Category: Manners

Healthcare for illegals

Healthcare for illegals

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First, let me be clear, I think that Rep. Wilson of South Carolina should be censured for his outburst while President Barack Hussein Obama was speaking in a joint session of Congress. He reminds of irresponsible brats such as Kanye West. Public outbursts while the President is speaking are simply unacceptable in any format and definitely not allowed in a joint session of Congress.

I do think that it is interesting that the rude outburst occurred due to a statement from BHO regarding healthcare for illegal aliens. There is a reasonable argument that BHO, while perhaps not lying, was not telling the complete truth. Check out this interesting video below and then read the rest of my comments.

 

Now I see that the Democrats in the Senate would like to toughen up the loopholes to prevent illegal aliens from getting taxpayer supplied insurance. I don’t get it, BHO says that this can’t happen but now a few days later there is an amendment that prevents this thing that can’t happen.  Makes me think that BHO was bending the truth a bit and probably knew it.

Of course the solution that the Senate is currently thinking about is to use Social Security numbers.  Seems reasonable.  SS numbers have become the defacto national identity card that we need. I have ranted on this before, if we would just have national identity cards then we would control much of the illegal problem that we have.

Below are a few clips from a recent article in the Wall Street Journal:

A key Democratic senator said Friday that lawmakers planned to toughen provisions in a health bill to prevent illegal immigrants from enjoying benefits, in a Democratic response to concerns by some Republicans.

Members of the Senate Finance Committee met Friday, and Sen. Kent Conrad (D., N.D.) said they wanted to use Social Security numbers to ensure that illegal immigrants weren’t eligible for subsidies envisioned as part of a plan to expand health coverage.

President Obama’s health-reform proposal has sparked heated debate over whether the plan benefits illegal immigrants, as demonstrated by Rep. Joe Wilson’s “You lie” outburst. WSJ’s Elizabeth Williamson breaks down the details of the proposed new government-run insurance plan.

Still up in the air is whether illegal immigrants would be banned from participating in federally regulated insurance “exchanges” under Democrats’ health bills, even if the immigrants were willing to use their own money to buy policies. On Friday, a coalition of three dozen faith-based groups wrote to Congress to express anger at the proposed ban.

What’s the big deal about Kanye West and Taylor Swift?

What’s the big deal about Kanye West and Taylor Swift?

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I have always known that Kanye West was a jerk.  Why is it such a surprise that he was a complete jerk and idiot for going on stage with Taylor Swift? Does anyone really expect this imbecile to have good manners?

After all, when we have Congressman yelling “You lie!” during a Presidential address to the joint session of Congress, why would we expect a dumb rapper to have better manners?

Of course, hats off to the beautiful Beyonce for giving up some of her time to honor Ms. Swift.  She has shown the world that she has class (and Kanye and Representative Joe Wilson are classless).

I have an idea!

  • If you are in South Carolina – don’t vote for Joe Wilson and donate generously to his opponent
  • If you want to listen to music – buy something from Taylor Swift or Beyonce
  • Don’t EVER buy something from Kanye West.

It is only with the power of our purse and our vote that we will teach leaders, dignitaries, and public personalities that we hold them to a standard that our mothers would have taught them.

How to handle 200 emails a day

How to handle 200 emails a day

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Mastering Technical Sales has a great article on their site explaining how to handle 200 emails a day. It is purposely written for suggestions to their target audience which is the pre-sales technical folks that are the brains in the IT sales world.

I pulled out a few of the more relevant paragraphs that were relevant to all regarding of profession but I suggest that you read the entire article.

I will start this suggestion list by sharing one of my habits. “Don’t file – SEARCH”.  Install one of the several desktop search indexing tools such as Google Desktop Search, Windows Desktop Search, or Copernic Desktop Search. Then, when you have read and are finished with an email, move it to a “Done” folder and forget about it.  Don’t try to figure out if you should file the email in the customer folder, the folder of the person that sent you the email, the folder for product problems or whatever.  Most people end up spending way to much time worrying about their filing system or trying to find an email in the file system.  Don’t worry about it – just search for the email in one of the above systems let the engine do the heavy lifting for you.

Unplug the machine. Almost every email system has a setting for receiving mail which says “poll every xx minutes”. Either set xx to something like 60, or turn it off completely and only synchronize your mail manually. You will be amazed how much time this saves you, as many problems will get fixed by other people and you don’t have to needlessly, and constantly, switch thought processes from one task to another and back again.

Train the people who email you the most. Especially if you are in a customer-facing position, they (the righteous emailers) have no right to expect you to respond inside 30 minutes. So, even if you can respond rapidly to these folks, don’t do it – wait for a couple of hours when appropriate. Should you decide to start answering emails between Friday evening and Sunday afternoon you are on the slippery road to electronic assimilation by the machine. Can you say CrackBerry?

Make your inbox a real inbox. It is a place where new mail arrives and waits to be processed. It is not a place to store pending tasks/to-dos or even to keep emails you don’t know what to do with. Your working inbox should be less than a screen full of messages, which equates to 20-25 emails for most of us.

Color up your world. Microsoft Outlook has a nifty feature which allows you to color code messages based upon who sent them. If you are a high email individual or a visual learner this can prove to be very useful. My system does the following:

  1. Red – My boss, his boss, executives and my primary HR contact.
  2. Green – My direct reports
  3. Purple – Anyone else in my department/division
  4. Grey – My peers within the company
  5. Brown – My “watch list” – typically Sales Directors and Area Managers
  6. Yellow – Automated Expense, HR, Purchasing and other approval requests

Take a trip to OHIO. The acronym stands for Only Handle It Once. When you do perform your hourly check of your inbox – take immediate action whenever you can. Either respond if it is a quick item, read and file if it is an FYI, delete it whenever possible (unless of course it is from a customer and you are the primary recipient), delegate it if appropriate or flag it as a task/to-do and move it to a “Take Action” folder. Just don’t let it sit in your inbox once you
have read it.

Your Mother was wrong! You do not have to send back a thank you every time someone helps you out. Reserve the thanks for special occasions, and responding to the nice people in HR, Finance and the office manager. Better yet, if you are in the same office, get off your rear and go say it in person.

Make your boss more efficient. Assume that your direct supervisor is even busier than you are, and if you can save her from thinking too hard it will reflect well upon you. So try phrases like “Julie – please read through point #3 below and reply with your approval or any questions by Thursday”. 95% of bosses will love this, and for the other 5% it gives you an opening to find out exactly what they do want. Once again, less room for misunderstandings and fewer last minute panics and reworks.

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My secret for Mother’s Day buying

My secret for Mother’s Day buying

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Actually my secret is gift giving in general for my wife of over 2 decades.

While I love her dearly, the sad fact is that after this much time and gravity (and her birthing 3 wonderful kids), neither of us can fit into the clothes that we wore on the big day in 1985.

I also suck at picking out clothes for her as gifts!

So what am i to do?  Simple, I have never stopped buying my bride of many years the same sizes that she wore on our first honeymoon.  That way, even though I know she hates the color and style of the blouse that I just bought her, she has a great reason to return it.  She also thinks that I compliment her on her size.  When she says “You know I can’t wear that size anymore”, I simply reply “But you have been working out and dieting. It looked like you were back to your old size again!”

She isn’t a dumb woman.  I am sure that she totally gets that I am doing this.  It still is a great way to save face for all of us and and I always get an appreciative thank you at the end.

P.S. The corrollary to all of this is NEVER give your wife the wrong size TOO large!  The first time you are dumb enough to make that mistake, you will adopt my strategy for life.  Even rummaging through her closet for sizes doesn’t work due to the different cuts and she just may have dropped a size and you didn’t realize it.  Play safe – go small.  And if you have given your wife the wrong size that is too large:

How is it sleeping on the couch?

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Too politically correct

Too politically correct

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I have had enough with being politically correct!  I just don’t get it.  When 96 percent of African-Americans obviously chose to vote for a man because of his color, the rest of the world has the right to comment on his color.  I do not begrudge the man appealing to the minority group that he belongs to.  That is exactly what happens in a representative government.  It is why in some voting districts a person that was a Jew or a Catholic or woman cannot win.  Frankly, it is why in some districts a Republican or a Democrat can’t win.

Stories that Walgreens is putting the spike on “Chia Obama” get my gander up.  After all, a chia pet is almost always a gag gift.  Why can’t it be a gag gift about a particular person?

Of course, perhaps the two NYC chicken joints are going over some proverbial line by actually making it look like President Obama is the owner of or is sanctioning a fried chicken establishment.  Using a man’s name to imply the he is an owner when he isn’t is not really in good taste (sorry for the bad pun).

In general though, Clint Eastwood was right that our political correctness is taking all the fun out of society and we are spending too much time on trying not to offend others.  We need to relax a bit.  Laugh at ourselves and our nationalities.  I am of Irish descent and the comments that I receive around March 17 are all in good fun and I never take offense besides…

…St. Patrick’s day is when everyone wishes they were Irish!

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RANT! Be careful buying iPod Touch from BestBuy

RANT! Be careful buying iPod Touch from BestBuy

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My 3 teenagers have all purchased the iPod Touch from BestBuy.  Actually, the youngest one just received his as a birthday gift and that is what is prompting this rant.

There are a variety of gadget sites that talk about the deals available at BestBuy (see here and here). The forums are split as to buying the warranty (here and here) but Apple doesn’t have a great track record on iPods and the BestBuy warranty has replaced 3 separate iPods for my family over the years so we think it is a good deal.

So when my youngest son wanted a new iPod Touch to replace his nano, it was natural for us to go to BestBuy. He was ecstatic when he opened the gift and it was plugged into the family computer within minutes.  Imagine his disappointment when his brand new Touch had pre-2.0 software on it and iTunes wanted him to upgrade for only $9.95!  This OS upgrade was announced almost a year ago.

I wouldn’t have been too upset except for four issues:

  1. this same thing happened when my daughter bought her iPod Touch 9 months ago and we had to fight BestBuy for a resolution
  2. if we had bought the unit from Apple, it would have had the latest software (according to the Apple customer support person when we dealt with this issue on my daughter’s iPod)
  3. because of the experience with my daughter’s iPod, we had asked the BestBuy sales person upon purchase if it had the latest OS and was assured that it did (I am not sure why I trust a young man that still is suffering from teenage acne though)
  4. the rude treatment that I received on the BestBuy support call

I have already written to BestBuy complaining about their support call as well as their shady service.  But they don’t get off that easy.  I am also going to complain here.

I have no quibbles about the software not being up to date for a product that is shrinkwrapped and unopened.  I fully understand that BestBuy is buying their Apple products by the truckload (or container load) and that some of these may sit on the shelf past an upgrade.  However, they should be clearly marked as having the old OS and there should be an automatic coupon printed at the time of purchase to allow the consumer to upgrade the unit. The unsuspecting consumer should not be penalized for BestBuy getting a great deal from Apple because they bought a million iPods at once.

I almost wonder if this is a plan by Apple and BestBuy to lure some unsuspecting consumers to pay for the upgrade to the new OS even though they are legally entitled to that upgrade for free.

So what was the resolution?  The same as it was for my daughter’s iPod.  I called BestBuy, complained, and told them we would be returning the unit if they didn’t make this right.  After a bit of grief that was inexcusable for customer service rep, they promised to send me a $10 BestBuy card to cover the out of pocket cost for the upgrade.

BESTBUY SHOULD AUTOMATICALLY GIVE OUT COUPONS TO COVER THE COST OF UPGRADING TO THE CURRENT VERSION OF OPERATING SYSTEM!

Lesson learned for any readers out there: check the OS on your iPod Touch that was recently purchased from BestBuy. If you need to upgrade to a current OS then call BestBuy for a gift card to cover the cost.  Don’t pay for the upgrade yourself!

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