Month: January 2009

“Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.”

— Sir Isaac Newton

I’m doing my end-of-year business accounting (whee!) and looking at the year in review. As always, I’m curious how many hours I put in every week. Checking my timekeeping records, it turns out I spent 2,362 hours working in 2008. That’s not counting any vacation time– I don’t even record my vacation time as “time off” in the records. It comes to just over 45 hours a week, which actually isn’t too bad.

Of course my real goal is zero work hours. But that’s still a little way off…

Some guy named Bali Hai (his real name?) has collected a series of B-movie title screens that are pretty funny to see, mainly because the titles themselves are just screaming to be mocked.

Here’s a flick that Universal Pictures probably tries to forget:

And who could forget the classic:

And heck, here’s a movie I’d be interested in seeing just to find out what the Ultra Vixens are:

Clearly the guys who ran Mystery Science Theater 3000 missed a few opportunities…

Woo hoo, the Dow Jones just poked its head above 9,000. Of course we’re still down 35% from the peak last year, but it looks like things are at least headed in the right direction.

The big question, though: can I still retire at 40? In a month I turn 37, so I’m getting tight on time…

I’m doing an evaluation of a software package on behalf of one of my clients. Basically I need to figure out if I can install it on their server and get everything running, and if so they’ll commit to spending the money to buy the software. So I’ve been talking to the vendor who makes and sells the software, and working to negotiate a better deal on the price (it’s very expensive).

I finally received an e-mail from one of the sales reps, and I figured out that the reason several of her earlier messages had bounced was because she had mistyped my e-mail address. Keep in mind I provided my e-mail as part of an online registration on their web site (so it was in their records) and I also spoke with her on the phone and asked that messages be sent to such-and-such address. Yet she didn’t get it right. And even in the message, she misspelled the name of the product.

Sure, the woman was probably just typing quickly and transposed two letters, but I would expect that if you’re a sales rep hoping to make a sale you could at least get the information right so it goes to the correct person and doesn’t have spelling errors in your product name. This software costs upwards of $7,500 per copy and that lack of attention to detail is a real eye-opener for me.

I’ve said it before: it’s the little things that make a huge impact. It doesn’t matter if you’re a sales rep or just a guy like me hoping to make his way in the world: the little things will make or break you. Spell things right. Remember peoples’ names. Be on time. Be polite. If you are, people notice and think favorably of you. If you aren’t, people notice that too.