Matt Bernier

Often, when people ask me if I need anything my canned response is “A pound of Fifties”.

Up until about 10 minutes ago, I never was asked how much money was in a lb of 50s.  Leave it to my boss to ask.

So, I quickly did the math.

Apparently, a dollar bill weighs 1 gram. (I am going to assume this site is correct, even though it looks less than reputable…it is the internets). Going with this math, I calculated that 1 pound equals about 453.59 grams, approximate to 454 (because this is money I hope to get some day, I rounded up).

This means that if you calculate grams times $50, you get $22,700.

So, if I ask for a pound of fifties, you now know that I am looking for $22,700.

Except, that if you know currency rules/regulations, you know that a dollar bill does not have to be whole in order to be considered legal tender.  It actually just has to have the denomination visible and both serial numbers in tact.

So, lets consider that if you ripped the corners off all the bills and assume that the corners constituted about  1/6 of the total weight of a bill.  This was done by borrowing a bill from a friend, folding the corner over, then folding the bill across that line to get about 6 sections.  I assumed that the two corners from one side plus the two corners from the other side constituted about 1/6 the total surface area and therefore the total weight.  I am not accounting for the metallic strip that is in the bill.

This means that I could fit 1/6 of  the 454 more bills into the pound.  Which adds up to 75.666 more bills (76, because we are talking about money I want to receive).  This adds up to $3,800 more.

Which means, that if I had an ideal no corners pound of fifties, I would have $22,700 + $3,800 = $26,500

Yes please, and thank you.

Now, to go along with one of the conversations that happened in the original thread where I got my most trustworthy information about how much a dollar bill weighs, they discussed Ocean’s Eleven.  Where the characters stole $150million.

Using $100 bills, this is 1,500,000 bills.  At 1 gram per, that equates to 3,303.9 pounds.  There were eleven of them. That means ~300 pounds per person.  Or, if you remember how they each carried out 2 bags, 150lbs per bag.  That is a lot of weight, especially for the smaller and older of the group.  However, if you factor in the adrenaline of stealing money from 3 casinos in Las Vegas, underneath their own noses, I believe they could have easily managed this weight.

Our national deficit is $11,615,800,451,825, according to the US National debt clock, which equates to 255,854,636 pounds of $100 bills.  That’s a lot.  The average weight of an American male is 191 pounds. This means that our deficit weighs as much as 1,339,553 American males.  That is more than the entire population of Jacksonville, Florida’s Greater Metro Area.

So, the next time you ask me if I “need anything”, and I reply with “a pound of fifties”, I sure hope you have a spare $26,500 laying around.

This post is a continuation of my post about managing my tasks, projects, and responsibilities.  There are links to the other posts at the bottom of this post.

Lists In Notepads

Recently, I found myself writing everything down in a notepad.  I was writing all of my personal to do items as well as my client and work to do items in the one list.  I quickly realized that it was getting to be too much in one list and maybe even too much for a single notepad.

My solution was to run to Target and get some new stronger notepads that will withstand the wear and tear of being transported in my backpack to and from work and all around Denver.  The notepads I used in the past were either legal pads, half-legal pads, or bound notepads.

The notepads I chose are “Cambridge Limited Business Notepads”, because of the quality binding, covers, and thicker paper.  Also, they are taller than they are wider so I can keep good long lists in them.

I have two of these notepads, one for my personal stuff and current to do list.  The second notepad is where I keep my client and project information.

Every client or project has their own page, where I keep information about what is currently going on, the todo list, and ideas I may have for their sites.  I am constantly flipping through the pages and writing something down, because I can’t remember everything.

When I finish an item on one of my lists or decide not to do it, I just cross it out. Sometimes, I get to the point where a page is mostly crossed out.  At this point, I just rip it out and start a new page for that project.  I write down everything that wasn’t crossed out on the previous pages and go about my business.

This process, while time consuming to set up, has made keeping my ideas and project information all in one place easier.  The only real downside to this is if I lose the notepad.  So, I just keep a strict rule to keep the notepads with my laptop so that I will not misplace them

Conclusion

I hope that he information I have provided in this thread was useful in helping your stay organized and sane (disorganization makes me crazy!).   If you have any ideas or comments, please leave them!

Other Posts In This Thread

• Introduction
• Email

This post is a continuation of my post about managing my tasks, projects, and responsibilities.  There are links to the other posts at the bottom of this post.

Email

I have clients that insist on using just email to communicate, which is fine with me because I use GMail, which lets me keep emails in threads instead of as individual emails.  This makes keeping a conversation in control very easy.  However, my inbox is constantly full.  For the last couple of weeks, I have noticed that when I empty my inbox out before bed I have between 20 and 50 emails waiting for me in the morning.  Most of them are status updates, automated messages, or twitter messages but it is still a lot of emails to go through in the morning and my inbox would get full of emails.

I needed a way to organize the emails, so that I could find them easily and reliably.  I also wanted the emails to be categorized automatically without missing them.  GMail to the rescue! They have a labels feature, which can be automated with filters.  I found that the filters got to be too numerous though, and I was wishing for nested folder (well labels here) functionality.  I quickly went searching and found a Firefox plugin that will turn your labels into “folders” and will allow nesting.  The plugin is called Better GMail.

All I had to do was format my labels like a directory path.  A good example is “Clients/Matt Bernier”.  When I view my Gmail account without the plugin this can be annoying, but I just make sure I have the plugin, and problem solved.

With the filters I am able to make them apply and still leave the label in the inbox, so I almost never miss an email. The only time I would is if it went to spam, which almost never happens.

Other Posts In This Thread

• Introduction

I am constantly trying new things to keep myself organized, on time, and accountable to my clients.  I have found this increasingly difficult as I add clients, projects, and responsibilities.  I am going to start chronicling how I manage my tasks, my clients, emails, and general to-dos in the next couple of posts.

I use a number of tools to manage myself, in this introduction I am going to go over the easiest ones to explain.

BaseCamp

I have and continue to use BaseCamp with my clients, which helps me to keep all of my client data in the same place.  Also, they provide an easy place for me to communicate with my clients, and them with me.  It is a great tool for project management and has saved my butt a couple times.

Google Calendar

I use Google Calendar to handle all of my scheduling.  Whenever I have something time sensitive that I need to make sure to remember, I put it into Google Calendar.

They will send me a text (SMS) message and an email before the event, at whatever interval I want.  Sometimes I know I will be in the clouds so I will have the reminder 30 minutes, or 15 minutes before I am due for a meeting.  Other times, I know I am going to need to drive, so I will figure out my drive time plus 15-30 minutes before my meeting, that way I have enough time to get ready and drive to the meeting.

Along with these features, Google Calendar has export and import functionality that allows me to have my calendar on my IPhone, my home computer, and my work computer.

Paper Notepads

I keep lists on notepads, about everything. I will detail this more later.