Written by gawker

Today is Columbus Day in case you weren’t aware. What a stupid holiday! Nothing against Columbus (other than the fact he was a dirty colonist who killed off millions of Native Americans) but taking an entire day to celebrate him is a total waste. And there’s a whole list of other holidays and celebrations we should get rid of. Let’s look.

Columbus Day

The problem with Columbus Day isn’t just Columbus himself (though celebrating him is dicey), or the Italian-Americans who enjoy celebrating one of their cultural heroes. The problem is that not everyone gets today off. You know just what I’m talking about, as you sit in your cubicle reading this because half of the people you need to talk to to get your job done have today off. Schools are out, the government is closed, but your office is open. That means you have to find a place to put the kids all day and listen to people talk about their long weekend plans while you have to work and hope it rains and ruins everyone’s free day off. That’s quite a legacy to leave, Columbus.

Flag Day

Do we really need a whole day to celebrate our flag? It’s great that we have a symbol for our country, but why go out of our way to recognize it in some way? Every other country has a damn flag, it’s not like having a flag makes us special. And just look at our flag. It’s kind of a design nightmare. It’s got all these bars and stripes and different colors and strange angles. As far as flags go, ours is a little cluttered. Maybe every year on Flag Day we should have a design competition to come up with something new? I’d support that.

Father’s Day

This is such pandering. It’s like Gillette and the American Tie Federation saw how much success Hallmark and 1-800-FLOWERS had with Mother’s Day and decided to horn in on the action. Most dads could care less about getting presents or attention or brunch or anything. They probably appreciate that you call them, that’s nice. Either that or your father was an asshole who treated you badly and divorced your mother for some new bitch with kids of her own and he doesn’t even really talk to you that much anymore. What an asshole! Who needs to be reminded of that?

Groundhog Day

Who the hell even came up with this holiday, and what does it even mean? On February 2, there’s this critter in Pennsylvania who comes out of his hole and either sees his shadow and get scared and something happens or he doesn’t see his shadow and then nothing happens. No one understands it. Not even the news stations that cover it every year. There are more rules to this than Ultimate Frisbee. It’s supposed to make spring come more quickly or something. It doesn’t. It’s February! We still have two more months of cold. How about giving us “Take a Trip to Florida” day? That’s all I really want in February.

Patriot’s Day

This is a day that is only celebrated in Massachusetts, our second least worst state, but it doesn’t mean they need a whole day off just to themselves. The Patriots, they’re good and all, but they’re not all that. They haven’t won a Super Bowl in six years! Look at Tom Brady these days. He’s making more headlines for his hair and loving Uggs and being a prolific babydaddy than he is for making passes and touchdowns. Stop being so cocky, Boston, your team isn’t that important.

Arbor Day

A day for the planting and caring of trees? Really? What, have we been hijacked by Greenpeace? Do you have to hug the trees after you plant them? And what good are trees if they won’t take care of themselves? You want trees to sit in your yard or on the street or wherever and just grow and be strong and not have to be tended to like some blooming invalid, right? What happens when the GOP finds out about this and tries to shut it down because it’s some pro-environmental action? Won’t they try to do the same thing to Arbor Day that they did to ACORN? Too many questions!

Talk Like a Pirate Day

Yes, mateys, this is stupid. And if you keep trying to make it happen, you’re going to have to walk the plank.

Confederate Memorial Day

Ostensibly this is a day to commemorate all the lives lost by the Confederacy during the Civil War. While people dying in war is always sad, these people were defending, you know, slavery. So, um. Yeah. Remember that.

Casimir Pulaski Day

This is a holiday in March that is celebrated in the Chicago area, mostly by the large Polish population. That’s fine, but Pulaski—a Revolutionary War hero—also has a federal holiday in October. I don’t want to discount the great things this gentleman did to win our freedom, but does he really need two holidays? I mean, the only other person who gets two holidays is Jesus. Oprah doesn’t even have one. Do something about that, Chicago.

Mardi Gras

Alright, Mardi Gras in New Orleans is fine. If you want to go and wade through streets paved in vomit and bad decisions and show off your body parts, be my guest. Actually, be New Orleans’ guest. If you want to do it anywhere else, then you’re just a drunk who is looking for an excuse to get shitfaced on a Tuesday. How about going to celebrate your first day of sobriety at a meeting instead? Then you’ll have a nice, easy to remember anniversary to celebrate every year. If drinking a hurricane on Fat Tuesday means that much to you, then take your tourism dollars down to New Orleans. They’d be happy to take them.

[Image via Shutterstock]

Bonus: An internet story

Written by the99percent

Illustration: Oscar Ramos Orozco

For a creative professional, a creative block isn’t just frustrating — it’s potentially career-damaging. When you rely on your creativity to pay the bills and build your reputation, you can’t afford to be short of ideas or the energy to put them into action.But all creative blocks are not created equal. Different types of block require different solutions — something that’s easily forgotten when you’re feeling stuck. Here are seven of the most common types, and how to unblock them.

1. The mental block.

This is where you get trapped by your own thinking. You’re so locked into a familiar way of looking at the world that you fail to see other options. You make assumptions and approach a problem from a limiting premise. Or maybe your Inner Critic rears its head and stops you thinking straight.
Solution: You need to change your mind. Question your assumptions, ask yourself "What if…?", and adopt different perspectives. Go somewhere new, or read/watch/listen to something new. Talk to people you can rely on to disagree with you, or offer an alternative point of view.
You may find creative thinking cards useful, such as Roger von Oech’s Whack Pack, Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies or IDEO’s Method Cards.

2. The emotional barrier.

Creativity can be intense. It’s not a comfortable pursuit. Faced with the unknown, you may be scared of what you’ll discover or reveal about yourself. Maybe your subject matter is painful, embarrassing or plain weird. Whatever – all of these fears and qualms are just different forms of Resistance, leading to procrastination.
Solution: You need to face the worst and come through the other side. There are plenty of things that can help — such as routine, commitment, and meditation. But ultimately you are going to have to endure the fear, pain, or other unpleasant emotions.
It’s like getting into a cold swimming pool — you can dive in head first, or inch your way in. Either way, it’s going to be bone-chillingly cold. But once you’ve got over the initial shock, done a few lengths, and got into the flow of it, you may be surprised to discover how invigorated you feel.

Faced with the unknown, you may be scared of what you’ll discover or reveal about yourself.

3. Work habits that don’t work.

Maybe there’s no great drama — you’re just trying to work in a way that isn’t compatible with your creative process. You work too early, too late, too long, or not long enough. You try to hard or not hard enough. You don’t have enough downtime or enough stimulation. Or maybe you haven’t set up systems to deal with mundane tasks – email, admin, accounting, etc – so they keep interfering with your real work.
Solution: Step back and take a good look at how you’re working, and where the pain points are. If it’s email, learn a new system for dealing with email. If you don’t have enough energy, are you working at the right time of day? If you feel paralyzed by freedom, introduce more structure and order into your day. If you feel constrained by routine, find room for improvisation.
There are no hard-and-fast rules — the only standard is whether your work habits work for you. Look for the right balance of routines, systems, and spontaneity for your creativity to thrive.

4. Personal problems.

Creativity demands focus — and it’s hard to concentrate if you’re getting divorced/ dealing with toddlers/battling an addiction/falling out with your best friend/grieving someone special/moving house/locked in a dispute with a neighbor. If you’re lucky, you’ll only have to deal with this kind of thing one at a time — but troubles often come in twos or threes.
Solution: There are basically two ways to approach a personal problem that is interfering with your creative work — either solve the problem or find ways of coping until it passes.
For the first option you may need some specialist help, or support from friends or family. And it may be worth taking a short-term break from work in order to resolve the issue and free yourself up for the future.
In both cases, it helps if you can treat your work as a refuge — an oasis of control and creative satisfaction in the midst of the bad stuff. Use your creative rituals to set your problems aside and focus for an hour, or a few, each day. When your work is done, you may even find you see your personal situation with a fresh eye.

It helps if you can treat your work as a refuge – an oasis of control and creative satisfaction in the midst of the bad stuff.

5. Poverty.

I’m not just talking about money, although a lack of cash is a perennial problem for creatives. You could also be time-poor, knowledge-poor, have a threadbare network, or be short of equipment or other things you need to get the job done.
Solution: Like the last type of block, this one has two possible solutions: either save up the time/money/or other resources you need; or make a virtue of necessity and set yourself the creative challenge of achieving as much as possible within the constraints you have. If you’re doubtful about the latter option, consider the first and second Star Wars trilogies, and ask yourself whether more resources always equal more creativity!

6. Overwhelm.

Sometimes a block comes from having too much, not too little. You’ve taken on too many commitments, you have too many great ideas, or you’re overwhelmed by the sheer volume of incoming demands and information. You feel paralyzed by options and obligations, or simply knackered from working too hard for too long.
Solution: It’s time to cut down. If you take on too many commitments, start saying ‘no’. If you have too many ideas, execute a few and put the rest in a folder labeled ‘backburner’. If you suffer from information overload, start blocking off downtime or focused worktime in your schedule (here are some tools that may help). Answer email at set times. Switch your phone off, or even leave it behind. The world won’t end. I promise.

Sometimes a block comes from having too much, not too little.

7. Communication breakdown.

Creative blocks can happen between people as well as between the ears. If you work in a team, tensions are inevitable, and can make it hard to do your best work — especially if you have one of those proverbial ‘difficult people’ in your working life.
Sometimes you get blocked by phantoms — merely imagining your work being booed by audiences and mauled by the critics. And sometimes this happens for real and you have to deal with it.
It could just be a marketing problem — after years of plugging away at your art with a miniscule audience, you wonder why you bother. Or maybe you just don’t have a hotline to the people who matter in your field, so you struggle to land the right opportunities.
Solution: This is where creativity blends into communication skills. You need to be adept at understanding and influencing the right people, however difficult or mystifying they may be. Which means beefing up your influencing, marketing, or networking skills. I don’t care if you’re shy (I was) or introverted (I am). If you want to succeed, you need to do this.
And sometimes it’s about accepting that you can’t please all the people all of the time, and growing a thicker skin for rejection and criticism. Show me a creative who’s never suffered a setback or a bad review, and you won’t be pointing at a superstar.

—

How Do You Deal with Creative Blocks?
Which type of block do you struggle with most often?
What solutions have worked for you?

Bonus: I wonder why she deleted me…

Written by lifehacker

Technology is great until it breaks and you have to spend hours trying to figure out what’s wrong before you can even fix the problem. Often times the entire ordeal will take even longer because you’ve failed to consider the obvious, or a particular strategy that worked in the past. Here are our top 10 tactics for diagnosing and solving the many problems that occur with your computers, smartphones, web sites, and more.

Thanks to everyone on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ who helped out with suggestions for this post!

10. Disable Crap You Don’t Need

 

When something goes wrong, it’s probably your fault. Computers certainly have their issues all on their own, but more often than not you’re going to cause a problem yourself. For example, AdBlock—as great as it is—can cause web sites to look like they’re not loading properly (or at all). It can prevent video playback if you have video ad blocking enabled, too. It should work, in general, but it’s not perfect and screws up from time to time. The same goes for any drivers or extensions in your computer. Sometimes you’ll install something incompatible by accident. Keep track of what you do and look at the third-party stuff you’re using to test and see if it’s causing the problem. Often times you can figure out which extension or driver (or whatever) is the problem by going down the list and considering if it relates to your issue.

 

9. Take a Break

 

If you’re working on a frustrating problem for more than 10 minutes, it’s probably a good time to take a break. Take a walk, get a cup of coffee, or do something else that will take your mind off the issues. Focus is only good when it won’t lead to an aneurism. Sometimes you just have to take a step back so you can approach the issues a bit later with a fresh perspective. It can be hard to do, but it’s often necessary.

(Thanks for the tip, Brian!)

 

8. Talk It Out with a Troubleshooting Buddy

 

When you’re stuck and don’t know what to do next, sometimes the best way to figure it out is to talk about it with someone else. Under ideal circumstances you have a troubleshooting buddy you can bother to discuss the problem and hopefully get some suggestions as well. If not, non-techies aren’t so bad either. Discuss the issue with them. Explain it to them in terms they’ll understand. It doesn’t matter so much if they can offer any help. The fact that they’re listening and you’re thinking about the problem in different terms can often lead you towards a solution—or at least the beginnings of one. If you’re stuck and don’t know what to do, stop searching online and talk it out. After a few minutes you should have some new ideas to try.

 

7. Make Sure It’s Not Just You

 

When a web site isn’t working, sometimes it’s not the internet. Sometimes it’s just you. How can you tell? You could ask a friend or just use something like Down for Everyone or Just Me? Go there and type in the web site in question. DFEOJM.com will let you know if it can reach the page or not. If it can’t, it’ll report that it’s down for everyone. If it can, you might want to restart your router and, if necessary, start looking into other possible causes.

 

6. Check Your Logs

 

Logs are your friend, even if you don’t know half of what they’re saying. When they seem like a foreign language, even a quick glance can tell you what might be causing the problem. You might not understand the error codes or any of the details, but you should be able to see if the error pertains to a specific application or task. This will, at least, give you a lede to investigate so you can focus on discovering what the problem really is. If you’re running Windows, here’s a tutorial on finding your log files. If you’re on Mac, just open the Console applications in Hard Drive —> Applications —> Utilities. If you do understand log files, then you’re in really great shape (and probably do not need to be reading this tip.)

(Thanks for the tip, Dan!)

 

5. Perform Regular Maintenance Tasks

 

Regular maintenance is important, whether you’re on a Mac, Windows, or Linux PC. Sometimes the issue you’re seeing is the result of a permissions error, a bad cache file, hard drive fragmentation, a messy registry, and so on. Obviously these issues don’t apply to every operating system, but performing maintenance tasks for your specific OS (guides linked earlier in this paragraph) can often clear up the problem. And, if you make these maintenance tasks a recurring duty, you may not run into some issues at all.

4. Set Up Remote Access

 

Whether you need to fix an issue on your own computer when you’re away or you’re helping out a friend or family member,setting up remote access makes a huge different in the troubleshooting process. When you can’t be there, it’s as close as you can get. There are many options, too. You can simply set up VNC or use a service to take the hassle out of the process. Many chat apps like Skype and iChat have screen sharing features as well, so you’re bound to be able to get through if someone else is around. When you can’t be there to troubleshoot the problem yourself, remote access is the next best thing.

 

3. Use Alternative Search Engines When Looking for Help

 

Google’s great, but it’s not the best place to go for everything. More geek-oriented search engines like DuckDuckGo tend to turn up better results when you’re looking for troubleshooting assistance. When you’re trying to find someone else with your problem, you want a search engine that’s going to dig up plenty of forum posts with discussions and, hopefully, solutions. If your primary search engine isn’t turning up what you want, try DuckDuckGo instead.

(Thanks for the tip, Kevin!)

2. Hit Up Helpful Q&A Web Sites

 

When you’re not sure what to do or who to ask for help, there are places online designed to solve your problems. As mentioned in #3, there are plenty of specific forums, but sites like StackExchange offer a focused format for asking questions and getting answers on a variety of topics. (We have a few other suggestions as well.) If none of those sites do the trick, you can always email us. We’re always on the lookout for good Ask Lifehacker topics, so if your issue is broad enough it may be a good problem for us to solve for you. Alternatively, our Help Yourself and Open Threads are good places to ask each other for assistance on a more specific issue.

(Thanks for the tip, Wagner!)

1. Restart

 

Seriously. We often forget to do it and it regularly solves the problem. It doesn’t matter if it’s an old Super Nintendo, a brand new laptop, or your smart or dumb phone—restarting is, in most cases, the first thing you should try when there’s a seemingly unsolvable problem. Remember to do it and save yourself a lot of trouble.

(Thanks for suffering through iPod troubles for this one, Whitson!)

 

 

Bonus: Balancing Sasuke – The McDonalds toy that became an internet sensation in Japan [Xpost r/otaku]

Written by socialhype

We all know Steve Jobs as the man behind the magic, but what we don’t know is the magic behind the man. The unfortunate passing of this pioneer left us with a lot of unanswered question. Who was this guy? why was he so passionate about this product? How did he become who he was?  Can his success be duplicated? – Probably not – Here are some interesting tidbits about the life of Steve Jobs.

1. Childhood

Steve Jobs was born on February 24, 1955 in San Francisco, California. He was put up for adoption and was shortly adopted by a couple named Clara and Paul Jobs. Paul was a machinist for a laser company and Clara was an accountant. Years later, Jobs sought the identities of his birth parents. He discovered his mother was a woman named Joanne Simpson, a speech pathologist, and his father, Abdulfattah John Jandali, a vice president of a Nevada casino. Though Jobs remained close with Simpson, he remained estranged from Jandali.

2. He dropped out of college!

In fact, Jobs never came close to graduating college. Surprising, considering he was one of the most brilliant masterminds behind the most successful company in the world. After graduating from high school in Cupertino, Jobs enrolled in Reed College in Oregon, where he stayed for a total of one semester. He dropped out due to the financial strain the tuition placed on his parents. In 2005, Jobs gave a commencement speech at Stanford University in which he described his short-lived experience at Reed: “It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned Coke bottles for the 5 cent deposits to buy food with and I would walk seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple.”

3. He lied to Apple co-founder about a job at Atari.

We all know Jobs for his amazing innovations in mobile technology, software, and computers, but what most people don’t know is that he helped in the creation of Atari’s game, Breakout. Jobs was offered $750 for his work on the product development, with the possibility of a bonus $100 for each chip eliminated from the game’s final design. To help him with this challenge, Jobs called upon Steve Wozniak, a man who would later become one of Apple’s co-founders. Because of Wozniak’s talent, Atari gave Jobs a $5,000 bonus, which he kept all for himself! He gave Wozniak a total of $375 for his help with the job.

4. His marriage

Jobs did an excellent job keeping his family and marriage out of public watch. In the public eye, Jobs was known for donning his signature black turtleneck and jeans on stage solo. However, at his Palo Alto home, Jobs had a family with his wife, Laurene. Laurene was an entrepreneur with a degree from University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton business school and an MBA from Stanford, where she met Jobs for the first time.

Though he was always dedicated to his company, Jobs skipped a meeting to take Laurene out for their first date. Jobs says: “I was in the parking lot with the key in the car, and I thought to myself, ‘If this is my last night on earth, would I rather spend it at a business meeting or with this woman?’ I ran across the parking lot, asked her if she’d have dinner with me. She said yes, we walked into town and we’ve been together ever since.” The two were married in the Ahwahnee Hotel at Yosemite National Park by a Zen Buddhist monk.

5. His sister is a famous author.

While searching for his birth parents, Jobs also discovered his biological sister, Mona Simpson. You may know her as the author of the well-known book, Anywhere But Here, a story about a daughter and her mother that was later made into a film starring Susan Sarandon and Natalie Portman. After their first meeting, the two became best friends and spoke every few days.

6. Celebrity flings

In an authorized book entitled The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, one of his college buddies wrote that Jobs had a short fling with musician Joan Baez. Baez later confirmed that the two were close for a brief period of time, but she is more known for her romance with Bob Dylan (coincidentally, Jobs’ favorite musician). According to the same biography, Jobs also dated actress Diane Keaton.

7. His first child

At age 23, Jobs and his then girlfriend Chris Ann Brennan had a daughter, Lisa Brennan Jobs. Her birth in 1978 came just as Apple was gaining fame in the technology world. Jobs and Brennan were never married, and he denied his paternity for some time, stating in court documents that he was sterile. However, he had three more children with his wife, Laurene. Years later, Jobs reconciled with Lisa and paid her tuition at Harvard.

8. Alternative lifestyle & drug use

Jobs has hinted a few times that he had some experiences with the psychedelic drug, LSD. In fact, he once stated about Bill Gates: “I wish him the best, I really do. I just think he and Microsoft are a bit narrow. He’d be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.” Albert Hofmann, the Swiss scientist who first synthesized LSD approached Jobs asking for funding for research pertaining to the therapeutic uses of LSD. Jobs has admitted to these experiences, calling them “one of the two or three most important things I have done in my life.” He suggests that his experiences with acid have contributed to the different approach that makes Apple’s designs so unique.

After visiting India, Jobs took a trip to a famous ashram and returned to the United States as a Zen Buddhist. Furthermore, Jobs was a pescetarian who avoided eating most animal products with the exception of fish. Jobs also had a firm belief in Eastern medicine and before he had his first surgery for his cancerous tumor, he tried alternative approaches and specialized diets.

9. His Estate

Even though he is the CEO of the world’s most valuable brand name, Jobs made an annual salary of just $1 since 1997 (his first year as Apple’s lead executive). Jobs often joked about his meager salary, saying: “I get 50 cents a year for showing up, and the other 50 cents is based on my performance.”

At the start of last year, he owned 5.5 million shares of the Apple corporation, which are now valued at $377.64 each. This demonstrates a 43-fold growth in valuation over the last 10 years. Because of these shares, Jobs leaves behind an enormous portion. He earned $7 billion from the sale of Pixar to Disney in 2006. Forbes magazine rated Jobs as the 110th richest person in the world, with a net worth of $8.3 billion. Had he not sold his shares upon leaving Apple in 1985 (prior to returning in 1996), Jobs would top the list at the world’s fifth richest individual.

No word has been given pertaining to plans for his estate, but Jobs has his wife, his three children with Laurene, as well as his first daughter to account for.

Written by businessinsider

Do you slouch in your office chair at work? Are you starting to notice rounded shoulders with your neck protruding forward? Do you stand up at 5 P.M. and feel like your back resembles a question mark?

If you answered “Yes” to these questions, you are part of a growing trend of people who experience postural problems from working in an office.

Slouching all day in an office chair forces your chest muscles to tighten, which pulls your spine forward and rotates your shoulders inward, while at the same time weakening the muscles of your upper back that aid in posture.

In other words, you start looking like a hunchback and may experience pain in your neck, lower back, and even arms and legs.

The good news is that Postural Kyphosis, the clinical term for this condition, is completely reversible. The 5 corrective exercises below can relieve chest tightness and strengthen your upper back muscles to help you look more like superman and less like a hunchback. Choose 3 of the 5 exercises (one must be a chest exercise) to complete a few times per week until your posture is improved. Before starting any exercise program, be sure to consult with your doctor. A guide by Built Lean:

Chest Stretch

Facing the corner of a wall, extend your right arm and put your hand against the side of the wall. Turn your body left and lean forward as you feel the stretch in your chest and shoulder. Be sure to keep your arm in line with the plane of your shoulder as you complete the stretch. Hold this stretch for 30 seconds and complete on both sides for 3 sets.

Chest Compression With A Massage Ball

In addition to stretching, deep tissue massage using a tennis, or massage ball can help restore muscle flexibility in your chest.

Holding a massage ball with both hands, press the ball and slowly roll it around the side of your chest. As you move the ball around, apply steady pressure to areas of tightness to relieve tension. Massage for 30 seconds on each side of your chest and complete for 3 sets.

Upper Back Foam Rolling

Foam rolling is another massage technique that can improve your spine mobility and correct rounded shoulders. Lay the foam roller across the spine in the middle of your back right below your shoulder blades. Your knees should be bent, feet firmly planted against the ground, and hands comfortably behind your head. Lifting your hips off the ground, roll forward so the foam roller travels down your back an inch, then drop your hips to the floor. Repeat until the foam roller is hovering a couple inches below your neck, then slowly roll back down following the same pattern. If you feel any areas of stiffness, stay roll back and forth on top of the area for 10-15 seconds.

Complete this exercise for 3 sets going up, down, and up again. You may feel some pain and discomfort the first few times you complete this exercise, but over time, your upper back mobility will improve.

Prone Y Extension

The Prone Y Extension accomplishes a lot in one exercise: it rotates your shoulders outward, stretches your abdomen (which is normally flexed), stretches your chest, and strengthens your lower back extensor muscles, along with the upper back muscles associated with posture.

Lie flat on the floor with your legs shoulder width apart and your arms extended in a “Y” over your head. Lift your torso off the ground while simultaneously externally rotating your shoulders so that your palms are facing upwards. Hold this position for 5-10 seconds, then lower down. Repeat for 3 sets of 8 repetitions.

Close Grip Row

The Close Grip Row can be completed seated using a cable machine, or standing using a resistance band demonstrated in the photo above.

Wrap the resistance band around a stable object at chest level and walk back a few feet until you feel moderate tension on the band. Your arms should be extended with a slight bend in your knees and feet placed shoulder width apart. Keeping your head up, shoulders back, chest out, back straight, and abs tight, slowly pull the bands toward the sides of your torso while squeezing your shoulder blades. Slowly resist the band until your arms are fully extended. Complete 3 sets of 15 repetitions.

To complement the exercises above, work in these everyday techniques into your business day:

Be Conscious of Your Posture

To ensure long term changes, it is critical that you become more conscious of posture when standing and sitting. Needless to say, human beings are not designed to sit in an office all day. We are built to move. Getting out of your office chair to walk around several times throughout the day can go a long way.

Follow A Balanced Exercise Program

If you are doing a lot of bench press, curls, and crunches, in combination with slouching in a chair all day long, kyphosis can worsen. Be sure to stretch your chest muscles and incorporate leg and back exercises into your fitness routine. An effectively structured fitness program can help improve your posture, functional strength, and overall health and well-being. If you are not regularly exercising, I would put it as #1 on your To-Do list.

Use Proper Ergonomics At Work

The monitor should be placed at arm’s length directly in front of you at 15- 30 degrees below your line of sight. Your forearms should form a 90 degree angle as you type and your legs should form a 90 degree angle as you sit. Keep your shoulders back, chest out, head up and use a wrist pad placed directly behind the keyboard.

By incorporating these exercises and tips into your daily habits, you will enjoy improved posture, health, and confidence. For a video demonstration of each exercise mentioned in this article, check out How To Correct Rounded Shoulders on BuiltLean.com.

 

Bonus: Yesterday I made a doghouse for my neighbors dog after finally being fed up with seeing it sleeping in the rain with no shelter for years.

Written by wired

Steven Paul Jobs, co-founder, chairman and former chief executive of Apple Inc., passed away Wednesday.

A visionary inventor and entrepreneur, it would be impossible to overstate Steve Jobs’ impact on technology and how we use it. Apple’s mercurial, mysterious leader did more than reshape his entire industry: he completely changed how we interact with technology. He made gadgets easy to use, gorgeous to behold and essential to own. He made things we absolutely wanted, long before we even knew we wanted them. Jobs’ utter dedication to how people think, touch, feel and interact with machines dictated even the smallest detail of the computers Apple built and the software it wrote.

Jobs was born in San Francisco on Feb. 24, 1955, and adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs of Mountain View, California. He was a techie from a young age, often sitting in on lectures at Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto while attending Homestead High School in Cupertino. He eventually landed a summer job there, working alongside Steve Wozniak.

Jobs enrolled in Reed College in Portland, Ore. in 1972, but dropped out after six months – he later said he “didn’t see the value in it.” He eventually returned home to California. He got a job at Atari, renewed his friendship with Wozniak and started hanging out with the Homebrew Computer Club. After trekking to India in 1974 — a trip he, like so many others, made to find enlightenment – Jobs returned home and looked up Woz.

The two of them launched Apple in 1976. Their first project, the Apple I, wasn’t much to look at — just an assembled circuit board. Anyone who bought it had to add the case and keyboard. But it was enough for Jobs to convince Mike Markkula, a semi-retired Intel engineer and product marketing manager, that personal computing was the future. Markkula invested $250,000 in the fledgling enterprise.

The Apple I begat the Apple II in 1977. It was the first successful mass-market computer, and easy to use, too. That would become a hallmark of Apple under Jobs.

The Apple II had a huge impact on the tech business, but cheaper alternatives, like the Commodore 64 and the VIC-20, quickly eroded Apple’s market share. IBM’s open PC platform eventually won out over Apple’s closed approach, and the die was cast. The PC dominated the market.

Still, Apple was by any measure a success. By the time Jobs was 25 in 1980, he was worth more than $100 million. Not that it mattered to him.

“It wasn’t that important because I never did it for the money,” he once said.

Apple once again shook up the industry with the Macintosh, announced in 1984 with a now-iconic Super Bowl ad challenging IBM. The Mac was a revolutionary step forward for personal computing — the first mass market computer to use a mouse-driven, user-friendly graphical interface. It was influenced by – critics would argue lifted from — technology Jobs saw a few years earlier at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. It irreversibly changed how we interact with computers.

But then Jobs fell from grace. One year after the Mac’s introduction, Jobs was fired in a power struggle with CEO John Sculley. Jobs was devastated. He felt he’d let those who came before him – pioneers like David Packard and Bob Noyce – down, and he wanted to apologize.

“It was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the Valley,” he admitted in a 2005 speech.

But Jobs realized he loved what he did, and wanted to keep doing it. So he founded NeXT, a computer company, and a computer animation outfit that he renamed Pixar. As for Apple, it faltered in his absence. The company’s stock plummeted 68 percent, pushing Apple to the brink of bankruptcy.

But in 1996, Apple purchased NeXT and Jobs returned to the company he founded. It wasn’t long before he was once again back at the helm, and Apple’s ascent began.

One of Jobs’ first moves was to make peace with arch-rival Microsoft. That led to a $150 million investment from Microsoft, breathing new life into the moribund Apple. Jobs was once again firmly in control, and this time he would make sure he didn’t lose it.

He ran Apple with a firm hand, enforcing a policy of secrecy, while instilling an unrivaled dedication to design and an unwavering commitment to quality. These things mattered so deeply to Jobs that he became a micromanager, one said to have put as much thought into the boxes holding Apple’s products as the products themselves.

Apple’s incredible string of hits started with the iMac and continued with iTunes and the iPod in 2001, the iPhone in 2007 and 2010’s iPad. There were some misses along the way – Mobile Me and Apple TV – but Jobs, working with lieutenants like Tim Cook, made Apple one of the biggest companies in the world.

Jobs had always been the public face of Apple, but he began retreating from the spotlight in 2004 when doctors diagnosed him with pancreatic cancer. It was a rare form of the disease, one that could be treated, and Jobs survived. His health, though, continued to deteriorate. His liver failed in 2009, and Jobs took a six-month medical leave. He returned, but was rarely seen. He announced he was resigning as CEO in August, and Tim Cook replaced him as the head the company.

At a 2005 commencement address at Stanford University, Jobs shared the philosophy that drove him.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life,” Jobs said. “Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Written by alternet

As the ongoing occupation of Wall Street by hundreds of protesters enters its third week — and as protests spread to other cities such as Boston and Los Angeles — demonstrators have endorsed a new slogan: “We are the 99 percent.” This slogan refers to an economic struggle between 99 percent of Americans and the richest 1 percent of Americans, who are increasingly accumulating a greater share of the national wealth to the detriment of the middle class.

It may shock you to learn exactly how wealthy this top 1 percent of Americans is. ThinkProgress has assembled five facts about this class of super-rich Americans:

 

1. The Top 1 Percent of Americans Owns 40 Percent of the Nation’s Wealth

 As Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz points out, the richest 1 percent of Americans now own 40 percent of the nation’s wealth. Sociologist William Domhoff illustrates this wealth disparity using 2007 figures where the top 1 percent owned 42 percent of the country’s financial wealth (total net worth minus the value of one’s home). How much does the bottom 80 percent own? Only 7 percent.

 

As Stiglitz notes, this disparity is much worse than it was in the past, as just 25 years ago the top 1 percent owned 33 percent of national wealth.

2. The Top 1 Percent of Americans Take Home 24 Percent of National Income

While the richest 1 percent of Americans take home almost a quarter of national income today, in 1976 they took home just 9 percent — meaning their share of the national income pool has nearly tripled in roughly three decades.

3. The Top 1 Percent Of Americans Own Half of the Country’s Stocks, Bonds and Mutual Funds

 The Institute for Policy Studies illustrates this massive disparity in financial investment ownership, noting that the bottom 50 percent of Americans own only .5 percent of these investments.

 

4. The Top 1 Percent Of Americans Have Only 5 Percent of the Nation’s Personal Debt

Using 2007 figures, sociologist William Domhoff points out that the top 1 percent have 5 percent of the nation’s personal debt while the bottom 90 percent have 73 percent of total debt:

 

5. The Top 1 Percent are Taking In More of the Nation’s Income Than at Any Other Time Since the 1920s

Not only are the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans taking home a tremendous portion of the national income, but their share of this income is greater than at any other time since the Great Depression, as the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities illustrates in this chart using 2007 data:

 

 

As Professor Elizabeth Warren has explained, “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody…Part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

More and more often, that is not occurring, giving the protesters ample reason to take to the streets.

 

Bonus 1: I am 62 years old.

Bonus 2: They are the 99%, or at least they used to be. [long]

August 11, 1991
Dear Chris,

I’m writing this note to you now because I don’t know what the future holds for me. I want you to forgive me for being sick and not being able to be there for you when and if you need me, but I want you to know one thing above all else, I love you so much that I can’t describe the feelings that I’m going through.

I want you to grow up and be a success at whatever you attempt to do. The time that I did spend with you was a wonderful and enjoyable time in my life and you helped make it that way. This letter is very hard for me to write because I keep starting to cry, knowing that I will not be here when you are reading this. The sadness keeps overwhelming me and tears are flowing down my face. I’m so very proud of you and you have shown me just how smart you are already. I expect you to grow and be able to use your head to think things out and to be able to ask questions if you don’t understand something.

Above all esle I need to know that you will always be there for your Mother and your sister. Your family is more important to you than anything else in this world. I know that there will be times that you get upset with Mom for not letting you do something that you want to do, but she does really know what is best for you. Listen to her and learn from her advice.

I’ve left you all my tools and tool boxes and other neat stuff. I hope that you use them wisely and safely, tools can hurt you very bad. I’ve worked with my hands building things or repairing things all my life and I’ve found out that I enjoy it very much. Most of the tools that I own where bought for working on German built cars, Audi’s, Porsche’s, Volkswagen’s, and Mercedes-Benz’s. Although I’ve worked on anything and everything I made most of my money on German cars. Again I wish you luck and safety in whatever you decide to do for a living.

I want you to face life and the problems that it gives you with a positive outlook, because if you think of the bright things in life, it makes the bad things not so bad after all! You are a beautiful and smart boy and I wish you all the luck and good fortune a person could ever want or need. I am sitting here typing this letter to you and you are right next to me shooting your bow and arrow that you got yesterday at Storybook Land. Christopher, please just always remember that I LOVE YOU more than anything in this whole world, and even if I’m not with you, you are always and forever in my heart and mind.

If at all possible Chris, I will always be with you. You are my life. I LOVE YOU. Goodbye, Son.

Your Dad …. I love you!