Recently I took a flight down to Boise, ID from Spokane, WA and although it was a very short, empty and uneventful flight I noticed some things that bugged me.

1. Keep your shoes on unless you are specifically asked to do otherwise by a TSA employee (the security guys). The last thing I want to smell on a cramped plane is your stinky feet!

2. Tone down your strong smelling scents like perfumes, lotions, etc.. You’re going to be in close proximity to other people and you although you want to smell attractive for “Mr. Right”, you also don’t want the rest of the plain looking at you like you just came from Bath & Body. I know it only takes a few minutes for me to be overwhelmed by that place.

3. Don’t bring your giant duffel bag or suit case as a carry on. Again, cramped spaces, limited storage and thats not what the overhead bin was designed for to begin with. Just check in the baggage, it’s very unlikely anything will happen to it.

4. Don’t fall asleep on the person next to you. Not only is it very uncomfortable for them but you’ll be just as uncomfortable when you wake up, especially if you drool while sleeping.

5. If your kids aren’t taught to behave themselves then either tie them up or give them tranquilizer. Believe me, on a long flight the last thing I will put up with is some little runt who refuses to stop kicking the back of my chair.

6. Don’t ask if it’s ok to use my space. If you want to rent my drop down tray then we can negotiate that but otherwise, don’t ask if it is ok for you to use my tray to put your food, papers or other crap. The space in front of my feet was for me, not your extra baggage. If it doesn’t fit, thats not my problem.

Other than that stuff, I love flying! I always try to get close to the jet engine or prop. since that stuff is very interesting to me. I have my flight procedure down pretty well so it’s usually a pretty painless and quick process through security and a comfortable trip.

Just be aware and considerate of others.

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Saturday morning I was abruptly awakened because my alarm didn’t go off. I had a 7:30am flight to catch so my brain was in freak out mode!

A few minutes later I realized I had set my phone alarm for the weekday and not the weekend….oops. It takes about 1 1/2 hours to get to the airport from where I live so I was out of luck since I woke up at 5:45am. I made a quick call to Southwest and rescheduled my flight for 10:25am and got out the door a few hours later.

To make things worse, the laptop I borrowed from my girlfriend for the weekend would crap out while trying to use the internet. Plus, the drivers weren’t installed for my Verizon Broadband card. So I paid $9 only to struggle with the internet not working.

I’ve been out in Nampa, ID since Saturday and haven’t really had any internet access until today when I actually had some time to get the laptop issue fixed.

So, here I am, waiting at the Boise airport with a few other people in a big empty building. I got the drivers setup for the Verizon Broadband card so I don’t have to pay for “Free Wireless”.

Had a pretty good weekend in terms of work though. I flew down here for business and managed to get a decent amount of stuff accomplished. Unfortunately I’m not a big camera guy so I didn’t take any pictures while I was here except right now at the airport (above). I need to work on that. Don’t worry though, you aren’t missing anything (it’s just desert down here).

So, in a few hours I’ll be back to Moscow and back to work!

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About six months ago I designed my first business cards and was pretty happy with them. Sent the designs off to the printer and a few days later had my first set of real business cards. Printed on a sturdy 15pt stock, full color and glossy on both sides with a pretty accurate trim.

That was with OverNightPrints.com - I was happy with the service, the quality and the price. I paid about $20 with two discount codes. One for free shipping and one for $10 off the order. $20 for 250 nicely done business cards seemed good to me.

Well, one of the business ideas I had which was what the cards were for had been set aside. So I had to get new business cards that are more personal and not quite focused on a project but more on the services I can provide.

I decided I would give a different company a shot and hopefully get a little higher quality (not that there was anything wrong with the first company). This time around I went with PrintsMadeEasy.com

Their website was a little off putting but from what I had read from around the internet, they did a good job with their prints. OverNightPrints.com had some negative feedback around the internet, thus the reason for trying someone else.

So I designed a new card and sent it off. This card would be more widely used so I figured I would need a few more. I ordered 300 and forgot about a big no-no rule. Unless they have been proven, test the waters first, then order the bulk.

300 really isn’t all that much but 100 would have been cheaper. With shipping I spent right around $55. So almost 3x more than the previous company for 50 more cards. A few days later the cards show up and I was so disappointed!

The print quality was poor and the stock used was flimsy and cheap. To make it worse, I assumed they did front & back glossy but was wrong so the back had no gloss coating. The cut job was done well but other than that I was not happy. Even the gloss coating was poor compared to the previous printer.

So back to OverNightPrints.com I go! I sent in the new designs today and only ordered 100 cards since I have 300 cards to waste…

Sorry PrintsMadeEasy.com but your stock used was cheap and flimsy, print quality was lower & gloss wasn’t as glossy. OverNightPrints.com congrats! Looks like you have a returning customer! Thick, strong stock that gives the cards a solid quality feel, print quality was sharp and gloss was fantastic on both sides.

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It’s not all about the hard work ya know. As many people say, “Work smarter, not harder”. I always took that as don’t physically work harder when you can get it done better, faster and easier if you used your noggin more.

Luckily I managed to figure myself out pretty quick in life and know what I need to do to maximize most of my capabilities. Now I see all these college students pulling all nighters, sucking down more caffeine than should be legally allowed, spending hours upon hours studying and ultimately landing that less than acceptable grade.

So Wired magazine showed up today and as I began reading the feature story I realized that I had been doing the majority of the things the article mentioned, almost my whole life. No wonder why people think I’m “smart”.

So the feature story is “12 Hacks That Will Amp Up Your Brainpower“, which is definitely worth a read, especially for all you college students out there! Here are the things I’ve been doing but if you want the whole read, visit Wired.

1. Distract yourself. Say wha?! - Yeah, keep yourself entertained! Duh! Nobody likes being bored and reading that boring arse text book is going to make your brain as boring as a nun. So crank up some tunes or study for 15 minutes and bust out with some Xbox for a few minutes.

I don’t recommend tv as it doesn’t really engauge your brain. You’re trying to distract your brain with something engaging which is going to help you with the boring crap that you want in that brain too!

2. Slow on the Starbucks you caffeine addict! - Ok, I don’t even drink caffeine any more, nor do I soda pop (I save caffeine for the gym). If you need some extra go power though, don’t suck down that $10 Starbucks so fast, sip n’ go. Why?

Well, caffeine blocks your noggin’s adenosine receptors (the stuff that makes your brain tired), so if you keep a steady drip of caffeine to your brain you’ll keep things level and sharp. Lets take it to the next level shall we? Eat something with carbs (complex if possible) and that will help really fuel your thinker.

3. Learning is life long, believe it - As sick as I was of high school or college, I always knew I would be learning things my whole life. I just wanted to learn what I wanted to right then. If you think you only learn so much in life, you’re done for. If you give up easy on the problems in life that you run into, well, you are either lazy or you just don’t believe in yourself.

The world is your playground, go make somethin of it!

4. Stop, breath, relax and think - Tests suck (at least I think so), especially when you panic or get slammed with anxiety. Your brain freaks out and makes you as smart as a chimp….which isn’t going to help you pass Calc. 2. How to get pass that monkey business isn’t always easy but with some practice, it can be done.

Stop your brain from getting carried away with itself and force a mindset of confidence. You CAN do it and even if you do fail, so what. The brightest minds in history failed many times over in their lifetime. It’s part of life, relax and do your thing.

Control your breathing and control your brain. This one has taken me awhile to learn.

5. Make it memorable - If you have a reason to remember it, then you will. Make a joke of something boring or be clever with it and it’ll be easier to get in your thinker. Like when you had to memorize the 50 states in elementary. It was easier when you associated the shapes of the states with something.

In that case you used your visual senses to make it memorable. You can do the same with your other senses though as well as your humor. We can’t help but remember the funny stuff.

6. Move your lazy hind end! - It helps your brain A LOT to go for a jog or a walk. Get your body moving and your brain is going to follow suit. Don’t over-do it though. Getting your heart racing or your muscles pumped won’t really help you. You’ve got to keep things under control and thats when your brain will be at it’s best.

I usually buy domain names after a workout because I am most creative and clever on the walk home from my workout.

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Seriously give some of these tips a shot but since you probably won’t remember all of them grab a sheet of paper and jot some notes down or email the notes to yourself. Give ‘em a shot! They have helped me for a long time already.

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Help. So simple yet so many people don’t really know how to help themselves. The answers are right in front of them but they haven’t learned to look a little harder and instead fall back on having someone else do it for them.

Unfortunately all that does is create a dependency and they never actually learn to figure things out for themselves. Give a hobo food and he/she will eat for a day but teach a hobo to hunt, fish, or work like the rest of us and he/she will have something to eat every day.

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love helping people. I get a great feeling of satisfaction from it, but there is a point when people are just using you. I don’t like to be used, makes me feel dirty.

I think the most common problem I come across is failing to use the “Help” feature in whatever software is involved with the problem. People ask, “Hey, how do I do this?”. I know the answer, it’s a simple answer, but if I tell them, they will just ask me again another time.

Instead I ask them, “Did you look at the Help section?”. 95% of the time the answer is no and 80% (or more) of the time, they find the answer themselves using the Help section. Next time, don’t bother me until you have at least made an effort to figure it out yourself.

So step 1 to being a do-it-yourselfer is use the Help section/feature. For more complicated problems the Help section can and will likely fail you (doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try though). In instances such as those…stop…think…and use the wealth of knowledge at your fingertips (the internet).

A large majority of questions I get, I don’t actually know the answer to. I do, however, use the internet to my advantage and quite well. My first response to something I don’t know, Google It! 9 times out of 10 I can find the solution or answer to the problem or question within minutes (often times seconds) with a quick search on Google.com

This gets very tiring though. I am just relaying information (and learning something in the process) that I don’t really care about. So step 2 is go searching through the internet for a few minutes, read and dig for information.

Once you have done those two steps, you are almost there! The last step is the easiest. Gather and organize your information. It drives me crazy when someone comes to me for help with only half the story. It takes me longer to help/solve and agitates me.

So, three simple steps to taking a giant step towards smart (and becoming smarter by learning from your probems).

• Step 1 - use the Help feature/section
• Step 2 - research/search through the internet (Google it!)
• Step 3 - gather information about the problem and organize it (helps everyone)

Nobody wants to be pinned as being stupid but only you can prevent forest fires…oops, I mean only you can prevent stupidity.

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Domain names… had I known years ago just how valuable they would be today, I would have spent my high school years working for money to invest in buying domains. But are we past the point that it’s too late? I don’t think so.

It seems like every week I hear about a domain name being sold for a ridiculously high price. At some point those domains were picked up for less than the cost of your Starbucks coffee. Pizza.com sold for $2.6 million by a some average guy that bought it back in the 90’s. Domain names as simple as Pizza.com have long been taken, but there are still some .COM names out there.

The prime domain name real estate in the .COM arena has been taken (for the most part) but there are still some left. What about .NET, .ORG, .EDU and other domain name extensions? They are going fast but there are still a huge number of them available because they aren’t “prime real estate”….yet.

Over the last year I have been picking up domain names I find that are clever or will or already have some value. I fully intend on continuing to do so and expanding into other domain extensions like .US, .CA, etc. very soon. The price for domain names is going up and will continue to do so.

I think what bugs me the most is that so many people just assume when they need a domain name, it will be there for them. Those people will be stuck with the domains nobody wants like 7×6gl4.co.uk or something similarly crappy. Companies are investing in domain names because they know what is happening.

Try doing a search to see if you can get your last name in the .COM (”yourlastname”.com). Good luck, if your’s is available let me know because if you don’t buy it I will. These companies are picking up thousands of domains for dirt cheap, then turning around and selling them for 100-1000x what they paid. Even people’s names.

I won’t be left behind while all these are being slurped up. My only regret will be that I couldn’t invest more money.

Want to hear some crazy facts about domain names and the domain name industry? Check this out:

• A single person owns over 200,000 domain names. (Dr. Lieven P. Van Neste)
• Business.com sold for $7.5 million.
• Every last 3 character domain name (for .COM) has been taken.
• The average length of domain names is 11 characters long.
• More domains begin with an “S” than any other letter.
• More domains begin with a “1″ than any other digit.
• The longest domain you can get is 63 characters long.

While there are still many options available to get yourself a cool domain name, the prime real estate is being swept up fast, prices are going up and the number of people starting websites will continue to rise. If you’re wondering where to start, you might want to read the “5 Step Website / Blog Setup Guide” post I made awhile ago.

Another post worth reading is “Are Domain Names Digital Real Estate?”.

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