The world around us

Since I’ve been working from home, I’ve become quite fanatical about organizing my desk in a way that I am not distracted while I am working. What ususally happens is that anything and everything ends up on my desk, when it has no other place to go, including gel pens, credit card receipts, business cards, home delivery menu’s, coins etc. I spend a good 5-10 minutes going through and sorting stuff out on the desk every day, putting stuff in their place, sorting, chucking, cleaning and so on.

This is quite a unique and offbeat idea that Springwise reports on, but something that will probably end up working. Say you love pets, but have no time to take care of or spend time with them. Well, now you can have a pet for short periods of time, a flexible pet ownership program. Flexpetz launched in Los Angeles and San Diego and provides customers with the option of having a dog just for a few hours a day or on certain days a week. The dogs are from shelters and are picked for their ability to adapt to differnet scenarios.

Membership is limited, and each dog generally spends time with a small group of people. Monthly membership costs USD 39.95 plus a daily fee, and members can reserve their pooch of choice online. Before being allowed to rent a dog, members go through a mandatory training session with a certified Flexpetz dog trainer.

Each time we move to a new city, one of the first things we do, even before we find a place to stay, is find a good restaurant guide. Having good places to go out to eat is a major plus for any city and in our book it’s one of the very important factors. The city of Phoenix has some of its best restaurants featured in AZcentral.com, which is a newspaper affiliated website for the Phoenix DMA. AZcentral reviews of phoenix restaurants are done by freelancing contributors, so you can be sure to get an authentic feel of the place, in terms of its food, decor, ambience, price etc. Each contributor selects a theme such as sushi bars and reviews three restaurants in that theme in the Chow ‘n’ Tell section.

Have you hear about this program called coComment that keeps track of all the comments that you make, whether they are going on in blogs, or forums, or in online communities? I heard about it this morning and it seems like a really great way to organize and sort all the conversations in one place. You can even share your conversations to your blog, with just one click or send it via email if you prefer. I forget of sites I’ve visited, so never end up going back to where I’ve posted a comment too see if I got a response, but this will be a great way to keep track of my comments and probably even encourage me to comment more.

So, that’s it for the night then. Even though I got started off pretty late in the evening, I’ve already been at it for almost 5 hours now. So, it’s time to call it a night and keep the rest of the work for the morning. Wonder how much work, I will be able to get done though, with packing and organizing and stuff like last minute shopping and buying presents etc to do.

Capella University is one of the leaders in online education and has now brought out a book on ‘Appreciative Coaching: A Positive Process for Change’ that is co-authored by faculty members of the university. The premise behind the book is that people and organizations flourish when the focus is on best practices, ideals and achievements. Using this technique of positive questioning and mindfulness, in a way to build on the strengths of individuals. The target audience of the book are individual coaches of managers, executives and people who can create change in their organizations by working with people. Sara Orem is a co-author of this book and besides being a faculty member and coach at Capella Univerity’s School of Business and Technology, she is also the principal of her own coaching academy. Capella University was founded in 1993 and is one of the best places to get a college degree online. the university has made it a mission to impart quality education to students. This post was based on information provided by Blogitive. For more information, please visit Blogitive.com. 

Wade Rathke is busy trying to mobilize support for the anti-Wal-Mart campaign and is creating a protest movement centered around farmers and traders unions. He stated that “Our campaign in India will be centred around farmers, and leading farmer associations across India have already joined hands with us. We will conduct awareness programmes at grassroot levels so that farmers don’t sell directly to any of these companies.” It seems that the only protestors are competitors of the retailers and of all of their supply chain intermediaries, so it doesn’t hold too much weight.

I watched Jay Leno after a long, long time tonight. I’m usually working at this time, so I don’t get to see it usually, but today since my Internet connection is not working, I’m using our second connection which is in the bedroom, where the TV is. While it took me longer to do my work, it was nice to get some laughs in between as well. As a bonus, he had one of my fav actors Kiefer Sutherlands on tonight.

The US has recently passed an anti-gambling legistation which does not cover betting on horse races and has allowed websites and wagering services for horse races to continue on. One of the leading horse racing betting comapnies is Xpressbet which offers pari-mutel bettting via account wagering. This means that once betters have subscribed, they can bet on races in North America, Europe and Australia, at events such as the Preakness, the Kentucky Derby, Sunshine Millions and many more. With an estimated market of over $15 billion, the horse race betting market is generating huge sums of money.

So, we’re off for a week starting tomorrow. Not a vacation really, since we are traveling for work, but we will manage to add a bit of fun and sightseeing hopefull, but no relaxation I’m sure. I will be taking a week’s break from doing my research project, but will continue to keep track of things so I don’t fall too far behind when I get back to work, the week after the next.