Today we had a lot to do.. went to the post office, bank, interior ministry etc. We also had appointments for all three kids at the eye doctor.. Thank God - they are all seeing perfectly!

The afternoon I spent uploading pictures at facebook.=)

This is by the way the end of hubby's vacation. Tomorrow he is back at work. I'm so thankful for theese days we had - recharging the batteries.. we really needed that!

My RSS is looking terrible.. too many blogs to read - and since hubby is going to use the computer for studying the whole evening I'll not be able to catch up tonight either.. Happy this problem will soon be solved.. =)

Uhm.. I should get started with preparing the dinner now.

But I've got an EVEN EASIER WAY for you to promote your business all the time and everywhere.  Add a signature line to your email. 

Here's mine. Every single person that gets an email from me is reminded about SCORE Chicago, its services and our outreach in blogs and social media.

Steps To Add A Signature in Outlook

1.  Open Wordpad or Notepad and type your signature details as you wish them to appear.  You have to type URLs to your website and blogs, but you don't have to insert hyperlinks.  The email software will do that.

2.  Open Outlook, click Tools, and then Options.

3.  Click the Mail Format tab and then click the Signature button below. 

4.  Select New, browse for your signature document in Wordpad or Notepad, and click to attach it.  Now open a blank email and you should see your detailed, promotional signature.

Steps in Mozilla's Thunderbird

1.  Open Wordpad or Notepad and type your signature details as you wish them to appear. You have to type URLs to your website and blogs, but you don't have to insert hyperlinks. The email software will do that.

2.  Open Thunderbird and go to Tools, Account Settings, and highlight an email account. Check box "Attach this signature." 

3.  Click Choose to browse to locate and attach your Wordpad or Notepad document. Now open a blank email and you should see your detailed, promotional signature.

If you are willing to upload a new signature document occasionally, you can even add and change special promotions. 

Isn't that the easiest way in the world to have everyone in your company actively promote your business? Shouldn't all your employees have promotional signature lines? Please share your thoughts and experiences in a comment.

-Peg Corwin

-Betty Otte

Next Sunday is an Indycar race, I hope Dixon doesn't win again, that is getting a bit old.

Even when I did the 10 minute presentation to a senior VP over a month back (which resulted in this invitation), I focused specifically on things the tool will help solve. These are not trivial problems, these are the problems that the industry is concerned about. I showed how we are already a step ahead in addressing these challenges. This tool provided the hope that we can be leaders in spearheading this process.

As an intrapreneur it is important to pick problems to solve early in your career. Picking tough problems and solving them is one third of the path. Doing this without making a lot of noise is one third of the path. The last third of the path can only be conquered by knowing how to present/woo. The hope factor helps a great deal in conquering the final frontier. If you think about this early on while you are thinking about the problem to solve, it will also help you pick the problems to solve.

Normally I wait until I've completed a book to comment on it, however Peter Block's "The Answer to How is Yes" has got my mind on overdrive - and I've just passed the first chapter. He suggests that the question "How?" could be more of an obstacle rather than a help to an end. He uses "How?" as a symbol because it is the most frequently asked question following critical conversations about changing directions in our jobs and lives. Coming to the decision that something should be done is often easy. The raising of the question, "How?" inevitably leads to a halt in progress until we have some perceived certainty.

One of the best observations I've read yet is when Peter says that, "if we were really committed to the pursuit of what matters, we might well be served to hold a moratorium on the question 'How?'...If we could agree that for six months we would not ask 'How?', something in our lives...might shift for the better. It would refocus our attention on deciding what is the right question, rather than what is the right answer. It would force us to act as if we already knew how - we just have to figure out what is worth doing."

What is keeping you from pursuing something that has captivated your mind? Removing the question "How?" from the conversation leaves us with only a decision to decide what matters most. Think about your life and after evaluating what matters most, make it a priority to take the first step toward seeing that "thing" happen.

*You know, I still screw up every time when I wanna spell "surprise".....I wrote about it in another post, somewhere, on one of the blogs, and I still do it - I think of that EVERY TIME I wanna spell "surprise", too.

But I digress. 

I feel excited, a little worried about the amount of information I will NOT know, where my younger classmates will have done it in the past year.  I am confident, however, that I can make up that lack of recent familiarity with anatomy, physiology, etc.etc through sheer force of will and a consistent study schedule.  I have learned SOMETHING in the past few years.  Overall, however, I feel this sense of strange ambivalence - not that I don't care about getting in, I DO!, but I simply have no idea what to expect. People ask me what specialty I will choose, or where I plan to practice and I have to make up answers because I  do not know.  So far I am only thinking of getting a strong start to my year, of keeping up, and of learning the ropes at the bottom of the stack.  I am not looking forward to being the smallest fish in the pond, but I think this will be good for me, reinforce my sense of humility in a discipline where it is especially important to stay humble.

The truth is, we're all trying to build a business and any bit of help we can get in doing that is priceless. 

I do have a marketing background (and degrees) that help me give good advice. But the best part is that I have owned and launched my own businesses so I know how hard it is to find a place to start. That's why I'm here. I really want to see the privately owned, small business give the Fortune 500, national chain, big box business a run for its money (even if it is billions of dollars). I'll help you do that.

Questa volta non c'e' nessuno a prendermi all'areoporto, cerco invano tra la folla un viso ma non lo trovo, quindi grazie ai meravigliosi super Shuttle torno a casa.

Tempo di un salto da Whole food per la spesa, di comprare un cell americano, di annusare l'aria nota di DC e il mio viaggio e' cominciato.

Questo non e' solo un viaggio, perche' non e' solo una vacanza, ne' un'esperienza lavorativa, ne' solo un diversivo. Questa sara' una vita concentrata in 1 mese.

Per chi mi volesse chiamare dagli States il mio nuovo numero e' 202 621 4517.

Today schedule of the week and ready to leave to NYC tomorrow.

I've thought about food a lot today, and briefly had a moment of "god, 14 weeks on soups". Walking past all the food stands to the Gilded Balloon was hard, not because I wanted to eat their wares (meat, eww) but just the smells and signs, thinking I'll have to keep going past those. I think I'm realising now that it's going to be psychologically harder than I expected, but I've been thinking about the end results too, what dress size I might be after losing 3+ stone, all that... it's exciting.

Let's see how it goes tonight. I've already been imagining myself throwing away all my food :D

As I have said before the way I boot oracle up is by running "sqlplus sys/password as sysdba" then typing "startup" and finally "exit" when it is all booted. I then run a nice long command "emctl stop dbconsole; emctl start dbconsole; lsnrctl start;" to restart the database web console and start the listener service up.

Thanks to dbamac I have now created a short script that does this in one go:

#!/bin/sh
sqlplus sys/password as sysdba <<ENDOFSQL
startup;
exit;
ENDOFSQL
emctl stop dbconsole; emctl start dbconsole; lsnrctl start;

I have to run the script as "oracle" as this is my user created during installation of the Oracle database who has all the right permissions etc. I stored the script as "startupdb" in my $ORACLE_HOME directory, in my case:

$ORACLE_HOME = /export/home/app/oracle/oracle/product/10.2.0/db_1/

So the command I use when I am logged in as root to start everything up is:

su - oracle -c $ORACLE_HOME/startupdb

The power of calling SQLPlus commands from the shell is awesome. It means you can set up cron jobs to automatically email reports, automatically backup data etc etc. Now I just need to get the script to start at boot, which means I am currently digging through the Solaris boot process using websites like this one from Admin's Choice.

The final goal is to have Oracle automatically start when Solaris boots and then email me to tell me everything is up and running ok. I need to figure out a few things before but it would be an incredibly handy feature to have.

UPDATE:

See this post for how I got Oracle to automatically start on Solaris boot.

I'm not so sure I agree entirely. I think inspiration can come from anywhere, and there is always the analytical approach - find a market leader in a market sector and figure out how to service the basic needs of the customer base faster, cheaper or more simply.

Having said that, the more conversations one can have about ideas and execution plans, the more feedback one will receive, and I don't believe that could be a bad thing.

Do you think ideas depend on geography?

You need a CFO with a 720+ FICO score.

You need to start or buy a corporation of LLC.  You save a little bit of time if you buy but not as much as you could two years ago.

You need to acquire and use several small sources of business credit (credit cards, merchant accounts, etc.) and use them. In this step, you can acquire $50k - $300k in various small lines of credit (cash and trade credit).

You must show activity in the corporations bank accounts.

Once the corporation is 2 years old, showing activity and using your current business credit to raise your Paydex score to 80, you can start looking for the larger business lines of credit.

One company can start with someone at 680 but I suspect that they are creating personal lines of credit to build you up to a business line of credit. This isn't a bad thing but it does add to the time it'll take to reach your goal.

So, starting at 720 (or upon reaching it), they will start or buy a corporation. From there they will build up your Paydex through multiple small lines of business credit. Once the Paydex is built up, you are all set for the larger business lines of credit.

Fictitious Name. Here's an example of what I mean. Five of my male friends decided to incorporate their business themselves--ABC, Inc. Once incorporated, they chose to operate using the name “XYZ Services,” so they filed a fictitious name registration.

One year later, they called frantic because they were being sued personally for something relating to their business operations

"They can't sue us personally," they exclaimed. "We're incorporated."

Now that my friends were in trouble, they desperately wanted help. So I called the attorney who filed the suit against them and asked why he sued them individually instead of the corporation. "Have you seen their fictitious name registration," he asked. When I admitted I hadn't, he smugly agreed to fax it to me. As soon as I saw the faxed document, I knew my friends were in trouble.

Here's what went wrong. A fictitious name or DBA, allows your business to operate using a different name. ABC, Inc., my friends' company, was a corporation. Corporations and Limited Liability Companies can transact business under a different name than their official one by filing a DBA that states this company is now operating with this name.

DBA vs. Personally. When my friends filed their paperwork to register the name XYZ Services, instead of noting it was the corporation using the DBA, they said the five of them were using the name. That's why the attorney was able to bring suit against XYZ Services which was owned by the five guys -- personally. Ultimately, we settled the case against them, and they went out of business.

There are excellent Internet resources to help you learn more about the ins and outs of fictitious names. Also, check with your county and state governments to see what is required in your state. Resources such as SCORE can provide assistance and information. Finally, it is always a good idea to run final documents by a professional. If you are trying to hold costs down, go ahead and utilize the online legal document sources, but a quick review by a professional attorney in your state may keep you from going out of business as my friends did.

-Susan Wilson Solovic, guest blogger