- @ScottATaylor Thanks for following me. in reply to ScottATaylor #
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- [Read more…] about Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-12-12
Why Companies Need to Acquire MIS Graduates
This is a guest post.
Most companies recognize that technology will play an increasing role in future success. That realization doesn’t necessarily mean that businesses know what type of professionals to hire. These four benefits should convince companies that they need to acquire MIS graduates.
To Reach More Customers
The Internet has radically changed the way that people shop. Consumers spent about $210.6 billion buying products from online retailers. At $4,778.24 billion, the business-to-business e-commerce volume is even greater. The trend is quite clear: businesses that want to increase sales need to offer their clients online options.
Despite its popularity, e-commerce is still an evolving industry that presents several unanswered questions to businesses that want to take advantage of it. Adding an information systems manager to a technology development team makes it easier to find solutions as businesses encounter new problems.
To Protect Customer Information
In January 2014, hackers stole information about 110 million Target customers. In September of the same year, hackers stole information from Kmart. When companies suffer security breaches, media outlets pick up the stories and spread them across the Internet. This creates terrible public relations scenarios that can make consumers cautious of using credit cards when shopping online or at stores.
A strong computer security team is the only way businesses can stop hackers from stealing customer information. That team needs to include several types of professionals who specialize in specific areas of computer technology. Someone with an Information Systems Management degree can bring those professionals together to create a security program that outwits even the best hackers.
To Become More Efficient
Companies need to cut spending and increase profits to remain competitive. Computer technology that focuses on efficiency accomplishes both of those goals. Without someone trained to build and maintain computer systems, businesses can’t keep up with competitors who understand that spending a little more money today on the right team members can lead to long-term benefits.
Businesses that don’t use computer technology to improve efficiency will likely fail to meet the needs of their customers. Either their services will suffer or their prices will go up. Either way, refusing to adopt new technology puts businesses at a significant disadvantage.
To Improve Communications
Communications plays a key role in helping businesses meet their goals. Today’s latest technology helps companies stay in contact with customers, transfer large amounts of information between offices, and develop database systems so employees and managers can access information instantly.
Improved communication technology doesn’t just happen on its own. It takes a commitment to building reliable computer networks that can transmit information securely. MIS graduates who enjoy traveling can use this as an opportunity to help businesses while exploring the world. While small businesses probably don’t need to hire a staff member dedicated to building computer networks, medium and large companies can benefit from hiring their own information technology staff members.
As technology continues to evolve, companies will need to rely on more IT professionals. What advantages do you think an MIS graduate could offer businesses in your community?
ING Direct – 2 Day Sale
Today and tomorrow, ING Direct is having a “Financial Independence Days Sale”.
It’s a good sale. If you open a checking account or Sharebuilder account and you’ll get $76. Apply for a mortgage and you’ll get $776 off of the closing costs.
I have accounts at 4 different banks. Two of those were opened for specific debt-reduction purposes. Of the others, one is used for most of my cash flow and bill payments, and the other is ING. As of this moment, I have 15 accounts or sub-accounts with ING Direct.
Opening an account is painless and only takes a few minutes. They are currently offering up to 1.25% in an interest-bearing checking account, though I’ve never qualified for more than .25%. That account comes with overdraft protection, so you are charged interest instead of overdraft fees.
Once you have your first account set up, sub-accounts can be created in literally seconds. Why would you want a bunch of sub-accounts? I have a number of saving goals. Each of these goals has its own account at ING. I can tell at a glance how much we have saved for our vacation next month and far away we are from affording my son’s braces. My kids each have an account here because, currently, the interest rate is at 1.1%, which is miles ahead of most traditional banks. Combined with the convenience of total online control, there’s no contest.
Money transfers are smooth. I use one of my accounts as a transfer account to get money to and from two separate banks.
I also have a Sharebuilder account. For those who aren’t familiar with it, it is a stock brokerage with low fees and a low barrier to entry. If you set up an automatic investment, you get $4 stock trades with no minimum. I’m not aware of any place cheaper.
That all sounds like a lot of ad copy and the links are affiliate links, but the truth is, I am just that happy with ING. I’ve never had an accounting error, or any problems at all.
The downside? Paper checks are verboten. They will not accept paper checks, but you do have a check card to use. You can hit 35,000 ATMS for free withdrawals, but any deposits are held for a few days before you have access to the funds. It can also take 3-4 days to transfer money from ING to another bank. I keep enough in the accounts that I’m always spending or transferring older deposits while I wait for the new ones to clear.
Even if you don’t like the bank, get a checking account, use it a few times and get $76 for very little trouble. Open a Sharebuilder account, buy some stock and collect $76 for it. Without an automatic payment, it will cost you less than $20 to buy, then sell the stock, netting you $56.
Who doesn’t like free money?
Working My Life Away
Since J. and Crystalare playing, and I don’t have a post scheduled for today, I thought I’d share my work history, too.
There are a couple of interesting things about my work history. Job #1 started when I was 6. Job #9 started when I was 21. I’m 33 now.
- Paper route. I delivered the local ad-rag. The route was split with my brothers. When I was 6, my share of the route was just the street we lived on. I think I had 8 papers to deliver. Later, that expanded to almost half of our tiny town.
- Odd farm jobs. I spent some time doing whatever needed to be done on a local hobby farm. That means everything from helping shore up a sagging wall in the barn to raking walnuts off of the yard.
- Dishwasher at my school. My freshman year, I gave up a study hall to wash dishes and serve lunch. My school was K-12, so I’d eat at the same time as the little kids, then wash their dishes and serve lunch to the rest of the students for $4.25/hour. I kept at it until my senior year, when I decided to relax a bit.
- Construction. Working with my Dad, until I fell off a ladder and severed a tendon in my finger when I landed. Easily the most difficult boss I’ve ever had, but it was excellent preparation for every other job I’ve ever had. His philosophy was that if he had to ask for it, I should have already known he needed it. Try carrying that training into another job and see if they complain.
- Dishwasher/Cook. I turned 16 and needed a job to afford a car that I needed to get a job. Nasty cycle. It took a couple of weeks of looking. Apparently, if a teenager puts on a nice shirt and shows up to the interview on time, he is way ahead of the curve. It took about 2 months to go from dishwasher to cook, and I kept the job until I was 18. I was working full-time all through high school.
- Palletizer. I spent 9 months standing at the end of a conveyor belt, picking up 50 pound bags of food powder mixes, taking 3 steps, and putting them on a pallet. We averaged 1500 bags per night. Fifteen years later, I still can’t comfortably button the cuffs of most shirts. When I flex, my forearms look like I have an unhealty “adult” internet addiction.
- Cook. While I was palletizing, I had a second job as a cook at a bar, working for a guy who was trying to avoid turning a profit by drinking his main product. This was 5 miles from the other job, and my car died right after I started, so I biked from job to job. In Minnesota. In the winter. I was a lean, mean popsicle.
- Machine Operator. I moved from the sticks to the Minneapolis area and was immediately hired to be run a CNC machine based on a friend’s recommendation to his boss. The pay was great for an 18 year old with no skills. I worked 5 twelve-hour graveyard shifts. The job mostly consisted of putting a little chunk of metal into a machine, closing the door, pushing a button, and sitting down for 15 minutes. This is the period of my life that trained me to shop for books based primarily on thickness.
- Bill Collector/System Administrator. After Brat #1 was born, 12 hour graves got to be a big pain. I’d work from 5 to 5, come home and make sure my wife got at least 4 hours of sleep, then I’d sleep for 4-5 hours and go back to work. Brat #1(who is now 13 and about 6 feet tall) needed to be fed every hour, so solid sleep didn’t happen for months. I took a pay cut to work normal, day-shift hours. I ended up working my way through college by collecting on defaulted student loans. Shortly after I graduated, I got promoted to be the system administrator of the collection system, responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars of debts flowing into and through our system correctly. I had a security clearance allowing me access to the Department of Treasury’s computer system. After a few years of this, the company decided that there were too many people with the same job description, so 5 overworked admins got laid off while the 6th got screwed with far too much work.
- Software Engineer. This is now. I write cataloging and ecommerce software, while managing a small team of programmers. I spend half of my day working on customer software estimates, training, and assisting on sales demos and half of my day writing code. I’m kind of a big deal.
That’s it, if I don’t count my side hustles. I’ve been earning a paycheck for 27 years, and have only had 10 jobs.
When did you start working? How many jobs have you had?
Beat the Check
- Image via Wikipedia
Have you ever played a game of “Beat the Check”? Your rent is due tomorrow, but you don’t get paid until Friday, so you write the check today an, on payday, you run to the bank to get your paycheck deposited before it has a chance to clear. To stretch out the time, you write yourself a check from another account to cover the deficit, knowing that will take a few more days to clear. This is called “floating” a check.
Sound familiar?
I think most people who write checks have tried to rush a deposit in before a check clears.
In 2004, the Check 21 act went into effect, which turned the game on its head. This law gave check recipients an option to make a digital copy of a check, slashing processing time. Instead of boxes of checks being transported around the country, the check began getting scanned and instantly transferred, along with all of the encoding necessary to keep the digital checks organized. This dramatically cut the amount of time it took to clear a check. What was once a week was reduced to as little as 48 hours.
Now, as technology improves and banks update their infrastructure to match, the “float” time has been reduced even further. Many banks are using image control systems to instantly convert all incoming checks to digital format. Within a couple of hours, these images can be transmitted to the Federal Reserve, to be transmitted nearly instantly to the issuing bank. If both the issuing and the receiving banks are using modern image control systems, it is impossible to float a check. “Beat the Check” is a thing of the past. It’s like betting on purple at the roulette wheel.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that the funds are instantly available. That would eliminate the banks being able make use of the funds during that time. Don’t expect the banks to make a habit of allowing you the use of your money before the federal regulations demand it.
Quit Smoking: My First Frugal Move…Ever
- Image via Wikipedia
It’s nearly the 5 year anniversary of my last cigarette, so I though I’d bring this post back to the front page.
A bit over three years ago, we found out that my wife was pregnant with baby #3. When we decided to have #2, it took us two years of trying. Naturally, we assumed we’d have the same issues with #3. Imagine our surprise when it only took 2 weeks. At that point, we were getting ready to celebrate brat #2’s first birthday.
That mean’s 2 kids under 2. Two kids in diapers. Three kids in daycare. Baby formula again.
We weren’t making ends meet with two kids, how were we going to manage three? I dropped my pack-or-two-a-day smoking habit.
But, I’ve gone over that before.
This post is about how I actually quit.
Some Facts About Me
I don’t do things by halves; I tend to do things all the way or not at all. For years, my wife would ask me to cut back, to just smoke a little less, but that never worked. If I had cigarettes, I smoked them. I always had cigarettes. When I eat, I eat. I’ve never managed smaller portions. I used to drink a case of soda each week, just because it was there. Moderation has never been my friend.
As a corollary, I don’t cheat. At anything. Ever. Because of the above fact about myself. I don’t moderate myself when I give myself rules either. If I draw a line, I obsessively avoid crossing it.
The problem comes when I try to give myself a “gray area” rule. “Smoke less” always leaves room for “just one more”, which easily leads to “I only cut out one cigarette yesterday, so what’s the use?” I had to be done.
After smoking for fifteen years–more than a pack a day for at least 12 of those–that’s an intimidating thought.
The Plan
The first thing I did was set a day to quit. I chose the day after my Halloween party. Before that would have been setting myself up for failure. Booze, food, and long conversations in a smoking-friendly environment were just 3 of my many triggers. I always smoked more at my parties, so the day after, I didn’t feel up to smoking much, anyway. I’d just ride that wave of “I don’t feel like it” to to holy city of “I quit”.
I didn’t quit smoking the next day, I just quit buying cigarettes. That left me half a pack to curb my cravings.
I also knew that nicotine cravings are about the most distracting thing I’ve ever had to deal with. That doesn’t make for a productive computer programmer, so I bought a box of the generic patch that Target carries. I started with Phase 2, because I wasn’t interested in prolonging the process. I just didn’t want to spend my work days thinking about smoking instead of designing software. I needed something to take the edge off, without actually smoking.
My plan was to have the patch at work, so I’d be able to work and to stretch those last 10 cigarettes out, as long as possible.
The Result
It worked. The pack lasted 4 days, I think. I smoked during my commute and after dinner. I used the patch only when the cravings got to the point that I couldn’t concentrate. After a week, I stopped using it at all. A few days later, I had a particularly stressful day and cheated. I took 3 puffs of that cigarette and threw it away, because it tasted like crap and I wasn’t enjoying it. That’s when I knew I was successfully done smoking. It was a 10 day variation of “cold turkey”. More than 3 years later, I have an occasional cigar, but never due to a craving. The day I experience a nicotine craving is the day I burn my humidor.
That’s how I quite smoking, strictly to try to get my finances in line. That has saved me at least $10,000 over the last 3 years.
