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Vol. 25, No. 12 • December, 2007
You can find this newsletter and some past issues on the web @ www.Freeman-Spicer.com
Happy Holidays and a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year from all of us at Freeman-Spicer!
Developing Your Life . . . . . . . . If you want to improve the cast of friends in your life, you must approach the acquisition of friends actively rather than passively. You can’t wait for them to seek you out because (a) there’s no guarantee it will happen with the ease and pace you expect and (b) you have ceded control over who your friends will be. They are choosing you. You are not choosing them. To get to this stage in life, you have to make a conscious decision about the importance of friendship in your life. Most people never think about it. It’s also necessary to feel that having more friends is a blessing, not a curse. (Never Wrestle With A Pig)
High Prices Are For The Birds . . . . . . . . . . . The cost of birdseed has taken off. By some estimates, you’ll pay 50 percent more this year to keep the cardinals fed through the winter. Reasons for the soaring prices include the high cost of gas and the diversion of such staples as corn for new fuel technologies. Laura Erickson, author of “101 Ways to Help Birds,” explains how to keep your spending grounded. ■ Don’t buy cheap mixed seeds. Mixed bags are less expensive per pound (about $13 for 20 pounds) but add weight with fillers, such as wheat and oats, that birds don’t like. To economize, buy black oil sunflower seeds. They’re nutritious and just about every seed-eating bird likes them (about $8 per 10-pound bag at Target). ■ If you scatter small feed on the ground, use white millet, found at animal-feed stores or online at amazon.com ($49.97 for a 50-pound bag). Find fantastic feed and bird information at Cornell University’s ornithology lab Web site, birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds, or at lauraerickson.com. ■ To avoid spoilage, use a simple tray feeder. Find one at Wild Birds Unlimited (from $15.99; wbu.com). That should stop your savings from going to seed. (Newsweek - Konnie LeMay)
An Elderly Gentleman . . . . . . . . . had serious hearing problems for a number of years. He went to the doctor and the doctor was able to have him fitted for a set of hearing aids that allowed the gentleman to hear 100%. The elderly gentleman went back in a month to the doctor and the doctor said, “Your hearing is perfect. Your family must be really pleased that you can hear again.” the gentleman replied, “Oh, I haven’t told my family yet. I just sit around and listen to the conversations. I’ve changed my will three times!” (Fournier)
Another Senior . . . . . . . . A distraught senior citizen phones her doctor’s office. “Is it true,” she wanted to know, “that the medication you prescribed has to be taken for the rest of my life?” “Yes, I’m afraid so,” the doctor told her. There was a moment of silence before the senior lady replied, “I’m wondering, then, just how serious is my condition because this prescription is marked “No Refills”. (L. LaFree)
Never-Ending Stats Dept . . . . . . . . . . . . . A site called W3Counter developed some interesting stats worth knowing: The most interesting by far is that very few people have jumped on the Windows Vista bandwagon. The market share for operating systems is still led by Windows XP, at 83.5%, followed by Windows 2000, with 3.9%. The Mac OS comes in third with 3.7%, followed by Vista, at 3.5%. Linux is moribund, at 1.3%, the same as the laggards such as Win98. Also, of interest, Internet Explorer 6/7 has 66.2% of the market - remarkable since Microsoft once had nearly 100%. Mozilla/Foxfire has most of the rest. (PC Magazine)
Trust . . . . . . . . . . . . . almost never gets talked about in business forums. Why? Because it is treated as a given. Yet negotiators sometimes don’t behave in a trustworthy way. Turst is critical for three reasons:
1. Nobody will tell you worthwhile stuff unless they trust you. They tell you what they must, but not the good stuff.
2. Once we lose trust, we almost never get it back. A person can make up for many faults with extra effort, but trust issues are different. Think of someone you don’t trust - what can they do to change your mind? Probably nothing.
3. Trust issues are a distraction. You want to focus on what matters most - reaching agreement - not some trust issue. (Shake Hands With The Devil)
MacGyver in Iraq . . . . . . . . . . . . It took Marcelle Shriver nearly a year - and hundreds of donations - to pack up 80,000 cans of Silly String to send to her son in Iraq. This was no lighthearted care package: Todd and his fellow soldiers were using the foamy substance to detect trip-wired explosives by squirting the string across a room and watching how it fell. It was a creative response to an ever-changing war and, as it turns out, one of the many innovative tactics being used by American soldiers in Iraq, and Afghanistan. (Newsweek)
How Do I Avoid Boil-Overs When Cooking Pasta? . . . . . . . . . The Science: As pasta cooks, it’s starch becomes sugar. These chains of glucose increase water viscosity and boost it’s boiling point. According to Barry Swanson, an expert with the Institute of Food Technologists and a professor of food science at Washington State University, “the increased viscosity, temperature and the number and size of bubbles during boiling results in a messy boil-over. The Solution: Give the pasta room to “dance.” By cooking it in a larger quantity of water you also give the freewheeling glucose room to spread out. This can also speed your pasta’s cooking time. The higher your water-to-pasta ratio, the less influence your pasta has on the water’s temperature, and the faster it cooks. Leaving the lid off avoids a bubble-causing buildup of pressure, and a wooden spoon lain across the pot will pop bubbles as they form. (James Norton in Popular Science)
Puzzles . . . . . . . . . . . . . Studies have shown that puzzles can keep your brain young. Challenging your brain will make you less likely to forget things. Of course, many technology companies have seized upon this. They offer software and games that promise to keep your mind young. You can spend a ton of money for these programs and gadgets. But that’s really unnecessary. Just go to www.rinkworks.com - and enjoy the many many different types of games. (Kim Komando)
“Win as if you were used to it; lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
Is It Really Decaf? . . . . . . . . . . . . Try not to lose sleep over this, but you’re getting some caffeine when you order decaffeinated coffee. For a snapshot of what consumers might expect from the big chains, we had secret shoppers buy a total of 36 cups of decaf from six locations of Burger King, Dunkin’ Donuts, McDonald’s, Seattle’s Best Coffee, 7-Eleven, and Starbucks near our headquarters in Yonkers, N.Y. All cups were the chains’ small size, holding 10 or 12 ounces. Back in our labs, we analyzed the caffeine content. There are no laws about caffeine level in brewed decaf. A cup of regular coffee is typically considered to have about 100 milligrams. More than half of our decafs had less than 5 mg of caffeine, but some had quite a bit more. One of the six cups from Dunkin’ Donuts had 32 mg; one from Seattle’s Best had 29 mg; and one from Starbucks had 21 mg. Levels varied within chains, but in our sample, McDonald’s decaf consistently had less than 5 mg. Our shoppers bought caffeinated coffee at the same chains, and we found a surprise there, too. Caffeine per cup ranged from 58 mg to 281 mg, providing less or more of a java jolt than you might expect. Consumer’s Reports take. Given that many people sip more than one small cup a day, decaf drinkers might be getting far more caffeine than they bargained for. If you love coffee but not caffeine, limit yourself to one cup of decaf, especially before bedtime. (Consumer’s Report)
The Buzz-Off . . . . . . It’s one of the burning question of our time: Which soft drink packs the most caffeine? Well, Auburn University researchers recently put their high-performance liquid chromatograph on the case, testing some 130 cola and citrus drinks. None could match the 128 milligrams of twitch found in the average 12 ounce cuppa joe, but the leader - Vault Zero - did pop the FDA’s legal cap of 72 milligrams for a can of soda. Here’s how a few of your favorites scored:
74 mg of caffeine = Vault Zero, 57.1 mg = Pepsi One, 55.2 mg = Diet Mountain Dew, 54.8 mg = Mountain Dew, 48.1 mg = Tab, 46.3 mg = Diet Coke, 44.1 mg = Diet Dr. Pepper, 42.6 mg = Dr. Pepper, 39.7 mg = Cherry Pepsi, 38.9 mg = Pepsi, 36.7 mg = Diet Pepsi, 33.9 mg = Coca-Cola,
22.4 = mg Barq’s Root Beer. (Wired Magazine)
For another listing of levels of Caffeine where Red Bull lists at having 80 mg of Caffeine go to: wilstar.com/caffeine.htm
Tell Me Why You Should Get the Job . . . . . . . . . . . . Some people will say anything to get a job. In a recent poll by staffing firm Accountemps, executives were asked to name the wackiest pitch they’d ever heard from a job seeker. Here are some of their responses:
• An individual told me he was allergic to unemployment.
• One candidate said that we should hire him because he would be a great addition to our softball team.
• A person said he had no relevant experience for the position he was interviewing for but his friend did.
• One person brought his mother to the job interview and let her do all the talking.
• One job seeker said he should get the job because he had already applied three times and felt that it was now his turn.
• One candidate sang all of her responses to interview questions.
• One individual said we had nice benefits, which was good because
he was going to need to take a lot of leave in the next year.
(Chicago Tribune)
Sincerely,
Edward C. Levy
President