“This silver-gold thing is a game to steal from the people the last savings…if some would still have them ”

I just saw this comment posted on facebook. And although at first, I realized this statement was completely wrong – How could increases in Gold and Silver steal savings from the folks?

I responded that Gold and Silver are real money… Federal Reserve Notes are worthless currencies… and yes, savings held in Federal Reserve Notes are secretly being stolen – Nothing new here.

But upon further thought, there is something extremely unsettling about the comment above.

Is it possible that someone, maybe many, believes the prices of Gold and Silver going up are the cause of the dollar decreasing in value? Think about that.

It is very common for people to get cause and effect backwards.

No one would even remotely consider that everyone walking outside with open umbrellas is the cause of the rain – Would They?

Of course not, the wet pavement and rain drops falling from the sky are the reason people are walking around with open umbrellas over their head. It’s only obvious.

Unfortunately, those who are not educated may suspect otherwise. Just as they might suspect increases in the price of Gold and Silver is what is driving down the price of the dollar even though it’s the very opposite that is happening. It’s the devaluing of the US Dollar by Congress and its accomplice, the Federal Reserve, that is causing the price of Gold and Silver to go up.

To take this further false logic further, as the price of the dollar continues to decreases, the price they pay for goods and services must go up. Consequently, the increases in the price of Gold and Silver must be the reason why prices keep going up all over!

Enter stage right, crafty politician of your choice…

These relentless speculators in Gold and Silver are stealing the savings of the middle class. With every tick up in the price of Gold and Silver, the middle class savers throughout this country see their savings decrease, their paychecks worth less, and there just isn’t anything left over to pay for food, clothing, housing – the basic items needed to survive.

Those of you that have thought it would be wise to hoard Gold and Silver, at the expense of your fellow citizen, should be ashamed. Your self-centered actions and quest for wealth at the expense of your neighbor is reprehensible!

A great president in our past, during a time of great economic distress, had to take steps in order to prevent the hoarding of Gold that was preventing the recovery of an entire economy. That president was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The year was 1933 during this nations previous Great Depression.

Consequently, effective immediately, using the power vested in me a President of the United States, I’m declaring the ownership of all Gold and Silver illegal. All those in possession of Gold and Silver, have 30 days to turn over all Gold and Silver in possession to the nearest authorized bank. Failure to do so could result in fines or jail. I would caution all Americans who may consider refusing to abide by this Executive Order…

It is becoming ever so clear that those who have Silver and Gold will soon be spurned as the evil instigators behind the inevitable crash that is coming to the US Dollar.

I just had my first glimpse into this reality.

Don’t think it will happen, just look at the outcry and response by Obama when oil prices spiked above $110 dollars a barrel earlier this year. Remember, it was all the fault of the speculators.

When the time comes, and it will, where a vast majority of Americans are showing up to the grocery store with volumes of Federal Reserve Notes and still not able to buy a loaf of bread, you can be sure a scapegoat will be called out.

HP Color Laser Jet 3600n – Calibration Fix

(UPDATE: I’ve been told this fix also works for the HP LJ 3600s)

As luck would have it, last week all my toner cartridges ran out at the exact same time. You know exactly how wonderful this is when these things run about $150 each at Staples. (I use a local place and get refills for about $120). So I ordered all four colors (you can do the math cost wise).

Well the black was first to go and when we replaced it the printer restarted and wouldn’t exit startup calibration.

The printer kept running and running so we turned it off hoping that the next morning when we turned it on everything would be fixed – no such luck.

First I went online and looked for answers. One answer was to take the whole thing apart and clean the scanner lenses. Well after taking half the printer apart, I decided that wasn’t a great idea. Fortunately I was able to get everything back together and everything still worked – even the continuous calibrating issue.

I tried a few other things I found online, and after some experimentation, it looks like I fixed the issue completely. It’s only been a couple of days but I can completely turn off the printer and power it back on and everything is working as it should.

It looks like there were quite a few other folks who had similar problems.

Here’s what I did and some pictures I took so you can easily (hopefully) perform the same operation:

HP 3600n Instrument Cluster

HP 3600n Memory Initialization



HP 3600n Maintenance Mode

1. Cycle power switch off then on.
2. Immediately as the printer powers on and the memory is initializing on the display screen (“HP 3600n Memory Initialization”), press and hold the “Down” Arrow until all three status lights are lit and you see two rows of asterisks (*) – see picture “HP 3600n Maintenance Mode”.
3. Press the “Up” Arrow once.
4. Press the “Menu” button once. This gets you into the maintenance screen and you will see “NVRAM INIT” on the Display Screen
5. Press the “Down” Arrow once until “Skip Calibration” shows.
6. Press the “Check Mark” Button once. A line of asterisks (*) will display under the words “Skip Calibration”. The printer will then finish initializing on it’s own at that point without calibrating.

At this point you should be able to use your printer like normal but you may experience some pretty bad print quality.

Consequently you DO need to perform a calibration.

Here’s how to perform a “Quick Calibration.”

Once the printer has finished initializing and is sitting in a ready state, perform the following:

1. Press the “Check Mark” Button once.
2. Press the “Down” Arrow button 2 times until you see “Configure Device.”
3. Press the “Check Mark” Button once.
4. Press the “Down” Arrow button 1 time until you see “Print Quality.”
5. Press the “Check Mark” Button once.
6. Press the “Down” Arrow button 5 times until you see “Quick Calibrate Now”
7. Press the “Check Mark” Button once. The printer will now perform a “Quick Calibration.”

If everything goes well, you should get about a minute or so of calibration and then the printer should return to the ready state.

UPDATE: If things are still not printing well, you may want to try a Full Calibration. This is accomplished the same way as a Quick Calibration. The only change is as follows:

Step 6. Press the “Down” Arrow button 6 times until you see “Full Calibrate Now”

A Full Calibration should take about 2 Minutes Only.

Here are some other notes:

• In the end, I replaced all the toner cartridges.
• Replacing all the toner cartridges didn’t fix the constant calibration problem. Only after I performed the “Skip Calibration” process would the printer stop calibrating.
• I highly recommend NOT trying to take apart your printer. There’s a good chance you will break something and you will really be stuck with a broken printer. I was an electronics technician in the Navy for 6 years and I realized after taking my printer apart that it was a huge mistake!

My honest opinion, it was replacing all the toner cartridges and performing the two procedures above that returned my printer to full “normal” high quality printing operations.

However, if you run into this problem, I would try these procedures before buying more toner cartridges. As I said before, those things are expensive. You may in the end have to buy a new printer if these procedures don’t work and you don’t want to add insult to injury by having 4 brand new but opened toner cartridges sitting in your office.

Finally, please feel free to comment below if you discover anything that could help someone else. By the way, I’m NOT some sort of Printer/IT guy. If you have questions I can try to help but there’s probably not much I can do other than recommend the steps above. But you can always ask and I can always say I don’t know!

I hope this helps…

… If it did help A LOT…
… If it did save your day…
… If it did save you a boat load of money!

Please feel free to make a donation because, as we all know, NOTHING IS FREE!

Best regards,

Mike

P.S. I’d love to see your comments below if this indeed helped fix your problem!

MORE REGULATION

President Obama wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal that appeared January 18, 2011 speaking on how it has been his administration’s goal to “strike the right balance” between creating regulations that we all absolutely need to protect our health and safety and eliminating those “placing unreasonable burdens on business.”

In order to clarify this administration goal, because maybe some of us got the wrong impression over the last two years, Mr. Obama created a new regulation (an Executive Order to be exact) designed to eliminate and reduce those other bad regulations.

The President clearly recognizes that government regulations DO put a burden on small business; those same businesses that “drive growth and create most new jobs in this country.”

But in this piece, Obama recounts eight regulations that are clearly necessary and “strike the right balance.” Those necessary regulations range from child labor laws to “aggressive” new auto standards.

Oh, and he points out that there wasn’t enough regulation and “proper oversight” of the financial industry and that’s why we almost fell into “a full-scale Depression.”

However, in his two years of leadership, he had only one example of where his administration had eliminated burdensome regulations.

Are you ready… I know this has been a hot topic of late and is on everyone’s mind…

The EPA last month “wisely eliminated” the classification of saccharin as a dangerous chemical!

Whew… And here I had no idea what to do with all this saccharin I had laying around.

Instead of worrying about saccharin, Mr. President, why not eliminate the EPA all together?

Or better yet, if you’re truly worried about all these burdensome regulations on small business, why not do something about our voluminous tax code? After all, April 15^th is fast approaching.

But no. Instead his administration has enacted some of the most complex and burdensome regulations on American Business in the form of Health Care and Financial Reform. Both of which will cost businesses untold billions of dollars to implement.

Make no mistake; this administration has no plan of eliminating rules, regulations, and laws that burden the citizens and small businesses of this country. The only true goal is to continue to centralize power and win another election.

Be sure that regulations will continue to be on the rise and will be just a burdensome as ever. They will either be passed by Congress, or more likely, be instituted by Executive Order.

President Obama states, “Regulations do have costs; often, as a country, we have to make tough decisions about whether those costs are necessary.” Well Mr. President, you have it partly right: YOU will be the one making those decisions, but unfortunately, they will be necessarily tough and costly on US.

Here’s a link to the Wall Street Journal Article

“When you take stuff from one writer it’s plagiarism, but when you take from many writers it’s called research”

One of my goals for the New Year (I call them “goals” not “resolutions”) is to read 12 books this year. I know that’s not going to win any reading prize but I’m not a particularly fast reader… And Hey, I’m busy!

Unfortunately for society as a whole, most folks don’t do all that much reading. And I have to admit, since graduating from college, I’ve totally slacked off on reading books.

The good news is that because most folks don’t read all that much, there is a lot of good information out there that just isn’t getting out.

The first problem is that reading takes work – especially when you compare it to sitting around watching football on a Sunday afternoon drinking beer.

But like most things, I think becoming a “reader” is just something that has to become a habit. At first it might be a little difficult to keep with it, but if you do, it will soon become part of your day and there will be a little burning feeling inside if you don’t read once you get in the habit.

The second problem is that in today’s age of instant information, people don’t want to take the time to read a few books in order to learn something new. We want answers and results instantly.

Because of these two problems, I think there’s a lot of opportunity for the internet entrepreneur who sees the possibilities involved in Information Marketing.

There’s a lot of money being spent on-line by consumers who want answers that work and they want them fast. The idea here is to be able to enter this market and provide the solutions needed by these customers. One of the best ways to become an “Expert” in any one field is to read a few books on the topic.

And better yet, read a few books, learn something and then put it into practice. If you have some success in applying this new knowledge, there’s a real good chance there’s at least a few consumers out there would like to know the same thing and get the same results – without having to go through the same learning process you went through.

After all, I’m willing to bet that most of the “new” books that are released each year are just a retelling of the same story or information from years past – but with a new twist.

Besides creating new products to sell, reading more about the topics you’re already interested in, will give you all the ammunition you need to build the free content on your blogs.

Finally, if you really like reading, why not write reviews and then sell the book you just reviewed. It’s extremely easy to set up an affiliate account with Amazon. Honestly, I don’t understand why so many people continually put review on Amazon. Basically all they’re doing is help sell more books for Amazon. If you’re going to help Amazon sell books, you might as well try to get a piece of the action.

So here’s a summary of why I want to read 12 books this year:

1. Potential to create my own products to sell.
2. Provide valuable content for my blogs.
3. Write reviews and sell books as an affiliate.

Here’s the link to become an affiliate with Amazon if you’re interested https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/

And… If all else fails, I know that reading a book a week will always helps to make a person more well rounded and educated – I think that makes anyone all the more wealthier.

Regards,

Mike

Mission Accomplished – Single Digit Body Fat Percentage

Just a quick note since I’m celebrating a goal that’s taken a lot of sacrafice and commitment.

Today I’ve reached a premeditaded accomplishment of achieving single digit body fat.

This journey started about 6 months ago when I was about 212 pounds.

Today I weigh 167 lbs with 9.9% body fat.

Today I will not be counting calories.

Today I will not be exercising.

Today I will not be worrying about whether I lost fat.

Today I will be enjoying a long awaited break from a regimen that left my body in an almost constant state of fatigue.

There is nothing better than achieving a goal that you set your mind into achieving.

If you have a goal… Set it in concrete in your Mind and Heart.

Once that fire is burning, there will be no doubt as to whether or not you will acheive it.

Talk to you later,

Mike Krauss

My BMI Said I was Obese!

First of all, I apologize for the underwear shots!

These photos were never intended to be revealed to anyone – my eyes only type of thing!

So the next question on your mind, “Why would you then put pictures up like this for the whole world to see?”

Let me first give you some background.

These pictures were not taken recently. I took these pictures back in Mid August 2006.

Back then I was comfortably (maybe not so comfortable - my pants were pretty tight) working in a cubicle for 9 hours a day as a Financial Analyst.

My entire lifestyle had become completely sedentary. The most activity I got was getting up to go to the fridge to get myself a beer.

But, in the cubicle right next to me sat a guy who was in incredible shape. In my opinion he looked like he could have competed as a bodybuilder. And he would go out on his lunch and run – Really, are you kidding me… August and at Noon!

I would often go up to him and talk about how he was able to run in this heat and that I would never be able to last not even a mile.

He never said anything negative back to me, but in retrospect, I’m sure he realized I was just making excuses – just as I realize now.

It was at this point I began to really start taking a look at myself and realized that I had let me weight situation get completely out of control.

At the time of these pictures, I was about 235 pounds. At 5′ 11″, that puts my BMI (Body Mass Index) at 32.77 – which to my horror is OBESE!

I certainly never thought myself as Obese, but the numbers were a rude awakening and motivated me to take action.

So I decided to start “running” and to start counting my calories. I put running in quotations because I started out by mostly walking.

Things were going good but I developed the worst Shin Splints that anyone could imagine. I hurt just to get up in the morning and walk much less go out for a light jog. Eventually it brought my exercising and diet to an end.  I ran on and off (mostly off) for about a year.

The results were pretty good. I managed at one point to break the 200 pound mark and hit 198 pounds for about a week – Just over 35 pounds of weight loss!

So for 3 years, from mid summer 2007 to this past July 2010, my weight bounced around about 215 pounds. The good news is that since I lost the weight by controlling my diet and by exercising (no fad diets) I was able to not put all that weight back on – even though I wasn’t doing anything to control my weight.

Well in July 2010, I got back  on the bandwagon. I began running again but this time a new pair of shoes put an end to shin splints before they had a chance to begin. And on August 6, 2010, I started a gym membership.

Shortly after starting at the gym, I had a complimentary body composition analysis performed – here’s where I was:

• Weight: 201.21 pounds
• Body Fat: 25.3%
• Body Fat Mass: 51.01 pounds
• Lean Body Mass: 150.21 pounds

Well, I’ve been working hard these past 6 months or so and I think the result are pretty stark.

7 weeks ago tomorrow I actually entered an online contest to loose body fat. I’ll be taking pictures and posting my results not only for the competition forum, but here also.

So again, “Why would I post pictures like this for the whole world to see?”

Answer: So I can show you the “After” pictures tomorrow!

Talk to you tomorrow,

Mike

Pushing My Introvert Extrovert

Here’s a real simple New Year’s “Goal” I’m going to implement this year.

I’ve recently realized that I typically don’t say “Hi” to other people… Sometimes even when I know them.

I go by and give a polite smile.

Don’t get me wrong, if they say “hi” first, then I always say “hi” back.

In the end, I think I’m coming off unfriendly.

I’m sure some folks are thinking, “Boy, Mike must not like me very much” or “Mike sure isn’t that friendly.”

Here’s the situation that occured that made me start thinking about this:

Just the other day I went outside and saw two of my neighbors talking right on my way to the garage just finishing up the last of my laundry. It was about 7:00 in the evening and so it was fairly dark and I wasn’t expecting anyone to be out.  (In my defense, I was actually a little surprised anyone was out there!)

As I came around the corner they both looked at me and I did my usual smile and kept walking on my way.

Just as I was passing them, the one neighbor said in a fairly low voice that trailed off at the end, “Hey There.”

As usual, I respsonded, “Hey.”

As you can see, nothing very exciting took place. In fact, it was the exact opposite of exciting. Even further, if my neighbor hadn’t said a word, it wouldn’t have been any less exciting.

But as I thought about the situation afterward, I realized it kind-of made me feel good that the neighbor said, “Hey There.” And, being the analytical type person I am, I deduced that other people might ACTUALLY feel good when you make the small effort of saying “Hi.”

Here’s what I think the deal is…

I for one am not a very socially outgoing person and I think that most people you walk by or come face-to-face with on a daily basis are intimidated. We don’t want the other person to think that we are some sort of weirdo stalker or something.

Heaven forbid we actually stop and have a small conversation – I mean, I can just feel the anxiety building inside of me!

As humans, we all have the deep desire to feel accepted.

One of the easiest ways for us to accept others, and indeed feel accepted ourselves, is to give a warm “Hi” with a smile to folks you come in contact with.

I’ve already given it a try a few times and I think you can feel how the other person instantly warms up.

However, I have to admit there have been a few times where I’ve become self-conscious and haven’t said it when I wanted to or just said it a little too under my breath.

The great thing is that this is an extremely easy New Year’s “Goal” that I can continually keep practicing each and every day. And in the end, I hope the result will an unconscious habit of telling everyone “hi.”

So next time a stranger walks by and says, “Hi”, it just might be me!

Talk to you later,

Mike

Well, it’s almost 2011… At the time of writing this we’re down to less than 48 hours.

Hopefully you’ve been thinking about how you can make some changes in your life for the better in this New Year.

I for one have been putting a lot of time and effort into some new money making ideas. I DO NOT think 2011 is going to be good year economically for the United States or the world. We’re sure to see more bailouts (mostly for states like California) under the guise of “EMERGENCY” which will lead to more debt and greater expansion of the money supply.

Trust me, this is not good.

I think the key for 2011 and beyond, is to develop multiple streams of steady income. We can’t rely on our employers and we definitely cannot rely on the government. Personally, I think getting back to a point of self-reliance is a good thing.

We are also moving into, or have already entered, the era of the Entrepreneur.

The days of working for one employer all your life and retiring with a pension supplemented by social security are way over. Furthermore, the days of investing in a 401K or IRA and hoping you’ll have enough money by the time you retire are over.

Sorry to disappoint, but the stock market is a short term game and not a long term investment. Ask anyone who was close to retirement in the last 10 years what their 401K statements look like. Don’t believe me; take a look at this 60 Minutes Story.

But I don’t want to get too Doom and Gloom on you with the first post on my new Blog Website.

There are still plenty of ways to make money out there.

For me, I’ve decided to expand into the area of Internet Marketing.  This website is my most recent step in that direction.

However, I’m not a beginner when it comes to marketing on the internet.

I’ve built my current business, Total Secure Shredding, almost entirely through internet marketing.  To this date, Total Secure Shredding doesn’t have a sales person. Just about every lead we get and shredding job we perform is acquired through the internet.

Since 2007, I’ve spent considerable time and money learning about how to effectively market on the internet. I have focused what I learned on how to market a local service business. The end result is that I have built one of the most powerful Shredding Industry Websites on the internet. I get questions all the time from fellow small business owners about building websites and marketing local businesses.

Besides the Total Secure Shredding main website, I’ve also put together other websites (mostly about shredding). Here are a few:

• www.BusinessNetworkingRadio.com
• www.LetipofEastCounty.com
• www.freepapershreddingsandiego.com
• www.papershreddinglajolla.com
• www.crosscutpapershreddingsandiego.com

The main point of this blog entry is to introduce this new website of mine.

As you can see, it’s pretty plain. That’s because I just started it and have put very little time into developing as of yet.

Instead of creating the entire website and then introducing it to the world, I wanted to introduce it while it was still a “Baby” so that I could show you the evolution, step-by-step, of this project.

Believe it or not, creating a website is not all that difficult. Creating a blog style website is even easier. The hard part is getting people to your website and then getting them to buy something.

So if you don’t have any resolutions for the New Year, here’s one thing I want you to do right now.

Go over to GoDaddy and purchase a “Domain Name”. A domain name is the actual name of the website you are looking up. For example, www.GoDaddy.com, the domain is “GoDaddy”.

When you get to GoDaddy, I want you to register your name as a domain. It might have already been taken, but I’m sure you can find some variant that you can use that hasn’t been taken.

Important Tip: Make sure you get a “.com” domain if at all possible

Domain Sale! $7.49 .com at GoDaddy

Here’s why…

Like I said, we’re in the era of the entrepreneur – like it or not. As such, you must have full and complete control of your brand. And guess what, you are your own brand. You can have other brands, but you and your Good Name is now your primary brand.

The days of passing out your résumé are soon going to be over. It’s already a trend where employers are looking up prospective employees on facebook to perform research.

You have to be proactive with your brand!

You have to take control of what the content of your brand will be. There’s no better way than by creating a website about you that you can control.

Also, more and more companies are hiring Contract Employees. I think there will soon be a day where we will see very few “W-2” employees. The reason is simple…

Companies do not have to pay any benefits (health insurance, life insurance, 401K, etc) for contract employees. In fact, you will most likely get paid more, in actual dollars, as a contract employee than as a W-2 employee. The bad news (or good news, depends on how you look at it) is that you will now be responsible for providing your own “benefits”.

The best way to be prepared for this eventuality is to already to be thinking as an entrepreneur. And that means – Get your “Brand” in order.

Here’s what can go on your website:

Accountants:

1. New tax regulations
2. Trends in Public Accounting
3. New regulations is the SEC coming up with
4. Tips and tricks for creating spreadsheets
5. Small business bookkeeping secrets.

Bartenders:

1. New drink recipes
2. Promotional ideas that work and don’t work
3. How to earn great tips
4. Make an unhappy customer happy
5. How to make customers “regulars”

Sales Clerk at a Cloth’s Store:

1. What fashion is in; what fashion is out.
2. Great sales in the area where you live
3. How to pick out your summer, fall, winter, spring wardrobe
4. Examples of great window displays
5. How to up-sell customers and rack-up commissions

I just real quickly came up with three completely different professions/jobs and five things for each a person could talk/write about. The possibilities are endless and it doesn’t matter what you currently do for a living. You don’t think a future employer would be impressed if you had a website like this?

Not only does it have to be about your profession… Do you have any hobbies?

Do you like baseball, bowling, running, lifting weights, reading, listening to music, going to movies, eating out, knitting, tech gadgets, dogs, cats, traveling, cooking, barbequing… This list can go on forever.

And here’s the absolute BEST PART…

Everything I listed, whether related to your job or to a hobby, has something related to it that you can sell!

• If you’re a small business consultant, you can sell QuickBooks;
• If you’re a bartender, sell professional bar supplies;
• If you’re Cloth’s Store Sales Clerk, sell the same cloths you sell during the day also online;
• If you like baseball, sell memorabilia;
• If you like listening to music, sell music downloads.

Hopefully, by now, you’re getting the “Big Picture” of what I’m trying to say.

I’m going to be implementing this strategy with this blog. I’m going to talk about the things that interest me and then produce income doing it.

And while I’m doing that, I’m going to show you how you can do the same thing yourself. I’ll be providing “How to” information so you can follow along step-by-step.

But, First Things First, click on the link below and go over to GoDaddy and register your name as a domain. This is a great deal and as a matter of fact, I just registered another domain for myself using this promotion.

Please feel free to leave a comment below and let me know what you think.

Regards,

Mike