Category Archives: Technology

Exploring New Ways to Earn a Living

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One of my friends has been a manager of a local gas station and convenience store for several. We chat for a few minutes here and there when I stop in to buy gas or a soda, or every once in a while a lottery ticket. He was telling me that his days managing this store are numbered because, ironically, he can’t afford the high cost of gas to get back and forth to work from his home, about 40 miles away.

The corporate office says there isn’t a store closer to his home that he can manage, so he is facing losing his job if the cost of gas continues to go up. So we’ve been exploring ways for him to either supplement his income as store manager or to replace that income with something else. He is currently exploring ways to make money from the internet, and he sent away for a starter package of information on how to start an e-commerce site.

New Laptop

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I have a Dell laptop that I love and was stupid enough to loan it to a girl who needed it for a few days. I figured I could do without for up to a week with not much inconvenience. She needed it to do a big project and had a chance to make some good money from the project, so I didn’t mind. But after a week went by I started to worry and finally called her to ask for it back. That’s when she said that she was having a problem with it turning on. Arrrgh.

I had her bring it back to my house and sure enough, it no longer turns on. She swears she has no idea what happened. That she had worked on it a couple times and everything was great, but then for no apparent reason it wouldn’t turn on.

After she left, I looked at it more closely and I can see where the back left corner of the case is cracked and it is obvious it’s been dropped. That so pisses me off. I can’t tell you how pissed off I am. Not really that she dropped it – if it was an accident, then so be it. But to lie to my face and not take any responsibility for it at all. ARRRGGHHH. I can’t deal with this – she’s on the top of my sh*t list and that’s not a good place to be.

Who You Gonna Call?

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Working as a reporter years ago, I covered a lot of courtroom dramas and I can tell you the most important thing I learned from all those days of sitting in court taking notes: do not EVER go to court without the best lawyer you can find.

I saw identical “crimes” presented in the same courtroom to the same judge and honest to GOD, the cases where the defendant represented themselves or waived the right to an attorney ALWAYS got a worse outcome than those who came with a lawyer – even with the exact same excuse, I mean, defense. And in most cases, those with a lawyer had the benefit of back room dealmaking so that all the judge had to do was bless the agreement between the D.A. and the defense attorney. Those without a deal got the shaft after their case was heard.

Online Management Tools

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This morning wanted to talk about switching over to an online version of project management. We’ve been using a database that the company had built about 10 years ago, and we both feel that technology has advanced a lot since then and there are more features and benefits available now. But we all know our current system like the backs of our hands, so I wonder how much resistance there will be from the rest of the staff if we try to change things.

With those thoughts in mind I started surfing for project management companies on the internet and found some that are probably what he has in mind. I really like the information on Atlantic Global’s web site.

A Marketing Career

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Years ago I wanted to get into “Sales and Marketing” primarily because I felt that the opportunities to earn what you truly deserve are more prevalent in sales positions than in traditional corporate management positions. Plus, sales is very optimistic, upbeat, forward thinking and you when you make a sale it is reason to celebrate your accomplishment. In corporate management, it is a lot of negativity, screwing people over and self serving. The only real reason a CEO has to celebrate is receipt of a fat bonus check earned off the sweat and sacrifice of all the worker bees.

In the early days when i was exploring the sales and marketing route, I asked a lot of my contemporaries, including other successful sale people and vendors, “What is the difference between “sales” and “marketing”? None of them gave me a good answer. It was only on my own exploration of the sales process and corporate structures that I discovered and embraced marketing. Over the years I’ve mastered quite a bit of the marketing principles and techniques in a variety of corporate settings. Now I am ready to step into the new millenium and learn more about internet marketing and search engine optimization.

Obviously I will make use of the internet for a lot of this effort. I have found some good articles about search engine optimization and internet marketing. One interesting aspect of the new marketing is that most of the traditional marketing logic does not apply. You have to shift mental gears into “geek think” instead of what works in the real world, because often they are very different and mistakes on your website can prove very costly and difficult to correct or overcome.