8 Ways to Sunday

Since I started my own business, I’ve been using Blinksale to automate my invoice process. It’s an incredibly handy web application, and your history of transactions can even be downloaded for import into desktop finance software (Quicken, Peachtree, QuickBooks, Microsoft Small Business Accounting, et al).

As capable an user-friendly as Blinksale is, however, there’s one thing it doesn’t yet do: allow you to apply credits to a customer’s account. At least, it didn’t do it until Matt Thomas found a clever work-around that allows you to accomplish just that. Something to remember in case I ever need to do such a thing.

(Props: Blinksale Blog)

Don’t you hate those job interview questions that seem designed to trip you up or make you say something stupid? Bhuvana Sundaramoorthy has posted a helpful list of the fifty most vexing interview questions, and strategies for answering them, on her weblog.

The book she excerpted these from was published in 1999, and I think changes in U.S. employment law might have made one or two of these questions no-nos. Nevertheless, the answer strategies for every question provide a useful perspective on how the interview process works, and what the interviewer really wants to know about you.

Updates

• 11/21/2006 @ 2:54 AM — On a related note, these tips for tech-related job interviews might be helpful to job-seeking geeks.

Yesterday I discovered a new (to me) web comic called Arcane Times, by full-time comic artist Cheyenne Wright. A certain variety of geek will find this strip hilarious, although the author’s busy schedule can make waits between episodes long.

Arcane Times is especially noteworthy, however, for its uncommonly good Cafepress swag. Among the items I have decided I must one day own:

• “Mouseferatu” mouse pad (you can learn all about the vampiric rodent in this series of strips)
• “Ask Me About My Evil Plan” t-shirt
• “I ♣ You” coffee cup

Cheyenne seems to be twisted in a way I can really appreciate. My hat’s off to you, sir.

All This, and a Raygun Too

Another object of consumer lust, discovered through a link on the Arcane Times web site — “Dr, Grordbort’s Infallible Aether Oscillators.” These are full-scale “antique” ’30s-eara sci-fi rayguns made as a side-project by some of the props people at Weta, the special effects house that did the LotR movies and King Kong.

Although the Manmelter 3600ZX model has a certain bulbous charm, my favorite is definitely the FMOM Industries Wave Disrupter Gun. It looks like it popped right off the cover of some 10¢ pulp novel full of many-tentacled aliens and manly space rangers:

Repent, brothers and sisters, for the sin of rampant consumerism! Repent, for the Shopocalypse is near!

Reverend Billy is the creation of Bill Talen, an activist and performance artist from New York City. As head of the Church of Stop Shopping, Billy tours with the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir and preaches a message of revival — revival of the days when local merchants were the way people shopped, and when big box retail chains weren’t shutting down main streets all across America and around the world. Borrowing the style of charismatic televangelists, Talen carries the word of the God that is Not a Product forth into the hostile environments of mega-malls and Wal-Mart Supercenter parking lots. He has also been known to exorcise Starbucks cash registers.

If you’re at all concerned with keeping small businesses alive in the face of the big-box juggernaut, Reverend Billy should at least be good for a laugh and a nod of agreement. If you’re of a more activist mindset… well, I understand he could use a few good tenors in his choir.

(Props: AnomalousNYC’s photo entitled Can I get an Amen?)