Mariannes Motifs

Kate Viola Best Atlanta Real Estate Agent

If you are looking for Atlanta Real Estate check out the ReMax website for Kate Viola.  Katie is one of my greatest friends - she and I both are from upstate New York, and used to be roommates.  She is really the main reason I ended up moving to Atlanta - she moved here and I came and visited and moved shortly after. 

Katie is an experienced licensed real estate agent and has a particular field of expertise in the metro condo market and commercial real estate.  She also has done alot of corporate relocation, and has recently been making a big splash in suburban residential.  Atlanta has so many neighborhoods and little mini city centers - you really want someone who knows the area and market you are looking at.

Katie is also one of the most personable and enthusiastic people you will ever meet.  She gives every project she works on 100%! 

Quality

I used to work for General Electric, and although I only worked for them a little more than a year, I learned a great many things about big business while I was there.  GE is one of the largest companies in the world, and they both make and save money by using economies of scale.  The are very big on Six Sigma Training which is a Quality training methodology used by business to reduce the margin of error to be so small as to be statistically insignificant.

When it comes to Quality Initiatives, a lot of companies pay a lot of attention to training their black belts and green belts, and give a whole lot of lip service to quality training.  However, what some companies seem to forget is that for a quality initiative to be truly integrated into the company it can't just be reserved for certain key players, top management, or key processes.  As my brother told me one time, to have a real "Quality" program, you need to look at the entirety of your organization from top to bottom.  How about the mail room?  How about the chairs your people are sitting on?  The work you get from your employees is going to be a direct reflection of the tools and environment they work in.  If you buy low quality equipment, prone to failure, then that might have a ripple effect through the organization.

Mistakes cost money.  Employee illness and injury costs money.  Quality ergonomic working tools and environments cost money too, however, you can receive pack a payoff in an increased performance of your employees.  Work can be accomplished faster without the annoyances of working with junky equipment, and you will definitely see an increased morale.  Everyone is happier when they have a comfortable chair!  Now that's is what I call quality.

3GB Community a scam?

I took down a previous post I made about 3gb community.  I have been advised that they may not be totally legit and to remove the post.  So I just wanted to say sorry to my loyal readers for steering you wrong.  Please avoid these guys until we hear more.

Thanks,

Marianne

Email from the folks at Bird's Eye

I just got a really nice surprise in my email - an email from a lady at Bird's Eye foods.  They noticed my March blog post about Steamfresh Veggies and offered  to send me a free cookbook and coupons to try their new Steamfresh Rice products: Long Grain White Rice, Whole Grain Brown Rice, and Long Grain White Rice with Mixed Vegetables.  (Hey - who says there's a rice shortage!)

I think this is fantastic customer service and great a great marketing methodology on the part of Bird's Eye.  Blogs are worth money these days, and a genuine product review from a trusted person (hey, you trust me, right? :-P  ) are like gold to create buzz out there in the world.  I wrote about Steamfresh veggies because I really like them, and got a great deal on them that I wanted to share about.  To be noticed by the company is just a really cool extra.  I can't wait 'til my cookbook comes.

And you know what - I won't sell this one on half.com either.  LOL.  I keep all my cookbooks - they are a fantastic resource and I love reading cookbooks.  Its very soothing for some reason to read cookbooks.  Even if I never make the recipe, I feel like I learn something from reading it.

Here is the book they have offered to send to me: How to Cook Everything: Vegetarian, by Mark Bittman.

Making a little extra dough

It's all part of my plan to take over the world.  So far I've done paid blogging, google adsense ($4.67) Widgetbucks ads in the sidebar of the blog, CafePress t-shirt shop (my brother and I are the only customers so far!)...  I've also had alot of success selling stuff on ebay and half.com.  I listed Seth Godin's Purple Cow book on half.com and it was sold within 2 hours!!!  I shipped it out the next day and listed some more books.  (Not bad considering I bought it for a buck fifty at Goodwill, and then read it.)

The nice thing about Half.com is how easy it is to list books.  You just type in the ISBN number of the book and pick the condition from the list of choices, and they know what book it is and even suggest a price for you to list them at.  Easy peasy. 

Here is another website that buys books from you that looks even easier to use - they have you print out a postage paid shipping label!  What could be easier than that?  I am going to have to give it a try.

military surplus

I remember when I was a kid my mom used to shop at the military surplus stores and and my brother and I wore chinos, and belts and stuff from there.  Those Vietnam ere Army jackets with the guys name on them were really popular back then too.  We had ammo boxes, bags, web belts, all kinds of cool stuff.

Nowadays alot of people buy BDU Pants for all sorts of different reasons.  That's Battle Dress Uniform, for those of us who haven't a clue about military lingo.  I was reading where a physical therapist wore them in black as uniform pants.  I gather that they are comfortable, indestructible, and have lots of pockets where you need them.

Did you know that I don't let my kids to wear camo?  Yeah I just have a thing against it - its my pacifist nature.  I saw some really cool self striping "camo" yarn at the craft store the other day!  How funny to knit some camouflage.

Investment Information and Retirement Goal Planner

Our company just had our quarterly 401k meeting.  Unlike most of them, this time I actually learned something.  I learned about a type of chart Financial Analysts call the Quilt Chart.  The one they showed us only had 4 squares across - but this Quilt Chart has a number of different In dices, and shows how each performed each year.  Its interesting to try to spot patterns year to year and try to use those patterns along with predictions of what is going to happen in the economy in the coming year to try to predict which investment categories will outperform next year.

Another cool tool I saw was a really nice Retirement Goal Planner web financial retirement calculator from The Hartford.  This is one of the nicest ones I've seen and I have seen alot of them.  I like the way it gives you the option to include Social Security or not into the calculation.

No politician is going to admit we are in a recession, but I am not afraid to say it.  It's time for me to go over my 401k with a magnifying glass and see what I can do to ride out the storm.  I am thinking of starting to put some money into one of the Real Estate funds and do some "bottom fishing."  Warren Buffet ain't got nothin' on me, baby.

Did I mention that Jin has been listening to AM talk radio lately?  We have had quite a few major arguments about Barack Obama.  Don't even get me started.  But yesterday he asked me who Warren Buffet was, so I guess its possible that cheesy bad republican AM Radio talk shows could possibly have one iota of value to them.  Maybe.  I'm not sure though.
 

I won my ebay auctions!

I won my ebay auctions for the two Magic the Gathering MTG Unglued cards that I was missing from my complete set.  I also got a price quote from a trading card store on the set - they will give me $60 for it.  I think I can do better than that on Ebay, so I think I will give it a shot.

I saw that the last auction of a complete set of MTG Unglued Cards 94/94 sold for $112.  I am tempted to keep them, LOL, but on the other hand it might be fun to go ahead and do the ebay auction and get some cold hard cash for them.  I wonder what these would potentially be worth 50 years from now or something like that...  Who knows?

I think I have a bunch of other random MTG cards too.  Maybe I should figure out where they are in the house and think about auctioning them off.  At least they are easy to ship, right?

I'm not even getting started with thinking about Jin's collection of baseball cards.   He won't let me touch those.

I signed up for PayPerPost

I signed up for payperpost. I first heard about this while looking at  Heather Manning's blog.   I was playing the "blog game" at DigiShopTalk (a digiscrapping forum I hang out in) where you post a comment to the person's blog above you, and the person below you posts a comment to your blog.

I was in the process of monetizing my blog (see my disclosure page for more details) and I was looking really closely at other peoples ads, links, blog designs, etc.  I saw Heather's "Get Paid to Blog about the things you love" badge and clicked it. 

I looked through the lists of opportunities to blog for money and I saw legit things.  I thought to myself, "self, I could do that..."  So here I am.  I do feel a little funny about it, but I think it's worth a try.  I promise to tell you, the reader, when I am writing a sponsored post.  I promise to check out what I am blogging about and make sure it looks legit.  Please also let the buyer beware, too.  In case I miss something.  And if you know something about a company I blog about that I should know, shoot me an email.  Marianne DOT Case AT Comcast DOT Net. 

Thanks!