Found Not Lost

There are times when I have to send out a lot of mail for my job. One of the most common problems I run into is that people often forget to put their zip codes. For those times, I usually depend on the good old usps.gov website’s zip code locator. However, when it comes to international addresses, I usually hit a dead end.

ZIPCodeWorld™ is a company that provides ZIP Code and Postal Code data products all over the world. They have a variety of products that enable you to find the information you are looking for and more. For instance, on their U.S. Zip Code Lookup database, when I put my zipcode in, it came back with not only with the longitude and latitude of my location, it also came back with additional demographics such as elevation, persons per household, the number of counties in the area, how many people live in the zip code, how many of them are white, black or Hispanic, and what is the median income per household and the average house value. That’s a lot of information to glean just from a zip code alone!

If you are a webmaster or web designer, ZIPCodeWorld™ offers a free Store Locator service. You know how when you go to a company website and you click on that ‘locate a store near you’ button a list comes up with stores in the area you specified? That’s a store locator. To program something like that can be a lot of hassle. ZIPCodeWorld™ will provide the code and maintain the system, all you have to do as a webmaster or designer is copy and paste an HTML code to your website.

Check out ZIPCodeWorld™ their service may be something you need.

More than half of the staff at my office are away from the office today, they are at a company sponsored event that involves water, lots of food and tons of fun to be had. Some of us chose to stay behind and get caught up on work. I stayed because I didn’t feel like spending a whole tank of gas that I can barely afford to put in my car for necessary trips. I certainly couldn’t blow several days worth of gas to go and have fun! *sigh*

Anyway, as a consolation, they ordered in for us the same barbecue feast they are having at the event. There was so much good food that I’m sure no amount of weight loss pills can compensate for today’s calorie intake. So the food was good, and it was free.

That’s not the point of this post though. I think, no matter how generous your employer is and no matter how laid back their attitude is, employees still should show some decorum. We had several people who started packing up the food for them to take home before everyone even finished eating. I was the one embarrassed for them because they didn’t seem to be bothered that everyone was looking sideways at them. Or could it be they didn’t notice? Of course, they later offered that people take the left overs home so they wouldn’t go to waste but I just thought the people who jumped the gun were rude. Is that the right word to describe them?

Bottom line is, after the fun and everyone is full, everyone goes back to their desks and it’s back to business again. But those same people who were looking at you sideways, and some of them are in positions of power, while you were packing away dinner for five just so you won’t have to cook this evening, will remember how crassly you behaved next time they have to choose someone to recommend for a promotion or a raise. And no, they won’t look at your behavior as a sign that you don’t let anything go to waste.

OMG, I just sat down. I’ve been up and running around since 9 this morning. First off, we are having our Hotdog & Bake sale today and tomorrow to raise money for our interns. Today’s hotdog sale was at the clinic, so we had to lug everything over there. Luckily, they have their own grill and we didn’t have to lug this heavy thing way over there. There was enough to carry, believe me.

The good news is, we made over a hundred dollars! That’s a great start. So tomorrow is the big cook out here at the office. We’ll have more people so we hope to make more money. It’s exhilirating, but it’s also tiring. I was dozing off sitting here at my desk.

Thing learned this week: “I doesn’t hurt to ask”.

I hate selling. So you know I have to hate soliciting donations; but, that’s what I had to do this week for our fund raising cookout. I was dreading it, but once I got started, I realized that it wasn’t really that bad! I just had to put my mind set that it wasn’t personal. So if they said no, I wouldn’t get my feelings hurt. The great thing is, most of them said yes! I am so pumped.

I have one of these Dymo LabelWriter Printers on my desk and I love it. I used to use the address labels that you feed into your printer and those were fine. But if you only use one label at a time like I sometimes have to do, after a while the sheet of label starts getting gray and dirty looking from having been passed through the printer too many times.

I use the turbo model because it also has the capability to be networked. That means other people in my department can print to this label maker. Thank goodness for that feature. Everyone can do their own printing rather than keep asking me.

The turbo model is not the only one available though. There is an even better one with a postage printing feature. I can’t use this feature much here at work since our mailroom usually takes care of stamping our mail, but I was considering this feature for our home business. If we purchase online stamps through the printer’s software, we can eliminate trips to the post office. No more estimating how much stamp to put, you can set exact amounts and not have to pay a monthly fee as when you rent a metered stamp printer from the post office.

Another feature that our mailroom guy likes about my printer is that when I print the addresses, it can automatically include the bar code that I guess is very useful when sorting mail.

I used to think, “I don’t print out address labels all the time. I don’t need a printer just for labels”, but after I got it and started using it, I realized that I’m using the label printer all the time! It’s not just for printing address labels, the label size can be changed and I use it for shipping labels, folder and book labels, stamps, and much more. If you do a lot of mailing, this is a great tool. Check it out for yourself.

Travelling for work may seem glamorous; but talk to anyone who actually does this for a living and they will tell you how far from glamorous it really is. Hotels are ok once in a while, but sometimes you just want to be comfortable like you’re at home. Where, if you feel like brewing yourself a cup of tea, you don’t have to wait for room service to bring it.

Luckily, executive housing rentals are now available for business people who travel, especially those who need to stay someplace for longer than a week but for less than what most leases would allow. With corporate housing you can have all the convenience of having your own home away from home. Fully furnished apartments come with kitchens where you can prepare your own meals, fitness areas to work out and unwind, washers and driers, and business tools such as high speed internet and faxing. It doesn’t sound glamorous, true. But the reality is, you just want someplace convenient with all the things you are used to at home.

Make sure you bookmark National Corporate Housing for the next time you have to travel far from home.