Producing value for others is not an easy task. For most people, their lives are completely tied up to their jobs. Their jobs provide the security of sustainability and affordability of social anesthetics like shopping sprees and Friday’s dine out.

My questions today revolve around: why do we all live so attached to the pursuit of money? why is it that we believe that with more money our life would be easier, safer and better? I have the impression that most people in their death beds don’t look back and say: “I would try to live longer so that I can make more money”.

A life in the pursuit of “more” is a life full of absolutely nothing. If I live my life as if I was awaiting for a destination I would miss my life completely. Because life is really the trip.

The worst part about it is that I pretend that my only problem is lack of money when in reality deep inside I know that the real lack is fatih.

If you take two people and send them to a deserted island: To the first one you give a million dollars and to the second you give a reason to live, who do you think that would last longer?

We are like money hungry robots with junk-filled garages. We associate so much pleasure to the act of getting that we have forgotten how does it feel to give something to somebody else.

The paradox:

I want to work hard to get more money. The more money I get, the more things I buy. The more things I buy the less money I end up with. So I have to work more for more money.

In the end, I have neither money nor life. It is a pretty clever distraction.

Summarizing: Our entire lives we sell our time in exchange for money. Money that we plan to use to buy a better life. But at that point we have no time left.

Is like working at Disney World. Waking up every day and working hard. When you retire, somebody asks you if you enjoyed the rides and you reply: “I didn’t have time to enjoy them”.

1. Navigate through Google Analytics menus to get your Javascript code,

2. Select your Google Analytics Javascript code,

3. Open the right folder and file in Drupal 6.6

4. Paste the Google Analytics code at the right place in your markup.

Enjoy. Also please fill free to send this videocast to your friends!

Alex Centeno MBA.
Digital Media Consulting Raleigh - Google Analytics in Drupal

Digital Media Design by Alex Centeno: Aligning Titles

Wake up! The unemployment in the US is growing drastically, the economy is in bad shape due to people’s unreasonable spending habits and we blame the government for it…

Joe Biden clothing line might be in the $7,99 to $9 dollars but does that really matter?

• “sites”
• “files”
• htaccess
• robots.txt
• Mysql base

2. Log on as the user1 , which is the first account
created and the main administrator account.  ** Do not close your
browser until the final step is complete.

3. Place the site in “Off-line” mode, to let the database updates run without
interruption and avoid displaying errors to end users of the site. This
option is at http://www.example.com/?q=admin/settings/site-maintenance

4. If using a custom or contributed theme, switch
to Garland.

5. Disable all custom and contributed modules if any.

6. Remove all files and directories from the Drupal installation directory.

7. Unpack the new files and directories into the Drupal installation directory.

8. Copy your backed up “files” and “sites” directories (from step1) to the Drupal
installation directory. If other system files such as .htaccess or
robots.txt were customized, re-create the modifications in the new
versions of the files using the backups taken in step #1.

9. Verify the new configuration file to make sure it has correct information.

10. Run update.php by visiting http://www.example.com/update.php (replace
www.example.com with your Drupal installation’s domain name and path). This
step will update the core database tables to the new Drupal installation.

Note: if you are unable to access update.php do the following:

- Open your settings.php with a text editor.

- There is a line that says $update_free_access = FALSE;
Change it to $update_free_access = TRUE;

- Once update.php is done, you must change the settings.php file
back to its original form with $update_free_access = FALSE;

11. Ensure that the versions of all custom and contributed modules match the
new Drupal version to which you have updated. For a major update, such as
from 5.x to 6.x, modules from previous versions will not be compatible
and updated versions will be required.

- For contributed modules, check http://drupal.org/project/modules
for the version of a module matching your version of Drupal.

- For custom modules, review http://drupal.org/update/modules to
ensure that a custom module is compatible with the current version.

12. Re-enable custom and contributed modules and re-run update.php
to update custom and contributed database tables.

13. Return the site to its original theme (if you switched to a core
theme like Garland or Bluemarine in step #4). If your site uses a
custom or contributed theme, make sure it is compatible with your
version of Drupal.

- For contributed themes, check http://drupal.org/project/themes
for the version of a theme matching your version of Drupal.

- For custom themes, review http://drupal.org/update/theme to ensure
that a custom theme is compatible with the current version.

14. Finally, return your site to “Online” mode so your visitors may resume
browsing. As in step #3, this option is available in your administration
screens at http://www.example.com/?q=admin/settings/site-maintenance
(replace www.example.com with your installation’s domain name and path).

In my opinion, the shifting of local purchasing and impulsive buying, will be radically exchanged for more programed savings-based purchases online. What this means is that the United States will cease to be the place that we use to know.

The economy in third-world countries, where spending and debt are reduced, is not a “walk at the park” for everyone.  Having a harder competition for jobs and for clients translates in highly trained middle classes with a severe increase in poverty. Not to mention criminality.

The creation of jobs is, in my opinion, the only way to slow down the decline of the American capitalism as we know it. Most people would agree with me that the average American is in trouble. According to the Plastic Safety Net survey (http://www.responsiblelending.org/press/releases/page.jsp?itemID=28011726) the following things are true:

* $8,650 is the average credit card debt of a low- and middle-income indebted household in America.
* 59 percent of respondents were in credit debt for longer than one year, with an average length of just over three and a half years.
* Seven out of 10 low- and middle-income households reported using their credit cards as a safety net—relying on credit to pay for car repairs, basic living expenses, medical expenses or house repairs.
* One out of three households reported using credit cards to cover basic living expenses on average four out of the last 12 months; households that reported a recent job loss or unemployment, and those without health insurance in the last three years, were almost twice as likely to use credit cards for basic living expenses.
* 20 percent of survey homeowners had paid off some credit card debt with a mortgage refinance in the last three years, reducing their home equity $12,000 on average. Further, these households still had average credit card debt over $14,000. As a result, they were carrying 18% more debt than homeowners who had refinanced a mortgage but not paid down credit card debt—even though their incomes were almost identical. In other words, they were trading unsecured credit card debt for higher mortgage debt secured by their home.

This, made sense when 1. mortgage debt was at a lower rate than credit card debt and 2. home values where appreciating at a higher rate than the cost of financing that home.

20% of Americans have refinanced their homes in order to pay, partially, their consumer debt. It is going to be impossible for this 20% to pay their consumer debt and therefore the only option is bankrupcy. Even more alarming is to understand that some of this people will have to compite harder to preserve their jobs: lower payed jobs.

The solution: There has to be a complete change of the American mentality; is it going to happen? Do you think that advertisers will stop associating pleasure to buying new stuff?

Alex Centeno MBA.

Why would the goverment want to help the people that bought houses that they couldn’t afford or in terms that they didn’t review, while not being fair to the ones that are paying their mortgages on time. Perhaps everybody should be defaulting on their payments in order to renegotiate their interest and their principals!

The crazy part, in my opinion, is that it is not a bad plan to help economy in a perfect world. But in the world in which we live, it is like giving tax money directly to the people that caused the problem in the first place. So it is like a parent that has an irresponsible kid and a responsible one. The irresponsible one takes all his toys and throws them away.  Then, the parent takes some of the toys of the responsible one and gives them to the first. The result? Both kids are now left with less toys overall and the trust of the responsible kid in his parents is crippled for ever.

Why should the taxpayers trust the government?