I've had a few boring jobs in my day, but the most depressing one was my first job out of college. I was bored stiff, and I didn't want to be.

It was an exciting job for a then-22-year-old. I had landed a job as an office production assistant, working at the studios of 20th Century Fox. One of my corny highlights was looking out a window into a parking lot one afternoon and seeing Sean Connery get out of the car. I had arrived, sort of.

But while the office needed help, it turned out that they didn't need all that much help. Within a few days, I had organized the filing cabinets, ran several errands and helped get this television production office running smoothly. But I was an assistant of an assistant, and after about a week there, it started to become apparent that there was no longer much for me to do. Every day became more and more boring, and I became more and more desperate to look busy. I think it worked too well. When I resorted to polishing the picture frames on the wall, the assistant came over to me and said, "I think we both know what has to happen..."

So I was "let go," but given two week's severance pay, which was really very decent of them. And then I promptly found a job where I was even more bored, and the location -- an office building miles and miles from Hollywood -- wasn't exciting either.

I won't bore everyone by going through my history of every boring job I've ever had, but I've been thinking about my earlier stabs at gainful employment because of a fun story in The Orlando Sentinel earlier this week about "boreout," a condition coined by Swiss authors and business consultants, Phillippe Rothlin and Peter Werder.

I've worked for some rotten bosses (thankfully, not the case here at WalletPop, smooch smooch), but my travails pale in comparison to the schmucks who hustle ads for Men's Journal. As a publicity stunt for an adventure issue, its publisher, Will Schenck, had its ad clients vote on a challenge for his crew. The "Dare the Rep" contest offered a choice of such staff-motivating tasks as climbing the Empire State Building (on the inside, thankfully), attending pro wrestling school, fire walking and winter surfing.

The winning challenge, though, proved to be swimming with sharks. According to Ken Wheaton in Advertising Age, the 15-person staff ended up at the Adventure Aquarium in Camden, NJ, in a pool full of sharks of several varieties (but no great whites). Thankfully, there were no incidents. No ad reps were bitten, no sharks were conned into buying a quarter-page in the fall issue.

The next time your boss peeves you, just remember the tank full of sharks. For me, the trip to Camden would have been enough to turn in my notice.

Have a story about the worst boss you've ever had? Share, please!

Although some people have the knowledge, resources and savvy needed to successfully play the stock market for themselves, many other people don't. For the people who lack the time or talent to manage their own portfolios, there are funds that will handle the technical work for you. In oversimplified terms, you simply place your money into your fund account and let them grow it for you.

I found an article at Investopedia which is the best short course about funds that I have ever run across. By understanding the elements that define a particular fund, better choices can be made about how to structure your fund program to accomplish your goals. The article discusses life cycle funds, fund allocations, risk assessment, investing style and fund management. You'll also find guidance about fund fees, diversity and personal investment goals.

Based on what I have learned over time about investment funds, my personal fund portfolio is structured for diversity, conservative protection, and both long and short term growth. I have 20% of my fund assets allocated to global investments, 20% in real estate securities, 20% in small cap venture funds and the remaining 40% is in fixed income holdings. Because of my asset allocation structure I may have missed out on some big gains here or there, but overall I'm pleased with my performance. My fund portfolio shows about 23% total growth over the last three years and my portfolio structure has proven to be modestly bullet proof, yielding a loss of only 0.73% through the recent credit industry foibles.

Even if you don't plan on investing in a fund for yourself, if you have a retirement plan at work, those assets are probably in investment funds and you probably have some control over the allocation of your assets. It pays to have an understanding about how funds work and how your goals affect the way you might tune your own retirement account. The article at Investopedia can be a helpful tool and it does a great job of making investment funds easy to understand.

SEC Chairman Christopher Cox thinks that the internet should be a great place for investors to have access to broader information about the companies they're considering investing in than ever before.

According to The Wall Street Journal (subscription required): "Mr. Cox also is expected to put up for final vote Wednesday a proposed rule that would enable companies to create online shareholder forums where investors and management could exchange thoughts, establishing a kind of chat room to improve communication. Opposing that model is the AARP, the lobby group for adults 50 and older, which said its studies show that doing so would result in fewer of its members participating in shareholder elections."

Huh? Why would being allowed to interact with management online make people less likely to vote in corporate elections? Isn't that kind of like saying the YouTube presidential debates would reduce voter turnout?

An online forum for shareholders and managers is a fabulous idea. One of the biggest corporate governance concerns in America is that executives are isolated from the owners of their companies. With notable exceptions, it's hard for investors to get the ear of a corporate executive to ask questions or provide ideas for boosting shareholder value.

Online forums would be a way to facilitate that, and it's something that should be cheered.