“All of a sudden this ham… hit me full long in the face and ’bout knocked me cuckoo.”

–Celebrity cook and Food Network star Paula Deen, who was hit in the face by a ham today while volunteering at an Atlanta food drive. Deen, who was helping to unload 25,000 pounds of meat donated to a local food bank, was the honored guest at a recent “Fortune Most Powerful Women Evening With…” dinner in Atlanta, where she told the guests, “Ladies, I have got a revelation: Eat the cookies. And chase them with bacon.” (Click here for Pattie’s post about Deen and the career wisdom she served up at the event.) –Jessica Shambora

by Jessica Shambora

Former White House press secretary Dana Perino (third from left) at the Minute Mentoring event she coordinated. Photo courtesy of Charlotte Sellmyer.

Dana Perino is only 37 years old and already has the title “White House Press Secretary” on her resume.

But at age 25, after working on Capitol Hill for two and a half years, she was saying to herself, “I thought I’d be further along than this.”

All around her, it seemed, men were leap-frogging into higher positions. She wasn’t sure which path would help her advance her own career.

That early confusion and uncertainty makes Perino particularly sensitive to young women in the same predicament today. She is, not surprisingly, also someone whom ambitious young women look to for advice. They ask her what they should do: Go to grad school? Ask for a promotion? Stay in D.C. or work on a local campaign?

Perino, who is now chief issues counselor at PR giant Burson-Marsteller (WPPGY), was struggling to find the time to respond to multitudinous requests when she thought up a solution that she calls “Minute Mentoring.” It’s speed dating applied to mentoring. She coordinated the first event last Thursday in D.C. at the offices of Bracewell & Giuliani, with the help of Susan Molinari, the former New York Congresswoman who is a senior principal at the law firm. (Read yesterday’s post about the Minute Mentoring event.).

Perino had lots of advice to dole out, some of it gathered within the corridors of the White House. Like the time her predecessor as press secretary, the late Tony Snow, told her that she would be briefing the press the following day. All she could think about was the challenge of replacing the man she calls “one of the greatest to ever grace the podium.”

Snow told her, “You’re better at this than you think you are.” And it’s a message Perino passes on to other women who doubt themselves. “It applies to everything in your life, not just your job. You’re a better friend, sister, wife, mother, daughter than you think you are.”

Perino, who was President Bush’s spokesperson for close to two years until he left office last January, told the young women that she used to catch Condoleezza Rice for quick questions as the former Secretary of State made her way from the Oval Office to the Roosevelt Room. “Some of the most effective meetings you’ll have will be in the hallway,” she said.

Perino also had plenty of practical tips:

On self-enrichment: “Turn off the television and read. One hour of reality TV is fun; four hours is destructive. Enrich your brain. Reading makes you a better writer. A lot of men and women coming out of college today are not good writers and it’s very frustrating.”

On health and battling stress: “Find a healthy fitness activity and start incorporating it into your daily life.” Each day before heading to the White House, Perino used to do one hour on the elliptical machine while reading the newspaper.

On taking risks: “Don’t be afraid to move.” Perino shared her own story of moving to England and San Diego before arriving back in D.C. at the job that led to her position at the White House. And she told the young women that if they wanted to run for Congress, they’d have to go back home. “You can’t run for office in D.C.”

What struck Perino the most about the inaugural Minute Mentoring event? The eagerness of well-known, accomplished women to be mentors, whatever their party affiliation. “For as partisan as this town is,” she says, “when it comes to women helping other women, there is no partisanship.”

With so many movers and shakers gathered at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in September, we jumped at the chance to capture some of them on film. Xerox (XRX) CEO Ursula Burns, McDonald’s (MCD) USA COO Jan Fields, and Google (GOOG) VP of Search Products and User Experience Marissa Mayer are among the portraits you’ll find in this gallery, shot by another notable woman, photographer Robyn Twomey. A regular contributor Fortune, Twomey also shot Bill Gates Jr. and Sr. for the cover of our Best Advice issue this year. –Jessica Shambora

by Patricia Sellers

Former White House press secretary Dana Perino (third from left) at the Minute Mentoring event she coordinated. Photo courtesy of Charlotte Sellmyer.

What good is having power unless you give it away?

The quickest and easiest way of dispensing power–and career advice–might be what I saw one night last week in Washington, D.C. It’s called Minute Mentoring. It’s speed dating applied to mentoring.

This pairing of role models and wannabes was beautifully orchestrated chaos. Last Thursday evening, 15 high-powered D.C. women parked themselves inside 15 offices at law firm Bracewell & Giuliani, and in a complex round robin of 10-minute sessions, advised 15 trios of young women how to navigate their careers.

Minute Mentoring is the brainchild of Dana Perino, the former White House Press Secretary in the Bush Administration. She’s now at public relations giant Burson-Marsteller. The idea to apply speed dating to career counseling struck Perino last May, after she gave a speech to a group of young female Congressional staffers and as usual, they converged around her afterwards, asking for “just 15 minutes of your time…I know you’re really busy, but please….Can you just have a quick cup of coffee with me?”

Perino’s notion of “one-stop shopping” for career advice gelled two months ago on her way home from the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit. On the plane, she was sitting in a row with Bracewell & Giuliani’s Susan Molinari and Dee Martin, who were fellow Summit attendees. They loved Perino’s idea–and they said, they’d host a Minute Mentoring event.

Susan Molinari dispenses advice to young women. Photo courtesy of Charlotte Sellmyer.

On Thursday at Bracewell’s K Street offices, the 15 mentors who dished advice hastily (a loud whistle marked the start and stop of each 10-minute session) included CNN political correspondent Candy Crowley, Meet the Press executive producer Betsy Fischer, former Clinton White House Press Secretary DeeDee Myers, APCO Worldwide CEO Margery Kraus, Pfizer (PFE) government relations VP Maria Cino, and Fortune Washington Editor Nina Easton, as well as Molinari and Perino.

Over the next couple of weeks on Postcards, my colleague Jessica Shambora will dish to you the career advice and lessons we heard. Meantime, check out this story about the Minute Mentoring event in Saturday’s Washington Post.

And since we’re on the topic of mentoring, I want to mention that the makers of a documentary film called Miss Representation flew in from California to film Jessica at the Minute Mentoring event. They had previously interviewed both Jess and me since we’ve been studying women and power–the topic of the film–for years. They’re so impressed with Jess, as a young star journalist, that they’ve decided to feature her prominently in the film, due out next year.

Good for Jess. And good for mentoring in general. We at Fortune, incidentally, have three programs, through the MPWomen Summit, to help women leaders mentor: a Fortune-U.S. State Department Mentoring Partnership that each year brings rising-star women from developing countries to shadow women leaders in the U.S.; a mentoring partnership with Exxon Mobil (XOM), that pairs math and science experts in the MPWomen community with college students; and a new partnership with American Express (AXP) to find extraordinary female entrepreneurs and expose them to Fortune 500 executives and other female leaders.

Sharing the power is what it’s about, really.

“Young is better than old,
Pretty is better than ugly,
Rich is better than poor,
T.V. is better than music,
Music is better than movies,
Movies are better than sports,
Anything is better than politics,
And nothing is better than the celebrity dead.”

–Stolley’s Law of Covers, created by Dick Stolley, senior editorial advisor to Time Inc., and founding editor, People. A legend of the magazine world, he made history when he secured the rights the Zapruder footage immediately following JFK’s assassination.

In a Q&A emailed to Time Inc. employees today, Stolley included an addendum to his law: “Obama has changed the “anything is better than politics” rule, but that won’t last forever.” Unfortunately 2009 offered too much proof of his rule about celebrity deaths. For more from Stolley, check out this photo gallery at Life.com where he shares some favorite photos from his years working at LIFE. –Jessica Shambora

“‘Unfriend’ has real lex-appeal.”

– Christine Lindberg, senior lexicographer for the Oxford University Press’s U.S. dictionary program. Today The New Oxford American Dictionary revealed that ‘unfriend’ is the 2009 word of the year. If you’ve got a Facebook profile, you’ve likely unfriended some annoying person in your network. Someone may have even (gasp) unfriended you!

There were lots of tech-isms in the running this year–paywall, netbook, sexting. One tech trend actually spawned its own mini-lexicon, but no news about the official acceptance of those terms outside the Tweetaholics and Twitterati! –Jessica Shambora

by Jessica Shambora

Watch out, geeks. You’ve got company.

Yes, Best Buy’s (BBY) Geek Squad, whose “agents” drive those Volkswagen Beetles to the homes of customers in technology distress, has competition to contend with: digital troubleshooters who aid consumers via the Internet.

Even as these forces are expanding, it’s hard to detect them. For instance, the “solution engineers” of Support.com (SPRT)’s are almost impossible to spot since they work via remote-access subterfuge. Once a troubled tech user downloads Support.com’s software, an engineer can access the computer via the Internet to diagnose and fix problems.

Ever stealthy, Support.com’s engineers even go undercover as technicians for companies like Staples (SPLS) and Sony. You’ve seen Office Depot (ODP)’s Tech Depot Services? These friendly folks are actually Support.com’s hired guns.

Perhaps you’re lucky enough to never have needed consumer tech support. (If that’s the case, either you don’t own a computer, or you own a Mac). But there’s no escaping that our lives are getting more digital every day. And even as we become more tech-savvy and as tech providers improve design and user interfaces, there will always be bugs, malfunctions, spyware and viruses.

There will be updates and upgrades. New platforms and devices to install. Compatibility issues to iron out. Who ya gonna call?

For hardware problems, you can go to your device manufacturer. But let’s face it, these days it’s all about operating systems, platforms and software: Google’s (GOOG) Chrome and Android, Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows 7, Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes, Adobe’s (ADBE) AIR.

So while the Geek Squad has been the most visible source of help (and no wonder, given the marketing muscle of Best Buy), it’s not the cheapest option. Nor the most convenient. Rivals are gaining ground as many consumers no longer need a technician to hold their hand–or simply don’t have time to schedule an appointment with a Geek.

Support.com hasn’t done well as a stock, in part because it only recently switched from serving enterprises to targeting consumers. Other options include startups like PlumChoice and iYogi. Meanwhile, phone companies are also getting in the game. Support.com CEO Josh Pickus says that Verizon (VZ), Dell (DELL), AT&T (ATT), and Wal-Mart (WMT) are all “poking around in this space.”

For more about this hot industry, check out my profile of Support.com on Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech site.

Note: Geek Squad offers tech support remotely through a partnership with SupportSpace, which offers services similar to Support.com.

“The hair is 75 percent of my performance.”

– Actor Robert Pattinson, who stars as vampire heartthrob Edward Cullen in the screen version of the literary sensation, Twilight. In a Q&A in the current issue of Entertainment Weekly, Pattinson says that for New Moon, the franchise’s second installment, he told the filmmakers, “Listen, I need to tone down the hair. Let’s make it a little more real, a little bit more…Method.”

Pattison’s not the only one who understands the power of hair. Pattie has also written about the speculation over how business leaders part their tresses. You can check out Pattinson’s “do” when New Moon hits theaters next Friday. –Jessica Shambora

“A key Jobs business tool is his mastery of the message. He rehearses over and over every line he and others utter in public about Apple, which authorizes only a small number of executives to speak publicly on a given topic. Key to the Jobs approach is careful consideration of what he and Apple say — and don’t say. “

–Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky on Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs. Lashinsky’s cover story, “Steve Jobs: CEO of the Decade,” in the current issue of Fortune, explains how the “showman…salesman…magician…tyrannical perfectionist” redefined not just one industry, but four: movies, music, mobile phones and computing. Check out the video below for more on how Jobs did it. –Jessica Shambora

“There hasn’t been a day in Steve’s life that he doesn’t get up, think about the company he works for, or what he’s going to do next. These are things that drive him.”

–Bill Campbell, Intuit (INTU) chairman and former CEO, about Steve Jobs–Apple’s (AAPL) CEO and Fortune’s “CEO of the Decade,” on the cover of the current issue. Once Apple’s VP of marketing and now on the board, Campbell  claims he’s never seen Jobs be anything but intense. In fact, Campbell says, Jobs is so focused on creating the next groundbreaking product, he doesn’t even stop to think about what it all means. “He wants to create something that has value, that has a legacy. ‘Legacy’ is my word. I’m not sure he ever thinks about legacy. He’s just driven like that.”

More big names in business offer their reflections on Jobs here. –Jessica Shambora