Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with personal

Jon vs. Jonathan

Spurious — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 15:51:44 -0800

Personal Branding in Academia: Jon vs. Jonathan? I am at the beginning of a career in academia / research, and now that I have a journal article coming out, my adviser asked me how I wanted to be labeled: "Jon Smith" or "Jonathan Smith" (Smith is a fake last name).

The name you use is important in academia, since fellow scholars use your name to find your articles and work. Many women scholars do not change their name when they get married specifically because it would make their articles harder to find (some would be under the old name and some under the new name).

I have been called Jon my entire life but all my official documents call my Jonathan. I currently run a growing blog under the name "Jon Smith", but I see no reason I couldn't change it. Most of my colleagues think I should use "Jonathan" for everything printed or work related and use "Jon" for everyday informal stuff.

I have added a bunch of additional information below:

- I have been called "Jon" my whole life, but my credit cards, passport, licenses, and diplomas say "Jonathan".
- I am just starting my academic career in a semi-hard science.
- I run a semi-popular blog related to my research under the name "Jon Smith"
- There are 9 "Jon Smith" listed in Facebook, but only 1 "Jonathan Smith".
- There are 3,000 "Jon Smith" results in Google, only 27 "Jonathan Smith" (but a few hundred are from my blog).
- There is 1 "Jon Smith" listed in Facebook, but 0 "Jonathan Smith".

Question: If you were me, would you use "Jon" or "Jonathan" for your author name and by-line? Why?

Thanks everyone! I have been mulling over this for weeks and need advice!

Overcoming a Human Roadblock

GeniPalm — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 10:33:18 -0800

I guess the question should really be, "how to overcome a MENTAL roadblock that has taken the form of a person?" I guess my situation can be likened to those age-old stories of someone not being able to forgive a parent for a bad childhood, and blames the parent for his/her failures. But my story is about an unwelcomed competition from a cousin, one that instead of facing I've always cowered to, and have thus grown in resentment and have become stifled as I continue watcihng my life unfold in misery, Wondering how to reclaim a personal sense of power regardless of her presence in my life, even though it seems it keeps "haunting" me. I guess the question should really be, "how to overcome a MENTAL roadblock that has taken the form of a person?"

I don't really know how to articulate fully this years-old dilemma of mine into a paragraph or so, but I will try, only because I honestly don't know what else to do. I don't know how to get past this and it's eating at my life, or more accurately, has devoured my life.

I have a cousin around the same age as me. Ever since I can remember, her parents have pitted her against me, competing on everything, especially educationally. I think this was a holdover from a competition between our moms, sisters also closely linked in age. I honestly never seriously considered the competition until it was continually brought to me. Like I vividly remember years ago, my cousin making snide comments about my scoring higher on the SAT, or when I had any semblance of happiness in my life on a social front, she would do these passive-aggressive things that showed her displeasure with my happiness! I really grew to resent her and tried to distance myself from her until unfortuately we ended up not just at the same college, but even as roommates. It was horrible. I increasingly grew self-concious of everything I did. It seemed every step I made toward trying to establish the kind of life I wanted that didn't include her, she would find a way to maneuver her way in. Following me to church, befriending my friends, joining the sorority she knew I wanted to (I ended up not joining for the sole reason of trying to avoid her!), and the list goes on. A few years ago, I found out that when I started grad school, she was asking around about what I was studying, "what's SHE doing there?" Not long after she enrolled. I quit. It came to a point where I looked back on my life and saw so many things I forfeited on, for the sole purpose of avoiding her, like her negative spirit was just daring me to succeed and be happy or something. It's weird I know, and it sounds strange. But after therapy for a year (yep I went to therapy over this ONE person!), trying to figure out how to be strong enough to just focus on me, after years of thinking and re-thinking, analyzing, turning to church and spiritual and self-help books, you name it, I still haven't figured out how to get past this.

I link all of my failures to her presence in my life. So many times I've thought about how free I would feel if I never knew anyone like her, if she was never born or something. I feel so weak, so beaten down. I wish my spriit was as strong as hers, but it's not. I wish I could be as aggressive at my life as she is at both hers and MY life, but I'm not. In theory, I know the answer: Just focus on your life. But we're first cousins in a tight-knit family. She is not someone I can just remove from my life forever. Even when I don't want to hear anything about her, people volunteer the info. So erasing her is not an option. I guess getting over my resentment towards her is paramount to moving on, but how? Every time I make a step forward, I start thinking about how that step should have been taken years ago, then I start thinking about why it wasn't, and there she is again, in my head, stifling my energy. I'm lost.

How do you get over someone you [rightly or wrongly] blame for your misery? Or better yet, how do you overcome the power you've allowed this person to take from you?

HIPAA

cvoixjames — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 11:45:57 -0800

What is HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability Accountability Act)? How does it protect an individual in terms of Doctors and medical conditions that , say, an employer might ask. Does it protect your privacy?

Meditative and healthy vacation ideas?

NikitaNikita — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 19:10:42 -0800

Looking for personal retreat/solo vacation ideas, combining meditation, fitness, and relaxation. Could also use some tips on how to plan such a vacay. Any ideas? In a similar vein as this fellow, I'd like suggestions for a personal retreat/solo vacation which combines opportunities for exercise, contemplation, and meditation. I've been feeling severely burnt out for various reasons, and would like to find a place to take a personal retreat. Fitness-wise, I enjoy yoga and hiking (but I am a little out of shape), beaches or mountains, would like access to healthy eating options, and would also consider more organized programs.. like, things of a boot-camp-y nature, or sessions on self-esteem, -awareness, etc. I also enjoy writing -- i can do that on my own, but iof there's something writer's retreat oriented you have input on, that'd be great too. I'm a 29 yo female likely leaving out of the southeast USA, and since I'm sort of limited on funds, cheap and/or spartan living would be fine by me. I guess about a week would be a nice long enough stretch of time.

I'm trying to figure out how to build such a trip, on my own, perhaps combining a drive with a visit to an ashram? or something of that sort. So, anecdotes on how one might have gone about planning this are welcome too, since taking/planning vacations is not my forte.

In fact, if there's something you know of that can be quickly planned and embarked upon... say, in a week or so? that'd be extra cool, for the spontaneity factor. (see, told you planning is not my forte.)

Thanks! (and if more info will help, lemme know...)

How to spend 25k to reduce debt and increase freedom!

crewshell — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 14:11:09 -0800

A man has debt, he comes into a little bit of money... how best should he spend it? A man has debt.
6k in student loans (5%)
19750k in credit card debt (ranging from 8-10 % interest)
15500k car loan (car is worth 12k)

Man gets 25k at 2% interest.
Man thinks he could get away with no car for 6 months, saving him 600 a month.

Should man pay off credit cards & student loans and continue to drive his car

or

Should man pay some student loans, sell car (take the lose) and pay off credit cards?

What makes the most financial sense. Ultimately regained financial freedom and the ability to go back to school is the goal. Though eventually another car will be needed.

P.S Current car is a gas hog. 18 MPG

Dublin 8

StickyCarpet — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 14:20:18 -0800

Dublin 8; South Circular Road; Old Harcourt Station, "Antics" with DJ Dave on Wednesday nights; Ring a bell? Are you a Dublin local? I need to contact a family member in Dublin, these are my clues, all local contacts appreciated, email in profile.

Personal Finance

locoindio — Wed, 21 May 2008 09:37:59 -0800

whats a good personal finance magazine to subscribe to? i know of kiplinger's. i don't know how good it is, though. what are some other magazines for personal finance?

So, I have a news story about violation of privacy...

irishkitten — Mon, 19 May 2008 11:05:10 -0800

If a national news station publishes your home address on television without your consent, what is(if any) the recourse? There was a news show recently that was doing a demo on a product. They used my husband's product for the demonstration. They advised him at the time that the address would be blanked out. Cut to showtime. Address very clearly legible. The broadcast was posted on website as well.

I've already made a call to the station, and have angrily advised them that this is not a very good thing, and that we are less than thrilled with the situation. Within an hour of calling, the video on the website was removed... but have not heard anything back from the station. We did not receive so much as an apology when we called initially.

I guess the question is, would you pursue it further? If the mods consider this to be chatfilter, please feel free to remove it, I just find the whole situation unsettling.

Thanks.

Money for the American dream...

odi.et.amo — Sun, 18 May 2008 09:36:53 -0800

What's the best way to loan money to a friend? Besides the obvious answer that most will come up with of "Don't do it at all", does anyone have experience with making a personal loan (1500 US) more official?

The friend specifically suggested having some sort of documentation and interest involved in the payment process. How should I go about doing this?

And to avoid any speculation in the responses, the loan is to help cover costs associated with filing for citizenship.

I wanna be fit!

AsRuinsAreToRome — Thu, 08 May 2008 18:55:07 -0800

How much does a personal trainer from Bally Total Fitness cost? I have a membership to Bally's and I want to hire a personal trainer for once or twice a week. Has anyone here had experience with a gym personal trainer and know the cost?

help me pick a OSX personal database?

penciltopper — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 14:26:50 -0800

Mac Mess Filter: help me choose personal database software. OK, so I've got a Mac and I can't find anything on it because I'm a slob that just saves everything in one "bucket".
How's that working out for me? Not so great.
By "personal database" I don't mean something like Access or OO.org's Base, keeping track of a vast record collection; I mean something that will take scans, PDFs, old emails, web clips, screenshots, etc. as drag-and-drop and do most of the searching/indexing for you.
Right now I just have all that kind of thing scattered all over my desktop - every so often when the desktop gets too crowded, I just sweep it all into a folder and hope I don't need/can find it in there at some later date.

I got a chance to use another Mac that had SOHO Notes (used to be StickyBrain?) installed, and it seems really cool.
I looked around, and it has several competitors.

Then I got concerned with "Ok, now I put everything into the Personal Database software and delete the originals (why keep two copies?), continue to use it for years, and the software craps out/company folds/alien space bats attack and now I can't get my stuff out of it again. So maybe I should just keep everything as files in the bucket, but organize with some sub-buckets, etc. (Does Leopard help? I'm still running Tiger.)

So if you know about this, and/or have used any of the following, please tell me what you can about:
SOHO Notes
Yojimbo
Bento
??? (another personal DB)
getting off my duff and making an organized file structure, labeling everything consistently, and letting Spotlight take it from there

Run away son!

DieHipsterDie — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 21:10:04 -0800

Looking for infamous personal add. Anyone recall a personal add placed several years ago by a VERY particular, picky, religious and possibly crazy woman? She had pages or rules and required reading for anyone interested in making contact with her and very specific rules if contact was actual made.

How do I pick a professional looking domain name?

dcbarker — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 07:22:25 -0800

Help me pick a professional domain name for email. All reasonable combinations of my name are already taken (the same goes for GoogleMail addresses). I'd like to avoid firstnamelastnameUK01321@googlemail.com if I can. I'm going to be using it mainly on CVs. So, because my real name (any reasonable combination of it..) is taken and I can't get my real name on GoogleMail, I'd like to pick a reasonably professional domain name (a .co.uk) to handle all of my email. That way I can just have firstname.lastname@mydomain.co.uk

The problem is.. Every domain I think of seems to sound like a lame social networking username or a dot com bubble company name. It'll be used on job applications, recruitment services and CVs. Nothing much else as I'd like to keep it separate from everything else.

I want to avoid getting a friend to forward mail from an already established domain for the same reason I'm not going to use one of my existing domains - I want a little self-contained email domain for work stuff.

I'm not so much looking for actual domain name suggestions - I'd really like advice on how to pick a suitable domain.

So, any ideas? Thanks!

Personal papers, receipts, and documentation -- should they stay or should they go?

nathaole — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 02:41:40 -0800

Paper trails: Similar to this link, I am looking for a specific list of personal papers, receipts, and essential documents I should keep and for how long. Any and all receipts? Bank statements? I am lost as to which papers one MUST keep and papers that just cause clutter. If I ever needed to prove something by way of having a paper trail, or if I were to be audited, I'd be left scrambling.

I've just graduated from university, have never done my own taxes, rent, and will be living in Toronto, Canada. I try to pay my bills online. Should I be printing out each statement or bill and putting it into a binder or file folder? Grocery receipts? What about those slips I receive from the ATM? Are there documents I should request from the people I am renting from?

Now I'm hearing that one needs to save their monthly transit passes for tax purposes. I know some people save each and every receipt, and I've always wondered why.

I feel confident in my organizational skills, so once I know WHAT to keep, I will be more than happy to file it away in a neat and organized manner. I'm trying to become responsible when it comes to finances, so tracking all of these things may prove useful.

Lists, suggestions, links and resources are all very much appreciated.

How do I get out of debt and get my writing back on track?

Anonymous — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 13:27:28 -0800

I just moved 4,000 miles to Washington, DC and took a job with far less salary than I am worth in a new industry for the fringe benefits. I have about $18,000 in CC debt and have a modicum of a plan but need real financial help to sort out how to pay off this debt while in the meantime making something in the mid-30's. Obviously, I should be doing a lot more than working my regular 9-5. I am an accomplished journalist, but I have literally never had to freelance. Now, I am sort of between things and realize I have nothing in the way of a signpost that advertises my work - and no portfolio to speak of. How does a person build a portfolio again from squat?

Is it worth it to start a blog and see what I come up with money wise?

Where do I get financial help? I'm not swimming in debt, but I have dreams where I watch my life sliding out from under me and I am tired of living a life I don't really have on income that's not really that. All of my purchases have been really lame, like eating out. I don't own a car or house or anything.

What financial responsibility resources are there for a young person with a job but nothing in the way of intermediate assets? (that won't come in the form of a book I've already gotten for Christmas, read, and still haven't figured out how to use.)

Easiest way to easily transfer finds from the US to my Canadian bank account?

GuyZero — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 08:09:11 -0800

I need to easily transfer finds from the US to my Canadian bank account. What's the easiest way to do this? For the next few months I will be living and working in the US while my family remains here in Canada. So I need to move my US pay so we can pay bills, mortgage, etc. I currently bank at BMO and would rather not change accounts as we'll all be leaving eventually. Where can I do my US banking that will make life easier? I will be in California so I do not think the BMO Harris subsidiary will be much help.

Personal Finance with Pounds

Happy Dave — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 10:01:17 -0800

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery." British personal finance blogs, forums and other resources? After several post-university years of lurching from one personal finance crisis to another, I'm finally pulling clear of my personal debt.

I've had a very decent increase in job income, and I'm also about to receive a legacy which will let me pay off my post-universtity loans, and, for the first time in my adult life, leave me in a position to start saving properly, investing fully in retirement funds and give me a stable enough life to create and follow a budget that isn't going to get dashed to pieces on my bank's indifference and yet another overdraft charge.

Since I started working towards fixing my personal finances, I've been following a few personal finance blogs in the US (Get Rich Slowly, The Simple Dollar etc). While these are very useful, and some of the principles are currency independent, they are very US-focused.

I'd like recommendations for personal finance blogs, forums and other online resources that talk about the specifics of the UK financial world, from ISAs to investing to bricks and mortar. My key aims in the next few years are to pay off £12k in student loans as fast as possible, save 6 months of expenses, a deposit for a house and get my retirement funding in order - which websites will help me do this?

I don't think I'm as anal as I should be

4ster — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 08:18:59 -0800

So if I'm going to use the GTD method, what am I going to use? After trying to make GTD work for me for almost three years, and then yesterday reading how a number of people at Lifehacker have given up on it, I'm wondering what plan B could be.

The fact that I've read practically every article and website on GTD, as well as tried out almost every calendar and task list program online, for the PC, and now that I've switched, for the Mac This leads me to believe that, for me at least, GTD has some limitations. Namely:

1. It's much more fun trying out new ways to implement GTD than to actually get things done (hence my serial monogamy with iGTD, tracks.tra.in, Rememember the Milk, Backback, Hiveminder, Toodledo, tadalist, Nozbe, Todoist, Vitalist, the GTD plugin for Outlook, and Clear Context, and of course, index cards and the Hipster PDA.

2. The whole get it out of your head and into a "bucket" make a lot of sense, but I'm just not naturally anal, organized, or whatever. I'm naturally a bit of a slob and a scatterbrain, to this has always been problematic for me. I've just never really had the self-discipline to take the time to do GTD properly, and I'm starting to think it may be a great system for people wired differently than me.

3. Devising my own system from the ground up sounds problematic to me, because I'm so prone to tinkering and trying out new stuff.

4. I couldn't get the Franklin-Covey system to work for me. I just don't have it in me to write a personal mission statement, and transferring tasks to the next day's list again and again is kind of demoralizing.

So here is my real question:

Can you suggest a personal productivity system to me that works within the following parameters:

1. I can do it on a Mac synced to a Centro.
2. It works using iCal and Mail.app/MailTags.
3. It's heavily digital. I don't do well with paper.
4. I can read about it in a book or on a website. I'm fine making some adaptations to an existing system, but having a place to start would be best.
5. Of course, I'd throw 1-3 out the window for the right system, but I'm not sure the right system could be the right system sans 1-3.

My doctor told me yesterday that it's possible that I may have a touch of ADHD, so I guess I should tell you that as well.

As always, a thousand thanks for your help, Mefites.

Lost user settings on a win XP machine

lobstah — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 06:59:05 -0800

Please help me restore my user settings (Win XP Pro). All of my wife's personal settings (also folders and files) have beem sent to the recycle bin upon restart. I tried to use the recycle bin restore feature, but to no avail. There is only one user account, and that seems to be set to new machine status. She wants her desktop back ! Last time, you guys saved my butt...can you do it again? Thanks.

Who makes personalized bath products?

campy — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 18:32:33 -0800

What web site provides a "Design Your Own" service for unique personalized bath abd body products? Several years ago I found a web site (via MeFi or some other similar method) that created personalized bath products for you or someone you know. The process involved a questionaire that I completed online with questions relating to the person's personality, likes and dislikes, and colors and other concepts.

Somehow, by using this information, they create customized products for you. I completed the questions then ordered body lotion, shampoo, conditioner and body wash. The packaging and product names were also personalized with messages that I chose... in small words on the back of the bottles there was a link to the web site with a code to reorder that specific type of product.

Fast forward to Christmas, 2007. Wife tells me that this was one of her favorite gifts of all time and that she would like me to order it for her... trouble is I have no idea what the site was, nor do I have the original bottles or email from the order.

Lots of googling and reading has left me with absolutely nothing... not even a similar service. Does anyone know of the company that I am looking for? Have they gone out of business? Is there a similar site where I can order this type of personalized product?

Thank you!

I'm all googled out! Please help MeFites...

stevyb — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 11:46:59 -0800

Broken Promises: Looking for stories of the damage that broken promises can cause an individual. Can be personal (maybe childhood stories), read somewhere(biographies?), recommendations where to find them, etc. Preferably something that can be easily told within a couple of minutes...Any help is appreciated!

Recommend me a good contact manager for phone numbers and names?

jacobean — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 16:41:56 -0800

I'm looking for a "lite" contact manager for my PC? I am tired of losing scraps of paper with temporary phone numbers on them...I do not want to enter them into my Outlook contacts manager. Is there any no "bells and whistles" application out there that I can quickly tap in the details into my PC? Even better would be an application that syncs with a Palm device?

What should I get engrave on my iPod

Brandon Blatcher — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 11:03:53 -0800

Suggestions please, on what to get engraved on brand new iPod. I decided to splurge for the a new pod, probably an 80gig classic, as opposed to buying a refurbished one like before, which means I can have something engraved on it. I don't want just my name or it doesn't even have to have my name on it, but I'm looking for ideas for something extremely unique.

I've read the suggestions here and while "Don't Panic" is close it still falls flat to me due to being more of an injoke, albeit a popular one. "Pussy Wagon" is kinda in the ballpark for its combination of words and ideas, but it's offensive and only funny in a movie character.

I'm not looking for a specific quote per se, though that would be fine if it was extremely good, rather for the idea of something. Example: "Artist X always had interesting things to say about Y, maybe look up some of his quotes."

It can only be two lines long and can only have 22 characters, including spaces, in each line.

Ideas?

Interesting & unusual medicine or tonics or elixirs in China

gttommy — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 16:19:27 -0800

ChinaFilter: What are some interesting and unusual medicine or tonics or elixirs I can buy in China that is not readily available anywhere else? I'm currently in Hangzhou and I want to know if there is anything interesting I can purchase. I'm wondering if there is any interesting tonics or potions or whatever that alleges to provide some personal benefit yet is relatively unknown or not proven by Western science. Could even be some strange device.

Mainly, I intend to send them back to Australia as gifts.

It can be ordinary. Doesn't have to actually work. Needs to be safe.

Suggestions please! Personal anecdotes also welcome.

Personal Finance Filter

gogomickey — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 08:05:56 -0800

Does anyone know of a good financial advisor in the Northern VA/DC area?