12/14/11

Today, President Obama spoke at Fort Bragg, NC, to welcome home soldiers returning from Iraq. In his speech he said, “You stood up for America; now America must stand up for you. Our commitment to you doesn’t end when you take off the uniform.”

I hope this promise is met with genuine and sincere interest and commitment by employers.

But to ensure employers KNOW WHO YOU ARE, here are my simple suggestions on what you need to put at the top of your resume, just below your name and contact information.

If you were wounded in combat, clearly state that you are a WOUNDED WARRIOR.

If you served in Iraq or Afghanistan, clearly state that you are an IRAQ or AFGHANISTAN VETERAN, or both if applicable. Don’t be bashful if your service goes back to Vietnam or even Korea.

I would prominently display this information above your clearance (if you have one).

Remember, most people reading a resume take less than 30 seconds to scan and reach an initial determination. So BROADCAST your military service!!!

There is no such thing as a perfect password. A committed hacker can crack any password, given enough time and the right “dictionary” or “brute force” tools. But just like breaking into a car, if the protection is strong enough, the hacker will become discouraged and pursue an easier target.

1. Start With a Base Word Phrase.

A good password starts with a base word phrase. Choose a memorable catchphrase, quotation, or easy-to-remember saying, and take the first letter from each word. Choose a phrase that is memorable to you.

Examples of some base word phrases:

* Can’t See the Forest Through the Trees: cstfttt
* Put Up or Shut Up: puosu
* If the Shoe Fits, Wear It: itsfwi
* You Can Lead a Horse to Water: yclahtw
* The Last Mile Is Always Uphill: tlmiau
* I Think, Therefore I Am: ittia
* Oh Say Can You See: oscys
* My Dog Quinnie Loves Mystery Suprises: mdqlms

Suggestion: try this list of acronym phrases you could use for inspiration

http://netforbeginners.about.com/od/internetglossary/a/glossary-of-internet-jargon-and-abbreviations.htm

Suggestion: try this list of famous quotations and catchphrases

http://forum.digital-digest.com/f41/famous-cliches-quotes-1-liners-etc-86123.html

2. Lengthen the Phrase

Passwords start to become strong at 6 characters long. While a long password can be annoying to type, a long password really helps to slow down brute force hacker attacks.

Tip: lengthen your password by adding the website name or computer software name to the base phrase. For example:

* cstftttGmail
* puosuVista
* itsfwiEpinions
* yclahtwWin7
* tlmiauMac
* ittiaAboutdotcom
* oscysPayPal
* mdqlmsEbay

Tech tip: passwords that are 15 characters and more are extremely strong, because Microsoft Windows will not store scrambled passwords in hidden files once they are 15 characters or longer.

3. Scramble the Phrase

Scrambling does not necessarily mean rearranging the letters. Rather, scrambling your password can effectively be achieved by swapping one or more of the password letters with a non-alphabetic character, and then purposely including uppercase and lowercase letters within the password. Scrambling creatively uses the shift key, punctuation marks, the @ or % symbols, and even semi-colons and periods. Using numbers as substitutes for letters is another strong scrambling technique.

Examples of scrambling:

* CstftttGm@il
* Puo5uVista
* 1tsfwiEpinions
* Ycl@htwWin7
* 7lmiauMac
* ittiaAboutdotcom
* o5cysPayPal
* mdqlm?!Ebay

4. Lastly: Rotate/Change Your Password Regularly

At work, your network people will require you to change your password every several days. At home, you should rotate your passwords as a matter of good computer hygiene. If you are using different passwords for different websites, rotate portions of your passwords every few weeks. Note that rotating parts of the password, not the entire passwords, will help deter hackers from stealing your phrases. If you can memorize three or more passwords at the same time, then you are in good shape to resist brute force hacker attacks.

Examples:

* mdqlm?!Gmail
* CstftttVista
* Puo5uEpinions
* 1tsfwiWin7
* Ycl@htwMac
* 7lmiauAboutdotcom
* ittiaPayPal
* o5cysEBay

5. Advanced Password Tips

There are several other resources for building strong passwords.

* See more samples of strong passwords here.

http://netforbeginners.about.com/od/lockdownyourpc/a/examples_of_good_passwords.htm

* See other personal password suggestions.

http://netforbeginners.about.com/u/ua/lockdownyourpc/user_suggestions_creating_strong_passwords.htm

* A FREE online password generator.

http://javascript.about.com/library/blpasswd.htm

* There are multiple drag-and-drop software tools that help you bypass hacker keylogger software.

Free tools like:

KeyWallet Password Manager

http://www.keywallet.com/kw_download.php?id=4

KeePass – a free open source password manager, which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way.

http://keepass.info/download.html

Roboform

http://www.roboform.com/dist/RoboForm-Setup.exe

work well because you can avoiding typing your passwords entirely, and just let your mouse do the data entry.

* You can also employ a digital vault like Password Safe. This kind of software creates personal “lockers” to keep all your passwords locked under a master password.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/passwordsafe/files/passwordsafe/3.26/pwsafe-3.26.exe/download

* Or try phrasing tips for password generation.

http://antivirus.about.com/od/securitytips/a/passwords.htm

1. Official CDC obesity estimates are lower than the actual rates because they rely on self-reported height.
Body mass index (BMI) is a measure of body fat based on height and weight. Since both men and women say they’re taller than they actually are, the official obesity stats are lower than the actual rates.

2. Women not only lie about their height, they also lie about their weight.
They say they’re not as heavy as they actually are. As a result, official obesity rates for women are much lower than are the true obesity rates.

3. The 2009 CDC obesity rate estimate of 26.7% is 7.2 percentage points lower than the 2008 estimate of 33.9% from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES).
One explanation for the difference? Height and weight were measured rather than self-reported in the NHANES estimates.

4. People with less than a high school degree have the highest obesity rate (32.9%).
High school graduates (29.5%) have about the same obesity rates as college drop-outs (29.1%). College graduates have the lowest obesity rate of 20.8% in 2009. This doesn’t mean that the “freshman 15” is a myth. It just implies that those who don’t go to college probably gain more than the 15 pounds freshmen gain around the campuses in America.

5. Non-Hispanic black people have the highest obesity rate of 36.8%.

6. Hispanics have an obesity rate of 30.7%.

7. Non-Hispanic white people have an obesity rate of 25.2%. Other races (i.e. Asians) have the lowest obesity rate of 16.7%.

8. The overall obesity rate increases for older age groups until the age of 60.
18-29 year olds have an obesity rate of 20.3%. The rate is 27.8% for 30-39 age group, 29.4% for 40-49 age group, 31.1% for 50-59 age group. The obesity rate declines slightly to 30.9% for the 60-69 age group. Those who manage to stay alive past the age of 69 have an obesity rate of 20.5%.

9. Women really lie about their height and weight.
Their obesity rate is lower than men in the 18-59 age group. They probably stop lying after the age of 60 because among the people above 60 years old, women have a higher obesity rate.

10. Obesity is expensive to treat.
Annual medical costs of obesity are as high as $147 Billion. On average, obese people have medical costs that are $1429 more than medical costs of normal weight people.

11. The government declared that “Past efforts and investments to prevent and control obesity have not been adequate” and decided to start new initiatives such as the “Let’s Move!” campaign.
The government will soon force cheese companies to put pictures of obese people on their packaging, in the same way regulators require cigarette makers to put disgusting pictures related to smoking on cigarette packages.

12. Approximately 72.5 million American adults are obese.
Obesity is one of the factors causing heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. Obese people are doing something the Obama administration can’t do: creating well paying healthcare jobs by eating themselves to death. Look at these two maps showing obesity rates and diabetes rates. They are almost identical. Do you think this is just a coincidence? Lipitor maker Pfizer (PFE), top diabetes drug maker Novo Nordisk (NVO) and McDonalds (MCD) owe a big thank you to obese people!

13. Colorado, District of Columbia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Hawaii have the lowest obesity rates in the country.
Obesity rates are lowest in the Northeast and West coast. Obesity rates are highest in Midwest and South (See the list of top 10 states with the highest obesity rates).

14. Contrary to the recent trends, the obesity rate has declined in some states during the 2008-2009 recession
Obesity rates in Alaska and Oregon went down by more than 3 percentage points. DC, Georgia, Minnesota, New York, Delaware, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Colorado managed to reduce obesity rates as well. Find out which states had alarmingly skyrocketing obesity rates.

15. The United States has the highest obesity rate in the world.
The US is also the biggest Big Mac consumer in the world.

Movies watched in 2011 via Redbox, Netflix, or the Movie Theatre and Cable TV.

9th Company
A Peck on the Cheek
Despicable Me
Megamind
Adventures of a Teenage Dragonslayer
Army of Crime
Black Swan
Carlos: Miniseries
Dreamcatcher
Elephant White
Emmanuelle 7
Grown Ups
Gulliver’s Travels
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1
Hunter Prey
Inception
Jade Warrior
Legend of the Guardians: Owls of Ga’Hoole
Monsters
Mortal Kombat: The Movie
Ricky
Spartacus: Blood and Sand
Spartacus: Gods of the Arena
The A-Team
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest
The Green Hornet
The Illusionist
The King’s Speech
The Resident
The Social Network
Toy Story 3
Trade
Vampires Suck

IDENTIFY

Very few people view themselves as angry. While anger can be easy to observe in others, we may think of it in our lives as frustration or stress.

ARE YOU ANGRY?

- Do you experience a physical response to conflict—tense muscles, clenched fist, glaring looks?
- Do you ever feel powerless in the face of disappointment or conflict?
- Do you find yourself lashing out in response to conflict?
- Do you catch yourself being verbally abusive?
- Do past hurts feel as painful today as when they first occurred?
- Do you feel you have a right to be angry?

DID YOU KNOW?

- One in five Americans has an anger problem.
- Couples that argue more than twenty percent of the time are unlikely to stay together.
- Each year in the United States, approximately 1.5 million people are the victims of violent crime.
- Sixty-three percent of boys and young men arrested for homicide (aged 11-20), killed men who were abusing their mothers.

You did your homework. You took full advantage of the available transition assistance services afforded you as you transitioned out of the military. In the process, you crafted an outstanding civilianized resume targeted to a specific job within a particular company. Now the only thing standing between you and a paycheck is the job interview itself.

Pull out your vuvuzelas. It’s game time.

In uniform, you were a bold, audacious risk-taking warrior capable of leaping tall buildings with a single bound. Understanding how your military-garnered skills and experiences could benefit a civilian employer may be obvious to you but it may not be as crystal clear to someone not knowing the difference between an MRE and a SOP.

No need to panic, however. The following tips can help you communicate more effectively, verbally and non-verbally, to civilian employers during your job interview.

Mentally, don’t confuse a job interview with a promotion board.

A military promotion board may be the closest thing to an actual job interview you’ve ever experienced, but there are notable differences.

If you were sitting before a promotion board, your posture would be rigid, your feet twelve inches apart and your hands, fingers outstretched, on your knees. Your steely eyes would focus on some speck of dust visible only to you, blocking out the rest of the living world at large. You would speak when spoken to and leave when told to do so.

Most job interviews, on the other hand, are far more relaxed than that and resemble more of a friendly conversation than an inquisition. Eye contact and overall body language is important, of course. More important however, is the existence of a real give and take conversation where both you and the employer can learn about each other.

Your goal in the interview is to create a positive impression. You want to learn as much as you can about the company and the job itself. You do all this in the name of creating future career choices for yourself.

Avoid using the military jargon you’ve come to know and love.

The only job you may have ever had was as a Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine in the U.S. military. It doesn’t change the fact now that you’re trying to land a different job, one that doesn’t necessarily require that you wear a uniform or speak in a unique shorthand language understood only by someone else who wears one.

Notice the subtle differences below:

- Your job interview is at 2p.m. not 1400 hours.

- If you agree with the employer on a given point, say “yes, I agree with that” instead of “hooah” or “roger-dat” even if the latter feels more natural to you.

- When explaining your work experiences in different regions, avoid identifying the areas as AORs or in [specific] theaters of operations. Instead indicate that you worked overseas or simply name the country/countries.

- Quantify your accomplishments and responsibilities using words that don’t resonate with past military performance appraisals. For example, explain that while you were stationed overseas, you supervised 110 network technicians (not service members) working in round the clock communications center (not a 365/24/7 NOC) supporting worldwide telecommunications operations (not the Warfighter downrange). Every industry, in or out of uniform, has its own language. Now is the time for you to learn and use the one you’ll need for your next job. Even if you are transitioning from the DoD in uniform, to the DoD in a suit, there will be differences to learn and embrace.

Omit reference to the C-word (combat).

Your job might have taken you to the front lines of combat more times than you care to remember. Like it or not, most civilian employers won’t want to hear about it.

What they want to hear about is how you can make a positive difference within their organization using your technical skills and leadership abilities. Let them get to know you and what you have to offer them sans the scary, life-threatening details you may have come to know as business as usual.

Your next job, out of uniform, can be a thrilling adventure itself. Give it a chance and in doing so, realize that you have to leave the past where it belongs.

Maybe it’s because the country was raised on the Protestant work ethic. Or maybe it’s that our mother’s words still ring in our heads: “If you don’t work hard, you’ll never amount to much.” Whatever the reason, Americans think they need to work hard to make money and that’s not always true.

Sure, you’ve got to show up and diligently toil at the office. But when you save and invest, you’re better off being a couch potato. The lazy approach to portfolio management wins over “hard work” pretty much every time.

How much does it pay to be lazy? A conservative estimate is that it would pay an average investor somewhere north of $250,000. That’s right. You gain a quarter of a million dollars by doing less — ideally almost nothing. (I’ll explain how in a minute.)

The first time I heard this concept, it was at an investment conference back in the 1980s and Jack Bogle, the founder of Vanguard Investments, was speaking. He talked about his academic research that proved that virtually no one could consistently beat the market over long stretches (like the 40 years we have to invest for retirement). The best you could hope for was to meet the market, which gave you returns that weren’t half bad.

The answer, he said, was invest in a broad swath of stocks and bonds through low-cost index funds and forget about your portfolio. Spend your time living your life instead of researching stocks and bonds. That’s much more fun than sweating over investments anyway.

A few years later, at another investment conference, I discovered Terrance Odean, a Berkeley professor who proved Bogle’s theory by coming at it another way. The more you trade, the more you lose, Odean discovered by examining the real-life portfolios and trading patterns of thousands of investors. His paper, Boys Will Be Boys, is a must-read for those who think they’re going to outsmart the stock market.

But I was reminded of the wisdom of the lazy approach this week by The Oblivious Investor, a neat little blog full of common sense advice. I had gone to read a post about paying for investment advice, but got distracted. (Does the web make everybody ADD, or is it just me?)The next thing I knew, I was reading a wonderful little piece about 8 Lazy Investment Portfolios. (In truth, the post is titled 8 Lazy ETF Portfolios, but that was so Wall Street-speak that I had to edit. ETF is short for Exchange Traded Fund and the only magic about this type of mutual fund is that they’re super-low cost.)

In the post, the Oblivious Investor outlines the simple portfolios recommended by 8 lauded experts, including MoneyWatch’s own Allan Roth, author of How a Second-Grader Beats Wall Street, and Steve Vernon, author of Live Long and Prosper.

All of these portfolios are low-cost; tinker-free plans. You buy them and leave them alone.

I even included a similar plan in the update of the book, Investing 101, called “The Lazy Man’s Portfolio Planner.” The only difference: You plug your own numbers into the portfolio planner to match your age and circumstances, so your tinker-free portfolio will meet your cash needs and suit your personality. That, presumably, will help you leave your stocks alone during volatile times like these, which could save you a fortune over the long run.

So how does being lazy pay you money? If you read Odean’s research, you’ll find that frequent trading costs you roughly 2.65 percentage points in annual investment returns. That means that, instead of earning an average of, say, 8 or 9% on a portfolio that you buy and leave alone, you’d earn between 5.35% and 6.35% by tinkering with it.

To see how that affects you in dollars and sense, we turn to “simple savings calculator” at BankRate.com. If we assume that you start investing $150 a month at age 25 and continue to contribute that same amount for the next 40 years, you’d end up with a portfolio worth $527,292 if you’re lazy enough to leave it alone and earn the average return of a diversified portfolio of about 8%. But, if you tinkered around — which triggers taxes and trading costs — you’d only earn an average of 5.35%, according to Odean’s analysis. That would leave you with $252,229 — some $275,063 less.

If you assume higher rates of return on your investments, or if you invest more on a monthly basis, the cost of tinkering becomes even more onerous. Let’s say you invest $250 a month and earn 9% on average. At retirement, the couch potato’s portfolio would be worth $1.179 million. The tinkerer’s portfolio (which earned just 6.35% on average) is worth $550,945 — an astounding $628,412 less.

The only tinkering you should do with your portfolio is to “rebalance” once a year. What that means is you look at the percentage of your assets that you have in each asset class — stocks, bonds, cash, etc. — and make sure that matches with the percentage that you think you should have based on your age, assets and goals. (If you have a planner, they’ll help with the numbers or you could do the worksheets in the Lazy Person’s Portfolio Planner — Chapter 13 of Investing 101 — to get the right percentages.)

But you just heard somebody say “This is a trader’s market! Buy and hold is dead!” Find out what they’re selling. It’s not impartial investment advice. Those who have nothing to sell you — the professors, the pundits and the cynical journalists like me — are going to tell you that you’ll make more in the investment world when you’re lazy than you ever could by trying to outsmart Wall Street.

1. Typos and Grammatical Errors
Your resume needs to be grammatically perfect. If it isn’t, employers will read between the lines and draw not-so-flattering conclusions about you, like: “This person can’t write,” or “This person obviously doesn’t care.”

2. Lack of Specifics
Employers need to understand what you’ve done and accomplished. For example:

- Worked with employees in a restaurant setting.
- Recruited, hired, trained and supervised more than 20 employees in a restaurant with $2 million in annual sales.

Both of these phrases could describe the same person, but clearly the second one’s details and specifics will more likely grab an employer’s attention.

3. Attempting One Size Fits All
Whenever you try to develop a one-size-fits-all resume to send to all employers, you almost always end up with something employers will toss in the recycle bin. Employers want you to write a resume specifically for them. They expect you to clearly show how and why you fit the position in a specific organization.

4. Highlighting Duties Instead of Accomplishments
It’s easy to slip into a mode where you simply start listing job duties on your resume. For example:

- Attended group meetings and recorded minutes.
- Worked with children in a day-care setting.
- Updated departmental files.

Employers, however, don’t care so much about what you’ve done as what you’ve accomplished in your various activities. They’re looking for statements more like these:

- Used laptop computer to record weekly meeting minutes and compiled them in a Microsoft Word-based file for future organizational reference.
- Developed three daily activities for preschool-age children and prepared them for a 10-minute holiday program performance.
- Reorganized 10 years’ worth of unwieldy files, making them easily accessible to department members.

5. Too Long or Cutting Things Too Short
Despite what you may read or hear, there are no real rules governing the length of your resume. Why? Because human beings, who have different preferences and expectations where resumes are concerned, will be reading it.

That doesn’t mean you should start sending out five-page resumes, of course. Generally speaking, you usually need to limit yourself to a maximum of two pages. But don’t feel you have to use two pages if one will do. Conversely, don’t cut the meat out of your resume simply to make it conform to an arbitrary one-page standard.

6. Bad Objective
Employers do read your resume’s objective statement, but too often they plow through vague pufferies like, “Seeking a challenging position that offers professional growth.” Give employers something specific and, more importantly, something that focuses on their needs as well as your own. Example: “A challenging entry-level marketing position that allows me to contribute my skills and experience in fund-raising for nonprofits.”

7. No Action Verbs
Avoid using phrases like “responsible for.” Instead, use action verbs: “Resolved user questions as part of an IT help desk serving 4,000 students and staff.”

8. Leaving Off Important Information
You may be tempted, for example, to eliminate mention of the jobs you’ve taken to earn extra money for school. Typically, however, the soft skills you’ve gained from these experiences (e.g., work ethic, time management) are more important to employers than you might think.

9. Visually Too Busy
If your resume is wall-to-wall text featuring five different fonts, it will most likely give the employer a headache. So show your resume to several other people before sending it out. Do they find it visually attractive? If what you have is hard on the eyes, revise.

10. Incorrect Contact Information
I once worked with someone whose resume seemed incredibly strong, but he wasn’t getting any bites from employers. So one day, I asked him if the phone number he’d listed on his resume was correct. It wasn’t. Once he changed it, he started getting the calls he’d been expecting.

Sleep plays an important role in your mental and physical health. Sleeping allows your body to rest and your brain to recharge after each day. The number of hours of sleep you need depends on your age and can also vary from person to person, even within a particular age group.

According to the Mayo Clinic, adults should get seven to eight hours of sleep a night. The Cleveland Clinic suggests that adults should get at least seven and a half hours of sleep a night and not much more than eight hours a night. Though older adults might sleep more lightly than they did as younger adults, this change does not mean that they need less sleep. In fact, the Mayo Clinic states that adults who sleep about seven hours a night have lower mortality rates than those who sleep much more or much less.

Too much sleep can be harmful, as well as too little sleep. According to the Mayo Clinic, oversleeping on a regular basis can lead to depression, weight gain and a variety of other health problems.

According to the Mayo Clinic, people who consistently get enough sleep have a stronger immune system and are less likely to get sick if exposed to a virus. When you sleep, your body produces proteins called cytokines. These proteins help fight infections, so if you have higher levels, you are better able to fight infections. You may avoid getting sick altogether, or if you do get sick, you can recover more quickly. You will also have more mental and physical energy and a better memory.

Sleep quality matters just as much as sleep duration. Sleep apnea, waking up frequently and other sleep problems might prevent you from sleeping deeply enough and reaping the benefits of healthy sleep. If you cannot fall asleep within 15 or 20 minutes or if you wake up in the night and cannot fall back to sleep within that time, you should leave the room and do something relaxing, according to the Cleveland Clinic. Only try to fall asleep when you feel tired enough. Avoiding daytime naps and performing regular daily exercise can also help you sleep more deeply.

Who wants to be a couch potato? Well, as a matter of fact, many people do, and for understandable reasons. Maybe it’s your one day off, maybe you just got back from practice, or school. Maybe you’re just tired. Whatever the reason, you can be a prime example of a couch potato if you read on.

1. Sit down in a comfy place such as a reclining chair, beanbag, or preferably, (you knew it was coming) a couch (just don’t sit on a potato!). Make it even more comfortable than it already is, but with minimal effort, of course!

2. Make sure you have everything you need. Such as snacks (junk food is great for being a couch potato), drinks, magazines, comic books (if you’re into that stuff), and most importantly, a television and remote(s).

3. Do something that doesn’t involve getting up. Flip through TV channels, or just eat.

4. Now just watch TV, because that’s pretty much all a couch potato does! Flip through the channels. Give each show about 10 seconds to entertain you, and if it doesn’t, just move onto the next one. If it does, watch until the show ends, or until you lose interest.

5. Another thing couch potatoes are famous for is playing video games. Go rent one that looks good or play one you already own! Please note that some Wii games involve some movement which could hinder your status as a couch potato.

6. Have others do things for you, like get you more food, or rent a movie for you, etc. But be sure to be nice about it, because if they refuse, you’ll most likely have to do it yourself.