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At work, I get my news from a fancy tool called iGoogle. This lets me add widgety items like news headlines to my personalized Google homepage. This is also my homepage in Internet Explorer on the three computers I use regularly: work, home - laptop, and home - desktop.

I had a problem with this though. I had a widget on there for stock quotes: things I owned and some watch list items. My project at work is basically a custom website, forcing my to open and close IE frequently all day. This made me constantly aware of the price which my favorite companies were trading at.

This became worrisome over the last few weeks as prices were falling quite quickly. As a long term investor who does not time markets all this can do is make you think and think about how far they will go down. You begin to second guess your choice in these companies. Your next step is to sell, but, wait, you remind yourself you are in for the long haul.

So what did I do? Well I removed the widget, duh, allowing myself to forget the worry and move on. There is a bigger picture here than me staring at some red and green numbers instead of doing my work. Market timing, psychology/worry, and short term investing can kill not only the average investor but even those who actively manage their investments, portfolio, or fund. To avoid such murder of the mind, don’t track your portfolio on a daily basis. Weekly could be pushing it too. Your long term goals should include holding some company for many many years - 5-10 should be a low number. Knowing the stock price on a daily or weekly basis can either make you big headed or conclude you are stupid for choosing such trash.

If it is trash, the price is not going to decide this for you anyway. The numbers and news will.

How do you feel about this? Chime in time.

If any of you live/work in or near Vancouver, WA, you may have noticed the crazy people who live there. I too have noticed these people. While I am at work, I have witnessed at least three car crashes in the last year - just on this one corner too. Also there are many people who walk down the street yelling at trees or having arguments with their other personalities or the other people they are with. (It should be noted not all persons from Vancouver are crazy. Hell I live there and no doctor has to me I am crazy - just my ex-gfs - ha I kid. Moving on.)

As you might image this is quite distracting; even if it is hilarious to listen to. A few weeks back, I had had enough and purchased some earphones to listen to music while working. This has made work much more productive and relaxing. It has also made me realize online radio stations are crap. Let me explain…

I have been using Yahoo! Music to get my music addiction at work. Go ahead and listen to Dustin’s Yahoo! Music Station. This service is mostly what I want in a radio station. I can rank my artists, songs, albums, genres, etc to build a customized play list based on my music likeness. Let me tell you, those Yahoo! servers are probably working overtime on me too since my preferences include country, oldies, grunge rock, new rock (indie, emo, etc), and classical just to name a few. I now have a very nice station customized for me with Yahoo!, but it is not enough. With this system, I have to either pay an nominal monthly fee or listen to ads.

Well dammit, I don’t want to do either. I want to listen to a station for free and not listen to ads. I am willing to look at ads, but I don’t want the Navy asking me to join anymore. I am not going to join the Navy. If I was going into the service, I would choose the Air Force so piss off. I am also not going to buy any songs from you. If I have a service from you, why can’t I just listen to it from wherever in the world I am instead of buying songs from you too. So, in summary, I want a free online radio station which I can customize to my listening needs which does not make me listen to ads.

Now, I realize these stations need to pay their bills including paying the artists each time the songs are played. There is also the threat of having these royalty prices going up potentially putting many of these services out of business. Well I ask these services to adapt and find a business model which will allow them to become free. I will even say please.

Now that my rant is over, I am on a search. I am now in desire of finding the best service out there which comes closest to these needs. There are tons of online radio stations including (off the top of my head) Last.fm, Pandora, Deezer, Yahoo! Music, AOL, and Live365.

Remember, although I have 50 Gb of music on my home computer, this library is not going to cut it since these services have all songs ever available with any Internet connection.

I also ask all of you out there what service you use or don’t use or how else you get your music. I am curious what creative alternatives I may have.

(Dustin was listening to The Shins while writing this post)

I just got a postcard from REI saying my bike needs a tune-up. I am not sure if all bike shops give out free tune-ups after some set time period on new bikes, but REI does as part of the warranty. Does anybody know if this is standard?

I am wondering if they will fix my bike given the condition it is in. I should go in and tell them I think the wheels are out of alignment.

Full Title: How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
ISBN: 0671027034
Get it cheap.

Summary: The title of this book explains everything which is this book more concisely than I could ever do. Either way, here are some more words to back it up. Carnegie uses anecdotal evidence to show how to explain your opinion without tell people what to do, know everybody and have them follow you everywhere, get people to do whatever it is you need them to do without asking - just to name a few - and 27 other life lessons to explain his point of achieving interpersonal relationship success. These lessons were primarily designed for use in the business world, but even Carnegie states they should be used elsewhere, everywhere, and often.

What I thought: The 30 gems which are called chapters within this book cannot be overlooked. Anybody who deals with any person other than herself needs to read this book. I am pretty sure that is all of us - unless you live in a cave. If you care even the slightest about truly influencing people or just being respectful of the needs around you, pick up this book.

As of this moment I am subscribed to 79 blogs and have read more than 2000 posts in the last 30 days. Many of those blogs do not write often or really at all, so it sounds worse than it really is. I also skip some after reading the headline, so the 2000 could be higher. After reading many of these for months or some for even a few weeks, I have favorited a few of them and thought I would share them with you. I have broke them into categories of sorts.

Career Advancement

• Brazen Careerist is Penelope Truck’s take at advancing your career. She actually has some experience too. Once working in the corporate world, she now is a ‘career advancement’ journalist.
• Employee Evolution is the Gen-Y version of Brazen Careerist. In fact Ryan does guest posts on that site and that is how I found this blog. As a Gen-Y myself, this hits home quite nicely.

General News

• Open Congress is a great way to stay involved and up to date with the events happening in DC. I personally only read the new blog but used to read the voting for my rep and senators. I took these off because they were listing all of the votes (ie vote to Adjourn or measures). There is an Open Mass, the Massachusetts version. I would like a Open Washington and Open Oregon personally. It would be nice to see how things will be fixed or broken in the future.
• WebbAlert is what happens when you take good looks, spunk, a love for all that is tech, and a triple shot espresso. In this four-day-a-week video blog, Mogan Webb comes to us to talk about the important tech/business topics.

Personal Finance

• Blogging Away Debt is a step by step, challenge by challenge effort to eliminate $40,000 in credit card debt. I might be off on the exact amount, but it is a ton. As of a few weeks ago, they were below $20,000 in less than two years. For anybody who thinks they cannot afford that new toy they want, read this for a month.
• Blueprint for Financial Prosperity takes a bit of a consumerist point of view. Many posts on this site are about saving money, not getting screwed out of deals, or just being frugal. (Frugality might be a theme for this section)
• Get Rich Slowly teaches the necessity of not getting into credit card debt (like its author J.D. used to be), being frugal with your lifestyle early on, and saving 15-20% of your income without gambling to get a few million when you are ready to retire. There are a few other gems on site, so don’t be shy while looking around.

Up and Coming Business Info

• AVC is Fred Wilson’s side project for talking about the Venture Capital and tech businesses. He also talks a bit about his life and his love for music. Fred’s day job is VC for Union Square Ventures. Some of the companies he has backed in his life are Geocities, Feedburner, del.icio.us, and these.

Hope you all enjoy the list as much as I do.