My mother has been nagging me to check on the internet for ways to keep our home more secure. If you have been reading my blog, you would remember that our house was almost broken into three times over the past few years. Although the burglars did not manage to come into our home, thank God, they did shatter our sense of security. Imagine not enjoying that in your own home.

Since then, my parents have taken various measures to keep our home secure. We have installed CCTV, home alarm system and installed a couple of fire-proof Home Safes to keep our valuables; not only jewelries and heirlooms but also other official documents like passports, birth certificates and college degrees of household members.

Home safes are also great for keeping computer data like external hard disks, pendrives and memory cards or just simple things like photo albums. I don’t know how many people do this at home.

Many people think that safes are just for the office, or perhaps they have underestimated the importance of home security, but there are also home safes of various sizes, designs and budget that are more suitable for home use. In fact, I think that a home safe should be standard in every home, regardless of the value of the house.

A couple of days ago, I had the opportunity to view a show house in a new residential housing development. It was quite a distance from where I am but since it’s a new place with innovative architecture, I thought that I should go and see what it was all about.

The kind of houses that were built is what we know as “town houses”. They are three-storied homes which are great for larger families, or families which have the intention to rent out one floor or something like that.

Although I think that this would make a great investment, seeing that the current economy isn’t good, hence the selling price for these homes is rather low for three stories, I think that what they lack are Stair Lifts. I think that if the developer had the foresight to install stair lifts to each home, they would be more appealing.

Of course, it is not too late for new homeowners to install one for greater accessibility for residents of the house, and offer mobility to children and older adults living in the house that may have difficulty climbing the stairs or may have suffered a temporary disability to the leg.

I think that a homeowner has to be far-sighted in making his home friendlier to people of all physical conditions.

Amidst the pink slip mayhem over the past six months, Fortune, like the magazine does yearly, has commissioned San Francisco’s Great Place to Work Institute to find out which are the top 100 companies to work for in 2009.

San Francisco’s Great Place to Work Institute surveyed over 80,000 employees from 353 American companies to come up with the list which will be published in the February 2009 edition of Fortune magazine.

Below are the top ten best companies to work for in 2009.
1. NetApp
2. Edward Jones
3. Boston Consulting
4. Google
5. Wegmans Food Markets
6. Cisco Systems
7. Genentech Inc.
8. Methodist Hospital System
9. Goldman Sachs
10. Nugget Market

The problem right now for most employees is not how well the company treats them but how possible it is to be laid off within the next one to two years.