In an outburst of frantic e-mail organizing I decided to come up with a standardized set of flagging in Outlook. I have been using the flags in outlook for some time now, but never to their full potential, and never with a consistent color/definition set. Today I decided enough was enough and I whipped up a standard and an accompanying flashcard to help me learn/stick with it.

Here it is:

Feel free to download and print one out to keep near your monitor if you’d like. If you think my colors/codes suck, download the Fireworks PNG file and edit freely.

/gtd for life.

UPDATE: This post has been moved to my Professional Notes site as well.

In my mind one of the few organizations that has a viral sales effect similar to Mac’s is that of the Girl Scouts. For two months in the spring of every year, thousands of young women spread out to knock on our doors and hawk over priced cookies. And every year we buy them up. What is it about an 8 year old girl with a green vest on that sucks those singles out of my wallet?

From personal experience while working in the warehouse at Dircks Moving Services the transportation, sorting, and distribution of the cookies is nothing less than jaw dropping. First, the cookies come in by the ton (seriously) and are stacked in the warehouse until about a week before “C-Day” (Cookie Day) when the updated order quantities come in. The warehouse staff breaks the cookie pallets down and sorts them into districts and readies them for distribution. Then early on Saturday “C-Day” morning the vans and suv’s start to line up in the parking lot. The troop mom’s armed with their order list, and megaphone take over from there ordering pallets to be broken down, sorted out, and readied for pickup. By midnight or so on “C-Day” the parking lot is covered with cookie crumbs, cardboard, and a few last scattered green vests. To give you an idea of the scope of the Girl Scout Cookie operation, check out these statistics for the South Carolina Girl Scout Cookie Sale.

Sidenote: In case anyone is looking to pick up a last second Easter present for me, I looove Samoas.

When I first started blogging I have to admit, the writing aspect of it was my least favorite part. I was in it for the web design. I love to tinker with CSS, javascript, two column layouts, three column layouts, semantics based code, etc.

Now though, its different. Now I like to write. Sure, as can be seen by the daily changes to the appearance of the site, I still love web design, but I enjoy posting just as much.

While researching a couple different topics for a paper due tomorrow in my logistics class I came across Article Insider. I quickly formed my opinion that this site is pretty darn slick. Basically, the website houses articles written by industry professionals (probably self proclaimed, but none the less…) about topics in their respective industry. On top of that, the site is easy to navigate, looks nice, and has TONS of content.

Makes me hope some day I can write about something I know about.

Today I really started researching where I stand especially in regards to being a student pursuing a Supply Chain Management degree and a critic of inefficiency.

I’m just a punk kid.

But I’d like to think that today I took a step in the right direction. I joined ISM or Institute for Supply Management. Alpha Kappa Psi helped me grow professionally, but now it is my hope that ISM will help me grow and network with respect to supply chain management, efficiency management, logistics, etc. Further, my dad hooked me up with a contact that he knows, Arnold Maltz. Mr. Maltz happens to be an SCM Associate Professor at ASU (link), and also happens to be the Education Chair for the Arizona Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) Roundtable. As such, I jumped at the opportunity to get in on the student membership of CSCMP.
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Warren Buffet has long been considered one of the genius investors of our time, and will long be considered such even after our time. Today Buffet and his investments holdings firm Berkshire Hathaway only furthered that status with a deal to sell Gillette to Proctor & Gamble netting Buffet a cool $645 million (story).

With all of the intelligence in the world, why aren’t there more wildly successful investors? This man is known as far and away the best, but how can he be that much better than everyone else?

Looking at his investment history, he rarely takes uncalculated risks, he rarely uses hostile tactics, and he rarely loses. I guess someone has to be the best.

Anyone want to spot me $90k to get a share of that?