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Keep Your Post Its

Today’s newspaper has a post it note ad on the front page, which is becoming an almost daily nuisance. The post it note covers up part of the headline and tears the paper when I try to pull it off to throw it away. I suppose someone in the sales department of the newspaper thinks they are hot stuff and is busy selling post it note ads to their newspaper advertisers as a novelty item, “sure to get attention!”

In my opinion it backfires, as the post it note irritates me and makes me think badly of the sucker who is paying money to put those sticky annoyances on my paper. There are other ways to get my attention with your advertisement, and annoying me with post it notes that tear up my newspaper’s front page is not a good way.

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Semi Tough

For some reason I ditched regular TV tonight and decided to find a movie “On Demand.” I’ve been using the On Demand feature from Comcast for a couple months and I have to admit that I’m getting really spoiled with the convenience of seeing a movie not only when I want to watch but it lets me pause and rewind, as if it was a VCR tape or a DVD. Very cool for when you can’t hear a mumbled line and you want to know what they said.

The movie I chose was Semi-Tough, with Burt Reynolds and Kris Kristofferson as two professional football players in a love triangle with the team owner’s daughter. There are some great lines in this movie that reflected the social times and values of the early 1970s.

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The Right Gear

My grandfather bought his first motorcycle in 1929, when Harley Davidson came out with their new engine, the 45 cubic inch V-twin that became known as the HD flathead. He used to tell us great stories of his adventures on that bike and I’ve been around bikes my whole life. My dad bought me a minibike when I was 4 years old and I’ve been riding two wheels ever since.

One of the most important things about riding a bike is to protect your body. When I ride I’m going to have everything covered for protection, from a helmet on my head to boots on my feet. If you look at an experienced Harley rider, you’ll see that they protect their bodies, too.

When you see cops on motorcycles they will be riding Harleys and they will be fully covered for protection, and if you pay attention to what the cops wear, you’ll see they have on high, leather boots. Most of the time when I ride I have on leather boots, but not the ones like the cops. But then I got to thinking that maybe I should try a pair of those.

The web site www.copshoes.com has a great selection of Motorcycle Boots in different styles from all the top brands. The web site lists a toll free number for calls from the U.S. and also a number for international callers. They even ship to APO and FPO addresses.They take all the major credit cards, including Paypal. This is one of the most customer friendly sites I’ve seen and the boot selection is top notch.

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Layoffs at Harley Davidson

Every day there’s more bad news about a company going bankrupt or having layoffs. Today the bad news was about Harley Davidson. The best motorcycles are made by Harley Davidson in Wisconsin, but people aren’t buying high dollar items likes cars and motorcycles, so the entire automotive industry is scaling back.

The Milwaukee-based motorcycle company reported its 4th-quarter profits fell almost 60 percent, so they are laying off 1,100 workers with 70 percent of the job cuts this year and the rest will be in 2010. That’s not good news for anyone – especially for serious bikers.

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Mix Tapes

Years ago I would buy albums that I liked and pull a couple of my favorite songs off of the albums to make custom mix tapes. Sometimes a friend would ask me to make a tape for them with specific songs onthem. I always thought that it would be great to make a custom CD with my favorite songs on them, but we did not have the technology available.

Now with home pcs sold with cd burners and dvd burners built in, and the internet with downloadable songs all over the net, we can all do that easily. Yet I don’t and I’m not sure why. Perhaps the thrill of having the music I liked right at my fingertips has waned. Perhaps the music has changed.

There is very little new music that even spurs me to go buy an album. Where I used to buy at least one album from every single paycheck, now I buy just one or two albums a year. Yes, it has gotten that bad. I really don’t like today’s music much and I’m not willing to spend my money on something that I don’t like. I find myself listening to talk radio in the car and you don’t buy albums of talk radio shows.

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Top City Choices

At lunch we were talking about the different cities across the United States and how the quality of life can differ so greatly depending upon where you choose to live. Of course, a lot of the discussion was subjective and how you define desirable qualities can change due to external factors, personal experience, and even media coverage.

In my current situation, a high quality of life involves nice but affordable housing in safe neighborhoods, a dynamic downtown with professional sports and cultural activities, and lots of opportunities for outdoor sports and recreation – such as lakes and rivers, state parks, etc.

Cities at the top of my personal list include:

  1. Austin, TX
  2. Nashville, TN
  3. Birmingham, AL
  4. Charlotte, NC
  5. Raleigh, NC
  6. Athens, GA
  7. Mobile, AL
  8. Louisville, KY
  9. Ft. Worth, TX
  10. St. Louis, MO

Well, just making a list has started me thinking that I should check out the different cities and see if I should be considering a move in the near future. One of the best ways to get to know an area is to work with a knowledgeable realtor and to be totally open and honest with them about your intentions to just look around.

I was able to find help with Austin real estate by clicking on the HomeCity.com web site and drilling down to the neighborhood and agent. That’s one of the things that I like about HomeCity – you can choose an area and neighborhood if you know where you want to buy, or you can click on the general area and get plenty of detailed information.

I know enough about Austin to be dangerous. The major areas in Austin includes Eanes, Rolling Hills, Round Rock, Lake Travis and the outskirts that make up the greater Austin TX region. So I’ll use HomeCity.com to help me find a broker experienced in the Austin Real Estate market and get help learning more about the different neighborhoods and local quality of life.

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Watch Out for the Latest Worm Attack

The IT guys just told us about a new worm called Downandup, Downadup, Kido!, or Conficker (all the same worm). It seems to be be delivered using infected USB drives. The worm hijacked the autorun program and shows a default selection on a fake download screen that looks just like the Windows download screen. The problem is that it shows installing it’s own virus as the default choice on the screen. So of course most people are going to click on it and then it is too late.

I use USB drives all the time but I only transfer specific files from the jump drive to the PC in use. I never use USB drives to install programs and although it is not foolproof, I think that is a good policy for others to follow. But if you have been infected, a site called F-Secure has a removal tool that should get rid of it.

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Party Season

The winter doldrums can be fought with lots of parties. At least, that’s the logic we’re going with around here. People are itching for an excuse to get out of the house and be around people. So we have parties scheduled for one reason or another just about every weekend through the end of February, and then the weather gets nicer in March and we can get start heading outdoors again.

Of course the motherload of parties will be the Super Bowl party in two weeks. That is an event unto itself and the competition for holding the biggest and best gets higher stakes each year. Personally, there might be a few of my friends hosting Super Bowl parties that I’d like to attend, but I’m going to the boss’s house for his party. At least the food and beverage will be top shelf and he has a 52 inch HD plasma screen to watch the game – and commercials.

I want to throw a dinner party the following weekend for about 10 people. The web site www.celebrations.com has some nice ideas for choosing a dinner party theme and then building the party around that, with invitations, decorations, menu items, etc. With all of their dinner party ideas it’s almost like dinner in a box, but you provide the food!

The last dinner party I threw was an Italian theme to celebrate the final episode of the Sopranos. It was so much fun but it was a sad occasion. I miss the Sopranos and it broke my heart to see the show end, but it was a great night with lots of authentic Italian food. If I had known about the Celebrations web site back then, I might have kicked up the decorations a few notches. So I’ll cruise the site and find some new ideas for my party on the seventh.

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Party Decorations

My secretary came back with a list of party supplies and decorations that she wants to buy for the baby shower next month. It’s not all that elaborate, but we do want it to be festive. I read over the list and told her to spend up to $200 at the party store and the bakery to buy everything they need for the party.

If there is any money left from the $200, she can use it to buy a gift card for our receptionist at a “Babies R Us” if there is such a place, or a children’s clothing store or outfitters. I can’t even think of the name of any of those stores. They just aren’t on my radar and I’ve probably never even been inside one. That’s just not something I have to deal with in my life. But I know they exist. They might even be at the mall and I’ve just never noticed. But my secretary can deal with that.

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Baby Shower

Our receptionist is going to have a baby in March, so the women in the office approached me yesterday about hosting a baby shower for her. They want to take over the big conference room and decorate it with balloons and streamers, have cake and ice cream, and ask each employee to bring a small baby gift. This is obviously a female thing, as the thought of doing something like that at work had never occurred to me. My secretary explained that the women are so fond of our receptionist that they really want to do something nice for her, and they hope that after the maternity leave runs out that the receptionist will want to come back to work here.

I agreed to book the conference room for the afternoon in February and for them to put the word out that it is a surprise and that gifts should be bought. My secretary offered to buy the baby gift for me, which is a big help because I know nothing about baby shower gifts. She suggested a moby wrap baby sling, which is a popular accessory for today’s new mothers.

Baby slings evidently wrap the baby and keep it close to the mother’s body without the mother straining to hold the weight of the baby in her arms. The baby slings redistribute the weight and pressure, which is a really good idea for women with a tendency for shoulder or back pain, especially when the child gets older and puts on some weight.