Brains Without Boxes!

During the end of each year, we reward the staff in our store with a gift to let them know we appreciate what they do for us.  The truth of the matter is that without them we wouldn’t have much of a business, so we give them a little token to let them know we care.

Even though the gift giving coincides with the Christmas season, that isn’t the real reason why we do it in December.  For us, our year end is this month, so it is a great way to check on the numbers, see how we did, and pick the gift accordingly.

For us, this year didn’t turn out as well as we had hoped, but we still ended the year in positive territory.  The downturn in the economy hit our business pretty hard, and we are still trying to recover.

So when it came to choosing the gift this year, it was tough – we didn’t have  a lot of money to go around, so we wanted to make it count.  After much deliberation, we decided to buy camera bags as we had bought digital cameras each year.

There will be a big speech when we give each staff member a camera bag tomorrow, and I hope that the staff understands why the gift isn’t as great as last year.

Technorati Tags: camera bag, camera bags

Do you need to get your LEED certification this year? If so then you might want to think about taking an exam in a city that is not the one where you live. You can travel to a 2-day workshop in almost any major city in the United States and study for the exam there.

Reasons that you might want to travel to get your certification to become a LEED Green Associate include:

• You might be able to write off a portion of the trip on your taxes. This is a business expense and may be able to count as business travel depending on your business. Talk to your accountant about this.
• You will be very focused on your classes. When you aren’t distracted by all that is going on at home you can really focus on what you need to learn in an intensive two-day workshop like this.
• You will get a chance to travel. Ultimately the reason to do this is to get away for a little bit and to see a new city while still doing something productive with your time.

You can take the courses that you need to pass your LEED exam in your own hometown. Why would you do that, though, when you have the option to travel somewhere for a nice weekend instead?!

Technorati Tags: leed certification, leed green associate

Can you imagine being eighty-eight years old and being sent to jail? That’s what happens when you try to defraud Medicare. At least that’s what happened to Adam Sortini. He has been sentenced to six months in jail for fraud. Following this he will need to spend an additional 15 months under house arrest. Additionally he will need to repay a six figure sum because of the fraud.

Sortini is an audiologist who could have made a normal living testing hearing aids and doing the other great work that audiologists do. However he decided that he wanted to make more money. His greed led him to start billing Medicare for hearing tests that he wasn’t actually performing. The government caught on and asked him for proof. He made the additional mistake of sending forged documents trying to prove that he was doing this work. This didn’t work and he was caught and convicted.

Greed never pays. Sortini had the opportunity to do great things with his career but decided instead that he just wanted to make a quick buck. Who knows what was going through the old man’s mind when he made this poor decision. It’s definitely going to have its consequences though since jail is no fun at any age.

Technorati Tags: audiologist, hearing aids

Sometimes people get sick of school. They just don’t want to finish the degree that they started. What should you do if you’re in this position?

Here are some of your options:

• Quit for a little while. Get some work experience. Get some life experience. Take a break. You can always come back later.
• Cut back to part time. You don’t have to quit school entirely to get a break. You can go down to part time and see how that works out for you.
• Switch to a new program in the same field of study. Students of physician assistant programs could look into audiology programs. Students of fitness could look into massage therapy. Trying a new approach to the same area of study can make you feel refreshed enough to finish school.
• Try an entirely different program of study. Maybe the degree program that you’re in isn’t right for you. Try something radically different.
• Transfer to a new school. Is the problem really school in general or is it just the school that you’re attending? Try a new school and see if it works out better for you.
• Stick with it. Sometimes all that we really need to do is to hang in there until the rough patch is over. If you can stick with it then you should.

Technorati Tags: audiology programs, physician assistant programs

Employers are cutting back on the amount of help that they provide to employees in getting an education. It used to be that paralegals could count on their companies to help them pay to take the bar exam. Counselors could count on the government to fund a certain amount of the training hours that are required for them to remain certified. However as the economy has suffered, businesses have been tightening the educational purse strings. It may be tougher than ever before to get your company to pay for your education but try to get as much as you can out of them nonetheless.

Your best bet is to find out what type of training your company will offer to you for free. For example a lot of tech companies will provide their employees with free Cisco certification training. You might even be able to do Cisco online training for free while you are at work. If you can’t take classes at work for free then find out if you can get paid vacation to take some classes that will benefit your job. If all else fails, do what you can to learn new skills on the job. You want to learn something from every job because it makes getting the next job that much easier.

Technorati Tags: Cisco certification training, Cisco online training