Category: Random
Bartels or Bartelses? TinyPrints Knows.
| November 28, 2011 | Posted by Angela under Random |
This is our fourth year sending holiday cards and all four years I’ve used TinyPrints. This year I was reminded why I always choose them to do my holiday cards.
I placed my order on Tuesday night. Wednesday morning I received a call from a Phoenix, Arizona location. I answered and it was a rep from TinyPrints. My initial thought for the phone call was that maybe they have to verify my credit card information. The rep goes on to talk about my order and how on my return address labels, it said ‘The Bartels.’ She asked if it was referring to my family (more than one) and I said ‘yes.’ What could she be getting at?
She went on to say that the proper plural form would be ‘The Bartelses’ but she recommended saying ‘The Bartels Family’ since the ‘es’ looks a little funny. She asked if I wanted to have it updated.
I had her change the name and she went on to complete my order.
Wow. I’ve always liked using their service because:
- They have tons of unique designs from lots of designers.
- They have an amazing web interface, from the initial search to customizing your order.
- They have great customer service.
They always say that a designer reviews each piece and I can attest to that.
I prefer to do my cards online to save time but still want the feeling of dealing with my own personal designer. TinyPrints gives me that.
To top it off, after I wrote this post, I received a personal, hand written card from Lorien (the lady I spoke to from Phoenix) thanking me for my business.
Here’s our 2011 Holiday Card. Happy Holidays!
Careless Whisper in Full Force at Rackspace
| November 9, 2011 | Posted by Angela under Business & Technology, Random, The Arts, Film, Music, Fashion |
I am sitting at my desk with my head deep in the weeds and all of a sudden I hear the start of George Michael’s “Careless Whisper” by a saxophonist. I stood up to see what was going on, along with everyone else around me. Rackers slowly stopped doing what they were doing, stood up and searched for the origin of this music. From afar, I see a shirtless man jamming on the saxophone. Was he a Racker? Was it someone’s birthday? He slowly started making his way through the office and as he continued, more Rackers started following. It was like the scene of when Forrest Gump grew his following by running and not stopping. Nobody knew why they were following but they were sure there was a purpose.
Later that day, snippets of the video started popping up on the interwebs. I really thought it was a Racker that was dared to do this. I went to the source and found out that he wasn’t a Racker. A Racker actually asked him to pay Rackspace a visit. He thought Rackers could use a few laughs on a Monday.
This is what makes Rackspace a special place to work. Putting a smile on someone’s face doesn’t take a lot of work, just some thoughtfulness and that’s what Rackspace is about. This is also why customers love us.
Book Review: The Happiness Project
| October 26, 2011 | Posted by Angela under Random, Words of Inspiration & Motivation |
I finally got to finishing The Happiness Project. There was a time when I always had my head in a book. Now my head is in the computer reading countless articles about a countless amount of things. I was excited to focus in and read a book about something I am passionate about.
How did I choose The Happiness Project?
I was in the break-room one day at Rackspace and a co-worker asked me how my son was doing. My reply was “He’s a really happy baby.” And he reply’s back with “Well you know happiness is 50% heredity.” When I asked him where he got that statistic, he said he was reading The Happiness Project. I wanted to know more so as soon as I got back to my desk, I googled it. I found the website and saw that the author, Gretchen Rubin, had cultivated a community around The Happiness Project. Lots of followers were starting their own Happiness Project. Before I could get involved, I had to read the book.
The Approach
The author is married, the mother of two, lives in Manhattan and is a lawyer turned writer. I feel that in order to enjoy the book and relate to her approach, you had to have at least one thing in common with her. The reason being is that it’s her project and she takes on these resolutions that relate to her lifestyle. I’m not saying you wouldn’t enjoy reading it but honestly, if I wasn’t a mother, I’m not sure I would have lasted the entire book. I was struggling through her “starting a collection” chapter because I just don’t understand collections.
Each chapter is a month and each month she takes on a new set of resolutions related to a particular subject. She does reference a lot of material she did research on and comments from her blog which made the chapters more engaging.
What was my motivation?
I am generally a happy person but we all have room for improvement right? There were two main things I wanted to get out of it:
- Be more positive during the tough times. We’re all faced with challenges in our life and we all respond to them differently. I think you’re level of happiness is an indicator on how you’ll react to those challenges.
- I wanted to figure out more ways I could help others be happier; And in order to make others happy, you have to be happy yourself.
The book is very realistic in that the author doesn’t suggest you go out of your comfort zone to be happy. It’s about maximizing on the little things you can do within your comfort zone to create happier lives. For example, just changing the way you word things can mean the world of a difference to someone.
Here are some quotes I highlighted from the book:
“The days are long, but the years are short.”
“Happy people remember happy events better, and depressed people remember sad events better. ”“You’re only happy as your least happy child. ”
“People who have fun are 20 times as likely to feel happy. ”
“Real life-shaking catastrophes can provide insights into happiness that you couldn’t have any other way, but the more you know about what happiness really means for you before you come to that point, the better equipped you’ll be to handle it.”
“Knowing what you admire in others is a wonderful mirror into your deepest, as yet unborn, self. ”
“It takes energy, generosity, and discipline to be unfailingly lighthearted, yet everyone takes the happy person for granted. ”
“The things that go wrong often make the best memories. ”
“Laughter is more than just a pleasurable activity. It can boost immunity and lower blood pressure and cortisol levels. It increases people’s tolerance for pain. It’s a source of social bonding, and it helps to reduce conflicts and cushion social stress within relationships.”
What did I get out of it?
I think the biggest thing I got out of this is realizing that I know what makes me happy, it’s a matter of making it a commitment to do these things that are important to me. Here’s my first draft laundry list:
- Remember others on their special day (Birthdays, Anniversaries) – Too often I let these days fly by.
- Express to my husband how much he means to me – Always in my head but not always told.
- Exercise – This is always a challenge because I’ve always been an athlete and I think I have to do 2 hours everyday when in reality, I am going to continue to let myself down. If I make it a point to simply stretch everyday, I will feel better.
- Eat Healthy – I am pretty good at this but I could cut out small things.
- Work with the youth – My #1 favorite hobby outside of family and work.
- Take a day off to spend with my son more often – I am fortunate to have an awesome job and can take a day off here and there. I should take advantage of this and not worry about the work as it will always be there!
- Don’t complain about the complainers – To hear people complain is exhausting but how am I making it better complaining about the complainer?
I hope to join a Happiness Project group and get started on it soon.
Waiting for @jacobbartels
| November 5, 2010 | Posted by Angela under Family Stuff, Random |
Jacob should be arriving any day now. As we wait for his arrival, I am thinking about the era Jacob will be born in and thought it would be neat to document some of the 2010 highlights:
- Barack Obama is President.
- Facebook and Twitter are the main forms of communication online with more than 500 million Facebook users and more than 50 million tweets being published per day.
- Haiti suffered a magnitude 7.0 earthquake with an estimate 200,000 deaths.
- The MacBook Air is released, weighing 2.3lbs with a 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor.
- The Gulf of Mexico experienced the largest oil spill in US history with as much as 60,000 barrels of oil leaking per day.
- Gas is $2.50 per gallon.
- New Orleans Saints beat the Indianapolis Colts for their first Super Bowl Victory.
- Texas Rangers make it to the World Series for the first time ever.
- 33 Chilean miners are rescued after spending 68 days trapped in a mine half a mile underground.
- The Discovery space shuttle is scheduled to have its 133rd and final mission.
- A ticket from San Antonio to Dallas on Southwest.com is $49 one way.
- UTSA is launching its first Football program scheduled to kick off Fall 2011.
- San Antonio still has no NFL team.
- Texting and driving is made illegal in San Antonio.
- Some artist named Justin Bieber is apparently a big pop star among the kids these days.
- Toy Story 3 is the biggest box office movie of 2010.
- Mom and dad work at Rackspace, a 12 year old cloud computing company with close to 3000 Rackers.
- Mom spotted her first gray hair this year.
- As of today, Dad has a full head of hair.
- @jacobbartels will be born to make the world a better place.
Halloween 2009 – Star Trek Style
| November 1, 2009 | Posted by Angela under Family Stuff, Random |
Jason and I typically hang low for Halloween. We enjoy hanging out with my family and watching my nieces and nephews dress up in their cute outfits. This year, since it fell on a Saturday, we went up to Austin to visit my brother and his wife. Their friends were having a costume party so we got all dress up, Star Trek style. We made our own outfits and I didn’t even have to buy anything! Jason made the cool Star Trek logos out of foam paper and we just got him some ears and a gun. My brother did an excellent job as Billy Mays (video below) and Layla did the Jessica Simpson look. There were actually some pretty creative costumes at Sean and Sarah’s party, who were Kayne West and Rhianna. My favorite? YouTube!
See all photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/safun/sets/72157622714512654/
This is the default footer layout. You can easily add or remove columns in the footer.
Comments