Your greatest success and happiness in life
will be found when you use your natural abilities
to their fullest extent.

Happiness is not in having or being, it's in the doing
The essence of true wisdom is to know that rest is rust,
and that real life is activity, laughter and love.

You were created to conquer your environment,
to solve problems and to achieve goals.
You'll find no real satisfaction or happiness in life
without obstacles to conquer and goals to achieve.

Yes, there is true happiness.
It's found in doing a job well done, in achieving a worthy goal,
in putting your child to sleep and in writing the last line of your poem.

Your personal growth itself contains the seed of happiness.

Copyright 2008 www.yourdailymotivation.com
Reproduce freely but maintain Copyright notice.

Do you believe in fate?  Do you read your horoscope and say, "Hey!  Right on." or something to that effect? Do you carry a lucky charm or have a "favorite" outfit for a favorite activity you must wear? Perhaps you beieve in angels? 

I'm not superstitious. However, I do believe in serendipity.  Such was a meeting of J. Money and me.

When I wrote  "National Techmark, bibomedia and spam - What an Review!" I wasn't looking for anyone to respond to my post.  I was just doing what comes naturally to me.  I was trying to help others by writing about the incident.  J. Money wrote one of the comments.  This was the serendipity I mentioned.

I have visited his blog several times and found that it dovetails nicely with another project I'm working on.  More on that later. Right now, let me tell you about J. and his blog. 

 It was a little young when he made his comment but it has grown to become something to be envied.  Here is one of the new generation's rising stars.  I realize that this blogger has a lot to learn from this 20-something.  By his generation's description I'm an old fart. 

Let me tell you about J. and his blog.    It is "Budgets are Sexy".  I was impressed enough to list it in my blog roll.  J has a light, airy, personable style to his writing.  He's blog is easy to read, yet informative.  It is speaks to the heart of the thing that I try to accomplish; help people help themselves. 

Do you spend money?  Do you have money questions?  Do you want to save money, or get out of debt?  Do you think that money is evil or that greed is uncool?  Budgets are Sexy and J's collection of corresponding links will help set your mind straight.  

He has generously listed my "A Mind's Diet" in his blog roll.  I didn't ask him to do this but that goes back to that other project I have been working on.  I did put his up on mine.  That was something I do not do very lightly.  As you can observe I am very selective.  There were no strings attached to that action.  He and his blog is that good. 

Vist Budgets are Sexy today.  Right now!  Learn from Budgets are Sexy. Profit from Budgets are Sexy and thrive. It is your right and I dare to say, "You'll never look at money the same way again".

Patrick Lalande   

Administrative Professionals Week is April 20^th – 26^th. Administrative Professionals are Very Important People in every office and unfortunately often taken for granted while working hard keeping the office operating without a glitch.

During World War II many women “manned” offices as secretaries, clerks and other positions to fill spots left by men off fighting in the war. Originally started in 1952 as Professional Secretaries Week (renamed in 2000 as Administrative Professionals Week) to recognize secretaries for their workplace contributions. It was also meant to attract people to administrative/secretarial careers.

Show your appreciation by rewarding your client’s secretaries and (don‘t forget your own clerical staff) the entire week. Start with a treat they’ll love: a day at a spa, a gift certificate to their favorite book or other store, a gym membership or chocolate is always a good stand by. And a meal is always appreciated: breakfast, lunch or brunch. It’s not too late to make time to show you recognize a job well done.

What is your favorite appreciation gift to give your Administrative staff? Let me know what gets the best results.

Patrick Lalande on WordPress

Quality tap water was only a distant dream.  Water at my new house wasn't drinkable, even though I have a complete water system installed.  My mini-aussies (picture below) wouldn't even touch it.

The problems were numerous.  The well hadn't been used in over a year.  It was too salty because of the water softner.  It had a funny smell and it tasted most like dead, fish tank water. 

I'd never had to care for a water system before as I've always made use of municiple water and a filtered water jug.  That was enough until I moved.  Now, the entire household was drinking and cooking with bottled water because of the problems listed above.  How did I deal with it? 

Mr R.L.

Mr. R.L. was the independent contractor, sent by my property management company, to check the system and adjust it if need be.  He knocked on my door when he was done. 

"Hi.  I'm Ron L.  I just adjusted your water system.  It should be better for you."  If you have any more problems, just call me.  Don't even bother with the management company.  They just call me anyway."

"Thank you, Ron.  I was wondering if I could take just a moment of your time to ask you a couple question about what everything is out there.  Would you mind showing me?

"Not a bit."

It was the best education I could have had.  That kicked off about 20 minutes of question-answer with Mr. RL answering every one of the questions with more than just the answers.  He  also volunteered tips and tricks to get the most out of my water system.  When he left, I felt very confident that I would soon be able to drink water from my tap, once again.

It has been 1 week since he dropped by.  I am happy... no, elated... to annouce that I can and have slowly returned to drinking tap water.  Not just drinking but cooking with it, and my two mini-aussies will now drink it too.

Superb job, Mr. RL.  We tip this drink to you! 

How many other people are having the same problems I was having? Do you?  

Patrick

HOW TO WORK IN ANY ENVIRONMENT

2.  Do your job well, but remember your mission.  God put you there to be a
Light.

3.  Seek opportunities to change the atmosphere without commenting on the problems.  You have a God to talk to.  You are on an assignment.  Quietness and competence shall be your strength.

4.  Don't let your environment get inside of you.  You should influence it, not let it influence you.  Stop going to work to be fed.  You didn't come to receive, you came to give.  Remember to Whom you belong.

5.  Increase your capacity to work with different personalities.  (They are doing this with you.)  God will often bless you through people you don't even like!

6.  Remember where you are does not define where you are going.  This will deliver you from frustration.  God has a plan for your life.  Keep your eye on the prize. When Peter did this, he was able to walk in what made other people sink!

7.  Get the optimum results with minimal confusion.  Be effective without making the environment worse; don't deliberately cause commotion with your personal issues.

8.  Don't be associated with one group or clique.  Labels limit your usefulness.  God wants you to work with everybody but be labeled by nobody.  Use all your God-given gifts.

9.  Always keep your song near you.  Do what you should when nobody is watching or will ever know.  Hold on to your Priority and let it shine!

10. Understand that God anoints you for trouble.  Put on the whole armour of God before going to work.

Also remember...

• Psalm 75: 6-7 For promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south. But God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another.
• Proverbs 18:16 -  A man's gift maketh room for him, and bringeth him before great men.  
• Matthew 25:23 - His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.
• Galatians 6:9 - And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. 
   

I was at the WordPress site this morning, intending to send in a support email question and help JD get unspammed for good. As it turns out, support is on Pacific time and I on Central. With support opening at 8am, I was woefully early, so I decided to peek into the help forums for a bit.

I happened upon a post thanking WordPress and my natural instinct was to post a link to my Ode to WordPress. After all, that's what I did when I wrote the Ode, not realizing that my excitement and desire to shout out how happy I was with their service just might look like thread hijacking.

So this time... I told myself to settle down, post a simple "me too" and come here to link and give them a trackback.

I can't help but want to post it again. I honestly do love the service we get here at WordPress. I can live with having to be more creative in how I make money from it than just throwing up some Adsense links. I really can. I can live with not being able to add javascript widgets in my sidebar. That restriction keeps us all safer from those who would wreak havoc on our blogs.  I am, for the significant part, incredibly satisfied with my options and my blog host. Enough so, that I wrote this poem last year and this year, still find it applicable enough to share again.

So Thank you WordPress. Here's to another great year!

The Ode post...

The love before the Ode...

The Ode:

See the post here

I just want to say how proud I am....  

That it took a naked picture of a stupid teen to get this blog to where it is today.

For our next 1000 hit post, we are offering a photo of naked retards mud wrestling

Got up early and had breakfast (we're running dangerously low on food, so I had to improvise a bit). Went to school with Dallas at about 8:20 and worked on my moot presentation until animal law class.

Ran home for lunch (more improvising - turned out quite well!) then back to school. Finished my moot script and met with my partner to read for each other and give feedback.

Changed into my suit and then went to constitutional litigation class. Mooted. We did really well. Went out to the nearby law student bar (which now sucks because it has been turned into a Hudson's) and had a pint. Went home, made popcorn, watched Futurama, and fell asleep.

Productive: 8/10
Fun: 7/10