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Showing posts from August, 2017

Finding a good baby carrier is like finding a good man...

It takes a lot of time and you have to go through a lot of bad ones. Before I had a baby, I thought the simplest way to figure out what kind of gear I would need was to read reviews on sites like Baby Gear Lab and Baby Center (if only parenting were this simple.) As ergo was consistently named one of the best carriers, I felt fortunate when my sister-in-law re-gifted me her never used ergo carrier. Unfortunately, my baby did not feel the same way. I quickly discovered why the ergo was never used by my sister-in-law. Whenever I put my baby in the ergo, he cried. Not cute little kitten squeals, but full on pterodactyl type shrieks. So desperate was my little one to escape from the ergo that he would arch his back and use his feet to launch himself off of me in some kind of deranged baby suicide attempt. There was nothing ergonomic about the ergo for my baby or I, so we moved onto the baby k’tan. I loved my baby k’tan – it was soft, comfy, easy to put on and oh so cuddly. It rem...

Influence People

Today we continue exploring Dale Carnegie's book How to Win Friends and Influence People.   The first part of this two series post was on How to make friends which you can check out by clicking the link below: How to make friends The other portion of this text is about influencing people.  If you'd like to read all the points that Dale Carnegie suggests, wikipedia does a nice job of laying it out in an easy to read format in the link below. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influence_People While Mr. Carnegie lists out twelve key points to winning people over to your way of thinking, I'd like hone in on a few of his points that in my opinion are the most important.  I think because these points feel so counterintuitive that it becomes difficult to understand how these points could be valid. Nonetheless, I would like to share my thoughts with you on these few ideas and pair them with a brief anecdotal.  Then you can be the judge and d...

An Ice Cream Binge Across America

For those of you who read my post about the science of ice cream making , you already know how much I enjoy making and eating ice cream. In her book, Sweet Spot: An Ice Cream Binge Across America , Amy Ettinger claims that the average American eats twenty-two pounds of ice cream a year. I bet I eat at least twice that. For an ice cream and book reading enthusiast, such as myself, Amy Ettinger's book, Sweet Spot: An Ice Cream Binge Across America,  would seem to be the perfect combination of my two great loves. Ettinger shares some interesting histories that I had not known before, such as the fact that the United States Food and Drug Administration considers ice cream a potentially hazardous food item because it "accounted for 2, 594 illnesses between 1990 and 2009, mostly from contaminated eggs or spoiled milk" (Ettinger 56). Ice cream is apparently so hazardous that some historians, according to Ettinger, contend that American President Zachary Taylor died after e...

How to make friends

How to make friends and influence by Dale Carnegie is one of the most influential books of all time.  Much like the title suggests, it is a self-help book that provides a mindset and strategies to make friends and influence people.  As an exploration of this text, we are going to do a two-part series on Carnegie's book, with today's post focusing on making friends. I found out about this book when I was reading an interview on Barbara Cocoran.  The founder of the Cocoran Group and current panelist/investor on Shark Tank.  In the interview she mentioned that the last book she had read was the aforementioned text.  She stated that this book was her guide to interacting with people and with making sales. I must admit that even in my own life I have incorporated parts of this book into my interactions.  In addition, as a person who has gone through leadership training programs, I am shocked at how much of his teachings are incorporated into the modern e...

Special Friday Post - My Yahoo Portfolio Experience - Part 1

If you have read the Koo Review before then you know that we are avid readers.  I have especially been interested in finance and investing as of late, as well as some marketing. One of the key items I've learned from reading The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham were strategies on how to invest in the stock market.  I created a Yahoo Portfolio account to track five companies that I found on the 52 week low list that I would have picked back on July 14th to invest in.   I purchased 100 shares of each company (to keep things simple).  My focus was: 1) Large cap companies. 2) A history of steady dividend payments. 3) Consistent positive net income for the past three years. 4) An established brand 5) The company sold or produced something that I understood So as you see below this is how our portfolio did after three weeks. So while it was not all great, you can see that the total gain was $558 as of August 4, 2017 at 10:45 a.m. ...