Ed Icionsub

Last night I read a post on Jerry’s blog about how many businesses do not have their street address prominently displayed. I think he makes a really good point. There have been several times that I had to go downtown and search for an unfamiliar address. That is so very frustrating, especially when you are trying to get to an appointment on time.

I call this situation a Nashville conceit. The merchants and professionals seem to have an attitude of “if they want me they will know where I am.” That is SO wrong!

There was an article in the paper that say over 60% of workers in the U. S. did not take their earned vacation time last year. That might be a good thing if you can can accumulate unlimited hours or days that carry over each year. But at my company we have to used the days earned within a year or we lose that time. So you can believe that I use my vacation time,

This year I have plans to go to the biggest and best golf tournament in the the world, held every year in Augusta, Georgia. I have a friend who lives in nearby Aiken, SC, so the deal is that I buy the The Masters Tickets for both of us and I get to stay at his house for a week during the tournament.

Last year I did not get to attend any baseball games all year, so this year I have to make up for that. I will get both Fenway Park Tickets for a game in July, and then Wrigley Field Tickets for the Cubs against the Cardinals. This game has been an annual tradition for us for 15 years, with the exception of last year and the passing of a brother in law. Obviously, we had to cancel our plans and attend the funeral. But this year, we are back to our yearly trek to Chicago in the heat of summer to cheer for the Cardinals.

One of the most interesting aspects of using the internet is that it is truly an international medium. I have been able to access newspapers all over the world, and participate in bulletin boards and discussions with people from a variety of different countries.

One of the most interesting bulletin boards that I found recently is based in India and helps the people having issues with various businesses as a public consumer forum.

One of my company’s franchisees is from India and he still has a lot of family there. He was in a meeting with me this morning and during a break he went online to check his emails and surf a few web sites. He showed me the consumer court India website and shared some of the recent posts with me. It was truly fascinating.

There are a variety of topics available for comments and discussions. I read the laptop computer forum and was very surprised to see how many complaints were lodged against all the major laptop manufacturers. It was a real eye opener and worth considering when shopping for a new laptop.

I wish there was a panic button on my computer keyboard. I have had a few times that something really bad was happening on the screen. I sure wish I could have pushed a panic button and had help dispatched immediately, even if it was just a phone call from a geek somewhere that could walk me through the problem and make me feel like somebody out there knew what they were doing and cared about my computer.

Wow – just saw a commercial with Eric Clapton for a cell phone. I think the phone is a T-Mobile exclusive, which actually is making me consider switching from AT&T so I can get this phone. It has a special design on the case and in the commercial, it shows Eric Clapton strumming what looks like guitar struts on the phone display. I wonder if that is a special application that lets you play the phone like a guitar? How would that even work? Not that it matter so much to me – I can’t play the guitar anyway. I just like the case design and the thought that it has a variety of cool apps that you can get for it. Plus, I’m a huge Clapton fan – from way back.

This next month is full of family birthdays. I have to buy several gifts for family members and some of them have to be shipped to Virginia and Oklahoma. I decided to spend a little time shopping for the gifts online while watching the end of the Grammy’s show tonight.

My youngest sister has a new granddaughter, so I want to help out with some new Nursery Furniture for my niece and her new baby girl. I know they have a nice crib, so I will find a nice changing table or dresser and have that delivered right to her house.

My other sister has a granddaughter who will be turning one year old just two days before Valentine’s Day. They don’t have much cash for new Infant Clothing, so I thought I would order a few things that should fit her now and keep her nice in warm, then order a couple things in a larger size that will be nice for the warmer weather that I hope is just a month or two away.

My grandson love to read and I want to start a nice library of Childrens Books for him. I know he loves anything to do with dinosaurs, so I found a couple of great books for him.

I put the orders in tonight and know that they will all be on their way next week to each of the homes – and I don’t even have to gift wrap any of them!

http://www.shopwiki.com/wiki/Toys+and+Games

There is an article on Yahoo that links to the new Fortune magazine piece, “Best Companies to Work For.” The online article lists the top 10 companies, based on things like low employee turnover, employee satisfaction (from surveys), and company paid perks.

The number one company this year is SAS, a software company based in Cary, NC. I did not realize that SAS is based in Cary until I read that this morning. I used to know some people who worked for SAS in the Washington DC and Huntsville, AL areas.

What impressed me about SAS is the philosophy of their CEO, Jim Goodnight, about taking care of the employees and the corporate culture that he models.

“My chief assets drive out the gate every day,” Goodnight likes to say. “My job is to make sure they come back.”

Goodnight backs that up with impressive statistics. According to Fortune, the average tenure at SAS is 10 years. The company has 300 employees that have worked 25 years or more. The SAS annual turnover rate was just 2% in 2009, compared with the software industry average of about 22%. Women make up 45% of the SAS workforce in the United States, with an average age of 45.

Computers are great when they are working. Not so great when they crash, lock up or refuse to turn on. Then I want to pull out my hair and grab a hammer to smash the offending desktop to bits. Back in October 2009 I turned on my HP desktop and got nothing – not even the blue screen of death. Turns out that the motherboard was “fried,” and I had to get a new computer.

The boss sent me a replacement computer, which was very generous for them to let me have a company paid computer at home. But it arrived last month with a lot of outdated and incompatible software and drivers. Not that I’m looking a gift horse in the mouth. I just mean that I had to do a
driver update for my monitor before I could see well enough to do the rest of the install, and then I had to find a few more drivers and updates to finish getting the new system set up.

At least I could get online and grab the drivers download from one online source, the site called driveraccess.com. That was a big help and saved me a lot of time.

I used the same site to get my printer driver files and to check for updates for other computer drivers that might be needed. All in all it took about an hour to completely install and update the replacement computer. I should be good to go for a while – let’s hope this desktop last longer than the last one.

Have you ever needed help with translation from one language to another? I find myself needing help reading a lot of posts that are in German.  Several of my Facebook friends are either in Germany or from Germany, and sometimes they post messages to each other in German. Me, being nosey, always wants to know what they are saying. If it is just a few sentences I can sometimes figure it out, but sometimes I need help from a translator.

When I did a search for that I found a web site that will translate to and from a lot of different languages. Some of their services are for a fee and some of them are free. From what I can tell, joining their site is free and worth checking out. You never know when you are going to need help understanding something written in a different language.

Found a list on the internet of the phonetic alphabet used by the U.S. military when sending radio messages:

A – Alpha

B – Bravo

C – Charlie

D – Delta

E – Echo

F – Foxtrot

G – Golf

H – Hotel

I – India

J – Juliet

K – Kilo

L – Lima

M – Mike

N – November

O – Oscar

P – Papa

Q – Quebec

R – Romeo

S – Sierra

T – Tango

U – Uniform

V – Victor

W – Whiskey

X – X-ray

Y – Yankee

Z – Zulu