Office Max!

I was patient and finally received the good news I have been awaiting to get my groove back. We got some good business news which will sadly take Scott out of town for a few days, but he will be back to celebrate the 4th of July with us. In addition, I got good teaching news.

Gadgets are not really my thing but you can get the cheapest electronics here at Zhongguancun. There are a lot of electronic malls in the area and if you plan to canvass for the cheapest, you need to set aside 2 days to get around all the places.

The problem with most business improvement efforts is, for one reason or another, they don’t last.

BASDA is the Business Application Software Developers Association based in the UK, which represents almost 200 of the world’s leading business software vendors including Causeway Technologies. BASDA works with governments and policy-making groups in the UK, Europe and worldwide. In early 2000’s BASDA came up with ebis-XML standard for exchange of structured documents between organisations. ebdex standardised ebis-XML as its internal standard. These days, number of accounting software vendors has ability to exchange documents with other applications using ebis-XML, e.g. Sage Transaction E-mail. BASDA events are great opportunities to build relationships.

In Levy v. OfficeMax, Inc., the Third Court of Appeals has reversed the dismissal of class claims that OfficeMax and Best Buy must assign tax refund rights to customers who mailed in product rebates.

This weekend was the first annual Seattle BizJam, a conference and networking event for small, independent businesses. During the Ignite lightning talk session, I presented some tips on sustainable business practices for the small office.

Professor Jurilla in her talk on the history of the book in the Philippines devoted a portion of the lecture on the rise of retail bookstores in the Philippines, which is actually a pretty late development. National Bookstore and Goodwill Bookstore were both founded in the 1930’s (in fact, Goodwill is celebrating their 70th Anniversary next year) by the same family, but due to the nature of publishing trends–specifically literary publishing trends–in the Philippines at that period, they behaved more like stationers rather than booksellers though they did carry books in their respective inventories. However, it would seem that National Bookstore concentrated on selling school and office supplies first and foremost in order to be able to support bookselling, and not the other way around, while Goodwill eventually became known for being a textbook seller.

1. I love all of you, I admire your dedication to your work and I understand that you all have PhDs and deserve respect, however, I deserve respect too. Having the copy machine jam while I’m making you 400 copies does not make me stupid. It does however create a nuisance for me to have to disassemble the machine to find that a crumpled copy of a crossword puzzle that you were doing earlier has been lodged in the rollers.

If there isn’t a crafts store where you live, try office supply stores like Office Max and Office Depot. If not, there’s always Ebay! See how far the frenzy has gone !?

I found Dad’s certificate of honorable service from the US Army; a Kentucky Colonels card; about thirty business cards of various engineers from all over North America; two lists of important phone numbers; several credit cards; an insurance card for his 1980 Ford Pinto; a hunting / fishing license; drivers license that expired in 1990; and lots of scribbles and a few measurements. But one of the best surprises was finding the pictures he carried with him.

Cisco and Microsoft have an opportunity because I don't see web2.0 technology being adopted by any other integrated business software vendor and sold into enterprise. Given that voip will be a big requirement within the web2.0 technology and Cisco are looking for a sales angle it seems a match made in heaven.