Cold therapy nerve damage

Something that I had never considered, despite having had physical therapists use it for my dad in the past, is the potential for damage if cold therapy, commonly used in the treatment of certain muscle or joint injuries, is used improperly or for too extended a length of time.

Being a freelance writer I am all too aware of things such as repetitive strain injury and the danger of carpel tunnel syndrome. Cold therapy, also known as cryotherapy, is often used after surgeries to treat swelling in wrists and hands (or for shoulders, knees and ankles). Used improperly, either for too long or at too cold a setting, cryotherapy can cause serious injury including nerve damage, chronic pain, or frostbite.

O’Hanlon, McCollum & Demerath are experienced cold therapy nerve damage lawyers dealing in product liability claims. If you have been treated with cold therapy and believe that you have suffered injury from improper treatment, then you should check the Texas Injury Lawyer's website and see their cryotherapy lawsuits information page and frequently asked questions.

This post was paid for by the Texas injury law firm O’Hanlon, McCollum & Demerath.

Taxes - Depreciation and Amortization

I've been working on taxes. Let me just say that Depreciation and Amortization is the EVILEST thing that they ever invented for a poor small business owner to have to work their way through. I have everything else sorted out and easy to understand, but each year that form trips me for some reason. :::pounds head on desk::: I give up, I will tackle it again tomorrow. I'll let you know what I figure out on it.

Tax Time: Income from abroad is taxable

It is that time of year again - taxes. The best place to start looking for information is the IRS tax information for business pages at the IRS website, but there is a lot of complicated information to try to sort through there. Where does someone start?

The best place to start is to figure out what your filing status is and what kind of income you will need to report. One key point to remember in this digital age where business can be conducted world-wide is that money you make from doing business overseas is taxable income. See Income from Abroad is Taxable on the IRS website for more information.

It's Just Business to Sell One Barbie for Less... Right?

Wal Mart got news today for selling black Barbies for almost half the price of the same style white Barbies. When the Cafferty File showed it this afternoon I was not sure what to make of it, so I went digging.

Google lead me to the Huffington Post, which has a video from a news broadcast about it, and the video lead me to a site called Guanabee.com, a Latino news site that bills itself as "Spicy Coverage". I had to do a search on their site for "Barbie" to locate the article. Which is from the 1st of March. They updated with a point to the site Funny Junk as their source for the picture.

Note: I advise against visiting Funny Junk, since the only thing they seem to be is a "who can rant louder" forum of people throwing racist and sexist insults back and forth.

So, as for the picture that started it all:

You can see here in a picture that was, from what I can determine, taken by a lady shopping in a Louisianan Wal-Mart, that the store discounted Mattel's Ballerina Teresa dolls (blue dress) from $5.93 down to $3.00 each, while Mattel's Ballerina Barbie (pink dress) remained at the original price of $5.93 each.

Now, the buzz all over the place is that this is something pertaining to racism. The
Cafferty File says that Wal-Mart informed ABC News that this was no more than an effort to clear shelf space in preparation for spring inventory.

A lot of the comments at the Cafferty File point to it being a simple business decision. One product is moving slower means that it is marked down so it will sell at a speed equal to the other product. Had this been a gallon of fat free milk that was marked down beside whole milk, would they be making some kind of commentary on obesity? Or would it be a simple business motivated reduction in a product that was not selling as well as another product by the same company?

I doubt that Wal-Mart did anything other than make a business decision to help move one product at the same rate as a similar product in an effort to clear shelf space, but I welcome input from others on what they think of the situation. I checked Mattel's site, but I did not see anything to indicate any press releases on their perspective on the issue.

(Any comments that are of an attacking nature will not make it past moderation)

Open Office - Full Office Suite for home and small businesses

Open Office
http://www.openoffice.org
Windows 2000/XP/20003/Vista, Solaris, Linux, Mac OS X

Open Office is what is called an Open Source program. This means that the program is free for anyone to use in any manner they desire – even for running a business.

Open Office is a full office suite program that includes:

• Writer – Writer is a very user friendly word processor that allows you to create written documents as simple as a basic letter or as complex as any desktop publishing program on the market today.
• Calc – Calc is Open Office's spreadsheet program and is fast to learn for anyone that has any experience with spreadsheet programs, even those who have no experience (like me) will pick up on how to create basic spreadsheets in no time at all. You can create multiple pages in a Calc document and use the SUM formulas to display a total from one sheet on a separate sheet, allowing you to create separate sheets for each month and compile the totals for each on the first page.
• Impress – Create multimedia presentations with both 2D and 3D artwork as well as animations, multi-pane views and create PDF, HTML or Flash presentations.
• Draw – I use GIMP, so have not had much experience with the Open Office art program. The little I have seen of its capabilities have been impressive, so I recommend anyone that will be creating presentations with Open Office investigate the Draw feature.
• Base – Another part of Open Office I have little experience with, the Base allows you to manipulate a database and create tables, forms and reports.

The very nature of Open Office allows the average user to be a member of the creative team. If you need a feature that Open Office does not have, it is as easy as either getting in touch with someone in the design community that can assist you in bringing the feature to the program, or even (if you have the programming skill to do it) accessing the source code and programming the feature in yourself. Yes, that's right, the source code for Open Office is as free as the program itself.

Sounding too good to be true? Afraid there might be some kind of catch I have overlooked? Open Office has over 20 years of development behind it and uses the Open-Source license, which means that the program is and always will be 100% free. A freedom that can never be revoked.

I stronly encourage you to investigate Open Office (http://www.openoffice.org/) before you consider buying any office suite. 100,000,000 downloaders can't all be wrong.