Things are usually never as bad as they seem at first

Have you ever just had one of those weeks? Well, what started out about a week ago as what I thought was the end of the world is looking pretty bright now.

Anyway, all my personal drama of the past week made me think of a time about 3 years ago when I had my wisdom teeth removed. I had it done in my dentist's office with local anesthetic and a good dose of "I don't care about anything" drugs. Afterward, I thought I was going to die from the swelling and pain. So, I basically crashed and had to be woken up every so often to change the ice (uh...bags of frozen veggies) that I used to keep me iced down to prevent swelling. [By the way, if you ever need ice for an injury, and haven't tried it, bags of frozen vegetables, particularly corn and peas, are fantastic for that purpose.] Anyway, at one point my sweet caretaker put a bag of blueberries on me as we’d run out of other veggies. While I slept, the juice leaked out all over the towel we had wrapped around my head. When the next wake up time came and she saw it, she thought I’d been bleeding profusely and we both about had a panic attack!

It didn't take long to figure out it was just blueberry juice, but the point is that it sure looked like I was in bad shape initially. In the end, it turned out fine. In that case, we switched back to frozen corn and I eventually stopped swelling and hurting and got over the ordeal pretty quickly.

Winston Churchill once said, "If you're going through hell, keep going." Even if your experience doesn't necessarily qualify as hell, I think it's good advice. It's sometimes hard to remember when you're in the midst of a stretch of bumpy road, but I was reminded this past week that a bumpy road doesn't last long and there are turn-offs and other roads much less bumpy ahead. (And big thanks to friends who gave my shock absorbers a boost this week!)

Sorry for the lengthy absence from posting, but I'll get back to posting more regularly in the days to come.

If

I stumbled across this poem by Rudyard Kipling today and it struck a chord with me so I thought I'd share it. It speaks of character and persistence and so much more.

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

--Rudyard Kipling

It's about the audience

I love this quote. Every time I give a presentation I hope it's obvious that I feel strongly about my subject. But the most important thing is that the audience takes away something that moves them.

While recently attending a course taught by Garr Reynolds (PresentationZen) and Nancy Duarte (Duarte Design, Slide:ology), Nancy said something that is a great corollary to the Salladay quote. She said, "You can give a great presentation or you can give a presentation that moves the world." Amen sister!

What does one TRILLION dollars look like?

If you haven't seen this, it's worth a look. I'd happily take the 1 million dollar package (100 packets of $10,000) which looks like this...

...and would still have room in my bag for my laptop.

Isn't it amazing that something that looks so small can mean so many big things?

Sigh...

Expense reports - The Next Generation. Wow!

I was filling out expense reports this past weekend and tweeted about it:



A short while later, I got a reply tweet:



My first thought was "Oh crap! Twitter spam!" But for some reason, I clicked on the link and ended up at a new site called Expensify.



Maybe because I hate filling out expense reports (particularly the part where I have to tape all my receipts to copy paper) or maybe it's because I was just bored of doing it and thought something new and different would at least be not boring, so I signed up.

Within a few minutes, I had linked up the credit card I use for all my business expenses and imported all the transactions for that card into Expensify. From that list of transactions, I chose the expenses that were from my latest business trip and built a new expense report following the very simple instructions. There were a few expenses that I didn't charge to my card, so I added those manually.

They said I could email a JPG of the receipt to receipts@expensify.com and it would be made available for me to include on my report just like charge card receipts. I tried this and it didn't work. Oh well...I figured it was either user error or perhaps it was the fact that this site is still labeled "beta" and I had just hit a bug that was preventing it from working.

But, for the part that worked, I was very happy. Every expense from my credit card had a certified electronic receipt. What this means is that there is proof of my charge direct from my credit card vendor that the IRS accepts so I don't need to provide the physical receipt for those expenses. In other words, if I charge everything to my card, I have electronic receipts for all those charges and my entire expense report can be handled without me having to deal with one scrap of paper or receipt! Now that is awesome!

I was a bit concerned about the cash receipts JPGs not showing up though so I sent a feedback note (by clicking on the site's Feedback link) saying that I couldn't get the JPG email to show up properly. I figured the feedback would just disappear into a support black hole, but then !bam! I got an email from a real person with a real name with a real email address:



I forwarded him the original email I had sent with the attached JPG as he requested and got this reply:



Wow! Real. Live. Actual. Responsive. Customer. Service. Wow!

I re-sent the email with the attachment and checked my Expensify account and !wah-lah! it was there, pretty as you please.

Wanting to be thankful but seeing something else I was now wondering about, I replied:



And very shortly, I received this note in response:



Again, I say Wow! I got an acknowledgment and a work-around.

I'm seriously impressed with these folks. It reminds me of TripIt and how much easier using it has made organizing my travels. Expensify seems to be to expense reporting what TripIt is to travel. Granted, I think they've still got some maturing to do but I'm highly impressed with what they've got and with their excellent customer service. And, even better...it's free to use!

My customer service experience is so critical to how I view a product or service. If customer service and support is top notch, I think that speaks volumes. And, it didn't take much for the Expensify folks to make me feel well taken care of and heard. I appreciated it so much I've just spent 20 minutes writing this blog post singing their praises!

So, if you hate doing expense reports and want a way to make it easier and faster to do them than you ever thought possible, I highly recommend that you check out Expensify.

Tagged

My friend Cheryl tagged me for this a couple of weeks ago and so I'm playing along (better late than never)!

Here's the deal:
1. Go to your My Documents/My Pictures
2. Go to your sixth file
3. Go to your sixth picture
4. Blog about it
5. Tag 6 people

Well, first of all, I'm a Mac user so there's no such thing as My Documents/My Pictures. So, I improvised. I went to iPhoto and chose the 6th Event category (it was entitled "Misc Fun"). Here's what I found:



You know I followed the instructions because why else would I ever choose this humiliating photo of myself to display to the public! Thanks a lot Cheryl!

So, here's the deal. I have a thing for hats. I don't wear them often, but I have several I keep around for things like hiding bed hair when I have to run to the store early in the morning to pick up something we need for breakfast. But mostly, I like to try on different hats and have fun making up stories about what I'd be doing or who I'd be if I was the owner of that hat.

Can you guess who I'd be in the hat pictured? Yep...that's me...the Grand Poobah!

This hat was one of many I tried on at a shop at Universal Studios Florida called the Brown Derby. That day I tried many hats and had many photos taken, but this one was the one I was most tempted to purchase. I could almost imagine the stares I'd get the next time I wore it to cover up bed hair!

I'll admit to ending the tag game at me. I mean really...the Grand Poobah does have the power and authority to change the rules just a bit doesn't she?!?!

Tweetie

For those of you who Twitter and own an iPhone, you may like this app - Tweetie - if you haven't found it yet.