Best list I’ve seen for worst job-interviewing mistakes

Add comment March 16th, 2010

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Among them, complaining about anything and sounding desperate. And there are 48 others in this story in U.S. News & World Report.

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Don’t carry this attitude with you to a job interview.

Housewives star renting Hampton home for $300,000 for summer

2 comments February 24th, 2010

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Want to rent the Hampton home of former Rockfordian Kelly Killoren Bensimon, Playboy’s latest cover model, who stars in “The Real Housewives of New York City”?
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For $40,000, it’s yours for June; $300,000 and you can have it all summer, according to this story in Newsday.com.

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By the way, the third season of the New York City version of Bravo’s “Real Housewives” starts at 10 p.m. March 4 on Bravo (Comcast 37).

Are you tipping more, less, the same?

4 comments August 26th, 2009

I know you’re probably eating out less than you did before the recession.

Just wondering if your tipping pattern has changed?

Are you ditching more items at the check-out?

Add comment August 21st, 2009

Lots of us are thinking twice when we get to the check-out line at the store, according to this story by the Associated Press:

“Hard numbers are difficult to come by, but Burt P. Flickinger III, a retail consultant, estimates that in 25 percent of shoppers’ trips to the store, they’re ditching at least one item. In the recession of the early 1990s, it was 15 to 20 percent. In good times, it’s more like 10 percent.”

Personally, I’ve been more likely to not put an “extra” item in my cart in the first place.

How are you feeling about the reported easing of the recession?

Add comment July 31st, 2009

So, the recession eased in the second quarter, this AP story says.

Bowling and gambling in Dubuque and our weekend getaway to a close-by city that’s far from where Rockford is economically

1 comment March 16th, 2009

Two of us traveled from Rockford, two hours west to Dubuque, Iowa, last weekend and experienced a reasonably priced good-time getaway.

It was a trip that took us from a 13.7 percent unemployment rate in a city of 150,000 to a unemployment rate half that, of 6.6 percent, in a city of 60,000; from a city where “for sale” signs on houses are to be found on practically every street to one where we spotted very few for-sale signs.

The city was busy, even though a few bed-and-breakfast owners were willing to give us discounts because they considered it a slow weekend. We had trouble finding a hotel room downtown or even on the outskirts Saturday night; there was a dog show downtown and a statewide bowling tournament that continues weekends through spring. By the way, a game of bowling here is $3.95 versus $3.25 at the spanking new Diamond Jo land casino where the two of us lost a reasonable $50 for three hours of playing poker, and shoes were $2.50 versus $3 here.

Comparisons between Rockford and Dubuque were in the local news a month ago. That’s when local business leaders were quoted as stewing over IBM’s decision to transform a downtown building to open a computer hub for 1,300 highly skilled, highly paid workers in Dubuque. Dubuque won out because of its highly educated labor pool, something Rockford doesn’t have. Dubuque is home to five institutions of higher education.

By the way, when we asked a bed-and-breakfast operator there at the Victorian Hancock House  to tell us a few things about Dubuque, the IBM jobs were at the top of his list. Rockford wasn’t in the running for the $100 million IBM project. But like Rockford, Dubuque in the early 1980s was “nearly dead,” according to the head of Dubuque’s economic development arm. But now, it’s poured more than $300 million into its riverfront and downtown in the past five to 10 years.

(Dubuque Riverwalk Plaza)

And the downtown and riverfront look great. It felt like we were in a happening place in a city where we didn’t see hardly any litter on the streets, and we drove downtown and all around the city in its better neighborhoods and those that weren’t tops. We didn’t see any boarded up windows, like there are on many west side Rockford homes.  It was a far cry from the empty pop bottles and plastic grocery bags we noticed on our re-entry into the city in parking lots along Auburn Street, to name one eyesore area here.

In the Feb. 14 Register Star story linked to above, Rockford businessman Peter Provenzano, CEO of SupplyCore, said of  Dubuque, “They’re a symphony, and we’re a bunch of street-corner musicians.”

Maybe we should get the Rockford Symphony Orchestra’s popular conductor Steve Larsen to tutor Rockford leaders in how to pull everyone together so we can be more like Dubuque and make beautiful music? Other suggestions?

Seeing that little girl this morning made me sad

8 comments March 12th, 2009

Every Thursday morning when I’m going to work at the News Tower after having traveled to WREX-TV at the far west end of Auburn Street to promote fun things happening on the weekend, I turn south on Central Avenue and drive on different streets on the way to my desk at 99 E. State Street, Rockford.

When I’m driving on those streets, I always feel like it’s a different world there than the one I’m used to.

Not that I’m rolling in the dough by a long shot. But where I come from and where I live, houses have glass in the windows. The windows aren’t broken or boarded up like they are on too many of the houses I see on streets such as Furman, Fairview, Bluefield, Oakfield. And too many lawns in the area are littered with junk.

Things are quiet when I’m driving on those streets about 7:10 a.m. About all I see is a few kids walking together on sidewalks to their school bus stops or waiting with one or two others for the bus at corners.

This morning, though, a little girl, maybe 6 years old, with straggly, dark blond hair, was walking north on Forest Avenue almost in the middle of the street. Her coat was open in the 10-degree temperature. She was wearing a back pack.

She was alone. She was crying.

And I felt sad.

I had no idea what was bothering her. I didn’t want to stop and lend her a shoulder to cry on for fear of me being a stranger and scaring her. As I turned a corner, I saw a school bus rambling up another street, and I rationalized it would be her bus. She’d get on it, and the bus driver would notice she was crying and say something to her that would make her feel better. Or at least she wouldn’t be alone.

All I could think of when I got to work was that a little girl shouldn’t be walking in the street to the bus stop by herself on a really cold morning with tears in her eyes.

I  hope the house she lives in doesn’t have broken or boarded-up windows.

Where Obama is lacking

1 comment March 10th, 2009

Newsweek provides an interesting rundown in this story on where Obama is lacking, and most of it covers the economy.

Unemployment rates shake things up like numbers on the Richter scale

Add comment March 6th, 2009

You know that saying that it’s a recession if your neighbor is out of work, but a depression if you are.

In the same vein, it might better reflect our state of mind if unemployment figures were considered like numbers on the Richter Scale.

An earthquake that measures 5.0 on the Richter scale has a shaking amplitude 10 times larger than one that measures 4.0.

Likewise, it sure feels like Rockford area jobs are being shaken exponentially compared with the nation’s, where the U.S. unemployment figures  at 8.1 percent in February reported today is putting economic watchers in a tizzy.

Hell-O! In Rockford, the jobless rate in December, the latest reported so far, was 13.2 percent, and Beloit’s was 15.1 percent in January.

Of course, all the jobless figures are expected to worsen.

But like the saying goes, recession if it’s your neighbor’s problem, depression if it’s yours.

Waa Waa, if Vegas walks like a duck …

14 comments February 23rd, 2009

Everybody knows Sin City is Party City. And when you don’t have money, you don’t party like you used to.  Period. Everybody knows that, too.

Las Vegas is what it is. And hoteliers and casinos should quit whining that jabs from government officials upset about bailed-out companies partying in Vegas on the taxpayers’ dime are hurting their industry.