AchieveMax® Blog

I often wonder if we live on the same planet or in the same dimension as those within the beltway in Washington. Don’t they have access to the same newspapers and magazines that we do? Do their TVs have no news channels? Do they not visit the areas they represent? Do they not hear from those they supposedly serve?

I’m constantly hearing the top leadership in the nation, from both parties, tell us that “We are not in a recession!” or “Thing’s are looking up!” or “It’s only a matter of time” or “Elect us and we’ll change things!”

If you have eyes and ears, it doesn’t take long to discover that few people in this country agree with these claims. Let’s take a look at a few of the situations which may contribute to these feelings:

• The most recent AP poll declared that “81% feel America is headed in the wrong direction!”
• Detroit’s own home town newspaper recently produced a glaring headline that dominated much of the front page. It read: “Auto Sales Plunge to Worst in 15 Years!” 

Major Job Cuts Continue

Airlines

Northwest Airlines says that it’s cutting an additional 2,500 jobs; Delta Airlines is cutting 4,000 jobs; Continental will cut 3,000 jobs; United Airlines is trimming 950 pilots; Air Canada is cutting 2,000 jobs; Air Tran is cutting 300 flight attendants and 180 pilots, ATA announces 260 job cuts, and Frontier Airlines cuts 600 jobs. Can you imagine how difficult it will be for these airlines if times gets tough?

Siemens

Many people have heard the name Siemens but few realize how much it impacts our lives here in the U.S. The Munich-based conglomerate is improving America’s infrastructure through technology and innovation in medical, power, automation and control, transportation, information and communications, lighting, building technologies, water technologies and services and home appliances. Siemens employs 70,000 employees in the U.S. and 400,000 worldwide. In a bid to streamline its operations and deeply cut costs, Siemens plans to cut 16,750 jobs, accounting for 4.2% of its workforce worldwide. The industrial conglomerate said the cuts would include 12,600 administrative jobs as well as 4,150 positions at other units.

Steve & Barry’s

Here’s a discount retailer that took the world by storm just a very short time ago. It arrived on the scene with a storybook history offering customers from coast to coast quality products at tremendously discounted prices. Steve & Barry’s offered several lines designed by such celebrities as Sarah Jessica Parker, Amanda Bynes, Venus Williams, Stephon Marbury and the WWE. Industry experts said the “perfect storm” of a poor economy, razor-thin profit margins, growing too fast too quick, and too many celebrity relationships combined to cause this unexpected calamity. The company, with 275 stores in 40 states, opened 10 new stores this year and had plans for at least 10 more in the near future. To learn more about Steve & Barry’s storied beginning, simply click on Little-known Facts about Well-known Businesses - Steve & Barry’s.

Starbucks

Here’s another shocker. After years of ambitious expansion, the coffee retailer plans to close 600 U.S. stores, most of which were opened only in the last two years. Starbucks says it will try to place affected employees in neighboring coffee shops.

Rite-Aid

The third largest drugstore chain in the U.S., operating more than 5,000 stores in 31 states with 116,000 associates, Rite Aid announced that it will be closing 28 stores and re-evaluating dozens of others that aren’t earning their keep. This action comes at a time when Americans are used to seeing Rite-Aid seemingly open a new location on every corner.

Foot Locker

With income down 78% last year, this gigantic shoe retailer is running for the hills. Formally known as the Venator Group, it evolved from merger of the F.W. Woolworth CO. and Kinney Shoes. It operates 3,785 stores in 20 countries. After announcing the closure of 274 stores last year, Foot Locker recently added an additional 140 stores to that list.

Disney Stores

The Walt Disney Co. announced earlier this year that it was assuming management of 220 Disney Stores in North America that had previously been run by Children’s Place. It plans to close 98 of those U.S. stores and two in Canada.

Linens ‘N Things

Employing 7,500 employees, the #1 large-format retailer of home textiles, housewares, and decorative home accessories in the U.S., boasts 571 stores in 47 states and six in Canadian provinces. Earlier this year it announced a Chapter 11 filing followed by plans to close 120 underperforming stores.

All I can say is that it’s a good thing for these companies that we’re not in a recession. Did you note a hint of sarcasm there? We’ll all be better off when leaders in key positions stop denying the current crisis and start taking action to address it.

Harry K. Jones is a professional speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services. Harry has appeared all over North America addressing topics such as change, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork and time management for a number of industries, including education, financial, government, healthcare, hospitality, and manufacturing. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our contact form.

In the spirit of C.A.N.I. (Continuous And Never-ending Improvement), here are this week’s new facts—one for each day of your coming week. Pass them on to others to keep the spirit alive or invite your friends and family to visit our blog where they can also view previous entries.

• On July 2nd, after Merrill Lynch analysts downgraded General Motors’ stock from “buy” to “underperform” and said that bankruptcy was “not impossible,” GM shares closed at 9.98, a 54-year low.
• Toyota’s market cap (calculated by multiplying the current share price [per share] with the number of shares outstanding) as of July 1, 2008: $163 billion. GM’s: $6.1 billion.
• Anheuser-Busch reportedly has agreed to be acquired by Belgian brewer InBev for about $52 billion. The deal being reported by The Wall Street Journal would create the world’s largest brewer and put the iconic American beer maker in the hands of the Belgian-based company behind Stella Artois and Beck’s beers.
• Baby boomers are retiring at the rate of 10,000 every day!
• To improve its chances of winning medals in next month’s Olympic games, China runs 3,000 special academies where 400,000 young runners, weight lifters, swimmers, and other athletes are rigorously screened and trained for hours every day.
• Chrysler said it will include wireless Internet as an option for all of its 2009 models, in a first for any automaker. Chrysler is hoping the Wi-Fi option will raise flagging sales. Highway Safety Associations are not happy with this announcement as they foresee an obvious safety hazard.
• Amazon.com’s website was down for a total of three hours in June. Amazon, which drew 58 million visitors in April, loses an estimated $1.8 million in sales every hour it is down.

Harry K. Jones is a professional speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services. Harry has appeared all over North America addressing topics such as change, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork and time management for a number of industries, including education, financial, government, healthcare, hospitality, and manufacturing. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our contact form.

Our “Words of Wisdom” feature on our website continues to grow as we add our 22nd category today. A glance at today’s headlines might convince you that timing is everything when it comes to our current subject choice … persistence.

Federal regulators seized the assets of the largest regulated thrift to fail and the second-largest financial institution to close in U.S. history. Home prices continue to tumble. Foreclosures are rising. Credit is tighter than ever. $5 gas is predicted by summer’s end. Food prices are skyrocketing. Iran’s testing missiles. Weather’s gone amuck. Stores are closing from coast to coast. Jobs become more scarce daily. Add to this growing list the challenges of immigration, social security, energy, veterans, trade balance, education, health care, foreign policy, military, global competition, abortion, affirmative action, the budget deficit, tax reform, campaign reform, crime, death penalty, drugs, foreign relations, gay rights, guns, labor unions, the environment and our obvious lack of strong Presidential candidates as we approach November. Whew! Had enough?

It took a great deal of “persistence” to simply finish reading that list of downers. We’re going to need even more persistence to weather this perfect storm of challenges currently confronting the nation.

Read what some of the greatest minds in our history had to say about the importance and benefits of maintaining persistence during trying times. You might want to share a few of these thoughts with others who could use a boost. You’ll both benefit from the investment of just a few moments.

Also feel free to check out our in-depth offering of quotes on many subjects should you be in need of a refreshing thought, idea, slogan or profound nugget for an upcoming meeting, presentation, or lunch room bulletin board.

We offer interesting quotes on the subjects of leadership, teamwork, customer service, time management, goals, change, motivation, sales, potential, gender, creativity, repetition, enthusiasm, employees, attitude, networking, fear, sense of urgency, passion, empowerment, women, and now persistence.

Click on “Words of Wisdom” in order to review our entire offering.

Harry K. Jones is a professional speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services. Harry has appeared all over North America addressing topics such as change, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork and time management for a number of industries, including education, financial, government, healthcare, hospitality, and manufacturing. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our contact form.

Most of those NOT born in a barn have certainly heard of Google. However, the two young men responsible for the world’s largest Internet search engine may not be as well-known to many. Known by those in the technical community as “Geeks Gone Wild,” Sergey Brin and Larry Page, are No. 32 ($18.7 billion) and 33 ($18.6 billion) respectively on the 2008 list of Forbes list of the world’s billionaires.

Obviously, things weren’t always that way. The co-founders first met as Stanford University graduate students in computer science in the summer of 1995. Sergey was in a group of potential new students which Brin had volunteered to show around the campus. They actually weren’t very fond of one another until they found a common interest retrieving relevant information from large data sets. They went on to co-author what is widely considered their seminal contribution, a paper entitled “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine.” The paper has since gone on to become the tenth-most accessed scientific paper at Stanford University.

In August 1996 the initial version of Google was made available, still on the Stanford University website. Although they don’t quite qualify as a “rags to riches” story, they did share a humble beginning by renting a garage in Menlo Park, California, for $1,700 a month. Today they boast four core buildings, fondly called Googleplex, in Mountain View, California, totaling 506,317 square feet as well as branch offices all over the globe. This complex must be seen to be believed. We’ll tell you more about this unique culture in a future article. The original two employees now lead a staff of about 17,000 full-time employees.

That growth is a result of the fact that this dynamic duo have virtually cornered the search engine market, holding about 58% of the market while their next two competitors, Yahoo and Microsoft, hold 22% and 9% respectively. Even if these two competitors were to join together they would still trail Google by 27%. They also extended ad business into TV, cell phones, and various online venues; they bought Web video portal YouTube for $1.65 billion last year and recently partnered with EchoStar, LG Electronics, Salesforce.com.

Page and Brin ran Google as co-presidents until 2001 when they hired Eric Schmidt to become Chairman and CEO of Google. Now that Google is the world’s entry point to the Internet, Google plans to become the world’s dominant advertising broker, the world’s dominant social network, the world’s dominant mobile supplier, and the world’s dominant product of alternative energy. Talk about ambitious goals!

Now let’s take a look at the co-founders individually:

Mikkhailovich Brin

• Mikkhailovich (Sergey) Brin is a 35-year-old Russian-born American entrepreneur.
• Brin was born in Moscow in 1973 and emigrated to the U.S. in 1979 at the age of 6 with his mathematician parents. His father gained work as a mathematics professor at the University of Maryland and his mother went on to work at NASA.
• He attended grade school at a Montessori School in Maryland, received further education at home, attended Eleanor Roosevelt High School, and enrolled in the University of Maryland to study computer science and mathematics, where he received his B.S. degree in 1993 with high honors.
• Brin began his graduate study in computer science at Stanford University on a graduate fellowship from the National Science Foundation. He earned his Master’s degree in August 1995 ahead of schedule in the process of his Ph.D. studies.
• Brin has also received an honorary MBA from the IE Business School.
• Brin expressed interest in the Internet very early on in his studies at Stanford. He authored and co-authored various papers on data-mining and pattern extraction. He also wrote software to ease the process of putting scientific papers often written in TeX, a text-processing language, into HTML form, as well as a website for film ratings.
• While studying for his Ph.D., he met Lawrence Page and went on to work with him on a project to organize the Internet and improve the way people search for information. They first nicknamed the project “BackRub” as it relied heavily on the number and relevancy of links pointing to a website.
• Brin has appeared on television shows and many documentaries, including Charlie Rose, CNBC, and CNN. In 2004, he and Larry Page were named “Persons of the Week” by ABC World News Tonight. In January 2005 Sergey Brin was nominated to be one of the World Economic Forum’s “Young Global Leaders.”
• In 2007, Brin was cited by PC World as #1 on a list of the “50 most important people on the Web,” along with Larry Page and Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
• In May 2007, Brin married Anne Wojcicki in the Bahamas. Wojcicki is a biotech analyst and a 1996 graduate of Yale University with a degree in biology. She co-founded 23andMe, a personal DNA genotyping service.
• He is also an investor in Tesla Motors, which is developing the Tesla Roadster, a 221-mile-range battery electric vehicle. He has also placed an order for the Roadster. It is reported by Conde Nast Portfolio that Brin drives a Toyota Prius.
• In June 2008, it was announced that Brin had made a $5 million investment in Space Adventures, the Virginia-based space tourism company. His investment will serve as a deposit for a reservation on one of Space Adventures’ proposed flights in 2011. So far, Space Adventures has sent five tourists into space.
• Brin currently holds the position of President of Technology at Google and has a net worth estimated at $18.5 billion as of March 9, 2007, making him the 26th richest person in the world and the 5th richest person in the United States. He is also the fourth-youngest billionaire in the world.

Lawrence Edward Page

• Lawrence Edward “Larry” Page is a 35-year-old U.S.-born American entrepreneur.
• Page was born in Lansing, Michigan, in 1973 to the late Dr. Carl Victor Page, a professor of computer science and artificial intelligence at Michigan State University and one of the University of Michigan’s first computer science Ph.D. graduates, and Gloria Page, a computer programming teacher at Michigan State University. Page is also the brother of Carl Victoer Page, Jr., a co-founder of eGroups, later sold to Yahoo! for approximately half a billion dollars.
• Page attended a Montessori school in Lansing, Michigan, and graduated from East Lansing High School. He holds a B.S. degree in computer engineering from the University of Michigan with honors and a Master’s degree in computer science from Stanford University.
• While at the University of Michigan, Page created an inkjet printer made of Lego bricks. He was also a member of the solar car team and served as the President of the HKN, a national electrical and computer engineering honor society.
• After enrolling for a Ph.D. program in computer science at Stamford, Page was in search for a dissertation theme and considered exploring the mathematical properties of the World Wide Web. His supervisor encouraged him to pursue this idea, and Page later recalled this as the “best advice I ever got.” He focused on the problem of finding out which web pages link to a given page, considering the number and nature of such backlinks to be valuable information about that page.
• Sergey Brin soon joined Page in his research project, nicknamed “BackRub.” They developed the Page Rank algorithm and realized that it could be used to build a search engine far superior to existing ones.
• In 2007, Page was cited by PC World as #1 on the list of the 50 most important people on the web, along with Brin and Schmidt.
• Page is also an investor in Tesla Motors, which developed the Tesla Roadster, a 250-mile-range battery electric vehicle.
• Page currently holds the position of President of Products at Google and has an estimated net worth of $18.5 billion, placing him at rank 26 on Forbes’s list of the richest persons in the world, together with Brin.
• The World Economic Forum named Page as a Global Leader for Tomorrow, and The X PRIZE chose Page as a trustee for their board.
• Page married Lucinda Southworth at Richard Branson’s Caribbean island, Necker Island, on December 8, 2007.

Harry K. Jones is a professional speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services. Harry has appeared all over North America addressing topics such as change, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork and time management for a number of industries, including education, financial, government, healthcare, hospitality, and manufacturing. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our contact form.

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I recently made the challenging trek to Lost Wages, Nevada (also known as “City of Lights” - “Glitter Gulch” - “Sin City” - “The City That Never Sleeps” - oh, and Las Vegas) to speak at an annual meeting. It was 110 to 112 degrees every day! New casinos were going up everywhere. There was no sign of recession or depression anywhere.

I’ve been coming to Vegas for decades, and while it looks different every time you get off the plane, some things simply never change. This town is full of gambling devices … roulette wheels, crap tables, slot machines, and wedding chapels!

I personally don’t drink or gamble and seldom have time to make it to pool side at these events so I skipped the obligatory “Cooks’ Tour” … getting baked in the sun, stewed at the bar and burned at the crap tables!

One of the challenges for anyone flying from east to west is the time change. It’s interesting to leave Detroit at noon and arrive in Vegas at 1 p.m. It certainly doesn’t feel like a mere hour of flight time and, of course, it isn’t. The non-stop flight is actually 4 hours and 11 minutes, which feels more like 4 days and 11 hours. Add the hour you must arrive early prior to the flight, another hour for the usual delay and the eternity between touching down and actually arriving at your gate, and you’re pushing close to 7 hours.

I learned long ago to come prepared by bringing my laptop and the enormous stack of magazines and newspapers I review weekly to keep current on business news, political situations, and world events. However, on this particular trip I think I may have overdosed on negative news. In the future, I think I’ll be limiting myself to just a few sources a day. Here’s some of what I learned on this trip.

12,000 Laptops Lost Each Week! (624,000 Per Year!)

A new study by the Ponemon Institute estimates that about 12,000 laptops are lost every week (based on interviews with officials at 106 American airports). That same study revealed that half of all the business travelers surveyed said they fly regularly with important information on their laptops. Most of them—more than two thirds—don’t use any type of security system in the event that laptops are lost or stolen. Eventually, one of those laptops is going to be loaded with our Social Security numbers and names. I wonder what they do with all those computers?

Growing Trend

The Wall Street Journal reports that many small towns and community colleges are switching to four-day workweeks in an effort to help employees cope with the rising gasoline prices and could soon be joined by some larger local governments. Expect to see this trend become the norm if something isn’t done about oil prices.

Waterless Washing Machines?

BusinessWeek reports that researchers at Xeros, a British company linked to the University of Leeds, have developed a machine that washes a regular laundry load using as little as one cup of water, about 1% of the 10 to 15 gallons a typical washer requires. The machine uses tiny plastic chips and a bit of detergent to rub dirt from clothes, which emerge virtually dry—and extremely clean. According to research, washing machines in Britain alone consume about 120 million gallons daily, enough to fill 145 Olympic-size swimming pools!

Bye-bye, Billy

In one of the most carefully orchestrated transitions in corporate history, 52-year-old Microsoft Chairman William H. Gates, third richest man on earth, walked away from his day-to-day duties at the company he co-founded. He plans to spend more time working on philanthropy. He will continue to play a key role in Microsoft’s biggest long-term technical bets.

Going to the Dogs

Real estate baroness Leona Helmsley apparently earned her famous nickname, “The Queen of Mean,” by the way she treated her staff. However, following her death, she left instructions that her estate, estimated to be up to $8 billion, be spent on the care and welfare of dogs. The Humane Society of the U.S. and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said they will be suggesting programs for applying the funds in the most productive method.

Harry K. Jones is a professional speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services. Harry has appeared all over North America addressing topics such as change, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork and time management for a number of industries, including education, financial, government, healthcare, hospitality, and manufacturing. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our contact form.

In the spirit of C.A.N.I. (Continuous And Never-ending Improvement), here are this week’s new facts—one for each day of your coming week. Pass them on to others to keep the spirit alive or invite your friends and family to visit our blog where they can also view previous entries.

• In the city of Washington D.C., no building may be built taller than the Washington Monument.
• There are four cars and eleven light posts on the back of a $10 dollar bill.
• There are more Irish in New York City than in Dublin, Ireland; more Italians in New York City than in Rome, Italy; and more Jews in New York City than in Tel Aviv, Israel.
• There are more than 300 different types of Barbie Dolls.
• There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with: orange, purple, and silver!
• Tiger Woods is the highest paid athlete. He makes around $80 million per year (or $219,000 per day).
• The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.

Harry K. Jones is a professional speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services. Harry has appeared all over North America addressing topics such as change, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork and time management for a number of industries, including education, financial, government, healthcare, hospitality, and manufacturing. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our contact form.

Last month, I had the privilege of speaking to a group of young people who were preparing to move on to the next plateau in their lives after graduation. On my return trip home from the Florida panhandle, I had a layover in Atlanta. My plane was delayed due to local storms so I grabbed a bite to eat. Like most airport restaurants, they had several TV monitors mounted on every wall. Waiting for my meal, I checked my e-mail on my laptop while glancing at the news headlines on the TV monitor.

For some reason, I happened to catch a commercial from start to finish. I’m not what you would call a commercial-lover. In fact, whenever possible, I fast forward through the majority of them. I obviously didn’t have that option in the airport, and I’m actually thankful for that fact. I watched a one-minute commercial which left me with a tear in my eye, a smile in my heart, and a valuable lesson on my mind.

It was so captivating that I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. There was a young boy about 7 or 8 years old standing at home plate on a deserted baseball field. He had a big smile on his face and a baseball cap askew on his tiny head. He held a bat on his shoulder with one hand and a baseball in the other. With enthusiasm he yelled, “I’m the greatest hitter in the world,” as he tossed the ball into the air, swung the bat, missed the ball completely and fell to the ground. He jumped up, replaced his dusty hat, picked up the ball off the ground, repositioned his bat and said, “Strike one.”

Again, with enthusiasm, he yelled, “I’m the greatest hitter in the world,” as he tossed the ball into the air, swung the bat, missed the ball completely once again and fell to the ground. Again, he jumped up, replaced his hat, picked up the ball off the ground, repositioned his bat and said, “Strike two.”

Again, with a little less enthusiasm, he yelled, “I’m the greatest hitter in the world,” as he tossed the ball into the air a third time, swung the bat with all his might, and once again missed the ball by a country mile as he fell to the ground. This time he got up a little bit slower, replaced his dusty hat, left the bat in the dirt and sadly said, “Strike three!”

He stood there at home plate dusting himself off with a sad look of shame and disappointment on his face. Then, as the camera closed in on his face, you could see his frown change to deep thought as he raised his eyes to the clouds in the bright sunny sky.

His facial expression quickly changed from deep thought to total joy as he tossed his hat high into the air and screamed as loud as he could, “I’m the greatest pitcher in the world!”

Now there’s a young man who has obviously learned the true value of a simple “reframe.” I wonder how many times, we, as adults, could share that same joy if we’d just put forth an effort to look at things differently … a simple “reframe.”

Harry K. Jones is a professional speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services. Harry has appeared all over North America addressing topics such as change, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork and time management for a number of industries, including education, financial, government, healthcare, hospitality, and manufacturing. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our contact form.

Here’s our second installation of a new feature designed to assist you in your efforts to save some time and effort in your day-to-day quest for success. As we locate valuable resources, we’ll post them here for your convenience. Browse the listing, identify potential assets, make a quick trip to those sites you chose to see if they may be worthwhile to add to your Favorites.

If you happen to have resources you feel might be valuable to others, please feel free to send them to us, and we’ll certainly consider posting them as well.

Tap the Power of Wise Geeks to Answer Your Questions

wiseGEEK allows you to search over 22,100 (and growing) articles, providing answers to common questions everyone seems to have but no one can find. It is maintained by a team of writers and editors dedicated to providing clear and concise answers to common questions. Currently, there are more than 50 active, qualified contributors, and profiles are provided. Readers are also permitted to “comment on this article” if they have additional information to offer. Every comment is researched and implemented where appropriate. Their qualified writers along with the army of readers ensure that the information is as accurate as possible.

Categories are numerous and you can expect to be overwhelmed with the number of answers you’ll discover on this site. Categories include: Technology & Gadgets, Home & Garden, Manufacturing and Industry, Internet & Computers, Health & Wellness, Crafts and Do-It-Yourself, Finance & Investing, Science & Engineering, Cars-Boats & Airplanes, Business & Economy, Sports & Hobbies, Food & Cooking, Travel & Entertainment, Art & Music, People, The World, Animals & the Environment, The United States, Language & The Humanities, History & Government, Miscellaneous, and others.

U.S. National Debt Clock

While the U.S. National Debt Clock is a very interesting site, you might want to be sure you’re sitting down before you actually make the visit. You’re in for a real shock! This site continually updates our outstanding National Debt, our estimated population and each citizen’s share of that enormous figure. By the way, the answer is yes—that total figure is in the trillions! It’s a real eye-opener and even tells you how to voice your concern to Congress and the White House.

The Outstanding Public Debt as of July 9, 2008, at 07:30:00 PM GMT is: $9,496,827,721,239.56

The estimated population of the United States is 304,325,087 so each citizen’s share of this debt is $31,206.19.

The National Debt has continued to increase an average of $1.72 billion per day since September 28, 2007! Concerned? Then tell Congress and the White House!

By the way, they even provide a link to another site that answers all of your questions about the U.S. National Debt Clock and even shares questions and answers of previous visitors.

U.S. POPClock Projection

The U.S. population clock is based on the national population estimates. The U.S. Census Bureau produces national population estimates annually using the latest available data on births, deaths, and international migration. Each year, we recalibrate the population clock when we release the new set of population estimates.

According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, the resident population of the United States, projected to 07/09/08 at 19:33 GMT GMT (EST+5) is 304,556,518.

COMPONENT SETTINGS FOR JULY 2008

• One birth every 7 seconds.
• One death every 13 seconds.
• One international migrant (net) every 30 seconds.
• Net gain of one person every 10 seconds.

The MightyCool Atomic Clock

If you need to set your clock to the actual current time, a quick visit to this site will provide you with precise time. The MightyCool Atomic Clock is calibrated several times per day with the U.S. Naval Observatory Atomic Clock, which maintains the official time standard for the United States of America as mandated by law.

You can find the time for each of the Pacific/Mountain/Central/Eastern time zones here at home as well as select International Times.

You’ll find a button on the page labeled RELOAD. Simply click on that button and the Atomic Clock updates to the current second.

Stress Relief

Time for a unique combination of both fun and stress relief. Go to this site and the page is nothing but a full screen duplication of a sheet of bubblewrap. You know how relaxing and mind-numbing it can be to simply sit there and pop each bubble on a full sheet of bubblewrap.

This site has several advantages compared to the real experience:

1. It requires much less effort than the real thing inasmuch as all you have to do is move your mouse across the page clicking on each of the 140 bubbles to hear each relaxing “pop.”
2. When you’ve finished, simply hit the “Fresh Sheet” button, and you immediately have another 140 bubble to pop. This can go on for as long as it takes to totally relieve your tension and stress.
3. Having a really tough day? There’s another button at the bottom of the page labeled “Manic Mode.” Hit this button and your page is transformed to deal with your increased level of stress. You no longer have to use your mouse to click on each bubble. Simply move your mouse all over the sheet as fast as you can, and you’ll pop every bubble you pass over—no clicking required. This, of course, increases the speed of your “popability.” Exhaust yourself! I know—get a life! On the other hand, this site may just prolong the one you have!

Bureau of Labor Statistics

If you’re looking for stats for any reason at all, this is the site to meet your needs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is the principal fact-finding agency for the Federal Government in the broad field of labor economics and statistics. The BLS is an independent national statistical agency that collects, processes, analyzes, and disseminates essential statistical data to the American public, the U.S. Congress, other Federal agencies, State and local governments, business, and labor. The BLS also serves as a statistical resource to the Department of Labor.

Stats are organized in the following categories for quick reference and ease of discovery:

• Productivity
• Business Costs
• Safety & Health
• Demographics
• Publications
• Occupations
• International
• Industries
• Research
• Geography
• Other Statistical Sites
• Kid’s Page
• Employment & Unemployment
• At-a-Glance Tables
• Inflation & Consumer Spending
• Wage, Earnings & Benefits

Harry K. Jones is a professional speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services. Harry has appeared all over North America addressing topics such as change, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork and time management for a number of industries, including education, financial, government, healthcare, hospitality, and manufacturing. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our