Today was my first day at my new job. The walk to work was terrible! I had to get out of bed and walk less than 10 feet!

I am used to walking quite a few miles every week for work, the gym and whatever else I might need to travel to get accomplished. So today was quite a change of pace for me. It was a really strange feeling getting up and eating breakfast at work, then cranking away at the work for the day.

The first thing I realized is that I will be doing more things during the day than I usually did at an actual work office. Both good and bad.

• Frequent visits to the kitchen for oatmeal
• Frequent visits to the bathroom from drinking so much water and not feeling like I should hold it for another 15 minutes
• Leaving to run a quick errand
• Managing interruptions during the day so I can actually get work done
• Multitasking much more than usual

On first impression I was worried that I would have a hard time actually getting my work done. I have a pretty strong work ethic though and working on the computer is what I enjoy doing anyway. What I was surprised to find out was happening was more frequent visits to food central.

I was more surprised to find out how many more things I was working on than at an office. I thought that was very strange.

As expected though, there were many things I very much enjoyed about working from home

• I can listen to my music without headphones
• I don’t have to fix my hair in the morning or even shave
• I don’t have to put pants on before I head out for work
• I can eat at my desk without feeling uncomfortable and awkward
• I can work how I want to work without anyone telling me how it should be
• I don’t have to wear a shirt
• I don’t have to worry about the tech guys cracking down on me because I visited a potentially bad website either on accident or on purpose
• If I want to act like a retard I can do so without being judged

Now, for the bad things I wasn’t so fond of

• No human interaction during the whole day can lead to some form of psychosis
• When someone sees you acting like a retard because you had the window wide open it’s more embarrassing than your coworkers seeing you act like one
• You have a higher potential of turning into that creepy guy who never leaves his apartment
• You being a solo neighborhood watch and listen for kids so you can yell at them

Anyway, day 1 of my new job has thus far gone well. We’ll see how things are going by this friday.

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About a week ago I ordered a small set of business cards from Overnightprints.com to replace the ones printed by PrintsMadeEasy.com. Well, they came in today (would have been friday if I was there).

Wow. I mean, WOW. It was a night & day difference between the two print jobs. I already mentioned how disappointed I was with the quality from PrintsMadeEasy.com but being able to compare the exact same card, side by side really shows the difference.

Overnightprints.com print job was a nice, thick & sturdy card stock, so it feels like it’s quality just holding it. Then the gloss was very smooth and glossy, quite well done. The edges were cut very smoothly, no rough edges, just clean and accurate.

Most importantly, the print quality was incredible in comparison to PrintsMadeEasy.com. I mean, the colors are vibrant & smooth. You can tell it was printed at well above 200dpi where as PrintsMadeEasy looked like it was printed out of an inkjet printer….wait I take that back.

I have seen better print jobs from standard desktop inkjet printers than from PrintsMadeEasy.

Lastly, the back has the same high quality gloss as the front, just as I requested! I am very happy with Overnightprints.com to say the least. Not to mention that they cost 1/3 what PrintsMadeEasy cost. If you’re planning on getting business cards (post cards, stationary, brochures, etc.), go with OverNightPrints.com

This is not a paid review for them, this is simply a very happy customer. Happy enough, in fact, that I may be ordering more print jobs than just my business cards from them.

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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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