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Zemanta thinks this post is about how awesome my Kia Sephia is in rally races.

So about 6 months ago I got the Kia registered again and decided I needed to know what was the absolute best gas mileage I could get with it.  So I made a list of hyper-mile techniques that I would try and those I wouldn’t.  Each tank of gas I add one to my driving habits and monitor the mileage.  Last tank I finally crossed the 40 MPG mark and I figure that since it was so hard to reach I probably wouldn’t reach it again.  Well I filled up this morning and hit 41.3 MPG.

So after my fill-up this morning I started wondering what my mileage would be if I didn’t care. You know, if I just drove like everyone else.  So this tank of gas will be a little different.  No more shifting below 2500 RPM, no more coasting as much as possible, no more easing off the line at green lights, and no more turning off the car at the Chick-Fil-A drive-thru.  And man the ride to work was fun. I had forgotten what it’s like to feel some sideways Gs.  So please if you see me driving like I am preparing for a rally race just keep in mind, it’s in the name of science and it’s just for this tank. That means a maximum of 294 more miles.

UPDATE:  That was fun. And now it’s over. But something weird happened in my week of just driving however I felt like. (Which came out oddly like a rally race. Wow, didn’t see that coming.) My car is rated at 32 MPG and for this test tank of gas I still managed to pull 36.13 MPG out of it.  Maybe there’s something broken that just needs to be broken.

Bill gates posted a really interesting picture to Twitter today.  http://twitpic.com/4cc7up.  Take a look at that picture.  Here’s the richest man in the world (depending on how his stocks are valued compared to Warren Buffet and the Walton kids. And that guy in Mexico) and he’s just sitting on the ground with a bunch of people who have probably never heard of him.  I wonder if they have any concept of just how much money this man and his wife control.

I wonder how often this happens to me.  I know some rather successful people here in Utah and have bumped into them in public on occasion.  Usually I’m with people who don’t know who we just bumped into and they don’t ever really grasp it.  I remember bumping into Ray Noorda back in the day and had I not already know him I would of thought he had less money than me.  He was a real down to earth guy.

But then I think there’s the time when I was a waiter at the Olive Garden. There were two LDS people on the staff and we were both working in the same section that day.  In walks newly ordained Apostle Jeffery R Holland and his family.  She picked up his table and was acting quite calm and collected about the whole thing.  So I had to stop and ask her “Do you know who you are waiting on?”  She didn’t.

And that got me wondering, who else has crossed my path that I should have recognized and didn’t.

So how can I know who I should know but don’t?

At one point or another we have all sat next to that guy in the diner that we haven’t ever seen before but somehow ended up talking with him for half an hour.  I imagine he has met quite a few people over the years who he already knew but didn’t recognize.  And I imagine it works out pretty good for his networking.

What if you or I were to try that?  You know, just sit down and start talking with people. Introduce yourself, talk about the other person, ask some good questions to understand what that person does, explore things you have in common.  I bet that more times than not you end up with a good contact to put in your rolodex.  And I bet that on occasions you even meet someone who you already know, know of, or want to get to know better.

Of course this is all just speculation.  Only one way to find out.

There’s a really good little clip on youtube by Tom Peters about the importance of Thank You notes.

I would add one thing that I don’t think Tom calls out in this video. That’s to hand write the Thank You note.  Why?

It’s the same reason that I hate getting Thank You emails.  A “thank you” is meant to show appreciation right? I get Thank You emails all the time and most are just a waste of time and don’t really make me feel appreciated.  I know that person is grateful but I already knew that in 99.9% of the cases.  There are a few small exceptions to my “no thank you email” rule.

Last week our entire department received a thank you email from our boss (the VP of marketing) where he called out specific actions and milestones that our team had accomplished.  Not only had we just launched the new corporate site but we had launched a plethora of smaller but still  hugely important sites.  And then he took it a step further, he copied all the C-level executives in the company to make sure they knew how well his department is doing.

I have also received a few in the past that detail why a colleague or client is so thankful.  They don’t just say “thanks”, they explain why it was so critical that you did what you did.  Those are good emails to get.

There have been 2 or 3 occasions when I have met with a potential vendor, client, partner, employee and received a hand written thank you note.  Let me tell you, that can make the most unattractive interviewee a potential hire.  Than can make the difference in choosing a vendor in close competition situations. Someone even overnighted me homemade cookies once to apologize when they had called me Todd by mistake. Even though that vendor wasn’t really a contender it was really had to say no to them afterward.

When the Thank You note is hand written you know that they really mean it. ” Who writes anything by hand these days?  I mean wow, they hand wrote this?  And look at this penmanship, he must be a really sharp guy.” Hand writing is the text equivalent of body language.  You can learn so much about a person from their hand writing.

Putting the thank you note on letterhead or a really nice stationary is important too.  If you are doing this in the name of a business this is one of the best things you can do to build your brand.

Related articles

• How To Write a Thoughtful Thank You Note (apartmenttherapy.com)
• Taking pen in hand (dispatch.com)
• PaperTemplates.net

So I wanted to try out a gallery for my posts.  This one here looks like a decent gallery. I have tested it out and it works fine.  So now the challenge is to create a post where it’s appropriate to use an image gallery.  That’ll come next I suppose.

I also don’t want to have to go look up the options somewhere online.  Maybe I’ll just post them here…

SmoothGallery options

Here are the most common options for SmoothGallery. If you need more: have a look at the top of the file utils.php that comes with this plugin.

I added some more options that aren’t part of SmoothGallery. They help you to customize the dimensions and other CSS related parameters.

Shoes without laces don’t have that problem of the laces getting stuck in the wheels on your office chair.

Tools of the Trade.  Halloween 2010