Since I never use cash, it does me no good to have it. If cash is on me it gets wasted on something like:

• vending machine candy
• gas station food
• girl scout cookies
• etc etc etc

About three years ago, I emptied a huge “Orange Juice” bottle. The orange juice bottle sits in my closet and every day when I get I home, I dump any spare change into it. Now, when I say spare change, I’m talking about any literal change or dollar bills that happen to be laying in my pockets. Sometime I drop ten-dollar and twenty-dollar bills, but typically its just singles or change.

Last month I decided to empty it and take it to the bank. I dropped the change in an automatic change-counter and deposited the bills. It worked out to almost $300.00. Now that isn’t a ton of money but it was a nice surprise. I didn’t work for it; It’s like reaching into your pocket and finding $300.00.

You Should Try It
This is an easy task. Just go out and purchase a nice piggy bank. If you don’t want to purchase a piggy bank, do like I did and empty a big orange juice (Sunny Delight) bottle. I know a lot of people like to have cash on hand but the truth is: you don’t NEED cash. It is almost an unspoken rule that businesses must accept credit cards (or debit cards) and even if they don’t, you always have an ATM near by.

Last night the SEC put a ban on short-selling 799 financial companies. Read the Official Release Here (PDF).

From my understanding, here is the SEC’s reasoning behind banning short-sells:

Due to a horrible real estate market more people are foreclosing on their homes. This has had a tremendous ripple effect. We have seen financial stocks lose a ton of value.

As traders noticed the uncertainty in the financial markets they freaked out. When people freak out, panic rules the stock market, not fundamentals. Short sellers take advantage of the sell off by selling stocks they don’t own. This causes the stock to lose even more value.

To put a halt on this, the SEC ruled to freeze short selling on 799 companies. This freeze will allow the market to stabilize and THEN they’ll turn short-selling back on.

Although the move by the SEC to ban short-selling has had a positive effect on the market (up over 1,000 points in 2 days), it also comes with some horrible side affects or at least some BIG questions.

1. Short-sellers make money by realizing that stocks are over-valued. If they aren’t in the game, the stocks could be WAY over-valued. What is the real value?
2. When you re-initiate short-selling, there is no guarantee that the market has stabilized. What happens when you allow short-selling?

My Predictions

1. Although short-selling is due to start again on October 2, 2008, it will be extended due to the political effects of a down market (It looks bad on the president if the economy is in the gutter).
2. Stocks will rally and continue to rally until short-selling is allowed again.
3. When short-selling is turned back on… we will see a major sell-off.

Due to surge in stock prices, options have become a very popular investment strategy. View my “Options” post here.

Personally, I can’t wait for short-selling to be allowed again… I’m going to be short a ton that day… I’ve already got my shopping list ready.

For you Wordpress and Feedburner users:

I’ve been a long time fan of Feedburner. But one day, my feed magically broke. I recreated the feed (http://feeds.feedburner.com/RjMartinosWebLog) and pointed it (rjmartino.com/wp-rss2.php).

Then, as I started creating new posts, I realized that nothing was being sent to feedburner. When I viewed my feedburner page, it was BLANK. When I logged into Blogline, my feed was blank.

I checked the Original Feed Validity. It checked out just fine…

I checked the FeedBurner Feed Validity. It checked out just fine.

I even re-synced… nothing.

I searched forums and found a guy named Rajasekharan at http://www.mtherald.com. Rajasekharan had fixed the same problem but he didn’t list the fix. So I visited his medical transcription blog, found his email address, and shot him an email.

He was really helpful. He explained that when he setup his feedburner feed, he gave the URL of his original feed (ie http://mtherald.com/blog/wp-rss.php). As he later found out, that was the blunder.

After changing the RSS feed to the correct URL, http://mtherald.com/?feed=rss2. It was solved.

I did the exact same thing. I set feedburner to look at http://wwww.rjmartino.com/wp-rss.php. The feed should have been set to http://www.rjmartino.com/?feed=rss2.

After changing the setting, I “pinged” the page using http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/ping, and a few minutes later, my feeds showed back up!

What is your favorite Dilbert strip?

To view Dilbert Cartoons, go to http://www.dilbert.com.

For you web developers:

Finally… with all my extra time during the summer, I’ve spent more time coding.

I’ve always had a “I can do it better” coding style. I can think of hundreds of times that I’ve seen a piece of software (or code) and said, “I can do it better.” Then I go out and sure enough, I do it better

The problem is that I spend hundreds of hours doing it.

Just recently I needed a form validator. The form validator simply needed to verify that two different passwords were typed correctly. Although server-side data validation is required, its ugly. Server-side validation requires a user to hit a submit button and wait for a response. I wanted something that was real-time… So, I reminded myself how much time I waste trying to recreate the wheel and I set out to find a solution that was client side (preferably JavaScript).

And I found it… I’ve started using LiveValidation.

LiveValidation is a javascript library that provides form validation on the fly. It’s open source and completely free. You can find a ton of examples on their site. And if you can’t find an example, LiveValidation has well-written documentation (something that is hard to come by these days).

Good Luck

As some of you know, I’ve been going to law school at UALR for the past year. It’s a part-time program which fits nicely into my work schedule but has cut deeply into my time availability.

During the Semester
During the semester, a typical day starts around 8am and as soon as I get off of work, I’m in class by 5:30pm. I sit in a class room until 9pm. I then get home, reply to emails, return urgent calls, prepare for the next day’s work, and then start reading for the next day of classes.

When I sit in class, I think about all of the thing that I COULD accomplish if I were not in school.

Needless to say, when I got out of school for the summer, I couldn’t wait to get out and see how much I could accomplish. As the summer began, I thought that I needed to work long hours to “get caught up.”

Now, in mid-August, I’m still working late hours and probably getting just as much done as I did while I was in class.

I’ve come to the realization that I lack time management skills. Actually, I don’t lack time management skills… they just go away if they’re not required. My formula looks something like this:

The more stuff I have to do and the less time I have to do those tasks… the better my time management skills. This follows my theory of:

“If you push yourself to accomplish more than you think you can handle… you’ll surprise yourself with how much you can actually accomplish.”

So, a few things that I’ve learned while trying to fix my time management skills.

1. Do not work with outlook open. Set time aside to respond to emails.
2. You do not have to answer every phone call. Set time aside to respond to phone calls.
3. Prioritize your task list. Not every task is equally important. Hone in on tasks that are important.
4. Log Your time. To measure your time management, you must know where you are spending your time.
5. One task at a time. I’m the worst at trying to do three things at once. But time and time again, I’m reminded that making a list is a better solution.

I leave you with a book that was given to me by an ex-girlfriend that told me long ago that I had time management problems. Admission is the first step to solving the problem.

I’ve played with twitter for a while now and I am still trying to gather my thoughts on the product.

The Service
For those who don’t know, twitter is a web application that allows registered users to post what they are doing “right now.” They make updates pretty simple. You can update using their web site, text message 40404, and email.

You can follow other users as well. So, if I want to know what my friend Jeff Noble or Capillya is doing, I “follow” him. Once I follow someone, it text messages me an update of “what they are doing.”

The Usage
Twitter makes it easy to update what you are doing… allowing me text message what I am doing it great. In addition, there are some really nice apps that make updating really simple. For instance, Jott.com allows me to call a toll-free number and make twitter updates via voice calls.

The Review
A friend of mine (after discussing twitter), told me that it isn’t a viable service. He called it a “feature” not a product. His thought behind the statement is that this is something Facebook and most other social networking sites have built into their product.

I guess I sort of agree. My only argument is not the service itself. The twitter service is similar to Facebook status update. Facebook does allow you to update status and you can even receive mobile updates when someone updates their status (this is something I’ve had to literally show someone).

The argument is the way the service is used. Facebook users update their status as a statement of feeling while twitter users utilize updates as statements on what they are doing….

Typical Facebook updates look like “RJ Martino is bored” or “RJ Martino is lucky to have such a great friend”

Typical Twitter updates look like “RJ Martino is writing a review on twitter.com” or “RJ Martino is going to a court appearance”

This is hard to explain… but to sum it up, facebook updates tell followers how they are feeling… twitter updates tell you what people are actually doing, not what they’re feeling.

So, as a technical review, I don’t think twitter is much than Facebook. But after using it for some time, there is no doubt that they are used in two different ways.

It seems almost certain that twitter is a viable product by the number of users but I’ve stopped making predictions on product viability.

Powered by Jott

When Employee Empowerment Doesn’t Work
But, “employee empowerment” doesn’t always work. You don’t want to use this style when you’re working with people that don’t care about quality, their customer, or future. These people live for today, not the long term. They over promise and under deliver. They say they’ll be there and never show up. They promise you’ll love the work and you end up hating it. They swear they didn’t see the errors you point out. They make excuse after excuse. They make errors without any excuse at all. They promise to change and they don’t. You don’t want to work with these people but sometimes you have no choice.

When It Doesn’t Work
When I notice that empowerment isn’t working, I switch to what I call “Reward Management.” This is typical in some industries such as the construction industry. This is also typical when you’re working with sub-contractors. The basis is, you only get paid when the job is done and when the job is done right. This is the last leg for me. I’ll call it quits if they can’t get the job done, maintain a great quality, pickup the phone when I call, or they can’t get it done when they say they’re going to get it done.

That’s it. Those two things are my only management options. Sometimes, I get handcuffed to a bad worker. Sometimes, I get a guy who starts a project and they’re so deep in the project, its hard to get them off of it. From experience, its always worth getting them off of the project as soon as possible. Don’t give them a third and forth shot, just get rid of them.

Conclusion
Good people are the hardest things to come by. When you find them, treat them as good as you can and be prepared to treat them better than you treat yourself. Don’t double cross them because you’ll need them in the future. And get them on your team as soon as you can.

Bad people are a dime-a-dozen. Dump them as soon as you can. Don’t give them a third chance and don’t think they’ll change.