Computers According to Carol

A is for Anti-Virus: she got it from my Uncle.

B is for Backup: always look in your rear view mirror first.

C is for Caddy: part of computer that holds a coffee cup.

D is for Defrag: a popular dance in the 1920's.

E is for Email: post office talk for express mail.

F is for Folder: before I pack a dress, I fold er.

G is for Game Port: cruise ships dock there to play.

H is for Hard Drive: going from Toronto to Florida by car.

I is for Internet: a basketball has to get inter net to score.

J is for JPEG: similar to a square peg in a round hole.

K is for Keyboard: I hang my keys here so I don't lose them.

L is for Laser Printer: placed on eye during laser surgery.

M is for Memory: deteriorates unless I use it.

N is for Newbie: a recent addition to the hive.

O is for Online: a covered row when playing Bingo.

P is for Program: usually handed out at beginning of a show.

Q is for Quit: don't ever!

R is for Ram: a male sheep.

S is for Software: the best clothes to buy.

T is for Traffic: always heaviest at rush hour.

U is for URL: short for You Are Loved.

V is for Virus: the reason we get vaccinations.

W is for WYSIWYG: a sissy wearing a toupee.

X is for X-Axis: dig for treasure here, but not with an axe.

Y is for Yahoo: often yelled after a win.

Z is for Zipped File: another name for zippered briefcase.

Start Investing & Save Money the Easy Way

If you want to start investing to get ahead or to start saving money for a rainy day an automatic investment plan is a good and easy way to do it and make money in the process. Now, do you want a savings plan, or a retirement plan? Maybe you just want your own investment fund for some special purpose.

No matter what your financial goal, investment companies can help you save money and make money through an automatic investment plan. Very simply, they set you up so that money is automatically transferred from your bank account to them every month (no charge).

These investment companies are better known as mutual fund companies or fund families. To avoid sales charges go with a major no-load fund family like Vanguard, Fidelity or T. Rowe Price. Their investment plans do not involve a contract, they are simply an arrangement. A minimum investment may be involved, so ask for information.

Now let's get specific. Say you want to set aside $200 a month in an investment fund. These fund companies offer a wide variety of funds to choose from. Do you want safety, income or growth?

Or, you want to set up your own retirement plan and contribute $400 a month. What kind of account do you open and which of their funds should you invest in?

Let's start with saving money to accumulate a cash reserve. You need safety here, so go with a money market fund and possibly short-term bond funds as your savings plan.

If your investment plan has a time horizon of several years (like for college expenses in 5 to 10 years) consider adding some intermediate-term bond funds and a little in stock funds to the above.

If you want to set up a retirement plan of your own, open up a traditional or Roth IRA with the fund company. You will have money market funds, bond funds and stock funds to choose from; the latter being growth oriented and riskier than the other two.

If you really want to make money and are willing to accept some risk start investing vs. just saving money. For short term goals, saving money is best because safety is paramount. However, if you have a longer-term time horizon start investing in stock funds and bond funds.

Here's another advantage of the automatic investment plan. You have a set amount of money each month flowing into your investment plan. When stock prices are low this money will buy more shares in a stock fund. When prices are higher you automatically buy fewer shares. This reduces your investment risk and works to lower your average cost per share. 

In A Slump?, Rejoice I Say, Rejoice!

Yea, I know........I hear you saying "that's easy for you to say"! Well......why don't you just pout about it then? You know, I want to tell you a funny story about a salesperson in a BIG slump. This person I actually trained before she moved on to another job many years ago. You'll like this.

Now, you know what a slump is, right? Don't ya? If you have ever been in outside sales you know what a slump is. But, now, on this wild thing we call the internet, we think we don't have to worry about "slumps" because we're big internet tycoons. Yeah! Right. More like typhoons. A big bag "o" wind.

Well, anyway, this particular salesperson was in presentation with a very wealthy businessman and trying her best to make a 5 million dollar sale. Talk about pressure. And, we sweat over $50 bucks.

Well, this sales lady had given her finest presentation, she had polished it, she had smoothed it, she had rehearsed it till all the rough edges were off, and it was round as a bowling ball. She just knew this sale was in the bag. She had already spent the commission so she had to make this deal fly.

As the presentation rolled on, after an hour and a half, she began feeling that she was not making a connection with this prospect. And, you know that nagging little voice inside your head that says, "Hey dummy" you ain't gonna make the car payment next month? Well, it started talking to her. And, she say's of all the times, right in the middle of my presentation I just yelled out, "oh sh**".

Her prospect, being an elderly sophisticated gentleman and just a little bit hard of hearing says, what? What? She said, in her most humble tone of voice, "oh excuse me sir, but could you direct me to the lady's room". He said, OHHHH! Certainly.

She says to me, with a look of total confidence on her face, like she knew exactly what she was doing and saying all the time, she walked right into that lady's room and took a big load off her mind. She say's and not a second too soon.

After composing herself she remembered what I had told her several years before about laughing. About how good it is for the soul. She thought to herself, that's my medicine.

So being as quite as she could she started laughing.

So really guys, come on now listen, slumps are nothing more than a part of life on and off the internet. I know you've heard it said a thousand times by every hot dog seminar promoter that comes to town with his little bag of tricks that's going to get you making a zillion dollars by the time you complete his program and of course fork out your fourteen hundred dollars.

Here are some easy things that everyone can do to get out of a slump. Everybody wants something easy. Here it is.

Most Important, Realize that slumps will inevitably come. They are just part of life. They are as dependable as the sun rising and setting. Also know that following every slump, will come the days of feasting. Just as certain. Next... if your wife happens to lock herself out of the house at 2 am, and she is yelling and screaming at the front door, and your dog is barking like crazy at the back door, DON'T let the dog in first, I don't care if he will shut up once he gets in. That's a BAD move. And not good strategy for getting out of a slump. Ok, I put that last paragraph in there to lighten you up a little. It is very important to take life's problems with the proper mindset. If you can laugh at a slump, I guarantee you it will end sooner than you think. If you are prepared to laugh all the way through it, it won't last very long. If you're not willing to laugh all the way through it, it may take a long time to go through it.

I have proved all these strategies out on myself, even the one about the wife and dog, yeah, really, and I tell you from 20 years of hard knocks what works and what don't. Maybe that's why I'm single today. Hmmm. Only the women really know for sure. :>)

Can you avoid a slump? Not really. But you can laugh your way through it. I promise you if you will force yourself to laugh, your body and mind will get the hint and then your inner emotions will really begin to make you feel like you are in control.

If you really want to know the facts, that's the problem with slumps. We feel like we are not in control. And that is scary. But feelings are fickle. They come and go with the wind. So, feelings that are created by outward circumstances can be changed by laughing yourself silly.

Try it, You'll like it.

Richard Vegas ©2002

Breakdancing: The Roots of The Street Dance

Breakdancing is the street dancing which began around 1969. Most people will agree that the superstar James Brown began the whole thing with a dance called the "Good Foot". James Brown was a real innovator and his dancing was something to behold. He did things with his feet that would give most of us a couple of broken legs!

Simultaneously in the ghetto, what is known as the "dance battle" became very popular and in many cases replaced gangster warfare as a method to end disputes. Breakdancing lent itself very well to the dance battle and the Good Foot was a perfect base for breakdancing.

Street dancers adopted the Good Foot which, for a short period, became known as the B-Boy and then breakdancing. Back then the dance moves were a lot different to the kind of breaking we see today. There were no popular, documented moves such as the headspin or the windmill. The dancers simply used their feet and nothing else. Some would argue that this "old style breaking" is more complicated than the kind of dancing we see these days.

Some of the floor work improvised back then was fantastically complex. If you go to a modern breakdancing competition you won't see many of the old school moves but you will see a lot of gymnastics. Impressive though this is, there are those that think breakdancing has lost its roots a little. On the other side of the coin you have people saying that it's just an evolution.

As a way to solve street battles and gang violence it was inspired. You were finding that amazingly, the gangs were using breakdancing instead of fighting. The breakdancing "battle" took on a world of its own. Of course there were still fights and inevitably sometimes a sore loser in a breaking battle would resort to violence.

Out of all this, breakdancing crews were formed. The members of a crew would practice and dance together. This is when the first very basic breakdancing choreography came about. One crew would invent a move which would inspire an opposing crew to go one better. For some of these guys breakdancing was literally the difference between life and death. They were very dedicated to what they were doing.

Just as all these new breakdancing crews were bursting onto the scene a guy called Afrika Bambaataa embraced the genre. Afrika Bambaataa is a legendary figure in the hip hop world. He was largely responsible for bringing breakdancing into the general public's consciousness. He got to know all the crews and encouraged them to develop what they were doing. Bambaataa's "Zulu Kings" breakdancing crew became a force to be reckoned with, winning many battles.

Since then breakdancing has continually progressed and more and more very talented dancers were bringing their skills into the arena. There were new moves being invented by the week and it wasn't long before we had headspins, windmills, backspins and all the other high energy, acrobatic moves we see these days.

The "Rock Steady Crew" were one of the groups to pioneer this new school breaking. These guys along with Charles Ahearn who made the seminal hip hop movie "Wild Style" were to bring breakdancing fully up to date and the dancing phenomenon became much more popular. There was no stopping the onward march of the break dance.

Nowadays breakdancing influences a lot of the choreographed dance routines which are an integral part of a modern pop record release. You have young kids coming up who are really into it and the genre is experiencing something of a renaissance. There's no doubt about it, breakdancing is here to stay and if you want more info a quick search on the Internet will turn up thousands of references to this modern art form.

Fundraising Opportunities at Sports Events - Raise Money for Your Club or Team

If you live in a community large enough to have a professional sports team or university there may be fundraising opportunities for your organization by working at sporting events. Many times sports organizations have jobs set aside that they let nonprofit groups perform so they can earn money. The teams do this as a way of giving to the community and building good community relationships. Some of the jobs your club or team might be able to do at a sports event are: helping to direct traffic in the parking lot, handing out programs, selling food, setting up before a game or cleaning up after a game.

These jobs may be available for just one game or you may be able to do this job a whole season. Doing some of these jobs just once can earn your club quite a bit of money. For example, cleaning up the stands after a college football game earned one club $1,500.00. This took three hours and around 70 volunteers.

How do you find out about these fundraising opportunities?

Sometimes jobs will be advertised in the newspaper before the beginning of the sports season. Other times you will only find out about these jobs by word of mouth. If you want to find out if these types of jobs are available you can start by calling the public affairs office of the teams. This office will probably be able to help you or tell you where else to call.

Before you commit to this type of fundraiser make sure you know everything about the job. You need to make sure you will have enough volunteers willing and able to do these jobs. Some of them are done in bad weather and late at night. The sports organization will provide you with the equipment you need to do the job and will probably have paid workers working along side with you. It's always a good idea to have too many volunteer than not enough. And make sure you have adults from your organization present to help supervise if your volunteers are children or young adults.

These types of fundraisers are usually hard work. But, the amount you can earn for your charity or club is worth the effort. I recommend considering this type of fundraising activity.

Are Smileys Appropriate in Professional Emails?

When email first began, users discovered a problem. Concise statements and words on a computer monitor didn't communicate emotion or intent very well. Almost everything sounded terse and harsh. It was difficult to convey the appropriate tone in which the message was intended.

To solve this problem, users created symbols to convey emotion and express feelings. These symbols are called "smileys." Another term for them is "emoticons" which stands for emotional icons.

Although there are hundreds of symbols, the most common emoticon is the smiley face. It's created by typing a colon, a dash, and a closed parenthesis. This is how it appears :-). It may also appear without the nose (that is, without the dash), like this :).

If you're having trouble figuring this out, look at this symbol :-). Then, lean your head to the left. Or, put your left ear close to your left shoulder. Now, can you see the smiley face?

Appropriateness

Emoticons are neat, and you may want to use them when sending email messages to your friends. But, are these symbols appropriate in professional email correspondence? The answer is - it depends.

Emoticons don't belong in ultra formal email correspondence. Yet, what about less formal situations? Can you use smileys in informal business correspondence where you are comfortable with the recipient? Yes, you can, as long as you exercise caution.

Caution

First, is this level of casualness appropriate for this situation? If informality is acceptable, then it may be okay to use smileys. However, if there is any chance the recipient will consider you less professional or less credible because of such informality, then refrain from using emoticons.

Second, will the person receiving the message understand the smileys? Not everyone is familiar with these little symbols. If the person has sent you messages containing emoticons, then it's safe to say he/she understands. Otherwise, you don't really know for sure.

Here's the final cautious word. If there's any doubt, omit the smileys.

Definitions

Even if you never send an email message that contains emoticons, you need to know what they mean. Someday, someone might send you email that contains emoticons.

Here is a list of the most popular emoticons. Test yourself. Cover the definitions with a piece of paper and see how many you know, or can guess, without looking at the answers.

Definition of Smileys (Emoticons)

Smiley (Emoticon) Definition 1. :) or :-) smile (happy) 2. :( or :-( frown (sad) 3. :'( crying 4. O:) or O:-) angelic 5. :D or :-D laughing 6. :-| apathetic 7. x-( brain dead 8. :-|| really angry 9. :* or :-* kiss 10. ;) or ;-) wink (light sarcasm) 11. :P or :-p sticking tongue out 12. :-& tongue tied

Advanced Tip for Emoticon Experts

For those of you who are emoticon experts, here is an advanced tip. How do you punctuate smileys? The smiley is placed at the end of the sentence, after the punctuation. Here is an example. :-)