Here are some interesting facts about stress. Note, these are just fun facts. If you’re looking for a cure, please keep looking.

• The word Stress has been used for hundreds of years – -it has roots in the Old French/ Middle English word Destresse, meaning “distress”, but it wan’t used in the psychological sense until the 20th century.
• There are two types of stress: Distress, the regular stress that plagues us, and eustress, a positive form that improves productivity and performance.
• Globally, more than three out of five doctors visits are stress related.
• In the U.S. alone, more than $22.8 billion is spent on anxiety-related health care each year.
• Each year, more than 275,000,000 working days are lost in the U.S. because of absenteeism resulting from stress.
• Stress balls, relaxation tapes, and other stress-fighting products accountfor $14 billion of spending in the U.S. each year.

For me the most interesting fact is “eustress”.  Doing a Google search for eustress yielded 111,000 results – pretty small by today’s standards. Searching for distress yields 39,200,000 (no further refinement was performed).

I tripped upon the ability to do something today that quite honestly has frustrated me for the past several weeks or so. Be logged into multiple Google Accounts at the same time inside the same browser. Sure you can use different browsers to accomplish this – but that’s not what I want.

Follow the directions here. Follow the first four steps on this article here, explaining (sort of) how to do this. http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?answer=181599

The real key is that first step, which says “Got to the multiple sign-in settings page”, which is here: https://www.google.com/accounts/MultipleSessions

Now, you actually have to at least get into your Account Settings (Google refers to this as signing into a product that supports multiple logins) screen in order to see that when you select the down arrow key by your email address, that you now have the ability to sign in AGAIN as a different account!

Viola! I was signed in as three separate clients at one time. Now this is not flawless – and Google will be the first to tell you that there are some caveats… But still. This just might be the tip you’ve been hunting for.

Here are some more wannabe sites.

• www.allvoices.com – Citizen Journalism
• www.howcast.com - How To Videos
• www.picapp.com – Embedded Photos
• www.slideshare.com – Presentations
• www.vringo.com – Video Ringtones
• www.groveshark.com – Music
• www.vevo.com – Music Videos
• www.bookrenter.com – Textbooks
• www.chegg.com – Textbooks
• www.renttherunway.com – High Fashion
• www.sproutrobot.com – Seeds

On some days, you might really think that’s the case. Some say that plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery. There’s no real plagiarism here, but check out some of these other ways to get social:

• www.company.com – Businesses
• www.dehood.com – Neighborhoods
• www.fiddme.com – Food
• www.flixster.com – Movie Fans
• www.gofundme.com – Fund-raising
• www.grockit.com – SATs, GMATs
• www.scitable.com – Science Research
• www.spiceworks.com – IT Managers
• www.thisnext.com – Shopping

Go ahead. Check some of these alternatives to Facebook out.

Here some sharing sites that perhaps you haven’t come across yet. Which of these are your new favorite?

• www.audioboo.com – Audio
• www.bubblemotion.com – Voice Blogging
• www.trazzler.com – Day Trips
• www. yammer.com – Business
• www.yazzem.com – Teens
• www.zkatter.com – Live Moments

Emoticons Date Back To The 1400′s

You’ve seen these emoticons  They indicate when you’re happy or sad

I bet you didn’t know that Medieval manuscripts in the 1400′s used hand drawn figures and faces to highlight certain lines of text and cue emotional responses. In 1881, Puck Magazine, the American humor periodical unveiled proto-emoticons.

In 1953 the advertisment for the movie “Lili”, in the New York Herald Tribune read “Today you’ll laugh you’ll cry you’ll love <3 Lili”.

Readers Digest featured a story showing emoticons being used in personal correspondence. And how can we forget that yellow smiley face sticker form the early 1970′s?

The first Internet emoticon was in a post  on the Carnegie Mellon message board on Sept. 19th. “From” Scott E Fahlman <Fahlman at Cmu-20c> I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers: Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this use “.

Many of us use Google Apps for e-Mail, word processing, calendars, and on-line storage. Can you afford to lose it? Backupify.com to the rescue! Simply sign up for an account, enter your Google ID and password — Viola! Now your cloud storage is backed up to your new cloud storage. Ranging from $10 to $60 per year, you have to go check out Backupify.com.

While there are a number of sites that enable you to resize and enhance your photos on-line, picnik has recently been purchased by Google, so you know their a road worthy application.

You can resize, rotate, crop, adjust color, add labels, apply special effects… and the list just goes on and on. You can do a number of great things, just by going to their site. If you want more functionality, sign up for a free account. If you’re after yet more functionality, they have a Premium upgrade for approximately $2 per month.

If you want to look good today, you owe it to yourself to check this out! www.picnik.com

Today, my best friend of 14 years passed on. My dog, Dufus, yes… that’s his real name. He was diagnosed in December with terminal Cancer and given weeks to live. Weeks turned into 6 months.

Over the past 14 years, he enjoyed running, green peppers, oatmeal, ice cream, and more lap time than any other dog. If I was driving, 10 miles or 1,000… he was on my lap looking out the windshield and ensuring that I was piloting the car correctly.

Since his diagnosis, we were all determined to let him live with dignity. Thoroughly enjoying people food, car rides and lap time. I have been fortunate to have shared his live and been the alpha dog in his little pack.

These past four weeks brought about the largest changes for him. He gave me 14 years of unconditional love – asking only in the end that I be there for him. My wife forwarded me an article  that said “As your pet, I may not understand your words, but I will recognize your voice”.

His last car ride found him gleefully on my lap looking out the window calmly and content. His final moments with us were spent looking into my eyes, hearing our voices, feeling my touch, and smelling my hand. In the end, he passed on peacefully, gracefully, and with all the dignity he earned and deserved.