Fox News Channel's Hannity show sent a crew to Virginia's political rite of spring, the Shad Planking and obviously their news team realized that Joe and I are experts on matters of beer, politics and shad. Watch the stunning excerpt from their segment below or catch the whole clip on Fox News Channel's website.

...Unless you are sharing an STD which most would agree is not a good thing to share. Fortunately for all readers I will not be sharing anything of that nature. No, today I am sharing a great article on sharing via social media.  Mashable.com lists twenty ways for you to propagate online content using your favorite networks and sites . Below are the first five suggestions that Mashable offers but you should definitely take a look at their entire list.

1. Using Twitter to Tweet and Share: Perhaps the fastest and most effective way to share a great blog post is through Twitter. Sharing or retweeting a link in Twitter can spread like wildfire. Use a URL shortener such as tinyurl or bit.ly to shorten links to fit within 140 characters.

2. Posting to Facebook: Sharing a blog post on the world’s largest social network is as simple as going to the Facebook homepage and posting a link.

3. Digg it: Not only will you help bring that blog post one step closer to reaching the front page of the news site Digg (which will spread it even further), but all of your Digg friends will see it as well.

4. Post on MySpace Profile: Don’t forget about the world’s second largest social network when sharing your favorite articles. Post the link to your MySpace profile so your friends can enjoy it too.

5. Posting to LinkedIn: Some blog posts are worthy of being shared by your business network on LinkedIn. Post a link to the Network Updates area in the homepage.

If you have an email account and use it for it for work there are two absolute certainties you will face: 1) There are lots of great deals for v1agra and c1alis for the discriminating email shopper and 2) The ambiguous email request for help or support with a problem will blow a good chunk out of your otherwise productive afternoon (and perhaps evening if they time it right). The Productivity 501 blog has the quintessential example of the ambiguous request:

My computer doesn’t work. Help!!!!!
– Jane

An email like this will guarantee three things: 1) Frustrated tech support 2) Multiple back and forth emails to clarify and remedy the problem and 3) an ultimately frustrated user. Emails requesting an action of someone should be as concrete yet as concise as possible to clarify the problem and work towards a quick resolution. Productivity 501 has some great tips for crafting more efficient emails that will reduce confusion and result in a remedy to the request.

• Write from the reader’s standpoint - Make sure you pay attention to the knowledge and experience level of your reader.  Define unfamiliar acronyms and use their language.
  
  
• Include necessary background information - I will often write a short email asking a question and then at the bottom add additional background or clarifying information.  For example, if I’m writing to someone who is new in their position, I may include a bit of background history explaining the current state of affairs.  By putting it after my signature, they can continue reading if they have questions, but it does not make my message overly long for people who are already familiar with everything that is going on.
  
  
• Anticipate questions - As you compose your email, keep asking yourself “what questions will this statement likely prompt from the reader?” Sometimes this may lead you to add another sentence that will clarify your meaning.  Sometimes it may prompt you to add an attachment of related information.  In some situations, it might even make sense to put a FAQ (frequently asked questions) at the end of your message.
  
  
• Keep messages short - Long messages tend to get ignored.  Try to keep your message short.  If it needs to be longer, be sure the first paragraph gives a good summary.  I’ve found that writing a one or two paragraph message, my signature, and then the bulk of supporting data (after my signature) helps increase the chance that they will read the first part of my message.

Consumerist links to an entertaining, informative and very well designed video illustrating the credit crisis by Jonathan Jarvis. If you are unfamiliar with all of the elements that led to the current economic debacle this presentation does an excellent job identifying the players, their actions and the resulting mess.

Take a few moments to watch:

I think I am pretty good at working productively on my own, especially after five years of operating from a home office. The problem I continue to struggle with is ceasing work at the end of the day.

I am sure the prospect of having difficulty terminating the work day is hard for some to fathom but for remote workers it is the day to day reality. It becomes even more of a reality when the niche of your enterprise and the outcomes of your labor meet equilibrium at your point of passion.  

Simon Mackie with the Web Worker Daily has a great post about knowledge workers facing this plight:

One of the things that I struggle with most when I’m working from home is wrapping up and finishing for the day. Quite often, I’ll mean to finish at, say, 6:30 pm, but then another email drops into the old inbox, or I’ll move onto “just one more” task, and before I know it it’s late into the night and I haven’t even started thinking about dinner.

When working from home, separating “work” and “home” is one of my biggest challenges. I’ve developed a few strategies to try to deal with this over the years.

This is an accurate description of my own life/labor struggle and one for which I continue to seek solutions. Mackie offers a couple strategies that telecommuting workers should consider implementing to better manage themselves during the workday:

• Have a clearly defined end time and stick to it. - Having a goal end time also means that I try to get all my tasks done for the day by that time which makes my afternoon more productive.
  
  
• If you need to use the Internet after the work day is finished, don’t open your work email. - If I open my work email and see an important email, I’ll be tempted to want to open it and deal with it. By making sure that I don’t open my work account in the evening, that temptation is removed.

My personal project is to work on the former objective of setting a fixed end time for work activity. I think the biggest challenge to this fixed limit is the habit of emergencies. By this I mean the frequent end of the day requests and actions that require immediate attention. For me I find that their consistent appearance has created a habit behavior of a floating end time for work.

As for the latter strategy, I've done my best to break away from the focus sucking nature of incoming email alerts and schedule times for email correspondence. Unfortunately I don't think I could ever break away from reading after hours correspondence in my industry.

Be sure to take a look at Web Worker Daily for some of their other great tips for working from home.

The Times-Dispatch is reporting that Governor Kaine has struck a compromise deal to eliminate noxious and poisonous second hand smoke from Virginia's dining establishments.

"The compromise strikes a fair balance between the rights of smokers who choose to enjoy a legal product and the rights of other individuals who want to enjoy a smoke-free environment when eating at a restaurant," said House Speaker William Howell, R-Stafford. "This legislation is all about finding opportunities for cooperation and compromise where possible. And, where state leaders can find and share such common ground, we should.”

The agreement makes Virginia part of a growing list of states passing legislation to curb smoking in restaurants. Twenty-three other states and Puerto Rico have passed bans on smoking indoors at bars and restaurants.

I will be interested to see the compromise aggreement and the potential positive outcomes from this much needed legislation.

UPDATE: I just received a press release from the Governor's office with details of the compromise deal. It states:

The legislation will ban smoking in nearly all restaurants across the Commonwealth, allowing narrow exceptions for private clubs and restaurants with a designated smoking room that is physically separated and independently ventilated from non-smoking dining areas.

This is a fair deal, we'll have to see how dining establishments work to accomodate this new regulation into their business. I suspect a great deal will opt to eliminate smoking entirely as the burden of physical seperation and independent ventilation is a costly capital improvement. Considering the recession's impact on dining establishments I doubt businesses will be allocating precious funds towards improvements for an ever shrinking and burdensome subclass of customers.

The ability of Virginians -- including convicted felons, the mentally ill and spousal abusers -- to go to a gun show, purchase a firearm from a private seller and not be subjected to a background check was preserved yesterday.

- The Richmond Times-Dispatch

The priorities of the Virginia legislature continue to astound me.

"People really hate you, and they're starting to hate us because we're hanging out with you. And you have to help us deal with that."
-- House Financial Services Chair Barney Frank's advice to banking industry execs, mult., 2/4.

H/T Hotline

The Oil Drum links to an awesome graph simplifying the chain of past, present and future events tying peak petroleum production with our current financial debacle and future debacles. Here's a clip of his chart:

Take a look at The Oil Drum for a better version with nicer charts and a full economic analysis.