Monthly Archives: October 2008

Commission Challenges

  By Dr Saxe | October 21, 2008 - 10:23 pm | life, money
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My cousin George is a mess. He sells cars for a living and he is a really good salesman, but he is not very good at managing his finances. Anyone who works on commission has a whole different set of challenges for managing money and budgets. You never know exactly how much money will be coming in and you never really know when you are going to get it. So a smart money manager will set aside at least two months of income, maybe more, depending upon your lifestyle, your standard of living, your monthly expenses and what kind of commission structure you work with.

People who work on commission cannot afford to spend every dollar as soon as it comes in the door. It takes discipline and sacrifice to get on track and build up reserves, but it can be done. If someone is in financial trouble, a smart person asks for help before it gets overwhelming.

The web site called Bills.com has a great selection of articles and information on managing debt and what to do when you get in financial trouble. The site describes the different ways to handle debt and pay off your bills. Not everyone in serious financial trouble needs to resort to bankruptcy. In many cases, a good debt consolidation program is a better alternative. The advantages of consolidating debt include a lower monthly payment, making just one payment and getting out of debt fast. It is truly a better solution than bankruptcy, particularly since they changed the bankruptcy laws last year.

Letterman Reruns

  By Dr Saxe | October 21, 2008 - 10:17 pm | entertainment, life, marketing, technology
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I find it odd that when David Letterman is going to be gone for a week, they air recent reruns of his shows.

Now, this week he is gone for some reason – we never are told why except for the one time that he had open heart surgery. We know he has a vacation home or ranch out in Montana, so perhaps he is out riding on the range. Who knows.

In the meantime, the loyal watchers are left with reruns. I don’t even mind some reruns – he has had some really awesome shows that should be flagged as classics. But they are running shows that were just on a month or two ago. Look, people. I’ve seen these shows. They aren’t anything special and they are very familiar. THEY WERE JUST ON!

Why can’t they show some older, classic shows with noteworthy guests? The programming people at TV stations just drive me NUTS,

Nitty Gritty PCs

  By Dr Saxe | October 21, 2008 - 8:45 pm | business, internet/computers
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There are at least 6 old computer hard drives littering my basement and four or five old color monitors, too. Sometimes there has been a little glitch and it’s been moved aside. Most often there was a crash and I just ditched it in favor or a new faster better machine. Computers are practically becoming disposable, especially since they are dropping in price to around $1,000 for the mid range, better systems
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The past few days we’ve been poking around the old computers and trying to decide if it is worth reformatting the entire hard drive and reloading the old original software on the ones worth salvaging or just tossing them into a recycling bin.

A few of them are giving me trouble rebooting and two are loading partially before locking up. That leads me to believe that we need to get into the system registry and work on it, or call in bigger guns to do what we can’t seem to master.

We tried a variety of internet resources. One place that I like is an encyclopedia of the top data formats. This site tracks the most searched file extensions and lists them in their searchable database, called “File Extension Library.” For example, there is a thorough description of the SYS files data extension, along with dat, doc, dll and other popular extensions.

Good Day for Football

  By Dr Saxe | October 19, 2008 - 9:43 pm | entertainment, sports
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My teams did well today.

The Titans beat the Kansas City Chiefs in a runaway game. They did let the Chiefs score a few points, but overall it was the Titans game all the way. Collins made all the right moves, although the team let him down several times. There was a missed call that the receivers blew in the third quarter and the offensive line didn’t give him much protection toward the end of the game. But overall it was a good game and they totally deserve their 6-0 record. The best in the league.

The Redskins won their game against Cleveland. It was close but a win is a win and we’ll take it.

The Cardinals didn’t play today. So the good news is that they didn’t lose a game and no one got hurt.

Sales Competition

  By Dr Saxe | October 19, 2008 - 9:20 pm | business, entertainment, shopping
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Planning for our regional sales meeting next spring, we have to turn in our budget projections by the end of this month. So we had a little meeting Friday afternoon and tried to figure out some of the different activities and planned expenses.

Every year we have a weekend meeting in March to kick off the summer selling season. All the sales reps are required to attend and most of them bring their wives for the weekend. We stay at nice, five star hotel and while the sales team is having their meeting on Saturday, the wives are usually out shopping or sunning themselves at the hotel pool. Then we all go out together for a nice dinner and socialize for the evening. The next day we have a half day of meetings and then we get checked out of the hotel and fly home. The part I’m trying to plan is the all day Friday meetings and what to do with the wives on Friday.

I’m thinking about having a scavenger hunt with the clues based on company products and our advertising campaigns. The wives can go along with their husbands and anyone without a spouse can pair up so that everyone is in teams of two. I’d like to get custom printed tee shirts for everyone with the company logo and color code the different sales offices.

My secretary found a company called SpeeDee Shirts that does custom printing on shirts and other products used for giveaways at trade shows and things like that. They have a web site with all their products so you can see what they have in stock and you can easily get either estimates on your print job or place the order right online. I asked her to check into getting custom tee shirts and let me know how many different colors they can do to make sure all the competing teams can have a different color.