All posts by Mark Jacobsen

Weekly Round-Up: 1/5/14 to 1/11/14

The Weekly Round-Up is a once weekly collection of my #1Aday daily shares. Hope you find something of interest!

Mon 1/6
Daniel Wallen @TheWallenWay on 20 Simple But Powerful Changes You Can Make To Simplify Your Life – http://mjg2.net/l/1905

Tue 1/7
This One Minute Video May Help You Save Someone’s Life – http://mjg2.net/l/1906

Wed 1/8
10 Health Myths That Just Won’t Die, Debunked by Science – http://mjg2.net/l/1907

Thu 1/9
Don’t Always Aim to Meet Unrealistic Deadlines – http://mjg2.net/l/1908

Fri 1/10
LPT: Open letter to car drivers from a part-time truck driver : LifeProTips – http://mjg2.net/l/1909

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Disclaimer: Thoughts and opinions are my own, and do not reflect the views of any employer, family member, friend, or anyone else. Some links may be affiliate links, but I don't link to anything I don't use myself.

Now Reading Mini-Missions

Reading Courtney Carver’s latest book: Mini-Missions for Simplicity

Interesting so far. Anyone else out there read it? Thoughts?

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Disclaimer: Thoughts and opinions are my own, and do not reflect the views of any employer, family member, friend, or anyone else. Some links may be affiliate links, but I don't link to anything I don't use myself.

Weekly Round-Up: 12/29/13 to 1/4/14

The Weekly Round-Up is a once weekly collection of my #1Aday daily shares. Hope you find something of interest!

Mon 12/30
Marla Walters @cruelironing on 10 Rules of Etiquette Everyone Should Know (and Follow!) – http://mjg2.net/l/1899

Tue 12/31
Kiyah Duffey @KiyahDuffey: a beautiful body – http://mjg2.net/l/1902

Thu 1/2
Joshua Fields Millburn @JFM on The Success Template – http://mjg2.net/l/1903

Fri 1/3
Lynn Truong @lynntruong says 68% of Shoppers Are Getting Ripped Off – http://mjg2.net/l/1904

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Disclaimer: Thoughts and opinions are my own, and do not reflect the views of any employer, family member, friend, or anyone else. Some links may be affiliate links, but I don't link to anything I don't use myself.

Saving $1000 on Auto Insurance

We recently received our auto insurance bill in the mail, and for once I decided to “just see” how much of a difference it could make going with a different company. At over $2k for the year (keep in mind MI is a no-fault state) I was hoping to knock a couple hundred bucks off. I started off as I would imagine anyone would do these days and took right to the internet. First stop… State Farm. After entering the data they wanted I waited eagerly and… more expensive. I almost stopped figuring “everyone is going to be the same”.

Still something pushed me onward even with children who needed things wining in the background. Next up I hit Progressive. This time I got a little encouragement with a quote around $700 every six months. I played around with the numbers and got it down to around $550 every six. We were talking some serious cash now. How could roughly the same benefit cost nearly 1/2 what I was paying??

Figuring it didn’t hurt to keep looking I decided to also give Geico a try. This time I was shocked to get a quote even lower! After looking over the numbers I chose to actually increase some of the limits and still kept it around $550 every 6 months.

In the end I chose Geico because for the same rate as Progressive I got more coverage, and still wound up paying nearly 1/2 what I was with AAA. When calling in to setup the coverage I was told that the primary discount was for an excellent credit rating, so for anyone reading this, make sure you’re paying your bills on time, in-full every month.

For those who want a breakdown of the actual coverage numbers, here they are…

Coverage AAA Progressive Geico
BI Liability $100k/$300k $100k/$300k $300k/$500k
Property Damage Liability (PD) $50k $100k $100k
Limited property Damage Liability “Included” $1k $1k
Property Protection (PP) “Included” $1M $1M
Uninsured Motorist BI $20k/$40k $100k/$300k $300k/$500k
Deductible/car $550 basic $500 comp/$1k collission broad form $500 broad form

The moral of the story? Go check your auto insurance coverage and rates then go comparison shopping. No guarantees you’ll see the savings I did, but it just may save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars a year.

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Disclaimer: Thoughts and opinions are my own, and do not reflect the views of any employer, family member, friend, or anyone else. Some links may be affiliate links, but I don't link to anything I don't use myself.

Weekly Round-Up: 12/22/13 to 12/28/13

The Weekly Round-Up is a once weekly collection of my #1Aday daily shares. Hope you find something of interest!

Mon 12/23
The Minimalist Mom @racheljonat reminds us: You Can Stop Shopping Now – http://mjg2.net/l/1901

Tue 12/24
Adam Penenberg @Penenberg challenged hackers to investigate him and what they found out is chilling – http://mjg2.net/l/1896

Thu 12/26
Sean Blanda @SeanBlanda gives 10 Tips for an Awesome Coffee Meeting – http://mjg2.net/l/1897

Fri 12/27
Jegede Abayomi @abayomi_jegede tells us about 10 Habits of The Richest People in the World – http://mjg2.net/l/1898

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Disclaimer: Thoughts and opinions are my own, and do not reflect the views of any employer, family member, friend, or anyone else. Some links may be affiliate links, but I don't link to anything I don't use myself.

Weekly Round-Up: 12/15/13 to 12/21/13

The Weekly Round-Up is a once weekly collection of my #1Aday daily shares. Hope you find something of interest!

Mon 12/16
Amy Morin @AmyMorinLCSW on 8 Scientific Secrets Of A Happy Marriage – http://mjg2.net/l/1890

Tue 12/17
Peter Shankman @petershankman On Entitlement, Regardless Of Your Generation <- this. So much this. - http://mjg2.net/l/1892

Wed 12/18
Why 9 to 5 is a Joke (And How to Deal) – http://mjg2.net/l/1893

Thu 12/19
MMM @MrMoneyMustache tells you how to Get Rich With The Position of Strength – http://mjg2.net/l/1894

Fri 12/20
How to Plant Ideas in Someone’s Mind – http://mjg2.net/l/1895

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Disclaimer: Thoughts and opinions are my own, and do not reflect the views of any employer, family member, friend, or anyone else. Some links may be affiliate links, but I don't link to anything I don't use myself.

Weekly Round-Up: 12/8/13 to 12/14/13

The Weekly Round-Up is a once weekly collection of my #1Aday daily shares. Hope you find something of interest!

Mon 12/9
Mark Panay @redeye on 13 Productivity Tips from People Getting Stuff Done – http://mjg2.net/l/1887

Tue 12/10
MMM @MrMoneyMustache says we’re Predictably Irrational – http://mjg2.net/l/1888

Thu 12/12
As a father of girls this makes me sad: How the Media Failed Women in 2013 – http://mjg2.net/l/1900

Fri 12/13
jlcollinsnh: Case Study #4: Using the 4% rule and asset allocations – http://mjg2.net/l/1889

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Disclaimer: Thoughts and opinions are my own, and do not reflect the views of any employer, family member, friend, or anyone else. Some links may be affiliate links, but I don't link to anything I don't use myself.

DB2: How to find records with non-printable characters (SQLSTATE 01517)

If you run a select statement and get the following error…

"SQLSTATE 01517: A character that could not be converted was 
replaced with a substitute character."

… you can use the TRANSLATE function to strip away printable chars, and compare that to a zero length string like so…

SELECT * 
FROM XX.TBL 
WHERE TRANSLATE(UPPER(FIELD_X),'','ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ1234567890!@#$%^&*()-=+/\{}[];:.,<>? ') <> '' 
FOR READ ONLY WITH UR;
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Disclaimer: Thoughts and opinions are my own, and do not reflect the views of any employer, family member, friend, or anyone else. Some links may be affiliate links, but I don't link to anything I don't use myself.

Weekly Round-Up: 12/1/13 to 12/7/13

The Weekly Round-Up is a once weekly collection of my #1Aday daily shares. Hope you find something of interest!

Mon 12/2
Joshua Fields Millburn @JFM on Five Steps Toward a More Meaningful Holiday Season – http://mjg2.net/l/1891

Tue 12/3
Brianna Wiest @briaeliza – 18 Things Everyone Should Start Making Time For Again – I agree with some of them. – http://mjg2.net/l/1883

Wed 12/4
Leo @zen_habis on The Necessary Art of Subtraction – http://mjg2.net/l/1884

Thu 12/5
Michelle Schroeder @senseofcents on 10 Things Successful People Do Differently To Reach Their Dreams – http://mjg2.net/l/1885

Fri 12/6
Kimberly Weisul @weisul on How I Became the Kind of Person Who Can Work a Room – http://mjg2.net/l/1886

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Disclaimer: Thoughts and opinions are my own, and do not reflect the views of any employer, family member, friend, or anyone else. Some links may be affiliate links, but I don't link to anything I don't use myself.

How to concatenate multiple columns in a DB2 select statement to return a single column

Use “||” like so…

SELECT LastName||', '||FirstName 
FROM [schema].[table]

If one of the columns is numeric you’ll probably want to convert to CHAR and TRIM like so…

SELECT LastName||', '||FirstName||' - '||TRIM(CHAR(EmplId))
FROM [schema].[table]
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Disclaimer: Thoughts and opinions are my own, and do not reflect the views of any employer, family member, friend, or anyone else. Some links may be affiliate links, but I don't link to anything I don't use myself.