Almost any job can be a training-course for starting a business if you treat it that way. But as I explain in “101 Weird Ways to Make Money” (Wiley, 2011), the more unusual occupations have some special advantages. They often have less competition, which can mean higher wages as an employee and higher profit margins as a business owner. Many of these odd enterprises also have few formal requirements in terms of degrees and licensing, making them easier to start. The 70 or more items on my own resume include repo-man, roulette croupier, bill collector and walking stick carver. These all provide stories for my current business, which is publishing websites like http://www.EveryWayToMakeMoney.com, but often a job is more directly translatable into an entrepreneurial venture. Here are 10 examples of strange jobs that can be used as a way to start a business.
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On Monday's NBC Today, chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd described liberal wishful thinking as “conventional wisdom” as he explained how: “The Obama team has been taking comfort in the fact that they believe this Republican race is moving to the Right, that it's a race to the Right. And they take comfort in that and they think that's going to help them long-term.” At the same time, Todd seemed perplexed that the President's poll numbers had fallen despite the conservative values of the Republican 2012 contenders: “But as that happened – and it was a lot of attention over the last four or five days….the President's numbers have still gone down. And that Gallup number, where it dropped in the daily tracking below 40 for the very first time in the presidency.” Later in the segment, fill-in co-host David Gregory asked Todd about how Obama was “going to run against certain members of Congress” and doubled-down on his attacks on Michele Bachmann during an interview with her on Sunday's Meet the Press. Gregory played a clip of that interview in which he dismissed Bachmann's opposition to raising the debt ceiling. The Minnesota Congresswoman pointed out that, “All the people out in America said don't raise the debt ceiling. That's the problem with Washington, they're not listening to the people.” Gregory fired back: “But why does that make it – why does it make it the right thing to do?” Turning to Todd on Today, Gregory saw Bachmann's position as something that could be used to go after her: “This issue of public opinion on the debt ceiling driving her vote, is this something that both the President uses as a potential wedge, and even other more mainstream candidates in the Republican Party?” Todd agreed: “It isn't just President Obama that's going to be hitting her on this. She's got a target on her back right now.” Here is a full transcript of Gregory's August 15 exchange with Todd: 7:05AM ET DAVID GREGORY: Chuck Todd is NBC's chief White House correspondent and political director. Also the host of MSNBC's 'The Daily Rundown.' He's in Cannon Falls, Minnesota, stop number one on President Obama's bus tour, this morning. Hey Chuck, good morning. So the President's got new tracking numbers out. A new low at 39%. He's hitting the road, also in the Midwest, which he knows is an important battleground for him next year. What's the game plan here? Is he talking about what he can do with Congress or does he now just want to turn on the Republicans?
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Earlier this year, Verizon CEO Dan Mead all but confirmed that an LTE Apple device would be making its way to Verizon. Eventually. And no 2011 Apple rumor spattering would be complete without at least a casual mention of the high-speed 4G network. Now, BGR claims to have received an internal iOS test build from a major carrier, revealing a property list file for LTE. This of course doesn’t guarantee that Apple will be shipping an LTE iPhone flavor later this year, but that it at least remains a possibility. Still, an October iPhone launch would fall nicely in line with recent confirmation that AT&T will be releasing an LTE smartphone in ” late 2011 ,” and 4G compatibility could definitely explain Cupertino’s holdup in announcing the iPhone 4′s successor. So, will you be flying through the wireless web at lightning-fast speed later this year? Hopefully we need not wait much longer to find out. Carriers testing LTE-enabled 4G iPhone? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Aug 2011 13:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Type: eBooks Title: Dinners Made Easy See all customer reviews Product Description: Your dinner crisis, defused. Take the stress out of your after-work dash. With this free e-cookbook from Stonyfield Farm, you’ll always have healthy recipes on hand – and on your family’s table. See the details
Continue reading …Bombs struck more than a dozen Iraqi cities this morning, killing 56 and wounding dozens more. The coordinated explosions mark the first major violence in a comparatively peaceful month of Ramadan, the AP notes; the violence comes as as officials debate whether to maintain a US presence in the country…
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Who wants cake? This guy does. Or so says 29 years of photographic evidence. Baked goods loom large in my pictorial history, as does the use and abuse of Dep Gel and even, dare I say it, an affinity for socks and sandals. As much as technology’s played a part in my existence, however, my photo album is all but devoid of references to my geekier undertakings. Believe me, there were nights spent playing D&D — although my relationship with RPGs was short lived — and days lost in the wormholes of the web, but, truth be told, I’ve never really considered myself a geek. Continue reading Growing Up Geek: Christopher Trout Growing Up Geek: Christopher Trout originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Aug 2011 14:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Cake Mania Main Street DS – Part 8 – Jack’s Burger Barn Level 5 and Unlocking Risha’s Flower Shop Baguette Hermione Granger Alle Sternen Münzen in New Super Mario Bros DS -Welt 1 [Part1] lahyoh24 says: Ds place is freezing ooo
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First million users enrol at digital Hogwarts, learning from new content by JK Rowling From flying letters to a 4,500 word-discourse on wand woods, early access to JK Rowling’s move into the digital arena , Pottermore , reveals a richly-imagined, elaborately realised behind-the-scenes peek into the world of Harry Potter. Pottermore does not open to wider use until October, but has already been inundated by Harry Potter fans. There have been more than 22m views of the webpage, peaking at some 50,000 requests per second on 3 August, as readers rushed to become one of the million users chosen to receive early access and a chance to shape the website’s development. The site is free to use – Rowling has said that she wanted to “give back to the Harry Potter readership”, who number in their hundreds of millions worldwide – but it will be the only sales outlet for ebook versions of the seven Potter titles. On entering the site, users begin to travel through the world of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, following in the footsteps of Harry and learning new facts about his world as they open an account at the goblin bank Gringotts, travel up and down Diagon Alley shopping for equipment for school and choosing a wand. Unlocking new content as they progress through the storyline, they can click on and collect items for their “trunk”, build and evolve their profiles, adding their own drawings, collecting books and chocolate frog cards, learning spells and brewing potions. A Pottermore account can also be connected to a Facebook account, with users able to make friends – and even take part in wizarding duels once they reach a certain point on the website. Comments from early users are already positive: “This is amaazing,” writes IceDragon, while another user praised the “Beautiful artwork!” “This is very cool. Very unique website. I love the extra content,” said CrimsonDream55, but NoxThorn88 “would have expected a little more action”. “I think Pottermore has the potential to be a lasting focal point for the Harry Potter brand – The Leaky Cauldron for the fans. I think the fact that it incorporates new content, a social networking element, and is also the only place people will be able to buy the ebooks will prove to be quite a potent combination … Having the ebooks there exclusively is a bit of a masterstroke in terms of ensuring people visit the site and engage with it, as is the way they are going to stagger the release of the content,” said Charlotte Williams from the Bookseller, an early user of the site. “It’ll be interesting to see whether it can act as a first port of call and draw new readers to the books, or whether it’ll more be used by existing diehard Potterites.” Rowling has written reams of new material – 18,000 words at the last count, but still growing – for Pottermore, as well as mining her archives to share notes she made when writing the novels. Nuggets unearthed on an early trawl through the site include the news that Rowling unconsciously based the Dursleys’ gloomy home on Privet Drive on a childhood home of her own in Winterbourne, near Bristol. “I first became conscious of this when I entered the number four Privet Drive that had been built at Leavesden Studios, and found myself in an exact replica of my old house, down to the position of the cupboard under the stairs and the precise location of each room,” the author writes. “As I had never described my old home to the set designer, director or producer, this was yet another of the unsettling experiences that filming the Potter books has brought me.” She also gives humorous background to the long-running animosity between Harry’s parents and the Dursleys – “Vernon tried to patronise James, asking what car he drove. James described his racing broom” – and explains why wizards don’t need the metric system. “Witches and wizards are not averse to laborious calculations, which they can, after all, do magically, so they do not find it inconvenient to weigh in ounces, pounds and stones; measure in inches, feet and miles; or pay for goods in Knuts, Sickles, and Galleons,” she writes. The site is currently based on the first novel in the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, with further books in the series to be added in the new year. Williams said that other authors would be watching the site’s development with interest. “I think other big-name brands will look very carefully to see what success it has, and if a high level of interest and excitement can be maintained,” said Williams. “By retaining the digital rights to her books, and selling the ebooks exclusively through this site, JK Rowling is bypassing not only her publishers but also retailers, so it’s a strategy that would only work with the biggest of brands. (And not many authors nowadays still retain the digital rights to their work.) This kind of re-wiring of publishing relationships – agents acting as publishers, publishers acting as agents, authors acting as publishers – is becoming more common, but I’d say this is the most high-profile experiment yet in digital disintermediation.” Harry Potter Children’s books: 8-12 years Children and teenagers Children’s books: 7 and under Teen books JK Rowling Alison Flood guardian.co.uk
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Gareth Buirski vs Lourens Botes Submission Wrestling (SFL) Aubin-Mercier vs Charette ricaespiritu says: 63-year-old holds off robber with rear naked choke – http://t.co/FyotD2y
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€10,000 reward offered for Yvonne’s safe return as Zangberg mayor revels in animal’s wanderlust A €10,000 reward is being offered in Germany for the safe return of a cow called Yvonne who went on the run in May after apparently sensing she was about to be sent to the slaughterhouse. Yvonne, a six-year-old dairy cow, has, in the words of one newspaper, become “a kind of freedom fighter for the animal loving German republic” since she escaped from her field in the village of Zangberg, 50 miles north-east of Munich, on 24 May. Having been fattened up, she was due to be dispatched when she managed to breach the electric fence surrounding her farm. For several months she led a quiet life grazing among the fir trees of nearby forests, until she nearly came a cropper crossing a road into the path of a passing police car. As word spread of this invincible cow, animal protection activists got involved, incensed that local hunters had been given permission to shoot Yvonne on sight. Gut Aiderbichl, an animal sanctuary over the Austrian border in Salzburg, agreed to buy Yvonne from the farm for €600 and has offered her a paddock with grass to graze on for the rest of her days. Now a fight is on as the bovine protectionists are pitted against the trigger-happy Bavarians, who shot and killed Bruno , the first bear to be seen on German soil for 170 years, in June 2006. Gut Aiderbichl are pulling out all the stops to catch Yvonne alive. Last week they enlisted the help of a bull called Ernst to try to lure her back home. Ernst has “a deep baritone moo that will appeal to Yvonne”, as well as a particularly manly musk, said the sanctuary’s founder Michael Aufhauser. “He is the George Clooney of bulls.” Sex is not on the agenda, however, as Ernst is castrated. Aufhauser also called on an animal psychic to communicate with Yvonne from afar. Franziska Matti, an animal communication expert from Berne in Switzerland, said she had managed to contact Yvonne using telepathy. “I spoke to her yesterday and she said that she was fine but didn’t feel ready to come out of hiding,” said Matti. “She said she knew that Ernst had been waiting for her but that she was scared. She said she thought that humans would lock her up and she would no longer be free.” After the German tabloid Bild offered a €10,000 reward for Yvonne’s safe capture on Saturday, the race to find her has heated up. In Monday’s Bild an 11-year-old boy called Sepp claimed to have discovered a fresh hoof print from Yvonne in the woods near his home. The boy had been tipped off by his grandmother, he said, who had spotted a cow while out collecting mushrooms two days previously. “I know that I will find her. My dad has 18 cows. I often have to help him feed them and take them out to pasture. I know what I’m doing,” he told Bild. On Monday Aufhauser said he had leased a helicopter to track down Yvonne. If that didn’t work, he had a secret weapon: Yvonne’s two-year-old son, Friesi, who was previously believed dead but turned up alive at a local farm. Friesi was offered by his owner to Aufhauser, and was on Monday undergoing “intensive training” to learn how best to call to his mother. “We know that the bond between mother cows and their sons is very strong. She will not be able to ignore him,” said Aufhauser. Franz Märkl, mayor of Zangberg, said he was delighted Yvonne had decided to go missing during the traditional summer news lull known in Britain as “silly season” and in Germany as “Sauregurkenzeit” – literally “sour cucumber time”, a reference to the days when good vegetables are scarce. “We trained the cow well for the summer [news] vacuum,” Märkl told the Süddeutsche Zeitung. “Now everyone in Germany has heard of our lovely village.” Germany Agriculture Switzerland Animal behaviour Animal welfare Food & drink industry Helen Pidd guardian.co.uk
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