•   Antioch Chamber of Commerce
•   Barrington Area Chamber of  Commerce
•   Buffalo Grove Chamber of Commerce
•   DBR Chamber of Commerce (Deerfield,  Bannockburn, Riverwoods)
•   Fox Lake Area Chamber of Commerce
•   GLMV Chamber of Commerce (Green Oaks,  Libertyville, Mundelein, Vernon Hills)
•   Grayslake Area Chamber of  Commerce
•   Greater Lincolnshire Chamber  of Commerce
•   Highland Park Chamber of Commerce
•   Lake County Chamber of Commerce
•   Lake Forest/Lake Bluff Chamber of Commerce
•   Lake Zurich Area Chamber of Commerce
•   Lindenhurst Lake Villa Chamber of  Commerce
•   Round Lake Area Chamber of Commerce
•   Wauconda Chamber of Commerce
•   Winthrop Harbor Chamber of Commerce
•   Zion Chamber of Commerce

It’s early Tuesday morning and I have had another sleepless night, but the entry this morning is about a need. I see and envision the need to strive farther and at a continual pace and see change in myself and the things around me. I always hope that things or expectations come to past decently quick, but I have to realize that everything takes time and that means that no matter what the obstacle is, we can give up or slow the pace. We also should remember that we have a lot of control over the flow of our day. We can control many sudden outcomes by remaining calm, showing a sense of confidence and acting with wisdom. The bible says be swift to hear and slow to speak. If someone comes to you or in your office ranting and raving about an issue they have, responding in the same tone of voice they utilize will only add fuel to the fire. If you respond in a calm and passive manner, it can change things almost instantly, because they know you are not trying to oppose them or play a different side. This means you just controlled the situation, while they still believe that they are in control. There are many practical situations even as simple as smiling at someone, giving a compliment or two, and changing that persons day into more than they expected. Control the situation to make things better than they are but, but use wisdom and discern when it’s not a good idea to intervene. You can either help change to occur or you can prevent change.

MORE REFERENCE

It’s been a little while since the last entry, and of course I have been staying decently busy with projects. I’ve been faced with an assumption from the public quite often. Many people think that unmarked productions is actually bigger than what it is.  I am in search of a team of designers/developers and an investor as well if that’s possible. With these needs being fulfilled, then yes the company would more likely than not grow to become a larger more recognized entity. Until this happens, unmarked is a one man operation. So if you know anyone that’s interested in becoming a part of a team or that is interested in investing in a small business, please send them my way. Designing is pretty much the bulk of what I do and making sales is not that hard, but trying to handle all aspects of the business is where the difficulty comes in. I design during the day in the corporate environment and at night and on weekends in my home office. With a nice small, experienced team, the possibilities are endless.

Ok. I am giving Microsoft a round of applause. They are continuing to step up and offer Business tools that are valuable. The most recent used tool that I found convenient is the online storage called “Sky Drive”. Using your same email address login for hot mail, you can access a virtual storage space that starts you off with a whopping 5 gigs of free space or at least that’s what I have. I am not sure if it is less for other accounts.

My hotmail email address is a paid account, although it only costs $20 for the year, it offers an increased mailbox size as well as larger file send/receive capabilities.

 The “Sky Drive” advantage allows you to have a public viewable storage place as well as a private location. We all tend to carry around thumb drives these days but this give you the advantage of almost being able to take your hard drive around the world without actually taking it.

The most practical idea I can think of, would be to send your thumb drive documents to the “Sky Drive” before traveling, so that in case the thumb drive is damaged or lost then you have an easy and fast way to access the files. This could be the difference between a successful meeting and a frustrated journey home empty-handed.

This is my first blog entry and I must say that I am excited to be doing this. I haven't quite decided on exactly what will be written in these entries, but what I am hoping to do is to stay within the realm of what I do for a living and the obstacles and experiences along the way. I hope those who may read this will find it to be beneficial spiritually as well as practical.

This entry is to give a little insight to the functionality of this particular page. This u-blog.php page is being controlled from a basic admin panel that I built using php and a mysql database. It has 4 basic functions: add, delete, update and view all. It's just enough for this application.  There is another utility that I am excited about and this is the first time I have used it. It is called 'iRite' and and it is developed by a company called "WEBASSIST". iRite is a WYSIWYG editor that allows you to edit form entries just like you would edit text in Microsoft Word" and it's all done live through the web browser. It is css based and I must say that it is really nice to not have to <b> Bold</bold> and <u>underline</u> offline and then upload the pages.

Utilizing the WYSIWYG editor as an editing tool, and a basic web database we could essentially build a basic Content Management System (CMS) for a client or for personal use such as in this example. If the client knows they only need a basic set of pages for example, 4 pages: Home, About Us, Services, and Contact. We could build the body of these pages to pull it's information from data stored in a database and then using this iRite editor, we can allow the client to edit their own page content including uploading and resizing images, making page links within the page and external to other websites or pages, and therefore give them limited freedom to edit as they like and whenever they so desire.

The Richest Man Who Ever Lived   

I am at the last few pages of reading this book. It is probably one of the best books that I have ever read. It has truly begun to transform my thinking and really has helped me understand why I’ve made some of the mistakes that I have. It truly is about the richest man who ever lived and the principles that he used to gain his riches, but even more is a book that will teach you how to check your pride, your un-detectable greed, your laziness, your lack of strategic partnering, your lack of due diligence when making important decisions and why all this has to be taken in account in order to attain personal goals.

I feel refreshed, purpose driven and I am focusing more on quality and excellence and appreciating the amount of labor it may take to achieve this and not focusing on how to rush it and cut corners.

Read the book!