In a social setting last week, I asked a woman standing near me what she did for work. She replied, "For my benefits, I work at XYZ company. For my passion, I edited medical manuscripts". It hit me hard although it has been happening for a long time. Medical insurance for all of us has become so expensive that many stay in their job just for the benefits.

The day after Labor Day. Always so ominous and yet always so promising. Living in Chicago, it is really the last official day of summer. I used to divide the year by quarters, I do it now by seasons. Today, the kids go back to school with my oldest starting high school. I head back out on the road speaking this week. Even as I prepare for the speech for my new book, Bounce! to be released in January 11, I switched around my office today to begin research on the third book (probably to be published in 2010) about customer service. (The first basic interviews for the book start tomorrow with the general manager of Red Mountain Spa!). It is good to never stand still. It is even more fun sometimes not to know where you are going.

It has been a difficult 24 hours. After spending most of the weekend trying to figure out the new T-Mobile DASH PDA, it was stolen from me. In the parking lot of a Best Buy, my son’s friend forgot to role up his window. Five minutes later when we got back to the car, the PDA, phone, and camera were gone. I went into shock. I prostrated myself on the hood of the car thinking about all the data I had lost. When a PDA and Phone falls into hostile hands, its time to panic. I immediately went home, changed my passwords and suspended the phone number. The amazing part, $275 and an hour later, T-Mobile had me back up and running with all my data on my back up drive was in tack. It’s a scary world!

Have you drank the new SEI WATER? It doesn’t come in a bottle. No to differentiate this product it actually comes in a FLASK. I have been getting some strange looks especially at business meetings where they think I am drinking vodka..straight up!

Fast Company also did a great article on bottled water this past month…its a must read!

In business, we need to add value not fees. We have to have the customer think they are getting alot for their money especially when the fees are high and not nickel and dime them. This is not the case at my son’s summer camp.

My son is at Interlochen Arts Camp this summer for 3 weeks to study theatre. It is a world renowned music and theatre camp and big investment to send him. I did not mind paying the fee or the fact that we had to buy him a uniform to wear to the camp everyday from their store, but paid email breaks the bank. Many camps will allow you to send one way emails to your children (some just stick with letter writing which is fine by me). But, Interlochen uses an outside service called Bunknotes. You need to buy 10 credits at a time which cost $10 ($1 per email). What is worse, they charge $1 handing fee for each order of credits and 7.5% service charge. Last time I checked, there was no handling involved in electronic requests and the highest rate for credit cards is usually 3%. This is all absurd it leaves a bad taste for me which colors my experience of Interlochen. When it costs thousands of dollars to send your child to camp, should I spend $1 plus more a day to send him email?

I have not problem if the camp has no one way email. My other son is at a camp without it. Letter writing is fun and just fine. But don’t charge me additional for email if the camp makes it available. It’s like lawyers charging for photocopying (another practice I dislike).

I alway say that people buy when they are in pain. Today’s pain is that everyone wants an iPhone which goes on sale today at AT&T and Apple stores. There will not be enough to go around so people have been waiting in line for the last few days. When I was on eBay yesterday, people were of course selling the iPhones they would purchase today. Ads would read…"I am number 3 on line in Atlanta.." But one ad read, "I am on line. This auction is for you to take my spot in line right before the iPhone goes on sale." People will sell anything as long as there is a need. That is the heart of capitalism…

I got a letter abit back from IBM the told me that they may have lost my personal information on a file that was lost. I was an IBM employee for 9 years so this is retirement records.

I liked the way they handled it. They told me upfront what happened. They did not think that anyone had accessed the informaton, but just to be sure they gave me a one year service to an IDENTITY THEFT agency that would monitor my files (if I wanted to activate this). I thought this was a smart way to handle it…admit the mistake and give something in case the worst happens.

Waking up has never been a problem. I use an old fashion alarm clock- the one with a buzzer and works fine. Now comes from Hammacher Schlemmer a flying alarm clock where it launches a helicopter around your room. Your job upon waking is to find it and put it back on the alarm clock before the buzzer will go off. Seems a bit ambitious to me for the first thing in the morning!

On a recent bus trip, I saw a business jacket which for Securitas which has their logo on one side (its a security company) and Jack Daniels (liquor) on the other…do these really go together?

My 14 year old son came home from dance last night very excited. He told me how he got a girl’s "screen name" (for Instant Messaging). I guess getting a girl’s phone number to actually call and talk to her is so old school.