- Happy Independence Day! Be thankful for what you've been given by those who have gone before! #
- Waiting for fireworks with the brats. Excitement is high. #
- @PhilVillarreal Amazing. I'm really Cringer. That makes me feel creepy. in reply to PhilVillarreal #
- Built a public life-maintenance calendar in GCal. https://liverealnow.net/y7ph #
- @ericabiz makes webinars fun! Even if her house didn't collapse in the middle of it. #
- BOFH + idiot = bad combination #
Zombie Wheels: How to Own a Car That Just Won’t Die
The average car dies somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 miles. My car is coming up on the lower end of that range and I’d like to see it last a lot longer than the top end. I paid the thing off in January, and I’ve grown fond of not having a car payment. Extending the useful life of your car–and continuing to use it–means fewer car payments and cheap auto insurance premiums.
Who really wants to keep making car payments month after month, year after year? I want my car to outlast me. Scratch that. If that wish come true, I’ll have a meteor fall on me the day before the transmission explodes.
How can you help your car continue past undeath, past the point when other cars have given up and accepted the True Death?
Keep Your Gas Tank Full
Here in the frozen north(though not as frozen or as north as some of you), it’s conventional wisdom to keep your gas tank full in the winter to prevent your fuel lines from freezing. Did you know you should keep it full the rest of the year, too? An empty tank is more likely to rust. Even before the rust eats a hole through the tank, there are tiny flakes of rust drifting into the gas lines and clogging the fuel system.
Change Your Oil
When you run old oil, you’re leaving contaminants and little flakes of metal flowing through all of the important moving bits of your engine. Changing your oil removes those tiny abrasive bits from the equation. I don’t recommend buying into the propaganda put out by the oil-change stores and changing it every 3000 miles, but do it regularly. I aim for about every 5000 miles, but a better recommendation is to do whatever your owner’s manual says.
In between changes, don’t forget to check your oil level and top it off when it’s needed. All by itself, that will improve your fuel efficiency and keep your car running happy.
Consistently keeping up with just these two small things will keep your car running smoothly for a long time.
How many miles are on your car? How long do you plan to keep it?
My Favorite Present
My favorite Christmas present this year was the one I gave to my 13 year old son.
Allow me to walk you through his evening….
First, he opened one of his presents. It was just a small box, about 3 inches by 4. A Japanese puzzle box. Inside the box was a note that read:
Closed off in the smallest room you will find a clue to bring you closer to your prize.
When he checked the cabinet below the sink in our basement bathroom, he found another note that sent him to my business website one a page with a url that contained “the square of my children”. When he eventually figured out that I meant their ages, not their quantity, he found a clue on my website.
This lead him to a section of his Minecraft server. It’s effectively a no-man’s land because he and his friends set off a nuke and turned it into a giant pit. They fall down and die there. Inside the pit was a cave. Inside the cave was a clue. The clue read:
Grandma and Grandpa love you.
What do you do when someone says they love you? You either get scared of the commitment and end a perfectly good relationship, or you say “I love you, too”. When the kid finally called his grandparents to tell them he loves them, they told him to give his parents a kiss.
I’m a jerk.
He came over and gave me a hug and a kiss. I handed him a piece of paper. When he looked at it, he asked if it was supposed to be torn in half. I reminded him that he has two parents, so Mom got a hug and a kiss, too. The resulting clue read:
The Answer to the Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything
Naturally, this points to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but the boy hadn’t read far enough into the book to understand the reference, so he had to hit google. After spending time looking for chapter 42, he finally thought to look at page 42, which had this clue:
My Little Pegasus
Two steps to the right
Two steps forward
Two steps up
This clue started at the My Little Pony I set next to a Pegasus in my daughters’ room. The boy was in dense mode because he had to ask his sister what a Pegasus was. She also had to suggest he open the closet door when one step forward made him bump his nose on it.
For all of that work, he got the Ticket to Ride game. He laughed the entire way through the treasure hunt, then decided he hated the whole process. However, for two nights running, he’s stopped the video games to play his new game with his family.
It’s a present he’ll remember forever.
Negotiating 101
In the US, haggling is something that makes a lot of people twitch and wet their pants. It’s too hard/scary/intimidating, so most of us just take whatever price is offered, with a smile.
The truth is, you can negotiate in almost any situation. Sure, big-box retailers with low-price goods–like Walmart or a grocery store–aren’t going to go for it, but a lot of other businesses will. Did you know you can haggle at Best Buy? It’s true, but only on the bigger ticket items.
You can also easily negotiate at place like these:
- Credit card interest rates and annual fees
- Luxury utilities like cable
- Rent
- Hotel rates
- Airline tickets
- Gym memberships
“Great”, you say. “Anyone can do it?”, you say. “But how, jerk?”
No need to call names, I’m getting to that part.
I am about to share the First Secret Lesson of Negotiating. This secret has been passed down from father to son among the celibate Shaolin monks for generations. Breaking the code of secrecy may be putting my life in danger, but I’m willing to do that for you, no matter the risk.
I rock like that.
Are you ready to be initiated into the secrets of the Ancient Masters? When our first abbot, Buddhabhadra, first wandered into the Northern Wei Dynasty branch of Best Buy in 477 A.D., he discovered the phrase most likely to break price barriers.
Are you ready, Grasshopper? This is the “Wax on, wax off” of effective negotiation.
When you are given a price, no matter what it is, say “Is that the best you can do?”
“This T.V. costs $7495.” “Is that the best you can do?”
“That comes to $56.95.” “Is that the best you can do?”
“$149,499 for the Ferrari.” “Is that the best you can do?”
“$12,000 for the kidney.” “Is that the best you can do?”
“Only $8.50 for this set of 10 tupperware lids that have been warped in the dishwasher.” “Is that the best you can do?”
“$50 an hour, honey.” “Is that the best you can do?”
“The salary for this position is $50,000 per year.” “Is that the best you can do?”
It is magical, it’s easy to remember, and it’s low stress. This is a non-combative question. The worst possible scenario involves the other side saying, “Yes, that is the best I can do.” No sweat.
Negotiating Lesson 101.2:
After saying “Is that the best you can do?”, shut up. The other party gets to be the next person to say something.
Go out and practice this over the weekend. Master the First Secret Lesson of Negotiating. I’ll be fighting off Shaolin ninjas for sharing the ancient secrets.
Resolving Legal Disputes
Dispute resolution has to do with the impartial rectification of conflict between individuals or parties. More specifically it is the utilization and execution of methods that are designed to resolve conflicts. In a case in which there is a dispute between people or groups, often times a third, neutral, party is selected to be an impartial representative for the disputing persons. Although dispute resolution can refer to resolutions both in and out of the court, it mainly applies to disputes that are settled outside of the legal framework of the judicial system.
Two of the most common types of dispute resolution are known as adjudicative and consensual. While adjudicative resolution requires a third party to mediate the outcome, such as a judge or jury, and usually involves some form of litigation, consensual resolution is the attempt to solve the issue between the two disputing parties without involving a third party, although at times a neutral arbitrator will be selected to preside over the case, though they will often be there not so much for authoritative purposes but more as a council to keep things fair. There is also a third upcoming type of dispute resolution, online dispute resolution, or ODR, which has become more popular in recent years with the rise of the internet’s prominence in daily life, but it is mainly the application of traditional consensual resolution practices, only adapted to the online environment.
Many disputes can be solved simply through adherence to the law, however, sometimes issues arise that the legal structure isn’t equipped to handle, and so a third party is chosen to resolve the conflict. These types of conflict fall within the jurisdiction of the law and so will be relegated to the political system for arbitration. Judicial resolutions are conflicts that will be, hopefully, settled by the court. In the United States, this is often the case with dispute resolution. This form of resolution usually involves litigation. This is the use of outside individuals to argue for or against the disputing parties. In a courtroom, the lawyers are the litigators, while the judge and jury listen to the arguments in order to come to their decisions.
Extrajudicial resolution is non-court settlement of conflict. Also known as alternative dispute resolution, or ADR, this is what people are usually referring to when discussing dispute resolution. ADR is usually more efficient, cost effective, and less time consuming than judicial resolutions. Extrajudicial resolution concerns various types of ways to settle conflict. These include arbitration and mediation. In arbitration neutral individuals will listen to both sides of an argument and render a decision based on evidence. Unlike the court systems, this proceeding doesn’t necessarily include a binding agreement with the parties.
Mediation is used in extrajudicial resolution as a way to open a dialogue between conflicting parties. The idea is to use a trained neutral third party in order to come up with unique solutions to solve the issue. A mediator is trained to be both an effective negotiator as well as an excellent communicator. A mediator is like a judge in that they cannot take sides, and they do not give legal advice either. Their decisions are not obligatorily followed, though they tend to be followed since the mediators are trained to make decisions that benefit both parties.
The techniques used in dispute resolution can be used both in and outside of the court room. It is often used by individuals who wish to speed up the process by not having to get into the political system. However, they are useful in many cases where individuals wish to come to the most beneficial agreement for all the parties involved.
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-07-17
- RT @mymoneyshrugged: The government breaks your leg, and hands you a crutch saying "see without me, you couldn't walk." #
- @bargainr What weeks do you need a FoF host for? in reply to bargainr #
- Awesome tagline: The coolest you'll look pooping your pants. Yay, @Huggies! #
- A textbook is not the real world. Not all business management professors understand marketing. #
- RT @thegoodhuman: Walden on work "spending best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy (cont) http://tl.gd/2gugo6 #
