Reading. Try using a long carriage typewriter in a cubbyhole desk setup. Remind me that a diagonal line is the long side of the triangle! This only took twenty minutes to type. Good thing you are reading the cleaned up version! Manually operated typewriters without any erase function sure do make lots of mistakes. Now I know why they retired them in favor of computers - so one can make an arse of oneself so much faster and with more correctly spelled words!

Yes, I do read a lot, and devour "news" when I can get it. Currently, I am lucky to get copies of the New York Daily News, but I am the third or fourth inmate on the pass-around, so sometimes the news is two or three weeks old. For example, I was just reading about Rodney Dangerfield showing signs of improvement, oops, he is dead now.

I clip out the articles that I think others may find useful. I recently came across a review of a play that Mickey Rooney was doing with his latest wife. My Dad is a great old-time movie buff, and I thought the show might be of interest to him, so I sent the article to him. Two weeks later received a letter back, along with some of the pages from the playbill. Sometimes good old hardcopy printing is still the most efficient source for gathering information,

My INC magazine subscription mysteriously got interrupted and just started back up again. The November 2004 issue has several great stories in it. "It's Not Easy Being Green" talks about the struggles of running a green company and not becoming a mainline Fortune 500. Think of the Ben & Jerry's sellout. Also, in a monthly column, Norman Brodsky talks about the good side of company drug testing in his own company.

I also read Fortune, and keep looking for ways to pick up the crumbs or fill the cracks left over once the top corporations are done feeding on the masses.

I also receive PC magazine, Electronic Musician, and Weavings, A Journal of Christian Spiritual Life, published by Upper Room Ministries.

CFO Magazine is a "trade" publication directed towards financial types in the corporate world. They recently did a great article on "The Failed Pentagon Financial Reforms." The Department of Defense has over 3.4 million employees; number two on the list would be Wal-Mart with 1.5 million. In terms of budget and sales D.O.D. is $400 billion vs. Wal-Mart's $250 billion.

According to the article, "The D.O.D. has 4,000 systems, including 542 accounting and finance systems, 143 acquisition systems, over 210 planning and budgeting systems, over 665 human resources systems, and ironically, at least three systems to inventory all the other systems."

And let me not forget the Funny Times, a monthly tabloid format publication that summarizes all the humor that is fit to print. As far as I can tell, this is a true small business and is not owned by any of the big media outlets. Check them out at their web site.
  ¶ 11:36 AM