We got Cox cable based phone service and internet last month. We had planned on using a wireless router for our laptops. However we can’t get the router to work. The router claims it can use windows XP which we have but all we get is a message sayiny it can’t support the device.

Could our pc be too old? It is about 7-8 years old.

Amma, I am frustrated today with my dilemma. I am writing this just to went out. I am a 30 year old male presently in U.S. for past 8 years. I have a younger sis happily married with a kid here in U.S, while my parents who have retired from their careers stay in India. I have got a Master’s in Mech. Engineering from a U.S. universty and have been working as a Sr. Mechanical Engineer in a fortune 100 company. I am a high acheiver and presently working on my part-time M.B.A from a top20 business school. I intend to acheive a lot professionally and have a well chalked out plan. I am really persistent in things I do and I acheive what I want no matter how may times or how long it takes. I believe in what I believe and do not get swayed so easily. This might be one of the reason why I chose to be a Mechanical Engineer. As a kid I dreamed of being one and persisted in becoming one inspite of social/parental pressure and lure of making high bucks as a S/W engineer. I have been highly successful as a Mechanical Engineer and probably in top 5% of salary bell for my qualifications. To the point:I recently went to India in August with the intention of choosing a girl to get married to. I happened to talk to couple of girls and narrowed it down to 2 of them. I took my time to talk to both of them by phone after meeting them initially. One of the girls was really beautiful 5’8" tall (I am 6’1" and handsome), I always wanted to marry someone really beautiful (We men are suckers to beautiful women) but at the same time I wanted someone who can be really independent and who can take up a career (which I thought would allow her to have individuality and be independent). Since this girl had a M.Sc in Microbiology, I was not sure of her prospects getiing a H1B visa. Moreover I had some concers about her dad’s job (He is Commercial Tax officer) as I do not have high opinion of people taking bribes. Though I hate to judge people, I thought if I marry this girl and later come to know that her Dad takes bribes I will not be able to respect him for which she might feel bad. Added to this the girl said that she will not be able to join me until April or May of next year (My plan is to get married in Feb’ 08 and bring whomever I am going to marry along with me). Due to this reasons and reasons I will mention next I picked the other girl.

The other girl is fairly good-looking 5’5" tall and has completed her M.C.A and working in India for a good S/W company. She is 26 years of age too. When I met her the first time I was really impressed with the soft nature of her father who is working as a Bank Manager. She has a younger sister in U.S who has pursued her Master’s and has been working here. The girl herself has applied for H1B for this year with the help of her sister and was successful in getting it approved. Though the parents offered to give some dowry during marriage, I strictly rejected it as I am totally against the dowry system and I hate to sell myself (and other reason is I believe in the concept of "no free money" and I hate to spend others money). I have been talking to my fiance (over the phone) and found her to be really nice. She told me a lot of things about her family without any reservations except for one thing. She mentioned that her Dad wanted to have a male child initially and was really disppointed when she was born. They left her (my fiance) at her grand mother’s home immediately after she was born and did not take her back for nearly 1&1/2 to 2 years. They named her only after 2 years. I felt really bad about the whole thing when she mentioned this to me and so’t of lost my respect for her parents. She also mentioned that her Dad likes her younger sister more then her though she claimed that both her parents loved her. The one thing my fiance did not mention to me was about her younger sister’s love. Her younger sister has been in love with a guy here in U.S. for past 3 years and has been going around with him. She works as a S/W engineer for a really big Mechanical Engineering company in U.S. (I had a job offer from this company sometime back which I rejected due to my personal reasons). I have a lot of friends working as Mechanical Engineers in this company and happened to know about this love-relationship of the younger sister while talking to my friends casually. I consider myself a liberal and I did not feel anything wrong about it. I totally understood why my future-brides parents would not mention about their younger daughter’s love-courtship to me/my parents (due to the conservative Indian societical attitude). During our normal conversation I told my fiance that I knew about her sister’s relationship with her boyfriend and was okay with it. Then she mentioned to me that the guys (who is in love with her sister) parents approached my fiance’s parents about marrying her sister sometime back but the girls parents wanted them to wait until they can marry of their elder daughter. I talked to her younger sister and felt her to be really nice girl. We are officially supposed to get engaged on Nov 25th’ 07(without me being in India – its pretty normal in South India) and get married on Feb 15th. While talking to my fiance yesterday she told me that she will not join me after getting married as her parents want to her to attend her sister’s wedding in april-may timeframe.

I felt that they were trying to access my reaction to this through her though they haven’t mentioned any of this to my parents. I am so pissed off now with her parent’s attitude who are planning for their younger daughter’s marriage even before the elder gets married. Looking at all this I suddenly felt the parents are trying to get rid of my fiance somehow. They seem to treat her like a ‘loser’. Now looking at all this I am frustrated and am having second thoughts about the engagement. Is it better to call of now before I develop more ill feeling for her parents and her? I hate to be tagged a loser, please advise.

With the following credentials, what is the best job available?:

Master’s Degree in Business Administration
Fluent in Spanish
Fluent in Russian
Fluent in English
8 Years of Business Management Experience (including upper-middle management)

I am at my first ut thinking of business manyear in college, undecided on a major, bagement. How long will it take me to finish this major? 2,4,6,7,8 years? Also if its possible whats the Pros and Cons about majoring in business management. Im trying to be in the bank management when I grow up, am I on the right track? Sorry for so much questions, but its my future. Thank you all in advance.

hi all~ there are 3 issues here; first the background –

i’m the fiancee of a great guy and one of my best friends and her husband hired him in mid-2009 to work in their small biz shop. (My fiance also counted them as his friends; he has his own history with them. They’ve been friends with me 8 years, with some time off cause we were living in different states; a little less for him.)

They spoke to us that my fiance could really be the guy for the long-term, they want to groom him, and well, my fiance was excited. The nature of what they sell is *very* specific and you might say a little controversial and I personally have literally not met anyone in my major metropolitan area who would a) have that specific knowledge or b) truly care as much as my fiance did about his work and my friends’ business. My fiance created a product that went viral soon after it was placed for sale — it received coverage in a major newspaper. My fiance’s freaking smart.

well – first time they let my fiance go because their small biz was broke – they literally showed us the bank account statements – and they couldn’t afford to pay him. Fine. A week or so later they apparently realized their mistake and hired him back. He had extreme loyalty to them, and they had hired him to replace TWO employees. Well, as weeks progressed and my friends the business owners still hadn’t set systems in place for organization and work process, my fiance began to hear his boss tell him to work more quickly, multi-task more, take less time on quality. My fiance did the best he could and tried to be understanding. Long story short the male biz owner called my fiance on a Sunday night right after he had put in a half day of work on the weekend to say, sorry, too slow, things are still too backed up, we need someone in here who can do everything faster, you’re out of a job.

My fiance was BLINDSIDED. He was in *grief*. Actual literal grief. My heart ached for him, and I felt foolish for being so optimistic in the first place. My fiance, by all my observations ( i’m aware i have a bias ) was the very best and most *trustworthy* person they’ll hope to find. I fully respect that a business owner can run his/her business as he sees fit. My thing is, I feel there was so much missing in terms of communication, smarts and basic respect from them while he was on the job… I saw sides of them I’d never seen before, and I was disappointed.

issue A) – my own personal problems with my female friend the biz owner; I feel ignored and cast aside. One month before they fired him, my female friend had been very difficult to get responses from via phone or email, not responding to messages, if we would run into each other afterwards, I always heard the refrain of "sorry I’ve been busy". Usually I would have to place calls to her just to be social. One time when she and I were face to face at the shop I invited her to lunch, she said yeah, definitely, we’ll do lunch next week. I said great… but no follow up from her, nothing. I understand busy-ness. I work full time and got lots going on and keep a busy schedule too.

It was at this time my fiance got me my beautiful custom made engagement ring and we formally announced our engagement. Messages and calls poured in for best wishes and congrats — again, I heard *nothing* from my female friend! She hadn’t seen the ring and expressed no interest in seeing it. I was and continue to be ASTONISHED at this. …But a week or so after her husband FIRED my fiance, she left a message to call her — she wanted to know if we were coming to her Halloween party, apparently as her ‘no hard feelings’ gesture. I could only laugh. Here we were, newly engaged, planning a wedding, with one of us suddenly out of a job, money tight as hell, newly moved into a new apartment — and she’s concerned about if we will grace her goddamned party. Well suffice to say, she got nothing from us. My fiance had been curious if her husband would even call just as a follow-up, or to see if he found a couple cds of his – nothing from him. Meanwhile, I wanted to see what she would be motivated to do in November. No follow up calls, no emails did I receive from her either.

issue B) – is my fiance’s grief/disappointment and lack of respect for our friend the male business owner. Last time we discussed it, my fiance did not want anything to do with them, and him especially. However, the other day my fiance did say that he did not want to hold a grudge against them.

NOW… our WEDDING is coming up- and we have-

issue C) – is I want to respect my fiance and create the best day for him, as he is for me. He has not yet suggested we be in talks with them or invite them to the wedding. I *could* feel good about inviting them, but in my opinion my female friend would have to get right with me first and stop being such a deadbeat friend (it’s always "call me!"). I feel like I’ve made too many overtures that were spurned, and that s
(continued) that she just plain didn’t care about what was going on in my life. Yet we heard through the grapevine that they were worried and upset that we weren’t at their party.

This sucks. We’re in a limbo, no one wants to make a move first, and I’m seriously thinking of enlisting the assistance of a third party — a mutual friend to all four of us. As it stands right now, I’m going to be sad if they wouldn’t be there at the wedding, and sad if they would be there at the wedding without a full airing out of the situation and grievances.

Ideas, plans, admonishments, praise, criticism? Let me know! Thanks.

** p.s. – he and I met, by and large, through this couple. **

I am looking for responses from actual Customer Service Managers in a large corporate office setting. I have Sales Management Experience but this is my first venture into Customer Service Management.

I am in the Chicago land area.

PLEASE NO SALARY.com links I AM LOOKING TO HEAR FROM REAL CUSTOMER SERVICE MANAGERS or HR MANAGER THAT WOULD ACTUALLY KNOW AN ACCURATE ESTIMATE.

Job description requirement below:

Company is a "fluid power" and other industrial products distributor

The ideal candidate must possess 4-8 years of inside sales management experience, excellent leadership, communication, computer and organizational skills. In addition, the candidate should be customer service oriented and have the ability to work in a fast paced environment. This job requires at least 6-10 years of experience in an industrial setting, a college degree (preferred) and the ability to be a team player as well as a team leader.