tech blog, if I were to ever write one.  It could be a cool place to get answers for your “Dear Abby” type tech questions like how to convert a scanned JPEG into a PDF or what type of free phone services there are.  Hmm, now there’s a thought…

I’ve been really preoccupied with work lately.  When I’m there, I don’t think about personal things, and when I’m home, I’m tired and just want to relax, which has meant the e-mails in my Yahoo account are piling up.  I’ve managed to go through them this weekend, but there are quite a few newsletters that will probably go unread for months.  I don’t follow my social networks the way I used to and I’m just barely pumping out posts here.  For some reason, I’ve been really tired during the time I’m at home.  Plus, the Olympics have been a nice distraction, which makes it easy for me to never think about turning on my computer.  Let’s not even go into the problems I’ve been having with my charger.  I’m about ready for a new computer.

It’s been a month now, so I hope that I can get into a better rhythm that fits work, sleep, meals, entertainment, exercise, relaxation, and quality time all in one nice bundle.  I don’t have much energy for cooking dinner, which hasn’t been good, so I really need to start getting more sleep.  The good thing is, one of the guys at the office told me about an app that lets you track your sleeping cycles!  I looked into it and found the Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock, which will monitor your sleeping pattern and wake you up during a lighter sleep stage so it’s easier to get up and you feel more rested.  It’s a really awesome app that you should go check out if you have trouble getting up in the morning!  I’ve only used it one night, so it’s still calibrating to my sleeping pattern, but it could be quite useful in the future.  For a buck, more energy and less time wasted pressing snooze is totally worth it.

photo credit: Chris Doolittle

Firefighters in California have adopted a fire suppression policy for over a century now, which works very effectively in the underbrush type fires of Northern California, but do very little to stop the brush type fires of Southern California.  In fact, wildfires are still occurring increasingly year after year, with over 99% of the ones in coastal Southern California started by human activity.  It’s not just an issue of how we fight the fires; it’s how we prepare ourselves to prevent the fires.

Much of the problem arises with urban sprawl.  As our communities push further out into the undeveloped land surrounding us, we not only put ourselves at risk of being in the path of a wildfire, we are more in danger of starting them.  Since fires are something humans feel they can control, more or less, there is often a misconception that we can just stop the unwanted ones from happening.  However, that is not the case, especially since our homes are teeming with highly flammable materials, including the very palm trees swaying our backyards.  Fires are bound to break out, whether caused by humans or nature.

So, we should follow Dr. Jon E. Keeley’s advice: think of wildfires like we do of earthquakes.  We certainly don’t go around trying to patch up the San Andreas Fault, and neither should we try to stop all the brushfires from igniting.  As a matter of fact, in a study conducted by Keeley and Fotheringham in 2000, they found that chaparrals (native plants in Southern California) need periodic wildfires to help their seedlings grow!  It’s actually the smoke and chemicals from charred wood that allow the seeds of chaparral to germinate, otherwise they lay dormant.

Chapparals have adapted to the wildfires that swept the area every decade or two and now need them to continue to survive.  That’s not to say that the increased frequency of wildfires is a good thing, though!  When fires occur too frequently, native chaparrals die before they get a chance to recover and soon the hillsides are replaced by non-native weeds and dry vegetation.  These new plants are far less resistant to burning, increasing the frequency of fires, which spread to kill off even more native plants.  And thus the cycle continues, to the point that of the nine megafires (fires that burned more than 100,000 acres) in the past century, half occurred in just the last six years.

So how should we deal with the wildfires?  Well, to start off with, it would be smart to NOT build homes and developments in high-risk areas, which experts have identified.  Then, for those homes that are already on the fringe of wild land, clear out the vegetation in a 100-yard radius.  Also, homeowners should be cognizant of the materials in and around their homes.  Palm trees in particular are dangerous because they are extremely flammable.  Embers flying from a burning palm tree in your yard could then ignite a fire on nearby structures.  Finally, we should accept that wildfires are part of the cycle of life for our local vegetation and have a plan like we do for earthquakes.

To learn more, check out Dr. Keeley’s Oppenheim Lecture Series presentation.

I often get junk mail that tries to come off as legit, and half the time I have to laugh because their attempts are just SO pathetic.  Take this one I got:

Seriously?  You expect me to fall for that when you are using multiple fonts, no images, and don’t know more than two of the numbers in my account?!  Besides, those two numbers aren’t even right.  Ultimate FAIL.  Plus, when I hover over the link, I can see that the address it would take me to is complete bogus, seeing as it’s hosted on realdragonhk.com.  I’ve also never received such a plain e-mail from American Express, which always includes their logo (hey, every chance to build branding, right?) and uses HTML to create a nice layout that also shows me an image of the type of card I have.

I really hope that people are smart enough not to fall for things like this.  And if they somehow do, I hope their spyware is good enough to catch these ridiculous sites and redirect them elsewhere.  Honestly though, you’ve got to miss a lot of big, fat, and bright red warning flags to not notice.  The next time you receive one of these, I’d advise you to report it and then delete it.  Most sites have a fraud protection area where they give you an e-mail address you can forward it to – I know I’ve done so for this one, a fake IRS one, and I believe a Bank of America one.  Certainly most banks and credit card companies are well aware of this issue and have set up appropriate channels for you to go through.  That way, they can be alert of all the scams out there and get those sites flagged and removed ASAP.

I’m sure that many people have promised themselves that this is the year they will get fit.  And just a week and a half into the year, most are probably doing alright with that goal.  However, as weeks drag on to months, it gets harder to stick with it.  It’s like the opposite of going cold turkey, whatever that may be.  Suddenly trying to pick up a behavior is just as hard as trying to quit an addictive one.  The process tends to work better when it’s done gradually or less drastically.

That’s one of the reason why pedometers are doing so well!  People walk all the time, so doing a little more throughout your day doesn’t kill you and make you want to quit your new fitness regimen.  Plus, having the number staring up at you makes things a lot easier to track.  When you have small, measurable goals that you can easily track, it makes staying on target so much easier than the “I did 5 sets of 10 reps but I don’t see a difference” approach.  Personally, I love the weight room, but I can see how it’s not the best way for people to get in shape.  After all, strength training is more focused on building muscles than building a figure.

So in the following weeks, if you find yourself having trouble reaching your goals for the year, make a list of small actionable items to do, one at a time.  This goes for anything from health resolutions to general goals, like that book you’ve been meaning to read, that book you’ve been meaning to write, or the friend you’ve been meaning to catch up with.  Start with the basics – read a page, write a paragraph, send a text.  And of course, don’t forget to just keep walking!  You can build momentum step by step and soon enough you’ll climb your way up those mountains.

Now if only I could find my Pikachu pedometer… (story for another day, when I actually find it or determine it lost forever).

[update jan.12.2010]  Oh my gosh!  Panda showed me the link above and I was shocked to find this is something that was actually known (maybe even popular?) in the States!  Mine came from China, so I figured it was this obscure thing…

“hey”

It’s the most common instant message I receive and the one I’m least likely to respond to.  It’s an opener with no purpose, no direction.  Hey can lead you anywhere, yet nowhere, which is why I usually don’t bother to reply to most people who think that’s enough to start a conversation.  No, I’m a doer.  I need some sort of action and interaction, whether through sharing a statement or asking a question.  A simple greeting via the internet just doesn’t cut it.  Imagine if that’s all you got in e-mails.

“Just wanted to say ‘hi’.”

I wouldn’t even bother answering back to that.  To me, it’s like great, thanks for saying hi… now what?  Why did you greet me?  Did you want to catch up after a long time?  Did you have a question for me?  Did you just want to share a bit of your life?  Give me something to work with here!  It annoys me when people wait hours for me to reply to their one word before finally getting to the point.  I like to get the point as fast as possible and know exactly why I’m spending time interacting with someone.  And so, if people won’t even make the effort to type more than a single greeting to me so I can get an inkling of where they’re trying to take the conversation, I won’t make the effort to get the point out of them.

Even something as simple as “Hey, what’s up?” is fine!  At least then there’s something I can do right away – answer the question!  The conversation may last no more than two lines that way, but I’d at least give you the time of day to respond to the question.  Hey means nothing to me.  The most pointless conversation I ever had was an exchange of “hey”s followed by “what’s up” and “nothing much.”  Seriously, you have nothing better to say?!  -___-  I’m not looking for spectacular conversationalists, but some people really need to get the hint that when I’m not talking to them, it’s because they have given me NOTHING to talk about.

Rant over.  Thank you for listening.  :)

Lately I’ve been wearing a pair of white-frame sunglasses that I got at the LA County Fair.  They’re modeled to resemble Ray Bans (I think that’s what they’re called) and because of their shape, they fit my face easily.  I often run into trouble finding sunglasses that fit my head because I tend to have a wider distance between temples.  Most sunglasses hug my eyes and leave red marks on my cheeks after wearing them for awhile.  I usually end up with a headache too.

It’s a fortunate thing that I bought this pair, because I’ve been using it consistently ever since.  It seems the more you wear shades, the more you need them.  Is it just my imagination or have my eyes really gotten more sensitive to sunlight?  Whatever the case, psychologically at least, I need sunglasses on a bright day.  I actually just got these on a whim at the fair because I thought that the white frames were outrageous enough to be silly, yet mainstream enough to not get stares.  I’m always on the lookout for a snug pair that will fit my face and I suppose now I understand why the real Ray Bans are so expensive.

Well, using and abusing the white pair so much, I found one day that I didn’t know which bag I had it buried in.  My purses become black holes, so it was hopeless to find the things without dumping out the entire contents of my bags.  Unfortunately, I was on a time crunch, so I grabbed the first pair I could find – a brown pair I’d bought a long time ago.  I think I got them at my favorite (and now non-existent) shop in Westwood, Good Choice Gifts.  I do remember I had gotten the matching black pair because I couldn’t decide (as usually is the case).  I’ve since misplaced the black version.

Look at how happy I am!

I ran off, sunglasses in tow and put them on just before driving the car out of the garage.  And suddenly, bam.  The world looked beautiful, happy, better.  After so long wearing my black shades, I had forgotten the miracle a little brown shading can do for your eyes.  Forget rose-colored glasses!  Brown is most cheerful color of all.

If you’ve never owned a pair of brown sunglasses, I highly recommend them!  I’d say lighter shades of brown are better, giving just enough tint to the world without darkening it too much.  Filtering everything through this new lens on life makes greens greener, blues bluer, and everything richer!  I swear the sky has never looked so appealing than when I saw it through these sunglasses.

And hey, if the world looks happier to you, you’ll probably end up being happier too!  :)

Sometimes it feels like a really hard game. You zoom past the easy levels, then get stuck on a hard one. photo credit: danimations on flickr

Just yesterday morning I got the news: Thank you for applying, but we have chosen another candidate for the position.  Or something to that effect.  It feels like so long ago!  I had a lot of my hope banking on this job, so it was certainly a let-down that I didn’t get it, after getting so far.  I had three wonderful people give me great recommendations and even a fourth one who put in some good words.  In the end, it might have come down to exactly what I had feared… not enough professional experience in event planning and scheduling.

I had the passion, I had the drive, I had the excitement and enthusiasm!  I just didn’t have the years of experience to back me up.  I’m still waiting to hear back regarding feedback on how I was as a candidate so I can improve myself for the next try.  I really wish I had gotten this one though – it was perfect for what I want out of life now.  At least it didn’t hit me as hard as I thought it would.  It helped that I had just heard of some new, exciting opportunities, so now I’m applying for those.  Just gotta keep plowing forward!

Ironic then, that last night I listened to a speaker sharing advice on how to live our professional lives and today I listened to a speaker doing much the same.  I was oddly inspired, yet weary.  Sometimes you know what you should do, but it’s just not the right time emotionally.  I felt like that last night, as the pangs of a job not earned hit my subconscious.  I didn’t think it was affecting me much, but apparently it was.  Let me tell you, it is the most bizarre feeling, to be inspired and discontent at the same time.  It’s hard to reconcile.  Well, I took those lessons and pondered them on my way home, as I questioned many things in my life.  Then today I was feeling much more receptive to the advice presented.  I just need time to recover from everything I put into the potential job.

A wonderful event!

Let’s move on to the pointers that the two speakers gave, starting with Jordan Belfort:

~”motion creates emotion” – Put your body physically a certain way and you will start to feel that way.  Stand tall and confident and you will feel more confident.  Hang your head and look at the ground and you will begin to feel sad.  Move how you want to feel and you can create that emotion through body language.

~”act as if” – Whatever your goal is, start acting as if you have already attained it.  You will begin to open doors to lead you towards that very goal.  (This could work well in line with the advice that tells you to start taking on duties of those above you when you want to get a promotion/raise.  Just start working like you already have that job!)

~”where focus goes, energy flows” – The things you focus on, you will pick out more readily than everything else.  So focus on what you want to get and don’t expend resources on the rest.  We’re great at filtering out things to find what we want, but if we’re preoccupied with our weaknesses or problems, that’s all we’ll see.

~”change the way you look at things and the things you look at will change” – Similar to above.  When you focus on the good and what you want, you will go towards it.  When you shift focus down to the things holding you back, you will plummet.

The Wolf of Wall Street, as he's known.

~”build a new pattern” – From our youth, we develop patterns.  Patterns of thought, patterns of behavior, patterns of expectations.  Don’t let those inhibit you.  Break old patterns and start adjusting them bit by bit.  Next thing you know, it’ll be second nature!

~”mistakes are resources” – Every time you make a mistake, it’s a chance to learn.  Failure is in the eye of the beholder.  Take each stumble as a lesson so you don’t run into the same issue again.  Successful entrepreneurs especially know this; they’ve all failed and learned!

~”model after someone successful” – Find someone (or “someones”) doing what you want to accomplish and find a formula of their actions that work for you.  Take what they do best, what has led them to success, and learn from it.

~”Mother Nature has equipped you with everything you need” – You just need to harness that natural talent!

Amy Lukken, Director of Market Research and Educational Learning

And today’s speaker was Ms. Amy Lukken from Interface, with similar wisdom:

~People tend to focus on the negative, like when you get a report card with As and Bs and one D.  All parents will immediately see the D and question it.  We’re always working to improve our weaknesses (but what about our strengths?).  Around the time we’re 3-9, our natural talents start to emerge.  We can and should take those and find ways to develop them and apply them to future jobs.

~She showed us a t-shirt that said: Failure is NOT an option.  Good idea, but the most prominent words were “failure” and “not.”  Walking around seeing them all day doesn’t give the right impression.  (As I like to say, double negative wording is detrimental to the positive meaning they hide.  Just word things positively!)

~Discover your passion and aim for that.  You shouldn’t get stuck in a job you hate just because it is stable, pays well, etc.  Oftentimes there are ways to incorporate what you’re good at and your passions into many types of roles.  (Take me, for example – I’m good at proofreading, so I could be an editor in many organizations.)

Now I’ll take their words, trying to remember it all as I move forward.