So you want to use networking to your advantage as a means to helping yourself.
The trick to doing so may surprise you:
Help them first, ask for nothing in return.
It’s true! If you want to make solid relationships and build on those relationships, you have to start with the other guy. Listen to him, give him your ideas for his business (for free) and work zero angles for yourself. Be honest and sincere. Help him and I promise he’ll end up helping you 90% of the time.
Stop being so damn selfish. Its not all about you. Its about how you can help others. Help them succeed and they’ll want to help you succeed. Win-win is better than win-lose. Start with making HIM a winner, your win will follow.
( self contained underwater breathing apparatus, duh!)
After 4 hours of video and 250 pages of study, a 200 meter swim test, a 10min tread water test, 2 pool training sessions, four 40foot ocean dives and a 90 question exam (98% correct), I’m proud to say I’m an Open Water Certified scuba diver. This means that I no longer need to dive with an instructor (unless taking advanced classes like deep or night dives) and can plan and lead my own open water dives.
Here are some of the skills I had to learn and demonstrate both in the pool and at depth in the ocean (40ft):
Underwater:
Partial and full mask flood and clear
Regulator (the thing you breathe through) loss and replacement
Master neutral buoyancy both with BCD (vest) inflation and oral inflation (at depth).
Remove mask and replace and clear (easily my least favorite test)
Remove mask, swim 75ft, replace & clear.
Compass navigation
Simulate running out of air and tell buddy and use their alternate air
Host air for an out of air buddy
Controlled emergency ascent (out of air, no buddy)
Communicate with hand signals
On surface:
(I was lucky–the water wasn’t too rough for these)
Remove, inspect and replace weight belt
Remove, inspect and replace scuba unit (BCD and tank) (a little challenging since you’re removing your flotation and you have a weight belt on, especially if water is rough)
Switch between snorkel and scuba without breathing water
Tow a tired or injured diver
I also learned how to assemble and disassemble the scuba system.
And here are some interesting tidbits about diving that I learned:
- Pressure is double at 10m than at surface, 3x at 20m, 4x at 30m, etc.
- You use proportionally more air as you go deeper.
- #1 rule of diving: never hold your breath.
If you held your breath from 20m to the surface, the air in your lungs would triple in size. ie your lungs are busted. - During a controlled emergency ascent, you swim up at about 1ft/sec slowly blowing air out of your lungs. Its hard to run out of air because the air in your lungs is constantly expanding as you go up. Kinda odd.
- Air is over 70% nitrogen, which is not processed by the body. This limits the amount of time you can stay under. The deeper you go, the less time allowed (to prevent nitrogen narcosis–which causes drunk-like symptoms underwater) and the longer you must stay at the surface between dives to expel all the nitrogen (to prevent decompression sickness–when nitrogen bubbles block blood flow)
- Air can compress but water cannot. This is why only 3 areas on our body are susceptible to pressure–ears sinuses and lungs. This is because these are the only parts with air in them. Your mask is also susceptible–you need to breathe out your nose as you descend to equalize your mask.
It was a very “Yes Man” thing to do and I’m glad I did it. I learned a ton and am WAY more comfortable diving now. Here are some pictures:
Studying decompression tables for my exam.
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The 2nd pool training session with my instructor Pablo.
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Reviewing what I’m about to be tested on in the upcoming (3rd) dive.
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About to hop in for my fourth and final open water dive. The dreaded “remove mask and clear” test in coming up! Not too fun with saltwater at 40 feet.
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Pablo congratulates me after I passed all tests in my final dive and I’m officially certified!
GOGO
Recently I decided to educate myself on the issue of Global Warming. I purchased Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth DVD as well as The Great Global Warming Swindle DVD and watched them back to back. 4 hours later, here are my reviews of the videos and my conclusions on global warming:
Al Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth’:
(available on amazon.com)
About 10 % of this video focuses on Gore’s childhood and life story. Pointless.
Another 10% of this video focuses on the election of 2000. Pointless.
The vast majority of this video focuses on the effects of global warming:
- Receding glaciers
- Drying up of lakes
- Species loss
- Severe weather (Katrina)
- Rising sea levels
And about 1% of the video show facts that suggest that global warming is man made.
This video is highly political, nearly void of any real data and very alarmist and hysterical. It operates on the assumption that global warming is man made and that man can reverse it. It has a very limited scope regarding factual data and an unlimited scope regarding emotional pleas. However, the production quality is very good.
The Great Global Warming Swindle:
(available on amazon.com)
This British documentary focuses on about 6 scientists (including the co-founder of Greenpeace) who give arguments and data that demonstrate that global warming is real, but is not man-made or man-preventable. Using the same data as Gore used to show the relationship between temperature and CO2, this film’s scientists show that CO2 actually lags behind temperature. In other words, a rise in temperature causes a rise in CO2. The lag is about 800 years.
The film also gives a scientific explaination for global warming: The Sun. It shows that increased sun activity corresponds with increased temperatures. They attribute this to solar wind acticity indirectly causing an increase or decrease in clouds, which either block or don’t block the suns rays–resulting in either cooling or heating.
They also point out that CO2 is a tiny percentage of the Earth’s greenhouse gasses, with water vapor making up something like 75%.
When addressing the IPCC, the UN body that has declared that man made global warming is real and that 2500 of the world’s top scientists agree, the film shows that many of those listed are either not scientists or don’t agree. The film shows the highly political nature of global warming and even uses Gore’s point of “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it.” to explain the political slant of the issue. Of course in this case its funding or grants instead of salary.
The DVD also points out that from around 1945 to 1975 the earth was cooling (as the post-war industrial boom was in full effect, creating more and more CO2) and scientist alarmists were calling for the next ice age. Here are some pretty good quotes from that time. Since the mid 70s the Earth has been warming and now the alarmists are calling for warming disasters. It demonstrates the cyclical nature of temperatures.
The film has about an hour worth of bonus features which discuss various topics, including attacking some of Gore’s specific points and showing them to be false as well as showing very detailed (and quite boring) science behind the argument that global warming is just a cyclical phase and is not man made.
Finally, my favorite point of the whole movie was when one of the scientists pointed out that if we had to choose between global warming and global cooling/freezing, we’re lucky its warming. “If you’re choosing between the glaciers receding or advancing, I would think you would want them to receed.” hah.
All in all, this video was packed with logic and data, something very much lacking in Gore’s movie.
If you believe that global warming is man made, I highly recommend you purchase the video, or watch it (without bonus features) online.
Conclusion:
I am 100% certain that there is significant scientific debate on the issue of man made global warming. Based on the evidence I have seen so far, it seems extremely likely that global warming is natural and cyclical and the the rise and fall of temperature, as a result of increased or decreased sun acticity, leads to (rather than is caused by) an increase or decrease in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Sit back young one and I shall tell you a tale. It is a tale of trust, loyalty, greed, romance and betrayal. And it is a true story, who’s conclusion occurred mere minutes ago.
As I am the protagonist in this story, let me insure that you are aware of a few key characteristics regarding my personality. I do not enjoy housework, I am a firm believer in outsourcing, and I value my time very much. Over the years these traits have morphed into me having what I call a personal assistant. My personal assistants’ duties have evolved into the following:
- Housecleaning
- Grocery Shopping
- Household upkeep
- Laundry
- Random Errands
About 16 months ago I hired a new assistant. To protect her privacy, I’ll hide her name. For the sake of the story, let’s call her “Beth”.
Over the next several months, Beth demonstrated her ability to consistently complete the tasks I required. She showed that she was trustworthy (she’d collect random money she found at my house and place them in a jar for me). I kept it professional, but over the months we even became friends. I could count on her to do whatever I asked. She was a great employee. loyalty
Because she bought groceries for me weekly, and ran other errands that needed money, I let her use a $500 limit credit card that was in my name. I had my online bill paying service automatically send the card $500 per month–apprx what I was spending on groceries, cleaning supplies, etc. trust
In December of 08, a little over a year into our employment agreement, I was contacted by my credit card company. They had received a payment from me and wanted to know which account to apply it to. This confused me as I only had the one $500 card with this company. I inquired and discovered that in fact I had two credit lines open with them. One had a balance of about $4500, the other had a balance of $12,000. My jaw hit the floor.
Over the next hour or so, I discovered that because of my consistent payments, my credit limit had slowly increased from $500 to $5000, without so much as a letter or a call. I also discovered that an old credit card that I hadn’t used in years had expired and they had mailed me another copy. It was activated and over 3 months, was maxed out to $12k.
Thus began my highly motivated and aggressive mission to find out who did this and how I could nail them.
Of course I was also concerned that I might be liable for the 17k. I am an investor in lifelock and a member. I contacted them and to my surprise they told me that they would take care of whatever the credit card company wouldn’t. Now I could focus on nailing this bastard without worry of financial loss.
I opened a fraud case immediately with Visa. While they began work on the case, they gave me a list of recent charges over the phone. As soon as I hung up the phone I started finding numbers for the charges and calling them. The first one refused to give me any information, despite it being my card. I pressed on. The second company was far more cooperative. As the customer service rep read the shipping information to me, my head dropped as disappointment and anger grew. It was Beth’s name and address. I called a few more and all signs pointed to her. betrayal & greed
At this point I really only had once choice. I called the police and within an hour a trooper was at my door taking the report. He told me that if it was her first offense (which it was, I had done a background check before hiring her) she’d likely do no time. I asked how the case would proceed and he told me that I needed to go downtown and take a warrant out for her arrest. I asked if I should go immediately or if I should gather evidence first. He told me that the more information I could present at the warrant request the better.
Over the next few days, I received a complete list of all charges and began hitting the phone. About half the time, the company would refuse to give me any information. Other times, they would give me shipping info, order numbers and sometimes even fax or email copies of the orders. In all cases, Beth had the items shipped to her home address (or her parents’ address). It took me about a week to gather what I felt was enough evidence for the case to be a 100% lock. I filed out affidavits for Visa, and wrote a detailed account of the case for the warrant. Because Beth normally came twice a week, I had to lie to her and tell her that I was sick both times. (my lawyer told me to avoid all contact with her until she was arrested). After about 80 hours of work, I had a 45 page document with credit card statements, invoices, a description of Beth (including pictures and where to find her), even copies of her signature on shipping confirmations for orders placed in her name on my card. It was a slam dunk.
I confidently went to the courthouse and started the warrant process. I was very surprised at how short and simple the warrant paperwork was. I simply put “see attached” in the 3 line area designated for ‘describe the offense’. As the very friendly clerk (no sarcasm) processed my request for a warrant, I discovered why there were only 3 lines on the form. I saw maybe 4 other complaints as I waited, all involved physical confrontations. The two best examples involved a complaint of ‘her friend’s mom hit her’ (the girl was 14) and ‘his baby’s mama threw a brick through my windshield’. It was interesting to say the least.
Ok–back to the story. The clerk told me that my case would be reviewed by an assistant prosecutor and the warrant would either be approved or denied. My name was called and I went into his office. He was initially skeptical and somewhat cold. He asked me the details and once I showed him the monster document I had created, the mood of the meeting changed quite a bit. He thumbed through it, handed it back and told me the review was over. I went back to waiting and when the clerk re-called me, she told me my warrant was approved. She also looked through my document (‘warrant package’) and said, “you’ve done a ton of work. We never see cases like this. This is a slam dunk.” (her words). “I’m going to call over to the detectives office and see if any of them are still there.” (it was around 3pm on a Friday).
“I’ve got a guy here with a $17,000 credit card fraud case with 40 pages of proof. Anyone want a easy case?”. Apparently they did. She hung up the phone and wrote down instructions for me on how to get to the detectives’ office. It was across the street. I walked in and spoke with Detective Thomas. There were 3 other detectives in the room and after a couple minutes of me explaining the case and him looking through my package, all 4 began work. I was very impressed. One would be searching the VIN database for her car while another was tracking her parents and trying to find her social security number. He asked if I knew where she was right now and I said that she normally visits her parents (3 hrs away) on the weekends. As it was Friday, they were worried she’d beat them out of town. He asked me to text her to find out where she was. I did. To say the least, this was exciting!
After a couple of minutes waiting for a reply, Det. Thomas decided he was tired of waiting and he and another detective hit the road to find her. His first try was going to be her home. He gave me his cell phone and told me to call if she revealed her location. I happily agreed and met my brother for our normal Friday lunch. BW3s. num num num…
I hadn’t heard from the detective or Beth, so after lunch I called his cell phone and asked how it was going.
“I just picked her up. She’s in the car with me now. She had both cards on her. Also–she told me that you guys were dating and that you allowed her to use the cards. She said you had a fight and you’re just mad.” I laughed and said “Ok, well I have about 50 witnesses that’ll say we didn’t date”. (I had been dating the same girl for the last 10 months, and it wasn’t Beth!). romance? lol
He simply said “ya don’t worry about that”.
Over the next week she had her pre-trial hearing, where she was required to plea not guilty, as you cannot plea guilty to a felony. She crossed the felony line at $501.
Fast forward about a month, and her court date had arrived. I was worried she was going to claim we dated and drag this out. I was mentally prepared to parade witness after witness showing we hadn’t dated, but was hoping she’d changed her mind. I spoke with her lawyer and the prosecuting attorney. Her lawyer gave me some bullshit “she’s depressed and has mental problems” line. “All we want is to keep this off her record. Her and her family want to make this right.”Looks like she threw out the dating story.
I knew Beth, and I knew this was a sympathy ploy. I told her lawyer flat out that I thought that “mental problems line was bullshit.” He and I and the prosecuting attorney then talked for a while in the back room. Defense attorney was REALLY pushing for a misdemeanor with community service, psychiatric counseling, probation and full financial restitution. Although I have no official rights as the prosecuting witness, the P.A. (prosecuting attorney) explained to me and her lawyer that with this size of money and this extreme length of time (she had been stealing from me for 6 months!) he was going to leave it up to me. I left the room and gave it some serious consideration.
Misdemeanor or Felony?
No matter which I chose, the outcome for ME was the same. I knew I wasn’t going to be on the hook for the money, so that was a non-factor. The only real difference was the old ‘have you even been convicted of a felony?’ question on applications etc. I was surprised to learn that in either case, her record would be cleaned after a few years, assuming full financial restitution and no other convictions.
I thought for quite a while. I even called my parents and my brother to get their opinion. In the end, I decided that if any crime deserved a felony, this was it. 6 months of lying and deceit. Activating a card, running up 17 thousand dollars–it was insane. What ultimately pushed me towards felony was reviewing the many pages of her charges. She had bought items on eBay about 10 times per week. She did cash advances a few times for a few thousand dollars. All in all she had made maybe 150 charges in 6 months. Towards the end she was using the card 15 or 20 times per week! Felony.
I talked to the P.A. and he informed me that this required a higher court. A new date was set and eventually pushed back to have time to subpoena the arresting officer.
Then I started having more detailed conversations with Visa. I was assigned a special investigator who used a rule book too much and common sense too little. At first he told me that I would owe nothing–they would chargeback all they could from the merchants and would claim the restitution from Beth upon conviction.
Later he told me that the courts told him that I am the victim in the case, and the check must be made out to me. So now his position was that I was on the hook for what they couldn’t charge back–about 10 1/2 thousand dollars. He told me where to send my check.
Obviously, I told him this was crap. I said “If I get a check from her, I’ll send you the money. If I don’t, you’re not getting a dime from me.” For the time being I suppose we agreed to disagree. But I’d make them sue me for that money if she didn’t pay up. All in all, I was very unhappy with the level of service ELAN financial gave me.
And their fraud prevention is absolutely terrible!! When I use my American Express card, I get called twice a month or so to confirm “unusual” charges. Over 6 months, ELAN never once asked me if the hundreds of internet charges (with NO PAYMENT being made on the account!) were legit. Now they wanted to stick me with the balance? Riiiiiiiight….
Anyway, back to the case:
On the next court date, the P.A, officer, Defense attorney and I all met and once again the Defense attorney pressed for a misdemeanor. He has no shame. I again stuck to felony and once again, the date was pushed back…
That date was then pushed back via phone call from P.A…(the judge was out of town)…fast forward 3 weeks….
Then the day finally came. Today at 1pm on the 9th floor of the Judicial Center at 7th and Jefferson Street in downtown Louisville, the case concluded. Beth and her attorney sat behind one desk, I and the P.A. sat behind the other. The judge and P.A. officially declared the recommended sentence. The judge and the defense attorney officially declared that they were willing to accept the plea. Then the judge asked Beth about 30 questions, mostly to the tune of “do you understand….”
“that you have the right to a trial by jury”
“that you have the right to call witnesses on your behalf and have the court subpeona those witnesses”
“that if you plead guilty today you cannot appeal it to this court or any other court”
Finally he asked her “Is it true that between June of 2008 and December of 2008, while working for Mr. Landon Swan, you unlawfully used his credit cards without his knowledge to make purchases totaling $10,621.61?”
(This is the settlement amount. She actually stole about 17k)
“Yes.”
“How do you plea to the charge of (I forget the exact phrase, basically ‘credit card fraud’)?”
“Guilty”
The P.A. handed me a check for $10,621.61 (paid for by her dad, who is on a school teachers salary) from the escrow account of her attorney. The judge explained her sentence to her. 1 year prison sentence probated 2 years with probation officer. If she does anything from drink alcohol to shop lifting to DUI to anything worse, she’ll be locked up in prison for a year + the sentence for that offense. Its over, a mere 6 months after I called the police.
Throughout it all, she avoided eye contact with me and never spoke to me or communicated in anyway–not even an apology.
I’ve learned a lot about the justice system. It was actually a very interesting and frankly, fun, experience–but hopefully my last 
Sliced bread has nothing on mytrade’s new trade sharing feature, thinkshare.
Here’s the basics:
First of all, you must be a thinkorswim client to take advantage of this feature. And you should be anyway, as they are the #1 broker, hands down.
Once inside thinkorswim, anytime you place a trade you can check a box that says “share on mytrade”. You can also put in a note about why you like the trade. Then when you send the trade for execution it is shared on mytrade’s thinkshare system.
Then anyone can view it, see the details (a more detailed ‘trade page’ is in the works) and even copy the trade.
With one click, the trade is copied, and with another it is pasted into the thinkorswim trade queue. There you can edit/analyze/execute the trade.
We just launched thinkshare yesterday and its a hit. We already have a ton of improvements lined up and in the works. But please please let us know what other features you’d like to see.
Here’s a screenshot of all three functions: share, copy and paste…
Click here for our official release notes on thinkshare
The markets have been struggling and the only big moves to the upside have been created because of FED printing money and buying its own debt. Banks are screwed. Commercial real estate is screwed. Good speeches, even with the help of a teleprompter, cannot create profits out of losses. I am predicting a 5-10% decline in the broad markets, with banks and CRE leading the way, over the next 1-4 weeks.
Yesterday I wrote about tax warfare. The comments got off track a bit, mainly regarding voting for Barr over McCain (by two people who both wanted Obama to lose). But it mostly came down to realism versus idealism.
I’m no expert. I’m only 29 years old, but I can tell you I’m far more realistic now than I was in years past. I think experience slowly moves young idealists towards realism.
On one hand, my gut tells me to side with JakeGint. He says he is older and more of a realist. To me, being an idealist is easy–there are no consequences, only theoretical gains or losses. Experience has taught him to be realistic and I put a lot of stock in experience.
On the other hand, I want to side with Tarigal, a college student with little life experience but strong ideals. Why? Because while experience and realism will always be a smart safe choice, its always the young, idealistic and foolishly overenthusiastic idealists that make real and lasting change for the better.
I feel like realism is the safe play and will likely benefit most people, but without those idealists rushing in to the fight, we’d rarely advance as a whole.
Is it better to accept life for what it is and try to maximize your life inside those boundaries or is it better to spend your life trying to break the boundaries down? I think you can see why a 20yr old might have a different opinion than a 60yr old, and vica versa.
Thoughts?
In my first post (can you remember where you were?) I talked about how I was a laggard, and that since I was now blogging, it must be dead. I may have jumped the gun. But now I’m sure the bubble has burst…
My college entrepreneur professor (who gave me an A- (counts as 3.67 gpa) by the way…..sorry had to) set up his blog yesterday. Surely he’s the last one in right? Blogging is over. haha
All kidding aside, he’s just one day in and already has two well written posts.
You should check it out. His name is Curt Richards and he’s smart. He taught me some valuable lessons in college.
Going back to 1945 with data from about.com, combined with historical stock market data from yahoo finance, I’ve constructed a table showing the relationship between who controls congress (and the white house) versus the growth or decline in the stock market. An image of the table is below. Click table the excel sheet.
Below the table, I point out my findings…but feel free to draw your own conclusions.
Average Stock Market gain during Democratic Congress: +9.8%
Average Stock Market gain during Republican Congress: +30.1%
Average Stock Market gain during Democratic President:
with Democratic Congress support: +13.2%
with Republican Congress opposition: +32.6%
(+18.8% regardless of Congress)
Average Stock Market gain during Republican President:
With Democratic Congress opposition: +6.6%
With Republican Congress support: +25.3%
(+13.3% regardless of Congress)
This is not my opinion. These are facts.
(data for DJIA for each year taken from 1st trading day in that year. Gains are stated for 2 year periods. Half them for annual gains.)
