Over these past 14 years of being “father of two” I’ve bled, cried, laughed, sighed, yelled, danced, giggled, broke down, struggled, grinned, snickered, smirked, and gleamed over many situations that involved my two boys. I think I should list yelled twice.

I’m definitely not the perfect father and I’m sure if you ask them to grade me I’ll get a B- in fatherhood. I’ve learned over the years to listen to their needs (which gets harder to decipher as they get older), guide and not direct, inspire, and give hugs when they are going through tough times and in the high times of life.

All of these lessons learned are important but the one thing that has been passed onto me, I’m guessing generation after generation, is patience.

There are many times when I just want to give up and quit or keep harping on my kids for not doing their chores then I remember my father. I’m not sure how my father did it considering my past track record in disobedience. My father was following the mantra of “Keep Calm and Carry On” since the dawn of time. Even today, his patience level far exceeds mine. In fact, there are situations that frustrate me today and he just puts a smile on his face and keeps going in his true Zen-like nature.

Deep down, your kids love you so you don’t have to worry about them not loving you or hating you. My kids are in their teenage years and I’m struggling at the difficulty of this stage. I keep telling myself about patience. This patience is the same patience I needed when dealing with diapers, baby food, waking up in the middle of the night, and baths. Now this has transformed into chores, homework, and music lessons…and baths.

Try it out. Use patience and do not be quick to react. There is too much chaos out there and sometimes you need to be that calm to keep everyone going strong.

Today I’m grateful for my kids. Now where’s my breakfast?!

I read a lot of resumes. It is no secret that a lot of people still get resume-writing and cover letter writing dead wrong, but it is usually because they really haven’t tried. But a new brand of terrible has emerged: those who see great resumes online and try to copy them without success. Here are my tips for avoiding problems with modern resumes.

COLOR: beware of using color. It’s great, but there are two big problems: printing color costs, and your prospective employer printing in greyscale. Your resume may look great in color, but what does it look like when printed on the b/w office printer?

1. Colorful backgrounds: pretty, but think of the person interviewing you who has to print them. Skip black backgrounds and backgrounds with a pattern.

2. Colorful boxes and accents: print them in black and white just to make sure everything is still legible. If it looks like black on black, your information will not show.

3. To much color: what job are you applying for? Make sure your use of color is appropriate. A graphic designer should have more colors, graphics, and splotches than an accountant. If the job you want requires a professional demeanor, balance your use of color with professional taste.

SPACING: Make sure your resume can be read. If your resume looks crowded,no one will want to read it. If it looks too stylized, you may be wasting valuable space.

4. Get rid of big white blocks: White space should be horizontal, not vertical. If you have a big block of white space on the right, consider using columns.

5. Packing the page: If your resume looks like an essay, it is very hard on the eyes. Readers want to see white space and are drawn to small blocks of text in shapes instead of one solid mass of information.

6. Not enough to say: Bring in the left and right margins to create a clean, organized look.

BAD IDEAS NOT TO BE DUPLICATED ON A RESUME:

7. “Word Art”

8. Diagonal text

9. Block paragraphs

10. Heavy horizontal lines running the width of the page

11. Anything other than 8.5″ x 11″

12. 3 pages

13. Using the word “assisted” anywhere on the page

14. Multiple fonts

15. Anything that will make the administrative assistant handling your resume hate you

What did I get out of high school? I’m not sure but after being president of the sewing club I walked down the aisle with some awesome garb. Since its graduation season I decided to document some of my glue gun skills and show you how to make a money lei.

How to Make  Money Lei
You’ll need:

• Ribbon – at least 3 types of different widths and about 2 yards long
• Cash Money – your choice of the denomination
• Glue Gun
• Scissors
• Other decorations like flowers
• Wire
• Mini Stapler

Assembly:
Step 1: Lay everything out and take a deep breath.
Step 2: Fold the bills back and forth and bring the edges together and staple.
Step 3: Glue down two of the smaller ribbons together.
Step 4: Place dollar flowers on ribbon to measure out your spacing.
Step 5: Use wire and pierce the ribbon to tie on the dollar flower.
Step 6: Glue ribbon to the other ribbon.
Step 7: Add flowers on top of each bill (do not glue down or else your graduate will hate you).

Tips:
If you get flowers with wire, use that to secure the bill to the ribbon.
Do not glue the money.
Iron if there’s glue but not sticking because it dried.

I guess they are called Steel Pans now. Back in my day, we just called them Steel Drums.

References:

http://edelalon.com/blog/2012/03/east-bay-center-for-performing-arts/

The first thing you want to do is to export the contacts from the different sources into a CSV (Comma Separated Value) format. For things like Outlook, check under File and look for Import/Export. The same goes for most email clients out there.

The next step is to log into your Gmail account and then select Contacts. Under More, you’ll find Import. Select Import and the choose the CSV file you exported from your mail program and click on Import.

One of the things that most people will run into are the duplicate contacts or two separate contacts where one will contain the email address and the other a phone number.

Google solved this by having a feature called, “Find & merge duplicates…” To get to this, select Contacts while in Gmail and then click on More. In there you’ll find “Find & merge duplicates…” Once you select it, you will see the contacts that are duplicates. Just click on Merge to consolidate them. I went from 400+ contacts to about 125.

For more information, visit Google’s blog on this topic: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/one-button-to-merge-all-duplicate.html

So my wife bought the new Google Nexus 4 phone and we thought, “Oh, this is a new phone, it should work with my new car.” Nope. It didn’t work and we ended up losing $50 due to restocking fees. Thank you T-Mobile.

In the future we’re going to use this website to find out if the cell phone works with our Honda. Just as a side, the Honda dealership says that the best phone to use is an iPhone.

http://automobiles.honda.com/handsfreelink/find-a-phone.aspx

You can easily create a bootable DBAN USB thumb drive and boot from this USB drive to wipe your hard disk. Here is how :

1. Download the Darik’s Boot and Nuke ISO image from http://sourceforge.net/projects/dban/. At the time of writing this post, the downloaded file is dban-2.2.7_i586.iso. The file name can be different for newer versions, but it does not matter.
2. Download Universal USB Installer from http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/. The downloaded file is Universal-USB-Installer-1.9.2.7.exe at the time of writing this post.
3. Insert a USB pen drive and let Windows detect it. The inserted USB pen drive must have at least 50 MB free on it. It is better to backup the data on your USB drive before you use it for DBAN.
4. Run Universal USB Installer file that you downloaded in step #2 above.
5. Choose DBAN 2.2.X from the drop-down listbox. Then click on the Browse button and choose the ISO disk image file that you downloaded in the step #1 above. Lastly, select the USB pen drive letter from the list.
6. The inserted USB pen drive has to be FAT formatted, in order to make it bootable. If your selected USB drive is not FAT32/FAT16 formatted, then select the checkbox labeled something like Format X:\ Drive. Please note that, formatting will erase all the exisiting content from the USB drive.
7. Click on the Create button at the bottom to start the USB creation process. You will be shown a confirmation dialog informing about what is going to happen next e.g., MBR will be overwritten, disk label would be overwritten etc. Click on the Yes button to continue to create the bootable USB pen drive.
8. In a few seconds, your bootable DBAN USB pen drive would be ready. Click the Close button to close the Universal USB Installer.

The contract will let Quantum sell 7.75 megawatts of capacity from its project to Guam Power Authority, the Houston- based developer said today in a statement. Terms weren’t disclosed for the transaction, which closed April 25. The solar farm is expected to begin producing electricity next year.

References:
http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-30/quantum-acquires-power-purchase-deal-to-sell-guam-solar-energy.html

Files:

Black EPS Format

White EPS Format

Here’s an updated template for use in Excel 2013. I tested all the formulas and edited some formatting. I realized that the old one had some kinks in it.

Free download:
Excel 2013 Invoice Template