Category Archives: Reference

Presidents Day Quiz

Posted on by

In honor of Presidents Day we have a little history quiz…

Someone’s signature is often refered to as their "John Hancock" – why did this expression originate?

John Hancock was the first person to sign the declaration of independance AND his signature was huge (and ornate) compared to the others.

Bonus Points: Who do we have to thank that John was not captured by the British in 1775?

In April 1775, Paul Revere got John Hancock & Samuel Adams out of Lexington hours before the British arrived. Samuel Adams, of course, is famous for his ferverent boycott of tea including the Boston Tea Party protest. A lesser known fact, is that Adams’ motivation behind the tea boycott was not freedom from British appression or taxes, but creating an increased demand for his beer. ;)

Adding this quote to the archive seemed appropriate: "John Hancock….it’s Herbie Hancock." – Tommy Boy.

Business Tidbits

Posted on by

According to Human Resource Management the following is the breakdown for why people call in sick:

35% ARE sick
21% Have family issues
18% Have personal issues
14% Want a mental health day
12% Think they deserve a break

So a third are sick, a little over a third are dealing with issues, and little less than a third are taking a needed vacation day.

According to a study by CareerJournal.com and the Society for Human Resources…

40% of people have had an office romance AND 42% of those people ended up marrying a coworker

My take?  People need to get out more.  Picking a mate out of your dating pool is just a fact of life.  Having a crappy dating pool is simply proof a not having a life. 

Retirement… Now!

Posted on by

So I’ve been thinking about retirement a lot lately… aren’t we all right? Of course the more fun question regarding retirement is not how, but WHEN can I finally kick this job to the curb and live the good life?

I decided to find out. A few things had to be established before we could jump into the math. First of all we will assume that the investments are in the stock market which is the easiest and most common way to save for retirement. The stock market averages 12-12.5% return and inflation runs 2-2.5% so we will assume a real return of 10%. We will compute money invested on a percentage of income basis so that it can be applied to anyone weither you make $20k/yr or $200k/yr. Most people will make more money later in life than they do now. The equations will still hold – the amount you retire with will be a function of your average income during your career.

One last thing had to be decided. How much money do you need to retire? Well the experts claim that you can live off of an amount substantially less than your income due to lower taxes, no kids, (hopefully) no debt ect. Many say 60% – we’re going to assume extreme frugality and say that you can squeek by on 50% of you income and actually retire at that point. We have also setup to less painful levels of retirement. Retirement at your income level – which seems to be working for you now so it should in the future. And finally the good life of retiring to double you current income level. Nice. The results are below:

 

The Number Of Years Of Investing To Reach Retirement Income

(% Pre-Retirement of Income)

Ipods Cooler Than Beer

Posted on by

That's right among the coolest kids in town (college kids of course), the Ipod has — at least temporarily — de-throned drinking beer as the number one "in" thing to do.  iPods were rated as "in" by 73% of undergrads while beer and facebook.com ranked #2 with 71%. 

Does this mean that we are becoming a geek-ier nation or that tech is going mainstream when a gadget and a web site are going toe to toe with getting sloshed?

 Thanks Dre

The Perfect TV… Size

Posted on by
So you want a new TV and you want a BIG one. Or at least a bigger one. How big is too big? What’s the optimum viewing distance? For optimum viewing you want to be close enough that you don’t have to squint but not so close that you can see the “pixels” in the image. So this means that you can sit closer to a HDTV than a regular TV it also means that to “fully” enjoy the higher quality picture of a DVD or HDTV picture you shouldn’t sit as far away.

Two rules of thumb are as follows:Rule #1: Determine the viewing distance from the TV. Mulitply the distance in feet by “x” to get TV size (diagonal) in inches. Multiply by 4 for Cable TV, 6 for Digital Cable/Satilite/DVD, 7 for HDTV.

And my preference, Rule #2: Measure the width of your TV screen. Optimum viewing distance for TV is 3-6 times this width and 1.5-3 times for DVD/HDTV. Since you have a nice overlap at 3x you can use it for the best all around viewing distance/TV size. Now since regular TV is 4:3 ratio you can use 3,4,5 triangle math and come up with the one simple rule: TV size (inches diagonal) divided by 5 gives you the optimum viewing distance in feet.

Now remember this is the optimum setting for you Home Theatre/Main TV. So while a 70″ projector image is perfect for a 14′ distance to the main couch in the living room… putting a 55″ screen for the 11′ across the bedroom is a tad overkill.