Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Monday, April 29, 2013
the new salesman
A young guy from Michigan moves to Florida and goes to a big "everything under one roof" department store looking for a job.
The Manager says, "Do you have any sales experience?" The kid says "Yeah. I was a vacuum salesman back in Michigan."
Well, the boss was unsure, but he liked the kid and figured he'd give him a shot, so he gave him the job.
"You start tomorrow. I'll come down after we close and see how you did."
His first day on the job was rough, but he got through it. After the store was locked up, the boss came down to the sales floor.
"How many customers bought something from you today?" The kid frowns and looks at the floor and mutters, "One". The boss says "Just one?!!? Our sales people average sales from 20 to 30 customers a day. That will have to change, and soon, if you'd like to continue your employment here. We have very strict standards for our sales force here in Florida . One sale a day might have been acceptable in Michigan, but you're not on the farm anymore, son."
The kid took his beating, but continued to look at his shoes, so the boss felt kinda bad for chewing him out on his first day. He asked (semi-sarcastically), "So, how much was your one sale for?"
The kid looks up at his boss and says "$101,237.65".
The boss, astonished, says, "$101,237.65?!? What the heck did you sell?"
The kid says, "Well, first, I sold him some new fish hooks. Then I sold him a new fishing rod to go with his new hooks. Then I asked him where he was going fishing and he said down the coast, so I told him he was going to need a boat, so we went down to the boat department and I sold him a twin engine Chris Craft. Then he said he didn't think his Honda Civic would pull it, so I took him down to the automotive department and sold him that 4x4 Expedition."
The boss said "A guy came in here to buy a fish hook and you sold him a boat and a TRUCK!?"
The kid said "No, the guy came in here to buy tampons for his wife,
and I said, 'Dude, your weekend's shot, you should go fishing.........'"
The Manager says, "Do you have any sales experience?" The kid says "Yeah. I was a vacuum salesman back in Michigan."
Well, the boss was unsure, but he liked the kid and figured he'd give him a shot, so he gave him the job.
"You start tomorrow. I'll come down after we close and see how you did."
His first day on the job was rough, but he got through it. After the store was locked up, the boss came down to the sales floor.
"How many customers bought something from you today?" The kid frowns and looks at the floor and mutters, "One". The boss says "Just one?!!? Our sales people average sales from 20 to 30 customers a day. That will have to change, and soon, if you'd like to continue your employment here. We have very strict standards for our sales force here in Florida . One sale a day might have been acceptable in Michigan, but you're not on the farm anymore, son."
The kid took his beating, but continued to look at his shoes, so the boss felt kinda bad for chewing him out on his first day. He asked (semi-sarcastically), "So, how much was your one sale for?"
The kid looks up at his boss and says "$101,237.65".
The boss, astonished, says, "$101,237.65?!? What the heck did you sell?"
The kid says, "Well, first, I sold him some new fish hooks. Then I sold him a new fishing rod to go with his new hooks. Then I asked him where he was going fishing and he said down the coast, so I told him he was going to need a boat, so we went down to the boat department and I sold him a twin engine Chris Craft. Then he said he didn't think his Honda Civic would pull it, so I took him down to the automotive department and sold him that 4x4 Expedition."
The boss said "A guy came in here to buy a fish hook and you sold him a boat and a TRUCK!?"
The kid said "No, the guy came in here to buy tampons for his wife,
and I said, 'Dude, your weekend's shot, you should go fishing.........'"
Sunday, April 28, 2013
SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT
KEEP PASSING THIS AROUND UNTIL EVERY ONE HAS HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO READ IT…
THIS IS SURE SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT!!!!
THE ONLY THING WRONG WITH THE GOVERNMENT’S CALCULATION OF AVAILABLE SOCIAL SECURITY IS THEY FORGOT TO FIGURE IN THE PEOPLE WHO DIED BEFORE THEY EVER COLLECTED A SOCIAL SECURITY CHECK!!!
WHERE DID THAT MONEY GO?
Remember, not only did you and I contribute to Social Security but your employer did, too.
It totaled 15% of your income before taxes.
If you averaged only $30K over your working life, that’s close to $220,500.
Read that again.
Did you see where the Government paid in one single penny?
We are talking about the money you and your employer put in a Government bank to insure you and I that we would have a retirement check from the money we put in, not the Government.
Now they are calling the money we put in an entitlement when we reach the age to take it back.
If you calculate the future invested value of $4,500 per year (yours & your employer’s contribution) at a simple 5% interest (less than what the Government pays on the money that it borrows), after 49 years of working you’d have $892,919.98.
If you took out only 3% per year, you’d receive $26,787.60 per year and it would last better than 30 years (until you’re 95 if you retire at age 65) and that’s with no interest paid on that final amount on deposit!
If you bought an annuity and it paid 4% per year, you’d have a lifetime income of $2,976.40 per month.
Another thing…. What about people who have deceased husbands who died in their 50′s or early 60's before one cent of their social security could be drawn. If the widow draws her own Social Security benefit, the deceased's spouse's S.S. money will never have one cent drawn from what they paid into S.S. all their lives.
THE FOLKS IN WASHINGTON HAVE PULLED OFF A BIGGER PONZI SCHEME
THAN BERNIE MADOFF EVER DID.
Entitlement my foot, I paid cash for my social security insurance!
Just because they borrowed the money for other government spending,
doesn’t make my benefits some kind of charity or handout!!
Remember Congressional benefits? — free healthcare, outrageous retirement packages, 67 paid holidays, three weeks paid vacation, unlimited paid sick days.
Now that’s welfare, and they have the nerve to call my social security retirement payments entitlements?
We’re “broke” and we can’t help our own Seniors, Veterans, Orphans, or Homeless.
Yet in the last few months we have provided aid to Haiti, Chile and Turkey.
And now Pakistan……home of bin Laden.
Literally, BILLIONS of DOLLARS!!!
And they can’t help our own citizens in New York and New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy!
They call Social Security and Medicare an entitlement even though most of us have been paying for it all our working lives, and now, when it’s time for us to collect, the government is running out of money.
Why did the government borrow from it in the first place?
It was supposed to be in a locked box, not part of the general fund.
Sad isn’t it.
THIS IS SURE SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT!!!!
THE ONLY THING WRONG WITH THE GOVERNMENT’S CALCULATION OF AVAILABLE SOCIAL SECURITY IS THEY FORGOT TO FIGURE IN THE PEOPLE WHO DIED BEFORE THEY EVER COLLECTED A SOCIAL SECURITY CHECK!!!
WHERE DID THAT MONEY GO?
Remember, not only did you and I contribute to Social Security but your employer did, too.
It totaled 15% of your income before taxes.
If you averaged only $30K over your working life, that’s close to $220,500.
Read that again.
Did you see where the Government paid in one single penny?
We are talking about the money you and your employer put in a Government bank to insure you and I that we would have a retirement check from the money we put in, not the Government.
Now they are calling the money we put in an entitlement when we reach the age to take it back.
If you calculate the future invested value of $4,500 per year (yours & your employer’s contribution) at a simple 5% interest (less than what the Government pays on the money that it borrows), after 49 years of working you’d have $892,919.98.
If you took out only 3% per year, you’d receive $26,787.60 per year and it would last better than 30 years (until you’re 95 if you retire at age 65) and that’s with no interest paid on that final amount on deposit!
If you bought an annuity and it paid 4% per year, you’d have a lifetime income of $2,976.40 per month.
Another thing…. What about people who have deceased husbands who died in their 50′s or early 60's before one cent of their social security could be drawn. If the widow draws her own Social Security benefit, the deceased's spouse's S.S. money will never have one cent drawn from what they paid into S.S. all their lives.
THE FOLKS IN WASHINGTON HAVE PULLED OFF A BIGGER PONZI SCHEME
THAN BERNIE MADOFF EVER DID.
Entitlement my foot, I paid cash for my social security insurance!
Just because they borrowed the money for other government spending,
doesn’t make my benefits some kind of charity or handout!!
Remember Congressional benefits? — free healthcare, outrageous retirement packages, 67 paid holidays, three weeks paid vacation, unlimited paid sick days.
Now that’s welfare, and they have the nerve to call my social security retirement payments entitlements?
We’re “broke” and we can’t help our own Seniors, Veterans, Orphans, or Homeless.
Yet in the last few months we have provided aid to Haiti, Chile and Turkey.
And now Pakistan……home of bin Laden.
Literally, BILLIONS of DOLLARS!!!
And they can’t help our own citizens in New York and New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy!
They call Social Security and Medicare an entitlement even though most of us have been paying for it all our working lives, and now, when it’s time for us to collect, the government is running out of money.
Why did the government borrow from it in the first place?
It was supposed to be in a locked box, not part of the general fund.
Sad isn’t it.
Saturday, April 27, 2013
Friday, April 26, 2013
A man, his bike, and his chick.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
'Human Computer' Dead at 83
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SHAKUNTALA DEVI WAS A NUMBERS WHIZ |
Her colorful story begins at age three, when her lion-tamer father discovered her prodigious talent for memorizing numbers. Major public performances began at the age of six, taking her from what she once described to the Times of India as the semi-slums to locations around the world. Among her feats, as also recounted by the New York Times and the Telegraph:
1977: She extracted the 23rd root of a 201-digit number in 50 seconds; a Univac computer tasked with performing the same calculation did so in 62 seconds.
1980: She entered the Guinness Book of World Records after multiplying two 13-digit numbers—and voicing the 26-digit solution—in a total of 28 seconds.
She famously gave answers (once on the BBC, another time at the University of Rome) that were different from the ones the interviewers had; she was correct on both occasions.
An American researcher who studied her abilities asked her to find the the cube root of 61,629,875, and the seventh root of 170,859,375. She did so before his wife was even able to start a stopwatch.
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
GRANDMAS ARE SMART
GRANDMAS ARE SMART
I was out walking with my Grandson.
He picked up something off of the ground
I was out walking with my Grandson.
He picked up something off of the ground
and started to put it in his mouth.
I took the item away from him and
I took the item away from him and
I asked him not to do that.
"Why?" my Grandson asked.
"Because it's been on the ground;
"Why?" my Grandson asked.
"Because it's been on the ground;
you don't know where it's been, it's dirty,
and probably has germs, and sometimes germs
and probably has germs, and sometimes germs
make little boys sick and not feel good"
I replied.
At this point, my Grandson looked at me
I replied.
At this point, my Grandson looked at me
with total admiration and asked,
"Grandma, how do you know all this stuff??
"Grandma, how do you know all this stuff??
You are so smart."
I was thinking quickly and said to him,
"All Grandmas know stuff. It's on the Grandma Test.
You have to know it, or they don't let you be a Grandma."
We walked along in silence for 2 or 3 minutes,
but he was evidently pondering this new information.
"Oh...I get it! He beamed,
I was thinking quickly and said to him,
"All Grandmas know stuff. It's on the Grandma Test.
You have to know it, or they don't let you be a Grandma."
We walked along in silence for 2 or 3 minutes,
but he was evidently pondering this new information.
"Oh...I get it! He beamed,
So if you don't pass the test you have to be the Grandpa."
"Exactly," I replied with a big smile on my face.
When you're finished laughing,
"Exactly," I replied with a big smile on my face.
When you're finished laughing,
send this to another Grandma!
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Monday, April 22, 2013
True Friends - Live, Laugh, Love
Look carefully in each picture for the cat as it makes its way
down from the roof to the dog.
Then, check the explanation at the end.
The story behind this picture is this:
Every day - at the same time - she waits for him.
Sometimes she barks to call him.
He comes; they rub and greet each other
and they go for a walk. They have done
this for 5 years and no, they don’t belong to the
same owners.
The owners didn’t know until
neighbors seeing them together so frequently
commented to the cat’s owner, who then followed
the dog home which was a distance away - not
in a house close or next door. How it started no
one knows.
Wouldn’t it be great to have friends like this - always.
There, no words needed, they just intuitively
recognize the value of each other in their lives
and act accordingly.
Live, Laugh, Love
Life is not the way it's supposed to be. It's the way it is.
The way we cope with it is what makes the difference.
down from the roof to the dog.
Then, check the explanation at the end.
The story behind this picture is this:
Every day - at the same time - she waits for him.
Sometimes she barks to call him.
He comes; they rub and greet each other
and they go for a walk. They have done
this for 5 years and no, they don’t belong to the
same owners.
The owners didn’t know until
neighbors seeing them together so frequently
commented to the cat’s owner, who then followed
the dog home which was a distance away - not
in a house close or next door. How it started no
one knows.
Wouldn’t it be great to have friends like this - always.
There, no words needed, they just intuitively
recognize the value of each other in their lives
and act accordingly.
Live, Laugh, Love
Life is not the way it's supposed to be. It's the way it is.
The way we cope with it is what makes the difference.
Sunday, April 21, 2013
Gratitude
![]() |
If you never learn the language of gratitude, you will never be on speaking terms with happiness. |
Saturday, April 20, 2013
Friday, April 19, 2013
How a brilliant starlet created a worldwide technology boom...
It all started with a skin flick...In 1933, a beautiful, young Austrian
woman took off her clothes for a movie director. She ran through the woods... naked. She swam in a lake... naked. Pushing well beyond the social norms of the
period, the movie also featured a simulated orgasm. To make the scene "vivid," the
director reportedly stabbed the actress with a sharp pin just off screen.
The most popular movie in 1933 was King Kong. But everyone in Hollywood was talking about
that scandalous movie with the gorgeous, young Austrian woman. Louis B. Mayer,
of the giant studio MGM, said she was the most beautiful woman in the
world. The film was banned practically
everywhere... which of course made it even more popular and valuable. Mussolini
reportedly refused to sell his copy at any price.
The star of the film, called Ecstasy, was Hedwig Kiesler. She said the secret of her beauty was
"to stand there and look stupid."
In reality, Kiesler was anything but stupid. She was a genius. She'd grown up as the only child of a
prominent Jewish banker. She was a math
prodigy. She excelled at science. As she grew older, she became ruthless, using
all the power her body and mind gave her. Between the sexual roles she played,
her tremendous beauty, and the power of her intellect, Kiesler would confound
the men in her life... including her six
husbands, two of the most ruthless dictators of the 20th century, and one of
the greatest movie producers in history.
Her beauty made her rich for a time.
She is said to have made - and spent - $30 million in her life. But her greatest accomplishment resulted from
her intellect... And her invention continues to shape the world we live in
today. You see, this young Austrian starlet would take one of the most valuable
technologies ever developed right from under Hitler's nose.
After fleeing to America, she not only became a major Hollywood star... her
name sits on one of the most important patents ever granted by the U.S. Patent
Office. Today, when you use your cell phone or, over the next few years, as you
experience super-fast wireless Internet access (via something called
"long-term evolution" or "LTE" technology), you'll be using
an extension of the technology a 20- year-old actress first conceived while
sitting at dinner with Hitler.
At the time she made Ecstasy, Kiesler was married to one of the richest men
in Austria. Friedrich Mandl was
Austria's leading arms maker. His firm would become a key supplier to the
Nazis. Mandl used his beautiful young wife as a showpiece at important business
dinners with representatives of the Austrian, Italian, and German fascist
forces. One of Mandl's favorite topics
at these gatherings - which included meals with Hitler and Mussolini - was the
technology surrounding radio-controlled missiles and torpedoes. Wireless
weapons offered far greater ranges than the wire-controlled alternatives that
prevailed at the time. Kiesler sat
through these dinners "looking stupid," while absorbing everything
she heard...As a Jew, Kiesler hated the Nazis.
She abhorred her husband's business ambitions. Mandl responded to his willful wife by
imprisoning her in his castle, Schloss Schwarzenau. In 1937, she managed to escape. She drugged
her maid, snuck out of the castle wearing the maid's clothes, and sold her
jewelry to finance a trip to London. (She got out just in time. In 1938, Germany annexed Austria. The Nazis seized Mandl's factory. He was half Jewish. Mandl fled to Brazil. Later, he became an advisor to Argentina's
iconic populist president, Juan Peron.)
In London, Kiesler arranged a meeting with Louis B. Mayer. She signed a long-term contract with him,
becoming one of MGM's biggest stars. She
appeared in more than 20 films. She was
a co-star to Clark Gable, Judy Garland, and even Bob Hope. Each of her first
seven MGM movies was a blockbuster.
But Kiesler cared far more about fighting the Nazis than about making
movies. At the height of her fame, in
1942, she developed a new kind of communications system, optimized for sending
coded messages that couldn't be "jammed." She was building a system that would allow
torpedoes and guided bombs to always reach their targets. She was building a system to kill Nazis. By the 1940s, both the Nazis and the Allied
forces were using the kind of single- frequency radio-controlled technology
Kiesler's ex-husband had been peddling.
The drawback of this technology was that the enemy could find the
appropriate frequency and "jam" or intercept the signal, thereby
interfering with the missile's intended path.
Kiesler's key innovation was to "change the channel." It was a way of encoding a message across a
broad area of the wireless spectrum. If
one part of the spectrum was jammed, the message would still get through on one
of the other frequencies being used. The
problem was, she could not figure out how to synchronize the frequency changes
on both the receiver and the transmitter.
To solve the problem, she turned to perhaps the world's first
techno-musician, George Antheil. Antheil
was an acquaintance of Kiesler who achieved some notoriety for creating
intricate musical compositions. He
synchronized his melodies across twelve player pianos, producing stereophonic
sounds no one had ever heard before.
Kiesler incorporated Antheil’s technology for synchronizing his player
pianos. Then, she was able to
synchronize the frequency changes between a weapon's receiver and its
transmitter. On August 11, 1942, U.S. Patent No. 2,292,387 was granted to
Antheil and "Hedy Kiesler Markey," which was Kiesler's married name
at the time.
Most of you won't recognize the name Kiesler. And no one would remember the name Hedy
Markey. But it's a fair bet than anyone
reading this newsletter of a certain age will remember one of the great
beauties of Hollywood's golden age - Hedy Lamarr. That's the name Louis B. Mayer gave to his
prize actress. That's the name his movie company made famous. Meanwhile, almost no one knows Hedwig Kiesler
- aka Hedy Lamarr - was one of the great pioneers of wireless
communications. Her technology was
developed by the U.S. Navy, which has used it ever since.
You're probably using Lamarr's technology, too. Her patent sits at the foundation of
"spread spectrum technology," which you use every day when you log on
to a wi- fi network or make calls with your Bluetooth-enabled phone. It lies at the heart of the massive
investments being made right now in so-called fourth-generation "LTE"
wireless technology. This next
generation of cell phones and cell towers will provide tremendous increases to
wireless network speed and quality, by spreading wireless signals across the
entire available spectrum. This kind of
encoding is only possible using the kind of frequency switching that Hedwig
Kiesler invented.----Naomi Ragan
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