Yes, yes I do understand that everyone has different work situations and that mine may just be better than theirs but I think that sometimes the little things get in the way of the larger picture and we can’t dwell on that. I mean, we can dwell on it but it doesn’t get us anywhere. We all know the saying “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade“. Its somewhat similar to that but, I think that some need more of a push in terms of motivation than others. Well, how can you be more positive, you ask? Easy, lets take a look at a few big things I noted:

1) Peer distractions – Sometimes what may tend to happen is that one may get caught up in how others view them or if they have any issues with their co-workers. Everyone has their issues and I have had them in the past myself but you have to look beyond that. You have to look towards the future and say “Okay, now that I have this situation, how can I still complete my tasks?”. When it comes to tough co-workers, its not necessarily avoidance or the silent treatment. It’s the involve treatment – where you try to involve them more and attempt to listen to their issues to see if there really is something you can correct or assist with.

2) Team Spirit – It may seem that you don’t consider yourself part of the team and usually leave work as you are done. Sometimes, projects require that you associate with other staff and connect with them and help them when they need it. This builds the team spirit. If you help your peers once or twice, they will remember and assist you when you are crunched for time at a later time.

3) Recognition/Feedback – If you are in a manager and up position and you have people that work below you, feedback is crucial for personal development. Furthermore, if you seek the recognition or feedback then you need to raise your concerns with your local human resource team or request your manager or superiors for feedback as you complete a task or a project. The process of giving and receiving feedback is highly satisfying at an emotional level and from the standpoint of professional development.

These are things that most of us deal with on a daily basis or even if it isn’t on a daily basis, it is something that causes issues at our work place. Hopefully we can work to resolve the issues and make our work environment not just suitable but beyond suitable for our needs. Hope you guys have a great weekend!

Speaking of, the WordPress 3.3 update was something that was lingering over my head for the past few months and I finally performed the necessary backups and completed the upgrade. It seems that this upgrade had the least number of issues with it in terms of the plug-ins and themes.

The thought behind the upgrade came about mostly because I thought about giving the blog a major face lift for the new year and the newer themes required WordPress 3.0+ in order to function correctly. I haven’t started coding and modifying the theme base just yet but I have a design in mind to give the blog the update it needs.

So, what does the new theme change? For the most part, it will focus more on the content and bring about some major changes to the layout of the current theme. I think reducing the header space will move the content up and give in for advertising space to be more central to the theme.

This brings about a thought – what do most of you consider as a reasonable period of time before a theme for a blog should be changed? To me it seems that when a change is necessary, it should be made however, several key components that make a blog easily noticeable should remain the same such as the color scheme, logo and any other identifiers associated with a blogger.

Thoughts?

The structure that Fuji Xerox follows is that of the Good Company Concept. Under this concept, a good company must be “strong”, “kind” and “interesting.” A “strong” company can deliver excellent products and services that satisfy customers and also reward its shareholders on an ongoing basis. A company must be “kind” by contributing to the local and global communities in terms of environmental conservation, ethics and corporate citizenship. Employees find their life and work interesting at an “interesting” company. Fuji Xerox aims to be a company with a good balance of all three attributes.

Fuji Xerox produces and designs versatile multifunction printers to print, copy, fax and scan quickly and conveniently in color and black and white varieties. Fuji Xerox is part of a world leading enterprise for business and document management services. Through its broad portfolio of document technology, services, software and supplies, Fuji Xerox provides essential back-office support that clears the way for customers to focus on their core business. With awards from the United Nations and the Banksia Environmental Foundation, Fuji Xerox is well recognised for its commitment to sustainability.

Fuji Xerox (Japan) is a subsidiary of Fujifilm Holdings of Japan (75%) and Xerox Corporation of the USA (25%). Its a fairly interesting company with a significantly interesting corporate structure. Its something definitely worth reading and looking into.

Google recently purchased Motorola’s Mobility segment for a cool $12.5 billion. The deal is being called Google’s insurance policy against legal attacks from rivals such as Apple, Inc. TechCrunch points out that this deal adds 17,000 patents and 7,000 pending patents to Googles’ portfolio. The interesting news will now be to see how far Google will take Motorola Mobility considering the $12.5 billion dollar deal is 1/3 of Google’s cash in hand – not meaning to suggest in any way that the deal was all cash.

Motorola Mobility is responsible for the cell phone and TV Set-top ox business and Google is not backing down by offering a 63% premium to gain access to Motorola’s patent library. Google is essentially guarding itself against the Android system going through an intellectual property battle. It could be that perhaps Google wants to be more like Apple – owning the ecosystem around its Android platform but if not, the patent warfare might get heated up. Google also claims that the deal won’t harm Googles’ relationship with other handset manufacturers but that doesn’t seem likely at all.

The good news is for Blackberry (Research in Motion) and Nokia that they have now become targets for takeover as well, shooting their share values up. Google has now acquired Motorola to not only create the hardware that users like but to couple it with Google’s popular Android software. In the long run it would have been difficult for Google to compete with someone like Apple that is able to marry the hardware and software as easily as Apple does with the iPhone and Googles’ new acquisition will make way for them to stand head to head with Apple.

On the other hand, we may also see GoogleTV being pushed to Motorola’s set-top boxes and that could be a nightmare for some cable and satellite companies. Either way, I think the deal is only fair in terms of Google now being able to compete with Motorola – what this will mean for the consumer (aside from a better phone) is to be determined as time passes on.

I prefer getting on a plane and resting while on my way to a vacation spot but there are people who like to experiment with the not so standard traveling options such as RVs or even driving to a camp site with their favorite coleman tents ready to weather what the night will bring.

To me the idea of outdoor travel or vacationing just doesn’t seem luxurious enough and I understand that its not meant to be luxurious but I just can’t seem to come to terms with vacationing at a camp site. I wonder how many people still prefer camping as their choice of vacation travel and if so, aside from some of the popular destinations and some of the normal camp site activities – wood fire, hiking, biking, etc, what would be something more adventurous that people do nowadays.

Recently I read that due to the harsh economic times, some families are turning to camping and I questioned how many people actually do go camping. I also read that Coleman was the most preferred brand for camping equipment and it would be tough to argue with that – with everything from inflatable rafts, tents, flashlights, Coleman seems to accommodate most camping needs.

The question that comes to mind is – what is your preferred method of travel? and if you are a camper, what kind of activities do you indulge in?

Interestingly enough, this past week I wasn’t feeling too great and just a little R&R was able to help me feel just right. Now, onto Effexor. The reason I accepted the review was because I want to know what exactly the pill is used for. Modern medicine can cure a lot of things and if there is something out there, I am genuinely interested in learning some more about it. Essentially Effexor is used to treat depression or anxiety disorders – social anxiety, panic disorder, etc. These are referred to as “Venlafaxine” and are in a class of medications called selective serotonin and norepinephrine reputake inhibitors (SNRIs) – some long long words! These are just natural substances in the brain that help maintain the mental balance. Seems quite simple but I’m not sure if they work even though I read a bit about them and do know they work.

Seems like there are some warnings about such medications for those under 24 and obviously consulting with your doctor is necessary but I had to take on this review only to learn a bit more about something that I had apparently not heard about but something that is quite widely used.

Are you a big believer in medication or pills or are you like me where you figure a couple days of R&R will help you feel better?

My old printer was also an HP and mostly the HP brand has been good to me and thats why I stick with them. The problem now becomes that I paid $200 for the printer and the set of ink costs $50 but then I started thinking about re-manufactured ink cartridges. I know that I had tried it once and it wasn’t so successful and the biggest reason for that is because I had to refill it myself. Painful and disappointing and I was half way covered in ink.

I know a lot of people purchase these re-manufactured toner cartridges and there are a few popular websites such as RetailBlue (an Australian website) and a few others and noticed that the difference is substantial – 40% less than the retail value of the cartridges. Theres really no hassle since you buy directly from them and they ship it to your door.

Further, I realized by reading on Retail Blue that these cartridges are better for the environment – it makes sense because many components of a cartridge can be used over and over again because they either have a long service life and some of them last forever and by just throwing them away, you could recycle them. Think about how much ink is used daily in your office and so forth and suddenly recycling the cartridges sounds like a better idea. The process itself to recycle the cartridge looks at the cartridge housing as well as the nozzle, the electronic circuits, the replace drum and is then filled with the exact ink or toner formulation. Essentially these cartridges exceed OEM standards so why not? Save yourself some money, save the environment and go green!

Now my question is, how many of you recycle your ink cartridges and if you do, do you purchase ink from a remanufactured ink and toner cartridges store? Whats your favorite store?

Fortunately for our friends overseas, a store called Wickes is able to provide them with home improvement tools but whats interesting is that they actually design their own home improvement products which are designed to meet the requirements of DIYers, tradesmen and individuals involved in general repair and maintenance. The Wickes brand actually owns 200 stores, by comparison Home Depot has almost 2,250 stores in the US and Lowes has almost 1,750 stores. Not too shabby overall though. They opened their first store about 40 years ago and they have over 8,500 products.

The reason I’m talking about Wickes is because recently the idea of expanding the house came into my mind and that meant needing floor boards and wallboards/plasterboards (sheetrock) and when I did a search, I came up with Wickes. What really got me curious was the idea that DIY, specially in these economic times, has to be doing well and I believe that Home Depot did really well in terms of its overall Q2 profits and it seems like the trend will continue even if the economy does pick up.

My question then is this, when it comes to repairs or maintenance whether its to your home or your trusty computer, do you prefer the hands on approach (DIY) or hands off approach (let me call someone!) ?

When it comes to my cell phone accessories too, I’m not one who goes out and buys every single accessory and I think its better for me anyway because generally when I have in the past, I never end up using it but I know that lots of folks love their mobile accessories and thats why I decided to accept this review. MyTrendyPhone.com sells accessories for pretty much all mobile devices, whether its phones, iPods, cameras and video cameras for reasonable prices. They have a price guarantee and a satisfaction guarantee so if you find a lower price elsewhere, they’ll match it and if you’re just not happy with the product, they’ll gladly accept the return. Its one of those win-win situations for consumers like me, who really can’t make up their mind but generally if I have a product in my hand, I can make up my mind pretty quickly.

After searching their website for Xoom accessories, I realized that they not only sorted in the standard Motorola gear but they also pulled in other OEM replacements and other compatible products which was good and although I’m not in the UK, the pricing did seem fine to me from that point. Some of the adapters and such were only a few dollars which is a good price point. The question that I have for you is – what kind of accessories do you usually purchase with your mobile device – Whether its a cell phone, tablet, laptop, etc?

Scentsy Products are not only safe but they stem from a really creative concept of making candles safe. We hear so many stories about people leaving their candles burning in their home and it results in a tragedy and so something like this is not only a good product but its more of a safe alternative to the regular scented candles that you and I would use in our homes.

Scentsy generated more than $700 million in revenue in just 7 years and today it has almost 100,000 independent Scentsy consultants that share the exprience throughout the US, Puerto Rico, Guam and Canada. Its really interesting how the direct selling concept works because its more of a door to door type thing or where one Scentsy consultant puts together a small event for potential customers. Its a great idea, a great concept and a really great story considering that the company’s first home office was a 40-foot ocean shipping container on a small sheep farm. Things come a long way and this story shows exactly how dreams come true.