Mind your own bidness

Whenever I'm on a business trip, I start thinking more about, well, business (or as we say in the South, "bidness"). One of my favorite pastimes is to sit back and watch others at work - however you want to take that - and I find there's always something to be learned, either "how to" or "how not to." Things I learned on this trip: "How to Bore People Senseless in Less than 5 Minutes," "How to Weasel the Best Spot for a Laptop Internet Connection in a Meeting Room," and "How to Graciously Correct Someone in Front of a Roomful of People."

Ah, but I've mined a few more choice nuggets on a variety of business topics from various news sources that I'll store away for future use/non-use:

Network, network, network. Don't you get sick of hearing about it? But we all have first-hand experience with "it's not what you know but who you know." Here are a few networking tips from the Wall Street Journal, intended mainly for introverts but offering some good hints for those of us at the other end of the personality spectrum.

I was passing a Music/CD store last night in Georgetown and wondered to myself, "How long are "record" stores gonna be in business?" with MP3/iPod/CD burners everywhere. Here's an interesting idea from Scotti's Record Shops in Northern New Jersey: buy it, burn it, return it. It works like this: you buy a new or used CD, go home, burn it to your computer. If you return the CD within 10 days, you get at 70% store credit. We'll see how that works out for old Scotti's.

Lord, are we Baby Boomers ever gonna stop being more than a tool for corporate marketing ploys? They pegged us in the early 1950s and have not let us go! There are pros and cons to that, of course, but it's usually 20-30-somethings coming up with the marketing ideas and they get it SOOOO wrong, so often. Anyway, seems corporations are figuring Gen X is a bust because there just ain't that many of 'em, and Gen Y - which is almost as big as the BB Gen (makes sense, since Gen Y kids are the chirrins of the BB) - hasn't reached its full buying-power potential . Sooooo. Back to us. Read about how much marketers love us here.

Oh, and while I'm at it. Can we drop the "Boomer" label? I just hate it. How about B-Squared? B To the Second Power? Or just B's? Or Gen-Really-Cool-&-Fun? ;-)

Seems video-gaming is good for something, especially as we age. Studies have found that people over 60 who play video games increase their reaction time, hone reflexes, and improve vision. Oh, and gaming helps with arthritis, too. Read about it here.

Enough bidness fo' now. I gotta plane to catch. In the meantime, mind your own.