Tonights Video: Goldfish Burial

First of all, despite the message at the end, this is not an original. It is based on a joke I heard years ago.

Next, I gotta warn you about the potty mouthed little girl. It was bleeped, but we know what she says, so don't play it around the young ones.

Finally, enjoy:

Technology Tips You Wish Someone Told You About

It's a amazing what we don't know about the appliances and tools we use on a regular basis. Monday I found this article in the New York Times:

Tech Tips for the Basic Computer User

Last week, I wrote an entry on my blog that began like this:

“One of these days, I’m going to write a book called, ‘The Basics.’ It’s going to be a compendium of the essential tech bits that you just assume everyone knows–but you’re wrong.

“(I’ll never forget watching a book editor at a publishing house painstakingly drag across a word in a word processor to select it. After 10 minutes of this, I couldn’t stand it. ‘Why don’t you just double-click the word?’ She had no clue you could do that!)”

Many readers chimed in with other “basics” that they assumed every computer user knew–but soon discovered that what’s common knowledge isn’t the same as universal knowledge.

I’m sure the basics could fill a book, but here are a few to get you started. All of these are things that certain friends, family or coworkers, over the years, did *not* know. Clip, save and pass along to…well, you know who they are.

* You can double-click a word to highlight it in any document, e-mail or Web page.

* When you get an e-mail message from eBay or your bank, claiming that you have an account problem or a question from a buyer, it’s probably a “phishing scam” intended to trick you into typing your password. Don’t click the link in the message. If in doubt, go into your browser and type “www.ebay.com” (or whatever) manually.

* Nobody, but nobody, is going to give you half of $80 million to help them liberate the funds of a deceased millionaire…from Nigeria or anywhere else.

* You can hide all windows, revealing only what’s on the computer desktop, with one keystroke: hit the Windows key and “D” simultaneously in Windows, or press F11 on Macs (on recent Mac laptops, Command+F3; Command is the key with the cloverleaf logo). That’s great when you want examine or delete something you’ve just downloaded to the desktop, for example. Press the keystroke again to return to what you were doing.

* You can enlarge the text on any Web page. In Windows, press Ctrl and the plus or minus keys (for bigger or smaller fonts); on the Mac, it’s the Command key and plus or minus.

* You can also enlarge the entire Web page or document by pressing the Control key as you turn the wheel on top of your mouse. On the Mac, this enlarges the entire screen image.

* The number of megapixels does not determine a camera’s picture quality; that’s a marketing myth. The sensor size is far more important. (Use Google to find it. For example, search for “sensor size Nikon D90.”)

* On most cellphones, press the Send key to open up a list of recent calls. Instead of manually dialing, you can return a call by highlighting one of these calls and pressing Send again.

* When someone sends you some shocking e-mail and suggests that you pass it on, don’t. At least not until you’ve first confirmed its truth at snopes.com, the Internet’s authority on e-mailed myths. This includes get-rich schemes, Microsoft/AOL cash giveaways, and–especially lately–nutty scare-tactic messages about our Presidential candidates.

* You can tap the Space bar to scroll down on a Web page one screenful. Add the Shift key to scroll back up.

* When you’re filling in the boxes on a Web page (like City, State, Zip), you can press the Tab key to jump from box to box, rather than clicking. Add the Shift key to jump through the boxes backwards.

* You can adjust the size and position of any window on your computer. Drag the top strip to move it; drag the lower-right corner (Mac) or any edge (Windows) to resize it.

* Forcing the camera’s flash to go off prevents silhouetted, too-dark faces when you’re outdoors.

* When you’re searching for something on the Web using, say, Google, put quotes around phrases that must be searched together. For example, if you put quotes around “electric curtains,” Google won’t waste your time finding one set of Web pages containing the word “electric” and another set containing the word “curtains.”

* You can use Google to do math for you. Just type the equation, like 23*7+15/3=, and hit Enter.

* Oh, yeah: on the computer, * means “times” and / means “divided by.”

* If you can’t find some obvious command, like Delete in a photo program, try clicking using the right-side mouse button. (On the Mac, you can Control-click instead.)

* Google is also a units-of-measurement and currency converter. Type “teaspoons in 1.3 gallons,” for example, or “euros in 17 dollars.” Click Search to see the answer.

* You can open the Start menu by tapping the key with the Windows logo on it.

* You can switch from one open program to the next by pressing Alt+Tab (Windows) or Command-Tab (Mac).

* You generally can’t send someone more than a couple of full-size digital photos as an e-mail attachment; those files are too big, and they’ll bounce back to you. (Instead, use iPhoto or Picasa–photo-organizing programs that can automatically scale down photos in the process of e-mailing them.)

* Whatever technology you buy today will be obsolete soon, but you can avoid heartache by learning the cycles. New iPods come out every September. New digital cameras come out in February and October.

* Just putting something into the Trash or the Recycle Bin doesn’t actually delete it. You then have to *empty* the Trash or Recycle Bin. (Once a year, I hear about somebody whose hard drive is full, despite having practically no files. It’s because over the years, they’ve put 79 gigabytes’ worth of stuff in the Recycle Bin and never emptied it.)

* You don’t have to type “http://www” into your Web browser. Just type the remainder: “nytimes.com” or “dilbert.com,” for example. (In the Safari browser, you can even leave off the “.com” part.)

* On the iPhone, hit the Space bar twice at the end of a sentence. You get a period, a space, and a capitalized letter at the beginning of the next word.

* Come up with an automated backup system for your computer. There’s no misery quite like the sick feeling of having lost chunks of your life because you didn’t have a safety copy.

Tonights Video: Election 2008

Ever wonder about that percentage that is undecided every time they do a poll? From the Daily Show with apologies to Cubs Fans:



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More Backup Tips

I wish I had done more of this before I accidentally reformated my hard drive last month:

Dumb Little Man - tips for life

4 Important Data Backup Strategies For Your PC

Posted: 02 Oct 2008 12:47 PM CDT

Written on 10/02/2008 by Abhijeet Mukherjee. You can catch him at Jeet Blog where he blogs about different Web 2.0 apps and online tools and how they can help you become more productive.

Photo Credit: jeremyfoo

The computer is one of the greatest inventions we've seen - and the internet is probably the greatest icing on the cake. Your computer, apart from being a machine that has made life so much easier and lets you do almost everything you can imagine, is also a big box containing lots and lots of one thing - data.

Yes, that data could be in the form of pictures, videos, documents, software log files, movies, etc. For the most part, this data is safe. That is until the inevitable day that your hard drive crashes. If you haven't prepared, your data is gone!

This situation is so common that the art of the 'backup' has spawned an entire industry. Today there are dozens of firms offering different data backup solutions.

Sadly, I'm writing this post just a day after I was forced to reinstall Windows and recover my data. I can't tell you what a nightmare it would have been had I not backed up all my important stuff. Keeping that in mind, I've decided to mention 4 important data back up strategies for Windows users, most of them being almost the same for Mac users except for the change in the software type. Check them out and start backing up.

Back Up Offline Files And Folders
Offline files and folders are things stored on your computer; you know, the files that are available to you when you're no online. It can include all your pictures, documents, videos and many other files. To back them up, you should use an external storage device like an external USB hard disk drive. Such drives are plug and play and very easy to use.

As I have mentioned in a previous post, I use the 500 GB Western Digital MyBook for the purpose. Apart from this strategy, I highly recommend signing up with an online backup service like Mozy or Carbonite and getting your files backed up with them. In case your external hard drive gets stolen or damaged, they will send you the DVDs containing your data.

Talking about back up software, there are many. I have spoken about a free tool called AceBackup for this purpose. There's one more tool which I came across known as IdleBackup. It's an excellent tool which is free and automatically backs up files while you're away from your computer. LifeHacker has a detailed description about the entire process and how it works.

Back Up Browser Preferences
Your browser is your gateway to the internet. It stores data which includes your bookmarks and passwords and many other customized settings which should be backed up. If you are using Internet Explorer then you can export your bookmarks and save them to the external drive. Regarding the passwords, there are some paid tools to export and store IE passwords, although I haven't tried any of them.

For Firefox users, there is much more data, like the extensions and preferences. Fortunately, the backup is not that tough. Check out this post - 3 Useful Methods to Back Up Your Firefox Preferences. My personal favorite is the FEBE extension which backs up everything with a single click. I used to restore all my Firefox preferences easily, after reinstalling Windows.

Back Up Emails
Now emails are something which are as important as any other data and they need to be backed up. If you are using any web based email account, a separate Gmail account can function as an online email backup center for those accounts. You can go ahead and set up the Gmail mail fetcher for the purpose.

If you are using desktop email app like Outlook, you can export and backup the emails using the Import and Export Wizard. You could even export and backup emails from Outlook to Gmail online.

Sync Tools
We have discussed how to backup your data, however if you don't organize and sync the data in your computer and the external storage device then that's work half done. You need to setup tools which would also sync the data between the devices. IdleBackup, which I've mentioned above does incremental back ups which means it only backs up those files which have changed. So in a way it takes care of the sync task.

Other good tools which let you sync data between two locations are SyncbackSE and the free tool, Microsoft SyncToy. SyncbackSE comes with a free trial and is probably the best backup and sync tool available. It also offers a free version called Syncback Freeware which is a pretty awesome tool too.

Hope you like the backup strategies mentioned and make use of them to back up your data everyday.

Cheers,

Abhijeet

Tonights Video: The Wall Street Melt Down

This piece from CBS's 60 minutes was today's featured video from Kim Komando:


Watch CBS Videos Online

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Are You Up-to-Speed

or are you falling behind.

It doesn't matter how old or young you are, Seth Godin has a list for you:

The growing productivity divide

Here's a simple quiz:

• Can you capture something you see on your screen and paste it into Word or PowerPoint?
• Do you have a blog?
• Can you open a link you get in an email message?
• Do you read more than five blogs a day?
• Do you have a signature in your outbound email?
• Do you have an RSS reader?
• Can you generate a PDF document from a Word file you're working on?
• Do you know how to build and share a simple spreadsheet using Google Docs?
• Do have a shortcut for sending mail to the six co-workers you usually write to?
• Are you able to find what you're looking for on Google most of the time?
• Do you know how to download a file from the internet?
• Do you back up your work?
• Do you keep track of contacts using a digital tool?
• Do you use anti-virus software?
• Do you fall for internet hoaxes and forward stuff to friends and then regret it?
• Have you ever bought something from a piece of spam?

Can you imagine someone who works in a factory that processes metal not knowing how to use a blowtorch? How can you imagine yourself as a highly-paid knowledge worker and not know how to do these things... If you don't, it's not hard to find someone to teach you.

Life Lessons for Men

From the Art of Manliness Blog recently:

The Art of Manliness

Lessons in Unmanliness: Willy Loman

Posted: 02 Oct 2008 11:26 PM CDT

Occasionally, the Art of Manliness runs a series called “Lessons in Manliness.” They are an attempt to glean important life lessons from successful and inspiring men. Today, we’re going to do something a little different. We’re going to look at a man who was a paragon of unmanliness. The hope is that we can learn from his mistakes and not repeat them ourselves.

This first profile in unmanliness takes a look at traveling salesman, Willy Loman from Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman. Death of a Salesman explores the world of post-war America and the effect that America’s new found prosperity had on men. During the 1950s, men began to feel pressured to not just provide for their family but to also give them the luxuries that society was coming to believe every household was entitled to. Every family deserved a house with a picket fence, a new car in the garage, and all the newest appliances to make life easier. Advertisers pitched the idea that the American dream was in reach of every man. Yet the reality then, as it is now, is that strenuously reaching to keep up with the Joneses can stretch a family perilously thin. Unfortunately, Willy Loman bought into the idea and he let it destroy him and his family. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to provide nice things for your family; Willy just went about it all wrong. Here are a few lessons we can take from Willy on how not to be man.

Success doesn’t come from just luck, popularity, or personality. All throughout the Death of a Salesman, Loman tells his two sons, Biff and Happy, that the key to success in life is to be “well liked” and that all you need is “a smile and a shoeshine.” According to Willy, if you can become popular and get people to like you, you’ll have it made in life. The other part of Willy’s success equation was dumb luck; he thought men just stumbled into success the way his brother apparently came into his diamond fortune in Africa. But this philosophy simply sets Willy and his sons up for failure. Good luck and being well liked will only get you so far in life. The true lynchpin of success is tireless ambition and hard work. Neither Willy nor his sons ever learn this, and they are consequently failures at the game of life. Don’t be superficial like Willy; put you shoulder to the wheel.

Luxuries aren’t worth taking on debt. Willy wanted to give his family the best in life. He wanted his wife to have a refrigerator, a vacuum cleaner, and a car. There’s nothing wrong with such a desire. The problem is that Willy took on massive amounts of debt to buy these things. His debt load was so crushing that he decided to kill himself so his family could have the insurance policy to pay for it all. Avoid debt like the plague. Sure, some debt is necessary in the form of a mortgage or student loans. But having the latest gizmo is not worth the financial and emotional stress that comes with consumer debt. A man should seek to be independent and self-reliant. Debt will only get in the way of that goal.

Don’t live in the past. As the play progresses, Willy begins to retreat more and more into the past. He daydreams about a happier time when his sons loved him and he was a success at work. As he mulls over the past, Loman tries to figure out how things went wrong. Usually he pegs not being “well liked” as the root of his current troubles. Willy is like that former jock who has done absolutely nothing with his life since his glory days on the high school gridiron. Their best days are always behind them. Living in the past won’t get you anywhere. We should always learn from it, but our focus should be on the present and future.

Stay faithful to your wife. During Willy’s sales trips to Boston, Willy begins to have an affair with a character known only as “The Woman.” His son Biff goes to visit Willy in Boston and catches his father in his adultery. In one of the most powerful scenes, Biff confronts Willy about buying The Woman new stockings instead of buying them for his wife. To Biff, the idea that Willy would treat some stranger better than his poor family back at home is the ultimate betrayal. After Biff’s encounter with his father and his harem, Biff loses all interest in school and fails math, thus setting him up for failure down the road. Adultery is an ugly, ugly thing. It can destroy your family. A manly man is faithful to his wife and devoted to his family. Do all you can to affair proof your marriage.

Running from your problems won’t solve them. Ultimately, it is Willy Loman’s denial of reality that leads to his downfall. He makes his sons lie to him so he doesn’t have to face the truth. And in the end, Willy chooses to escape from reality altogether by killing himself. He figures that the only way he can be of any worth to his family is if he dies, and they get the insurance policy. Instead of facing his problems, he runs from them. Sure, his death allows his wife to pay off the mortgage, and she says that her family is free. Willy does become sort of a sacrificial lamb for his family. But he has forever robbed his wife of a husband and his sons of a father. He could have solved these problems without killing himself if he had confronted them head on. Don’t shirk the responsibilities of your decisions, no matter how serious the consequences. Be a man of honor and confront your problems directly.

Note: If you haven’t read or seen Death of a Salesman, check it out. Very good. The film adaptation starring Dustin Hoffman and John Malkovich is wonderful.

Download Your Free Guide to Being a Gentleman in 2008.

Check Out These Related Posts:

• Lessons In Manliness From Gladiator
• The All-Time Best (And Worst) TV Dads
• Lessons in Manliness: The Childhood of Theodore Roosevelt
• The Warrior’s Guide to True Manliness
• Write A Love Letter Like A Soldier

Tonights Video: Working Cats

Not really a video, but animation from an email:

Phase 1


You are listening to jazz -- Your first day at work is great. Your coworkers are wonderful, your cubicle is cute, and your boss is the best!


Phase 2

You are listening to pop music -- After a while you are so busy that you are not sure if you're coming or going anymore.


Phase 3

You are listening to heavy metal -- This is what you feel like at month end.


Phase 4

You are listening to hip hop -- You become bloated due to stress, feel sluggish and suffer from constipation. Your coworkers are too cheerful for your liking and the walls of your cubicle are closing in. You have started thinking 'WHATEVER' about your boss.


Phase 5

You are listening to GANGSTA RAP -- After more time passes, your eyes start to twitch, you forget what a 'good hair day' feels like as you just fall out of bed and load up on caffeine.


Phase 6

You are listening to the voices in your head -- You have build a makeshift door on your cubicle to keep people out, You have a dartboard with your bosses picture on it in your cube, You wonder why you are even here in the first place.

Drunk Emailing Solution

Wow, another reason to use G-mail!

Mail Goggles: A breathalyzer test for your Gmail

By Jacqui Cheng | Published: October 07, 2008 - 10:33AM CT

How many times have you stumbled home after a long night out with friends, only to plop down in front of the computer and start sending e-mails that you would wake up regretting the next day? OK, maybe some of our older readers in the crowd have never moved beyond "drunk dialing," but many of us are probably more familiar with the embarrassing phenomenon, a technological evolution of the drunk dial. Thanks to a new project out of Google Labs, however, you can at least stop yourself from sending "impaired" e-mails during certain hours.

Related Stories

• Hands on: Gmail Labs adds alpha features to beta product
• Germany to Google: g-osh, g-et over G-mail trademark already
• Gmail users report vanishing e-mail

Called "Mail Goggles," the Gmail add-on makes sending e-mail from Gmail more difficult during certain times that you can set manually (while sober, that is). How does it do this? If you have Mail Goggles installed—which you can do by going to the "Labs" tab under your Gmail settings and turning them on—it will force you to answer a series of math questions before sending out any new messages.

Not only can you adjust the days and hours yourself under your General Gmail settings, you can also adjust the math difficulty.

If you get any of the questions wrong, Mail Goggles will say, "Water and bed for you. Or try again." Of course, if you set the math settings too high, you may have a tough time solving some of those problems in under 60 seconds, even when sober (the ones pictured above are from a math level of 3). Then again, if you're sober, you could just turn Mail Goggles off and hit send on that impassioned letter to your ex-boyfriend/girlfriend or that flame to your boss.

Now, if only I could get something like this for text messaging on my iPhone on Friday and Saturday nights.

Further reading:

• New in Labs: Stop sending mail you later regret

Time Managment

This blog usually gets 2 updates a day. My other main blog, Collective Wisdom gets between 3 and 7 updates a day. How?

Working ahead. Planning ahead. Scheduling work and scheduling free time. It's not as tight as it sounds.

One of the ways I am able to have so many updates is that I use and promote other peoples materials.

There is also a Marketing Blog that is entirely my own thoughts along with a picture blog, and political themed blog, links are somewhere on this page if you care.

What I am about to share with you came in my email and would normally appear on the Collective Wisdom blog, but the content is needed by a lot of us that are trying to do more than ever in less time.

The Marketing Minute

Unless the building is on fire...stay OUT!

Posted: 29 Sep 2008 09:48 PM CDT

I know, as an agency owner, writer, speaker and active community volunteer (not to mention dad et al) there are some days when I literally run from meeting to meeting, trying to squeeze in phone calls in between meetings. And then I wonder...when will I get all the work done that these meetings generated? Those are frustrating days. But, to be fair, I do it to myself.

Sometimes I have to give myself a reprieve. So I cone myself.

Coning is something we invented at McLellan Marketing Group because all of us need some "quiet time" now and then. Every employee at MMG has a traffic cone in their office. When that cone is placed in their doorway, it means, "unless the building is on fire, do not disturb me."

I coned myself for about 90 minutes yesterday. The week had been frantic and I was riding very close to several deadlines. I got more done in those 90 minutes than I had all week. And best of all....I felt great. I felt calm, I felt successful. I felt like I was back in control. Here are some of my secrets to successful coning.

• Have a commonly understood signal (like the cone) that everyone in your office will honor.
• Set the example by NEVER interrupting a coned person.
• Turn your cell phone, regular phone et al ringers off.
• Do not check e-mail, blog feeds or any other distraction during your coned time.
• Do not do it for more than 90 minutes (its very frustrating to be on the other side of the cone and need to talk to someone who's been coned for 3 hours.)
• Make it a habit. Do it at least 3 times a week. Even for 30 minutes a time

Of course, it does not have to be a cone. Get creative. As you can see, I have added a skull to my own cone...just to reinforce the gravity of circumstance that one would experience if they broke the code of the cone.

It's hard to keep those marketing juices flowing if you are feeling bogged down. Find a way to get yourself some quiet time. You'll be surprised at how quickly you get re-fueled.

(And yes, I have a carpet with a little road on it for match box cars in my office. Another post for another time!)

How do you carve time out for yourself? How do you get thinking time, writing time?

Related articles by Zemanta

• The Myth Of Multi-Tasking, Ctd
• How to Get Back to Organized [Back To Work]
• The Fab Five of Time & Life Management
• Bad Habits: 8 Ways Freelancers Disrespect Their Own Time

Tonights Video: British TV Ad

If you though we went too far is the USA, check this out:


Find more videos like this on AdGabber

Nice Guys

Good advice:

The Art of Manliness

Nice Guys Don’t Have to Finish Last

Posted: 28 Sep 2008 11:26 PM CDT

Image from KeelyE

Oftentimes, when a man sees yet another bombshell on the arm of a dude who from all appearances is a complete d-bag, he is compelled to shake his fist at the sky and wonder if there is any justice in the world. “What does she see in him?” he asks in exasperation.

The poser of this question is often a self-proclaimed “nice guy” who doesn’t understand why men of his breed so often seem to finish last while the moronic tools of the world get the girl. To him it seems that his niceness is at the root of the problem, somehow repelling women who inexplicably prefer to date jerks. But the problem is not that this man is a nice guy, but that he’s allowed niceness to travel down the slippery slope into weinerdom.

Too many men use their niceness as a cover for the fact that they’re in fact insecure. It’s this lack of confidence and swagger that kills their chances with the ladies, not their well-mannered ways. Men often set up a false dichotomy. You can either be an arrogant jack ass or a demure nice guy. But there is a middle a ground, the combination women are truly looking for: the extremely confident gentlemen.

Diagnosing the problem

While men and women are outwardly quite civilized these days, imprinted on their genes are thousands of years of evolutionary experience, hard wiring from our nomadic hunter/gatherer days. Such wiring leads our genders to prefer certain things in the other. Men seek out young, big breasted, wide hipped women not simply because they’re shallow, but because a man’s inner caveman looks to these characteristics as signs that a woman can produce numerous and healthy progeny. And women look to big, strong, confident men because somewhere deep inside they seek the protection and security those characteristic once provided in primitive society.

So where does that leave the scrawny guy? Banging his head against the cave wall? Must he labor to become a beefcake to attract the ladies? For him, happily not. The need to be physically strong, while still very desirable to many women, is definitely not the deal-breaker it was for our ancient ancestors. Yet the female desire for strength has not dissipated; instead, it has largely shifted to a man’s inner appeal. You don’t have to be a man gorilla to win a woman’s heart, but you do have to be one supremely confident dude. And fortunately, this is within the reach of any man.

Become the Supremely Confident Gentleman

Be a leader and a decision maker-not a push-over. Yes, couples are equal partners in our modern society. Yes, men should absolutely respect a woman’s viewpoint and a couple should strive to make decisions together. But for a lot of men, female empowerment means shirking responsibility and decision making all together. A man doesn’t want to seem like a sexist pig, so he goes to the other extreme and constantly defers everything to his girlfriend. No matter how liberated she is, no woman wants to wear the pants all the time. She doesn’t want to be the one who takes care of every single thing. She wants you to take charge sometimes. The reason women sometimes go for total jerks is that they’re usually take charge kind of guys.

Be ambitious. Primitive women wanted to land the tribe’s alpha male, as these men were more likely to be the best providers for their young. You may no longer need to prove to your lady that you can spear a wooly mammoth, but you still need to show her that you’re an alpha male, or at least you’re working towards that goal. If you’re an insurance salesman, be a top notch salesman. If you’re a corporate guy, show her that you’re working your way up to the corner office.

Some men think women are vain and are simply interested in a man’s prestige because it translates into more money coming in. But the heart of this attraction is not the number of shoes she can buy, but the feeling of security a nice salary can bring. Every woman, at some level, wants to feel taken care of.

Have a cool man skill or hobby. Men often have a single-minded fixation on a hobby or interest, and these man passions are really attractive and intriguing to women. I’m not talking about being passionate about collecting Star Wars action figures. I’m talking about being really into music and being able to turn your girlfriend on to new bands and burn her CD’s you think she’ll love. I’m talking about woodworking, and showing your lady your workshop where you make oak tables and chairs.

Whether it’s being really into playing a sport, being able to cook well, being passionate about your volunteer work, or being an excellent photographer, all of these things are attractive to women. Not only does it make you seem interesting and unique, women also like bragging to their friends about it. “Ted made me that chair you’re sitting in.” “Wait until you try Brad’s eggplant parmesan.” Remember, women want to feel like they’ve found a good catch, a man respected by men and envied by women. Napoleon Dynamite was right. Girls like guys with skills.

Be supremely confident about your relationship. A woman wants to feel like you could have had your pick of any woman in the room and you chose her. Thus, she doesn’t want to feel like you are awestruck by the fact that she actually went out with you. Never act dumbfounded when she says yes to things like a second date or a kiss. Don’t ramble on about how women like her never say yes to you, and how you weren’t going to even approach her because you thought she was out of your league. Don’t constantly express your worry that you might lose her.

It’s okay to tell her what a really lucky guy you are and that you feel blessed that you met her, for this simply signals that you are grateful that your paths crossed, not that you’re freakin’ amazed she was interested in you. Always act like you knew she would say yes and you knew she would fall in love with you from the beginning. There’s was never any doubt in your mind. Because you’re the man, and why wouldn’t she fall for you? It’s not about being arrogant, it’s about being completely confident in what you have to offer a woman.

Be supremely confident and comfortable in your own skin. A supreme confidence in yourself can cover a multitude of sins. Even if you haven’t attained alpha male status anywhere in your life, simply being secure with yourself will endear you to women. If you’re a little homely, never let on that you think so. If you’re a little quirky, act like those quirks make you the coolest man in the room. Witness the curious case of the strange and unattractive starving artist. He doesn’t have the looks, the brawn, or the money. But women flock to him because a) he’s got a cool man skill, b) he’s mysterious, and c) he’s completely comfortable in his skin and couldn’t give a rat’s behind what people think about him. Radiate the fact that you are wholly and completely your own man. Being aloof from criticism or insecurities is an essential and attractive man quality to cultivate.

Any other suggestions? Don’t agree? Drop a line in the comment box.

Hat tip to Pete’s Wife for inspiring some of the ideas in this post. For more advice on how to attract the ladies, check out her post in the forum.

Download Your Free Guide to Being a Gentleman in 2008.

Check Out These Related Posts:

• Be a Modern Knight: Protecting Your Lady in the 21st Century
• Cracking The Valentine’s Day Code
• The History and Nature of Man Friendships
• Stop Hanging Out With Women and Start Dating Them
• The Manival #10: Independence Day Edition

Tonights Video: Unconventional Political Ad

Here's one way to do it different:

Health Issues

Several Inspirations for what you are about to read including my wife, Boston Legal, one of my clients and a few co-workers.

Along with being The Simplified Life Coach, my wife is also a home care nurse with lot's of specialty training. Now you have access to one of the reference tool she uses, the Physician's Desk Reference, the "Doctor's Bible" is available on line. (Hat tip to Kim Komando for featuring this as her Cool Site of the day today.) Here's the link: http://www.pdrhealth.com.

Monday night on Boston Legal on ABC, Denny Crane almost killed himself by overdosing on a daily regiment of 42 pills that he was able to obtain online. Now, despite the availability of drugs and the millions spent on marketing these pills, you need someone to watch over and coordinate the meds you take including over the counter remedies. Make sure your doctor(s) are fully informed.

Next on Boston Legal: Guardians and Gatekeepers

Finally, there is one bit of advice that my wife tells me repeatedly and that involves spreading of germs. Wash your hands. Don't grab doorhandles where everyone else grabs them. Do not spray your germs when you sneeze. I have had co-workers and clients pass illnesses around and at one time 1/3 of our office was out.

Tonights Video: First Wedding Dance!

Not your typical "First Dance"


Evolution Of The Wedding Dance - Watch more free videos

Name This Weeks Local Website

This weeks website is not fun and games. It is the personal site of a friend's wife and her progress as she battles cancer.

This woman and her husband have two daughters, age 10 and 1. I have known them for several years and I urge you to click here and see the site, read, and pray for the family. And pass this site on to others too.