Successful Blog

Thanks to Week 112 SOBs

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Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

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They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her to me. Thie award carries a “Liz said so” guarantee, is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and is backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

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Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame– A-Z Directory . Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Generosity and Little Boxes with Names

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Putting People in Boxes

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I was thinking about the shopping everyone will be doing today,
and it made me think of Pete Seeger’s song, “little boxes, little boxes all the same.”

Little boxes on a hillside, little boxes made of ticky tacky,
little boxes, little boxes, little boxes all the same.
—Pete Seeger

Little Boxes with Names

A picture came to me of people who are holiday shopping
Crowds of people vying for gifts, gadgets, and games
They are questing and requesting decorations and prizes
to celebrate by making big and little boxes with names.

How our eyes glaze as we move through the herding hallways
How we don’t see each other as we move through the holidays.

Do we start to think generosity is inside the boxes?
Do we put people inside boxes that have their names?

Gift Box

There’s the people we buy for
and the people who buy for us
There’s the people help us
and the people who get in our way.

It can happen . . .
little boxes, little boxes mentality
It can happen to the kindest soul
in less than a day.

Our feet become transportation
Our eyes become navigation
Our heads and hands are productivity
Lonely hearts overpay.

Yet, smiles don’t come in pretty boxes
Caring touches aren’t delivered second day.
Respect isn’t offered on paper then forgotten
We don’t put corrugated around loving words we say.

Generosity of spirit doesn’t live in little boxes,
little boxes tied with ribbon, little boxes so beautiful,
but in some ways all the same
Generosity of spirit lives in our hearts,
when we see every name tag as a person of wishes and dreams
. . . every person as a person with a name.

How will you be generous today?
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Pro Data Doctor

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Pro Data Doctor to the Rescue!

Great Find: Pro Data Doctor

Permalink: http://www.datadoctor.biz/

Target Audience: Anyone who has lost data from a memory card!

Content:

Have you ever lost pictures from your camera’s memory card? We were vacationing in August and after two days with the grandkids, I lost all my photos. That’s crushing! The photos just seemed to disappear from the memory card.

So I put in my second memory card. I could only take 5-6 pictures and then the camera thought the disk was was full. I really enjoy taking photos, so it was quite a disappointing trip from that perspective. When I returned home, I took my camera in for repair at our local big-box store. To make a long story short, the manager at the technical repair counter looked at the memory card and suggested that there was nothing on it and to go ahead and reformat the card. I wasn’t ready to give up. After all, if CSI and the FBI can recover files, there must be a solution.

This weekend I started looking online for a program or company that could help me recover my photos.

Memory Card Data Recovery Software

I found Pro Data Doctor and they make a product called Memory Card Data Recovery Software. I downloaded the demo version and it found a lot of files. So I purchased the program. It was successful! Yeah! I was able to recover all the photos of the grandkids and our adventures. Who wouldn’t want this photo?

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This company makes a lot of other recovery programs. Check them out if you have lost data. It’s worth a try!

This tool is on my favorites list because:

  • It’s easy-to-use
  • It works!
  • It’s reasonably priced

Check it out yourself.

See you next time!

–Sandy, Purple Wren

Related
Great Find: PictureTrail
Sandy’s Great Graphic Find: CoolText
Sandy’s Great Graphic Find: Pixel Ruler

SOB Business Cafe 12-14-07

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SB Cafe

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking–articles on the business of blogging written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are some of the best on the living web.

Cube Rules lives leadership. I said goodbye to my team and 3-4 others on the floor and headed on home twenty minutes after being laid off.

All of this, of course, happened a half hour after my wife, Kate, was laid off in a different building in a different department. There are times when working for the same company sucks…

Dorai Learn Log brings out A Robert Scoble interview with Tim Berners-Lee.

It involves serious study. It involves research. We need to study it as a huge complex system.

Jonathan Fields demonstrates doing for others is tricky business. “It’s late, sweety,” I say, “what’s the matter?” “I’m scared, daddy,” comes the reply. “What’s scaring you?” “The crickets.” [we live on the 9th floor in the city, ain’t no crickets, here] “I’m scared they’re gonna jump out and get me,” she continues.

Legal Andrew offers an educated perspective. Many of the key issues for this topic are exactly what time counts as “hours worked.”

Drew’s Marketing Minute offers a timely question (or two). I’m not talking about giving someone a pen or t-shirt with your logo on it. (You’re not doing that, are you?)

The Savvy Entrepreneur offers a thoughtful definition. . . . Filling the pipeline is the first stage in the Universal Marketing Cycle. If you’re not actively filling your pipeline, your business will soon run dry. So what DOES filing the pipeline really mean?

Lorelle on WordPress takes a stand on translations. . . . I rarely give permission. Whoa! Does this sound like it goes against Lorelle’s policy of open, transparent, fair, and equal communication and breaking down the language barriers? Nope. It is within my policies.

Related ala carte selections include

Being Five is a longtime favorite of mine. Be sure to read the one for 12/04/07.

Sit back. Enjoy your read. Nachos and drinks will be right over. Stay as long as you like. No tips required. Comments appreciated.

Have a great weekend! See you when I’m home again!

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Generosity, Gratitude, Wisdom, and Fools

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Wise or Foolish . . . Which am I?

What a fool believes, the wise man has the power to reason away.
—Doobie Brothers

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My dad used to say, “A fool and his money are soon parted.” If time is money, I guess that counts for time too. So when generosity foolish?

Many are the occasions on which people ask, sometimes expect, us to help them. I’m speaking of naked requests from people we don’t know, asked as if we do volunteer work for them. I often wonder at this. I know we’re told it doesn’t hurt to ask. Yet, we’re also told to be generous first. I wonder why they haven’t heard that second part? It sure affects a first impression. Why don’t they see that a person’s time given to them is time that could be spent earning and enjoying family and friends?

Far fewer are the times when special individuals write to ask for help to accomplish a goal. They reach out with gratitude. Yes, the gratitude comes with the request. It’s only natural to respond with generosity. The fairness of this, I understand.

Some folks who call us a friend, love us like they “love” their favorite doctor. They value us while they’re feeling in need or unwell. Later they forget to say “thanks” in the way cured patients forget to pay hospital bills.

Other folks go out of their way to make sure that we know our generosity didn’t go unnoticed. These friends are always here with a smile and a kind word, even when they’re gone.

The fool in me believes that all generosity finds a way back eventually.
The wise person I am knows that could be a foolish view.

This week my son asked for advice. At the end of the call, he said a quiet, “thank you.”

The fool in me was grateful.
Gratitude is wise.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Have You Forgotten What Makes You Magical?

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I've been thinking . . .

about the magical parts of ourselves.

I read once about a truck driver who would drive for hours to sit by a river to reflect on his problems. When they were solved he would drive home again. I solve my problems when I write, when I listen to music, when I talk long walks in my head and wonder what I should be doing next.

But I learn the most about who I really am when I am with people I care about, especially those whom I haven’t seen for a long, long time. In a funny way, it’s like watching grass grow or your own child get taller, you don’t notice changes in yourself until you have large spaces of time in between two points to compare.

When I went to the UK, I looked forward to seeing friends that I hadn’t seen for nearly 5 years. I knew that I would discover, uncover, or trip over something about my life that I hadn’t figured out because I was “too here.”

And it happened just that way.

Being in the company of people who knew me “in the olden days” brought my thoughts back to the person I used to be. They asked questions, and I answered them. It was curious to see which events, which ideas, of 5 years time passing I chose to mention. It was revealing to realize that 5 years ago I might have responded to their stories and updates differently.

I liked the new me.

Yet, tiny things that I valued about who I was 5 years ago started showing up on my radar screen. They were tiny good differences in the way my friends related to and remembered me. These were hopes, dreams, and deep heart things that new friends would have no reason to know.

I suppose it happens that way for most all of us. We’re so busy living; we don’t see how we’ve grown. We don’t see how our growing means we might accidentally leave behind bits of ourselves.

It’s a smile, the kind you get when you hear favorite old music, to meet up with parts of yourself that you didn’t value enough then.

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Dear friends, in whose care we’ve left our well being, hand back to us a piece of our hearts and our history, so that we can make it our own again. They’re a lifelong mirror who can reflect back all the marvelous colors.

They’re a gift because they see what we’ve forgotten — the truly magical things that are part of who we’ve been all along.

Have you forgotten what makes you magical?
The people who love you still know.

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