http://news.office-watch.com/t/n.aspx?a=512
Using Gmail as your spam filter
Gmail has a good spam filter, you can use it for your own email accounts.
Office Watch’s Email Essentials has picked up “my” tip on using GMail as a spam filter. Of course, they explain it much better than I do. I like to use TWO gmail ids.
ISP Id#1 -> Gmail#1 -> Gmail#2
ISP Id#2 -> Gmail#3 -> Gmail#2
But they explain it much better.
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Posted by reinkefj
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Credit unions good for car loans?
I am looking to buy a used car that is $16000. a 72 month loan seems to be getting me an apr of about 11% no matter who i go through – would a credit unio be able to give me a lower rate – and are there any downsides to being a credit union member?
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I just checked my credit union and you can get 48 months for 6%.
So they have good deals. I’ve blogged on how to bootstrap your way out of repeated car loans. Basically buy a car, finance it for three, but pay for six. The second three becomes savings for the next down payment.
I can’t give you a downside for a credit union loan, but I can give you a giant upside.
Most, if not all, credit unions don’t use the rule of 72 on your car payments. Most everyone else makes you pay the interest first and principal later. If you prepay the loan, then you’ve paid a higher rate for your money. CUs use a simple interest formula. Prepay early and you save interest expense. That prepayment also happens unexpectedly when the car gets totaled. So two good reasons to use the Credit Union. And, the CU usually has free credit life insurance thrown in.
So do your homework, it can save you big bucks.
Downside, you may have to bring a check from the credit union to the dealer, so you won’t have instant gratification of signing papers and driving away. So, I did think of a downside. But that dealer financing can be very “expensive” if you don’t really examine the details, which most people don’t.
Good luck,
Let us know how you make out.
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1 Comment | YahooAnswers | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/yourlife/31830
A Few Lessons from the Road
by Ben Stein
Posted on Friday, May 11, 2007, 12:00AM
***Begin Quote***
What’s the lesson here? Learn skills that can’t be defeated by foreign competition. The doctors in Detroit still make money. The finance people who manage the doctors’ offices still make money. And the people there who have substantial savings invested all over the world are doing fine, too.
More brutal than that lesson is that capitalism requires flexibility. Autoworkers who were being paid $50 an hour are getting laid off, it’s true. But in Indian Wells and Palm Desert, Calif., men and women who can lay tile or install plantation shutters or plumb toilets are getting $50 an hour and can’t keep up with demand.
***End Quote***
Remember the four part strategy: ruthless financial discipline, white collar job, blue collar skill, and a web biz.
Capitalism may require flexibility according to Senor Stein. But, the seeker “fighting” under today’s rules of engagement better have their own version of “flexibility” in mind.
Use your spare time wisely. Learn a language. There are things that are timeless and competition-proof. I’ve never met a poor plumber!
Leave a Comment » | JOBSEARCH | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer155.html
Memorial Day Alternative
by Butler Shaffer
***Begin Quote***
Paths of Glory – A Kirk Douglas film. A general sends his men on a suicide mission. When the mission fails, a few soldiers are arbitrarily selected to be tried – and executed – for cowardice.
***End Quote***
In my younger days, I loved war movies. I think it was Paths of Glory or perhaps it was The Execution of Private Slovik that killed that illusion.
Now I see and regret the error of my ways.
Maybe it was the anti-war folk songs of the Sixties. Maybe it was reading about countless kids coming home to their parents in body bags over the decades. Maybe it was the anti-war Socialist Left harping on the issue (to advance their own agenda). Maybe it was the MASH tv series.
Maybe it was just growing up.
I’ve since “learned” of the horror. The Japanese Internment, Dresden bombing, and A bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I “learned” it in school, but I was too stupid to really “learn” it.
I’ve since learned that venial leaders like Lincoln were pursuing their own agenda (i.e., that of the Northern mercantilists). Some were just lying like Wilson who campaigned on an anti-war platform and proceeded immediately to get us into WW1. Some were seeking to get out of economic trouble like FDR staging Pearl Harbor (see Stennent’s book). Some were silver-spoon sex-crazed drugged egotists like Kennedy, who knows what their motivation was (I’d have expected better of a vet who was almost killed). It seems we the people only find out the truth long after the bodies are buried. Our friends and family members bodies that is. We are led by a political class that has a positive motivation to put us more under their thumb. Hitler was an amateur. He should have had the income tax and inflation. That makes everyone a slave. Then you can kill them at your leisure.
“For the people, wars do not pay. The only cause of armed conflict is the greed of autocrats.” ~ Ludwig von Mises
“You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.” ~ Jeannette Rankin
“War is the health of the State” Randolph Bourne
All drive home the point. We all lose in ANY war.
You can talk to me about war, when someone is landing troops on the Jersey shore.
Dona nobis pacem.
Leave a Comment » | LIBERTY | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
AS EXPECTED
I’m going to have a lot to say about Jury Duty, but a quick note. Zenger! They keep repeating that the jury members have to apply the law as the judges give it to you. But, the Fully Informed Jury Association says differently. Jurys judge the law as well. Freedom of the press was established by the Zenger trial. Prohibition was effectively ended years before the Repeal by jurys refusing to convict violators. No mention of that. And, those who attend the gooferment skoolz probably never heard of it.
interbiznet presents The Bugler
May 15, 2007
***Begin Quote***
Gurutosis
The three most powerful words anyone can use are “I don’t know.” In an instant, the playing field gets leveled and the problem can be addressed without agenda. Center stage attention shifts and leaves an opening for the best local expertise to emerge. The very essence of leadership is knowing what to do when you don’t know.
***End Quote***
A well said piece of advice for seekers being interviewed. When candidates I was interviewing tried to bluff their way thru on a point, I’d hit the ‘eject button”.
No one knows everything, not even me!
It’s what you do when you can or can’t see the boundary. It’s how you test if there’s a hidden boundary there. It’s about your system for protecting against runaways, under runs, and stoppages.
It’s realizing that, you don’t know, what you don’t know.
The toughest boss I ever had used to asks for results, and then would ask how he was supposed to know that the results were true. At the time, I didn’t understand. But what he was asking was not just the answer to a problem, but to see the work that got to the answer. He wanted evidence and confidence. Just like in school.
So in your interview prep, be sure you have a legend (i.e., an elevator speech about something that you can pop out when needed) that presents a situation where either you couldn’t know the answer or you were wrong. In your legend, show how you always set up a “frame” so that you can never spin endless away. Visualize the spaceman’s wrench spinning off into deep space, until it reaches the end of the tether rope, and gets reeled back in. That’s the frame. Your frame can be time (i.e., I set a kitchen time, worked on the problem for an hour, and then I asked for help), feedback (i.e., a Colleague always checks my project plan for over commitments because I like to please people), or milestones (if.eat., I always have a project plan for anything I promise that has many moving parts).
Always demonstrate your framing!
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Posted by reinkefj
http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north529.html
Debt: An Inescapable Concept
Part 2: Personal Debt
by Gary North
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There is no tooth fairy. There is no retirement fairy. There will be no streams of income for the vast majority of old Americans. There will probably be monthly checks. They will not buy much.
***End Quote***
Medical costs will destroy us. The unfunded promises of the Medicare and drug benefits will bankrupt the country. When the politicians make promises, they leave the bill for the future taxpayers to pick up the tab. When the bill comes due, it’ll be devastating.
Leave a Comment » | MONEY | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/05/biometric
National ID: Biometrics Pinned to Social Security Cards
Ryan Singel Email 05.15.07 | 2:00 AM
***Begin Quote***
The Social Security card faces its first major upgrade in 70 years under two immigration-reform proposals slated for debate this week that would add biometric information to the card and finally complete its slow metamorphosis into a national ID.
***End Quote***
Great, then when the gooferment loses the data, we can have REAL identity theft. How long before you’ll be able to buy a “biometric national id”. Or the whole kit to go into business with on ebay? Can I get “one week” in the pool. If it’s such a great idea, why does it have to be “mandated”?
Leave a Comment » | LIBERTY | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
http://www.prairietumbleweedfarm.com
ATTENTION KMART SHOPPERS!
I think the “rules” are changing again. If you’ve been down to my “turkey farm”, then you know that I think there have been four “rule changes”.
http://home.comcast.net/~v2y2r0n27rhj6y/TURKEY/index_Page369.htm
Unlike that TV show “wife swap” — yeah I watch too much tv — there was NO rules change ceremony.
I wish I had a dime for every seeker who stops in for help that is working with the old pair of dimes.
<<You know paradigm. Way of thinking. Glass half-full half-empty. Your mental model. Your meme (i.e., mental gene).>>
I’ll still meet folks using the “gold watch” paradigm and wondering why they are getting screwed, broke, busted, disgusted, and killed in the employment marketplace. They believed the “barbara streisand” that their employer peddled until it was too late. They were a freshly axed turkey!
But, back to my point, about the “rules”.
I am sensing a new rule. As with most change, it is sneaking up on us. It’s actually adding to my “Three Part Harmony” description. A fourth item is being added.
The Web-based biz!
It is trivial for you to form a Nevada corporation. (I just did it for about $1200!) It is trivial for you to assemble a web-based store. (I’m in the process of doing it now for under $250) And, if this lady can sell tumbleweed, then surely you have something to sell. I think the key thing to notice is the available click at the top of the website that displays the site in Japanese!!
So, the model for success HAS officially changed! Henceforth and forever more, the model is “Four Tined Fork”. That is: (1) Ruthless financial management — get it, keep it, make it work; (2) White Collar job; (3) Blue Collar skill; and (4) one or more Web-based businesses.
Don’t say you didn’t get the memo. Here it is. A wake up call.
(Surely, if she can sell tumbleweed to the Japanese, you can do better!)
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Leave a Comment » | JOBSEARCH | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
New York – the new Venice?
By Niall Ferguson, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 13/05/2007
***Begin Quote***
Looking closely at which activities are most vulnerable as Asian competition ascends the value chain from manufacturing into services, Blinder estimates that “somewhere between 22 per cent and 29 per cent of all US jobs are or will be potentially offshorable within a decade or two”. That could be one in four jobs.
***End Quote***
Not a good omen for the future.
Leave a Comment » | JOBSEARCH | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
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FJohn Reinke
Consultant at Technology Legacies LLC
Advisor, Computer Governance Committee at Manhattan College
Editor / Publisher at Jasper Jottings
Greater New York City Area
JJ Positraction JJ Endnotes Downsize DC
Philosophy of Liberty
I have NOT received any gagged governmental information requests
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