From the Mind of MandoRon

So I’m spending a few days in the same hotel as the American Christian Fiction Writers National Conference.  Why?  Because my wife is attending, and the thought of goofing off in in Colorado for a few days really appealed to me.

Andrea and I have been talking a lot about the christian fiction industry lately.  There are a lot of similarities between the christian fiction and christian music industries. 

The key ingredients to marketable christian fiction seem to be: (1) gentle and uplifting, (2) set your novel in the past, (3) capitalize on what’s been done before, and (4) above all, follow the rules.  Romance appears to get you a nearly automatic book deal.  I’m dying to expound on this more, but I’m amazingly going to exercise restraint.  It’s perfect fodder for a Stuff Christians Like blog post.  Jon started to go there with this one, but didn’t dive fully into it.

Walking around the hotel with all of these novelists has got me thinking that I should try my hand at fiction.  So I’m going to write a short story for you today and publish it tomorrow.  The current plan is that it will fall into the Historical Vampire Fiction genre.

GO POKES!

Two odd things happened on the way to work this morning…

First, I was stopped behind several cars at a stop sign.  The car in front of me suddenly shifted into reverse and started backing up.  She almost hit me…

Second, I saw my long-lost twin.  I was looking in the rearview mirror (as the aforementioned driver should have done) and noticed that the guy behind me looked exactly like me.  Shaved head.  Chin beard.  Goofy grin.  I think he may have had an earring though…

I’ve been told a few times that people know someone who looks just like me.  But I’ve never seen anyone that looked just like me before.

Freaky!!!

(My smart alec wife, who has a twin sister, popped off that it happens to her all the time.)

I wasn’t planning on a writing a sequel to my recent post, Of Inboxes and Men, discussing how people manage their inbox.  But plans change.  I recently read an older blog post from Michael Hyatt on the subject of email inboxes, and it’s got me rethinking my own email strategy.

A little background first…  Michael Hyatt is the CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers.  I follow him on Twitter, and when he recently tweeted a link to a blog post on email inboxes, it caught my attention.   As a CEO, I imagine that he gets a lot of email.  I also know from his tweets, that he cleans out his inbox every night.  So I figured he would probably have something meaningful to offer on the subject of email inboxes.

I wasn’t wrong.  You can find Michael’s original post here.

In his post, he talks about how to clean out your inbox everyday and several strategies for making it easy.  But what really caught my attention was how he files old emails.

Simply put, he doesn’t.

He has one folder titled “Processed Mail”, and moves anything he might want later into that folder.  Then later, he uses the search features of the email program to find what he’s looking for.  Michael believes it’s more efficient and takes less time than using a lot of subfolders.

I use approximately 150 subfolders to file away old emails at work.  My system isn’t working.  I work a lot of different projects with a lot of different suppliers.  I never know whether to file old emails under the supplier’s name or under the project.  I end up doing a mix of both.  Sometimes it takes quite a while to find the right folder.

So I’m thinking about trying Michael’s advice.  It’s a big change and I’ve been thinking about this for several days now, trying to decide if it will work. 

I think my plan of attack will be to try it for a month, or so, without doing away with the older emails already in the subfolders.  I can always go back and refile the ”processed mail” folder later if I bail on the whole thing.

Thoughts?  Is anyone else doing this?

Over my lunch break Monday, I made a trip to the bank (technically a credit union) in order to withdraw some money from my savings account.  I gave the teller, who seemed a little frazzled, my account number and showed my ID.  She wrote the account number down on a slip of paper and the amount that I wanted to withdraw.  Then she had me sign the bottom. 

This was not the normal procedure.  It turns out that their computer system was down and they were having to do everything manually.

But here’s the weird part…  She gave me $500 cash without even looking to see if I had enough money in my savings account. 

Get this… they were trusting me, the customer. (Technically, I am a “member” since it’s a credit union and not a bank.)  Trust doesn’t seem very common in business to consumer transactions anymore…  Although, I once ordered a custom mandolin strap from a guy who will build and ship off of an email, trusting that the check or paypal will come through in a few days.  But I digress.

At some point, the credit union decided to take a risk and continue, as much as possible, providing services to their customers.  Of course, the credit union (and I’m not saying which one) put themselves at great risk in doing so.

What if I somebody had told me they were doing this, and I strolled in asking for money without even having an account?  What if I had made an honest mistake and overdrawn my account?  ($$$ = overdraft fees)

I’ve been to an Intrust Bank before when their system was down, but I was only making a deposit.  I have no idea if they would have given me cash.

So what’s your opinion?  Was the credit union doing the right thing?  Or were they exposing themselves to too much risk?