We all know that one of the trendy things right now is to have all of your paper bills canceled and enroll for online bills, automatic payments, online bill payments and other things like that. All nice and good. What bothers me is that one of the reasons most of the banks, credit cards, utility providers etc. which encourage you to do so use the environment as one of the reasons (most of the times one of the most important one). I don’t have anything against that. As a matter of fact I do agree that the more of us would choose to go paperless, the more we would contribute to the conservation of our environment. (Why I personally don’t do it, it’s a different story and I’ll write about it some other time).

What’s my problem, than? I’ll tell you what my problem is. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but another thing that’s becoming trendy (or so I think since I’ve only seen it happening in the past year) is for your credit card companies to send you checks to use for whatever reason you wish (to pay other cards, to pay bills, to transfer some money into your bank account etc.). Overall quite a good idea. I don’t know if you’ve gotten any of them (I believe you would need to have a balance lower than 50% of your credit limit to get them). These checks usually have an expiration date, meaning you can only use them by a certain date, which in my case, on most batches I received, was about three months from the date I got them.

And now we’re getting to the problem (finally); two weeks later I’ll receive another batch. And two weeks after that, another one. And so on and so forth. I mean here you are encouraging me to go paperless to save the trees, yet you don’t even wait for the expiration date on the checks you sent me just two weeks ago to come and you send me another batch. Absolutely wasted paper. And needless to say they don’t send only the checks. A bunch of other junk advertising comes along with them (don’t even get me started on that one).

As I said, I do believe the whole idea with the checks is a good one - you never know when you need them. But there’s two things these banks could do (either one of them or both of them in the same time). Either keep your mouth shut (so to speak) and don’t try to make me feel guilty about ruining the environment with my paper bills, when you yourself couldn’t care less about it and when the actual reason for which you prefer your customers to go paperless is because it cuts down on your costs, thus increasing your profits. Or/And have a software that tells you the expiration date of the last checks you sent me and, in the same time, whether I have used any of them so far or not. And have that software tell you when to send me the new checks: when I have only a couple of the previous ones left or when there’s about a week or so left before they expire (whichever comes first). Don’t even tell me you can’t have something like that (’cause I’ll take it as if you think I’m stupid). As for whether this would be cost effective or not, well… I guess it’s less expensive for you to waste the trees. But then I go back to my problem: stop trying to sell me paperless on environmental reasons.

In the same area of wasted paper, here’s another thing that bugs me. I have a checking account. Attached to that account is my debit card. When I opened the account, the bank representative offered me to have that card work like a rewards credit card (you know the deal: you buy on credit you get something in return). In my case we’re talking about United Airlines miles. Considering I’ve never had a rewards card of any kind so far, I accepted the deal (which costs me about $25/year without me ever being able to use those miles - they’ll expire before I have enough of them) just for the heck of it.

Ever since then, I receive, from the guys at United, credit card offers. And they’re linked with that debit card I mentioned. Each and every one of the offers comes with an updated balance of my miles together with a big fat number of free ones I could get if I apply for this credit card. Of course these offers have expiration dates as well. But do you think they wait for those offers to expire before sending me new ones? You got it: NO. And just like the case with the checks, new ones come in, literally, every other week. Sometimes the envelopes just sit there on my desk for weeks and weeks just pilling up. I don’t even open them anymore.

And you’re telling me you care about the environment? And you’re trying to sell me paperless to save the trees? Are you freaking kidding me?

I know what many of you are going to say: Dude, it’s just marketing. Everyone knows these things are going on and you just have to live with them. Just let it go.

And I ask you: Why? Why should I let it go?

You can rest assured I’m not as naive as to even imagine I could have anything changed about it. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to take a few minutes of my time to express my disgust with these companies and folks who would do anything in the name of the good ol’ buck.

As for the fact that is nothing but plain marketing, I don’t know about you, but I’m the kind of person who believes that there’s a limit to everything. And if you see that your prospective customer is just not interested, it’s time to give up. Or if you just have to keep on trying, at least stop the harassment. As far as I’m concerned, that’s what it is: harassment. Don’t do it so often anymore. Give the guy (or girl) a break before you come knocking on the door again. It’s true they might have changed their mind in the mean time, but stop expecting this to happen within a few days. It won’t.

A friend of mine has been looking recently to buy a new car. Due to his job, he and his girlfriend could only go look for one together on a Sunday. They know a guy who works for a dealer. When they told him they would be stopping by the next Sunday, huge was their surprise to find out that most (if not all) car dealers in Illinois are closed on Sunday.

“Are you crazy?” he asked. “What do you mean you’re closed on Sunday? Isn’t that the day most people can come look for a car?”

“Yes it is. More than that, it’s the one day when most people have the time to look for a car. They come in and they take their time looking around and wasting our time ’cause they’ve got all day. While on most of the other days, they either come in after work or they have other plans they have to take care of. In either case they don’t have much time to their disposal and have to make a quick decision. They need a car and who knows when they have the chance to come again. This way they can’t afford to look at too many models, compare prices or visit other dealers. They don’t have too much time to spend. They’re in and out, most of the times buying a car.”

Are you kidding me?

I don’t want to say that all dealers all over the country are doing the same thing (by the way, are they doing it in your area?) and if that guy lied to my friend, I’m lying to you. Out of curiosity I did a search for Illinois car dealers closed on Sunday and 6 out of the first 10 results were dealers that were closed on Sunday.

If you think about it, it makes sense. It’s all about basic economics. It’s nothing but a marketing strategy. You might feel offended by the fact that someone is trying to twist your hand into buying a car without giving you the option of shopping around. If that’s the way you see things, think a little about all the sales going on in your area and all the commercial announcing them: “Hurry in. Sale ends tomorrow” (for example). I don’t know about you, but to me it’s quite about the same thing. Oh, and if you really think you’re getting a huge deal at all sales events, think again (but about this some other time).

How many of you have asked yourselves various versions of this question?

I’ve just heard it the other day in a show. It got me thinking about a very good friend of mine who told me before (and still does whenever the issue comes up) that he’s never been good at Math. “I never planned on being an engineer or accountant or financial adviser or any of those things that require you to know more than adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing some simple numbers. I can do that and that’s all I need to know. When it comes to Math all I ever did in school was to get some passing grades and that was just fine with me.”

Before I go any further I must confess that I am a bit subjective about the whole topic as I’ve always liked Math. I never really took it to the extreme (as to make a hobby out of it or to become a Math teacher or anything like that) but it has always been my favorite subject in school. It was the one subject I was never afraid of when it came to tests, exams, papers and stuff. (And I was always helping others, thank you very much.)

Now that I think back at all the time I “wasted” on Math without having any direct results, I realize that it is probably the one subject in school that prepared me for life. That’s right my friends. Math prepares you for life. By learning math you learn to see patterns in everything around you (and in 90% of the situations life is all about patterns); it teaches you to make connections between pieces of information; it teaches you to solve puzzles (puzzles of the life); it teaches you that in order to get any type of results in life you have to follow certain steps and formulas (how many times have you wished you knew the formula to success - no matter what type of success we’re talking about); it teaches you that everything in life has a cause and an effect, that everything happens for a reason and that there’s a result of everything that happens in life; it teaches you how to look for solutions to certain situations and how to find the first steps you need to take in anything you have to do. If you believe I don’t know what I’m talking about you might want to check this web site.

“Well, of course you Math people are going to say only good things about it. You like it, love it maybe, and understand it. It’s easy for you to talk.” No, my friend. Understanding Math has nothing to do with what I’ve just said. Besides that, I have no interest to talk nice about Math. I’m not a teacher and my job doesn’t even involve any complicated Math (just simple Arithmetics). What I’ve just said about it comes out of pure belief and practical observations around me.

“Whatever you say. The problem is that I just don’t get it!”. I’m really sorry if I sound harsh, but you don’t get it because you don’t try hard enough. I am a strong believer that each and everyone of us is born with equal basic intellectual capacities. However, at some point in time, for one reason or another we decide to cultivate just a few. The reasons vary. From this moment on we’re working on what we think we’re good at and ignore the other stuff, thus becoming good at what we think we’re good at and getting sloppy at the other ones. Because it’s all about practice. You’re good at what you practice the most.

I’ll give you three examples in support of my theory.

As you probably realized (by my writing style, my English and if you read my About page) English is my second language. I was born and raised in Romania. I learned part of my English in school. I had no real problems with it as I liked it from the very beginning. I had, however, classmates who were on the verge of failing their year just because they could not get passing grades at English. When they realized the gravity of the situation they decided it was time to unfold the mysteries of the language. And guess what? They got it. It wasn’t easy. But they worked hard and realized it’s not really that difficult. They just had to want to do it, sit down and concentrate at what they had to do and, eventually, it all came naturally. A couple of them (who kept on going with their efforts) got quite good at it. I used this example to emphasize that this is the way things are with everything, not just Math. You have to want to do it, sit down and concentrate at what you’re about to study.

I’m going to use another example that goes the other way. As I mentioned before, Math has always been my favorite subject. Naturally, other type of subjects (and I’m especially talking about Literature) were anything but something I enjoyed. Until a couple of years ago, when I had to take on Composition 1 & 2. I was terrified. I was never good at writing stuff (Composition 1) or literature analysis (Composition 2). But I decided I was going to give it a try. I just took on the challenge one step at a time. And guess what? Before I knew it, people in my class were asking me to read my essays each and every single class. Even the professors loved them. It certainly sounds like bragging. And of course my writing skills could use a good deal of improvement. But that’s not the point. The point is that I am the living proof that if you put your mind to it you can get good at anything.

The only exception I can personally think of is physical disability. For example, one of the many jobs I took on was construction. Actually I tried doing construction twice (altogether about a year). I have finally gave up on it because my back was killing me. No matter how many types of supporting belts I tries, I just couldn’t make it work.

I started with Math and look what I ended up talking about. That was my intention from the very beginning. The bottom line, as I have mentioned it a couple of times throughout the post, is that anyone can get a grip of anything on this planet. Our brain is such an amazing thing. You can understand and get good at anything. You just have to want to (and for that you need to understand what’s going to do for you - see Math above) and really concentrate on what you will have to do and learn.

I wish you lots of good luck and don’t hesitate to let me know how things are working between you and Math (or anything else for that matter).

This was usually featured in my sidebar. Many times it takes quite a while for it to load (which was slowing down the site). As a result I decided to take it down. However, since it’s my favorite collection of songs which plays when I do some cleaning (not too often, don’t worry), I had to keep it. I don’t have (all of) these songs in one single compilation except this one. Anyway, this is the music I listen to when I clean. Check it out, it might work for you too and make the cleaning a bit less dreadful.