June 2012
1 post
Shhhhh. Announcing your plans can make them fail.
Many thanks to Derek Sivers for this gem.
Shouldn’t you announce your goals, so friends can support you? Isn’t it good networking to tell people about your upcoming projects?
Doesn’t the “law of attraction” mean you should state your intention, and visualize the goal as already yours? Nope.
Tests done since 1933 show that people who talk about their intentions are less...
May 2012
4 posts
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
I have just finished watching the film Perfume, The Story of a Murderer. It’s allegory is one which bears many life lessons while the plot fails in certain respects to capture the redemption possible. The film centers around Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a child born out of hate in the fish-markets of Paris where he is left to die under a stinking rack of dead fish by his mother. But not...
January 2012
3 posts
Your 2012 Strategy for Yourself
Do you have a plan for 2012?
Only 15% of adults have a written plan for their lives outlining goals and strategies for accomplishing them. Most people will bounce around from one meaningless thing to the next.
To achieve your goals in 2012, you need to think like a manager – with a strategy.
Follow these five steps to create a strategy for you:
Step 1: Discover—Find Purpose through...
August 2011
2 posts
July 2011
1 post
Required Reading for Congress
With less than 3 weeks until the August 2nd deadline for Congress to approve a plan to raise the debt-ceiling, Republicans and Democrats are playing a game of chicken with this country’s sovereign wealth. Each side points to the other as inflexible as the odds increase that Congress will not raise the nation’s borrowing limit by the deadline. President Obama said Republicans were...
June 2011
3 posts
Managing Your Google Resume
On March 6, 1974, Ayn Rand gave the commencement address to the graduating class of the United States Military Academy at West Point. Among other salient points she is credited with the following profundity:
As a human being, you have no choice about the fact that you need a philosophy. Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of...
May 2011
4 posts
My Favorite Kindle Highlights New Profile Feature! →
“Today, of Americans officially designated as ‘poor’, 99 per cent have...”
– The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley
NJ Franchise Protection Act Amended!
The State of New Jersey is adopting significant changes to it’s Franchise Protection Act which protects automobile dealerships against the franchisor’s controls. Some of the more poignant aspects of the law include:
It shall now be unlawful for a motor vehicle manufacturer to: j. To impose or attempt to impose any requirement, limitation or regulation on, or interfere or...
April 2011
5 posts
Congratulations Aftermath Ventures
I am proud to announce the formation of Aftermath Ventures Inc., an affiliate of Agresta Acquisitions LLC. Aftermath Ventures (www.aftermath.vc) builds new web/mobile software products in collaboration with entrepreneurs at startups and established businesses. We are the hybrid of an investment fund and software development services company - designed to reduce risk and gain efficiencies in...
“An error only becomes a mistake when you refuse to correct it.”
– John F. Kennedy
Ikigai. Find it and add life to your years and...
Ikigai (生き甲斐, pronounced [ikiɡai]) is the Japanese equivalent of the French, raison d’être. In English, these translate respectively as: ‘something important one lives for’, and ‘a reason for being’
The Japanese attribute their longevity and overall quality of life to their desire to find ikigai. Unlike our ancestors, why obsess over what the results of our efforts must be when instead we can...
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Civil Discovery & Privacy for Auto Dealerships &...
The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 (“the Act”) can be found in title 15 of the United States Code. The Act provides for administrative, technical, and physical safeguards of consumers’ personal financial information by requiring certain agencies and authorities to establish a set of standards for the recording, storage, and use of said information. The Act specifically protects the personally...
March 2011
12 posts
Upcoming - 2011 World Finance Job Conference
The folks at Essential Access have asked me to speak at the upcoming 2011 World Finance Job Conference in NYC on April 7, 2011. Please visit the 2011 World Finance Job Conference and register to come meet me and some of my colleagues. Looking forward to seeing you there.
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Tip: Overcoming a Struggle & Deferring Pleasure...
In January 2007, Outside magazine interviewed a little-known ultrarunner named Dean Karnazes. Ultrarunning or ultramarathoning, is the practice of running races that are sometimes 4 times longer than a standard 26 mile marathon. Save the math: yes, Dean Karnazes is one of those guys running 100 mile long races. Why should we listen to what a guy who spends more time running in a day than most...
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New HealthCare Law's Effects on Doctor's Abilities...
Thousands of physicians across the country are involved in class-action lawsuits alleging that the nation’s largest insurers are involved in a “conspiracy … to deny, delay and diminish payments to health care providers.” [1] According to the Heritage Foundation, the denial rate for Medicaid is three times that of private insurance companies, and the lag time between the...
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Musings about Local Government
Government is a tortured beast. It is tortured by its own internal contradictions and hypocrisies and overwhelmed with its own bureaucracy. It feeds on the livelihoods of those it governs, taking their money by fiat. Your local government is the center of torture in this beast. Between federal, state, county and local it has the least power and the most expected of it in terms of...
Hello Bar - Brilliant Web Marketing Tool! ... →
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“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not;...”
– Calvin Coolidge
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“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”
– Henry David Thoreau
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Grit & Success
Grit is a willingness to commit to long-term goals, and to persist in the face of difficulty. Studies show that gritty people obtain more education in their lifetime, and earn higher college GPAs. Grit predicts which cadets will stick out their first grueling year at West Point. In fact, grit even predicts which round contestants will make it to at the Scripps National Spelling Bee. The good...
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Robert Agresta is using Art Finder! →
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“Confront them with annihilation, and they will then survive; plunge them into a...”
– Sun Tzu, The Art of War, Qi (Shandong), China, c. 512 BC
February 2011
5 posts
“For a long time, I’ve known that the key to getting started down the path...”
– Tim Ferriss quoting Chad Fowler, The Harajuku Moment in The Four Hour Body, Crown Publishing, NY (2010).
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man...”
– Theodore Roosevelt, Citizenship in a Republic, La Sorbonne, Paris, France (1910).
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Simplicity
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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Fixing & Protecting Personal Credit
Recommended Steps: 1. Get your free credit report on http://www.annualcreditreport.com
Pay the extra $15 for the credit score one-time.
Do not sign up for any repeating credit reporting services, they are unnecessary.
Credit Reports are issued by three major reporting agencies, each of which has different information. You are entitled to one report from each agency under a new federal law...
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Constructs of a Constitutional Convention
“And the men who hold high places must be the ones to start to mould a new reality closer to the heart.”
- Geddy Lee [1]
Like mariners tossed for 250 years in thick weather on an unknown sea who have come upon the earliest glance of the sun, let us take our latitudes and ascertain how far the elements have driven us from our true...
May 2010
1 post
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Musings about Government
Government is a tortured beast. It is tortured by its own internal contradictions and hypocrisies and overwhelmed with its own bureaucracy. It feeds on the livelihoods of those it governs, taking their money by fiat. Your local government is the center of torture in this beast. Between federal, state, county and local it has the least power and the most expected of it in terms of...
October 2009
3 posts
5 tags
I Know this Much is True
WASHINGTON, DC — Tea parties are springing up across America demanding tax reform and a reduction in government as the solution to our economic crisis. These Americans believe that ingenuity is all the stimulus that we need. The iconic images reluctantly broadcast by the mainstream media show middle-americans marching around with signs bearing quotes from their favorite framer or zealously...
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Your Property Taxes at Work
This article [article here] appeared in the Bergen Record on August 4th, 2009. It refers to the Englewood Cliffs mayor and Borough Council having adopted a $12.7 million budget for 2009 — down 3.8% from last years $13.8 million budget. Mayor Parisi was quoted as to how the budget was reduced. The article leaves one to conclude that the municipal portion of the tax bill will decrease....
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Will Atlas Shrug?
Consider the state of our nation:
1. Government is moving to nationalize private industry under the guise of terms like “bailout”.
2. Government is moving to create “fairness” on public radio by limiting small-government favoring correspondents in favor of more big-government reporting.
3. Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged novel (a 50-year old prophetic prediction of our current economic status)...
August 2009
2 posts
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A Replacement for Zoning
I oppose any unnecessary intrusion by the government into the property ownership of a United States citizen. Necessity is an exacting term, it does not mean legitimate, rational or even important, it means that only those intrusions into private property that are absolutely necessary and expressly authorized by the constitution are acceptable.
As our nation evolved through periods of...