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[caption id="attachment_10016" align="alignnone" width="620"] Photo: Sal Cincotta[/caption] Terrible customer service experiences are so common -- and so commonly frustrating -- that websites like Yelp and Urban Spoon rely on them for their business. Because, of course, very few people have such blindingly good experiences that they merit a review.

It's my culture. It's where I come from.

[caption id="attachment_9998" align="alignnone" width="620"] Image via Flickr[/caption] In you're a freelancer, chances are your friends are jealous.  After all, there are tons of perks to the job, including (but not limited to): more time at home with your BFF the couch, the ability to spend part of your day in yoga pants without people judging you, and the fact that you're basically your own boss.

[caption id="attachment_9959" align="alignnone" width="620"] Photo via Flickr[/caption] This month, thousands of writers will commit to grinding out close to 2,000 words per day as they take part in National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, a writing project-gone-internet obsession now in its 15th year. The point of NaNoWriMo?

Any producer or engineer that’s visited another studio or worked with someone new has had the moment where you glance out of the corner of your eye as someone else sits down in front of the console and whips out some super-slick Pro Tools shortcut you’ve never seen before. You either calmly pretend you know exactly what they’re doing to save face (while trying to glance over their shoulder next time they aren’t looking) or blurt out “WHOA!

[caption id="attachment_9938" align="alignnone" width="620"] Image via Flickr[/caption] Vulnerability, though it's often been historically viewed as weakness in business, has gotten a lot of attention lately. From the confessional nature of many successful CEO's blogs (think Richard Branson and Rand Fishkin) to Dr.

[caption id="attachment_9926" align="alignnone" width="620"] Photo by Ian Sane via Flickr[/caption] In a recently-published paper written in 1959, author Isaac Asimov hit on an idea that now, seems fairly ahead of its time: That, while the act of creating is something most artists and thinkers and makers prefer to do alone,  new ideas and concepts aren't born in a vacuum. "My feeling is that as far as creativity is concerned, isolation is required," he explained.

Creative costumes are pretty much always a Halloween hit -- especially if they're topical, involve a pun, or are otherwise a little outside the box -- but before the days of pop-up Halloween stores and online ordering, costumes were creative because they had to be. Whether it was a crafty mom who was especially adept at the sewing machine, or clever kids who put in the work on found objects and cardboard, the Halloween costumes of previous eras involved a lot of innovative thinking and handiwork.