Silently Thinking Out Loud – Page 7 – Thingery Previews Postviews & Music

Things Used To Stop On Christmas

In the small town (around 8,000 people at the time) where I grew up, things just stopped on Christmas. Oh, not things in the houses, or things on the highways, but by the time Christmas Eve rolled around there came a time during the late afternoon when everyone in town had actually closed their shops and gone home.

It stayed like that until maybe noon the next day, at which time a couple of gas stations opened, mainly because they were essential. Maybe a couple of bars opened too, I don’t know, and how would a little kid?

Inevitably the Christmas Eve procedure created pent-up economic demand-something needed batteries, somebody needed a tool to fix the thing they broke while assembling it, somebody discovered they didn’t have any butter for one of the dishes, the list was inevitable and remains totally to this day unpredictable.

But after you broke the airplane wing or discovered you couldn’t make the tank go, or whatever the problem was, you had to wait. The gas station would be open tomorrow noon.

That wasn’t the convenience store, mind you-we hadn’t thought of those yet. The gas station would have batteries, they always did, or glue, or whatever-you took your chances and went there looking for it even if you KNEW it wouldn’t work.

Now that it’s fifty years later, the news is filled with economic recovery stories about the Second Black Friday as Christmas shoppers are still buying on Christmas Eve. I’m going to be one of them.

Or I might be one of them on Christmas Day, not sure. I was busy online right up until this afternoon-I fielded an order which I drove through the snow to the Post Office and deposited it there by 3:00 and there was a lot of traffic moving around the town despite the snow.

I stopped by the convenience store by force of habit, but I know I didn’t need to-they’ll be there tomorrow.

Before I ran the package into the Post Office I thought maybe I could intercept our Postal Carrier on their way past the house after doing the turnaround beyond us, and I went for a little walk down the road in the quietly falling snow that was coming straight down (it’s been a year since it has done that I swear).

An occasional car went by (make that SUV-for some reason they’re the only thing you see on this road), but it was that same kind of quiet I remember from my days on West Ninth street, in awe as I looked out of the upstairs window with my new telescope at the patterns the frost formed on the trees in the far distance of six or seven blocks away.

Maybe it’s always that quiet, maybe I should go out there and walk down the street every day like lots of people in this neighborhood do, but somehow I doubt it.

It’s a serenity thing. The serenity thing is spiritual. It seems fleeting most of the time yet it hangs onto fifty-year old memories, happy to serve them up at any time.

You have to hit the pause button though.

Boy These Blog Things Are A Lot Of Work

Boy these blog things are a lot of work, aren’t they? I’ve always been a big believer in typing my way into reality and I think they’re worth it, but boy, they’re high maintenance. You have to feed them, care for them, buy them stuff to eat, take them out for exercise…..

I hope this blog is blatantly commercial-that it seems to be mostly about Things for sale. I’ve had the same kinds of Things for sale throughout most of my career, so I get a chance to concentrate but it turns out there’s always more information that could be useful, particularly in terms of “tags”.

The tags turn out to be important to search results, the search results, to sales, the sales to how long I can just loll around and sleep all day.

And right after you get done realizing your tags will never be finished, you realize blogs can make money in other ways, like advertising.

Here’s a Google Ad:

You see them all over the Internet. This one is supposed to “adjust itself” to my content (we’ll see if it does that). If you click on it, I accumulate some credit and will eventually get paid, partially by the guy who bought the ad. So unless he steals my sale, I like that, which is why you see them all over the Internet.

So I need to think about how much space I devote to that type of thing, and Google is only one example. On top of that, I need to try to control what kind of ads might be shown (I’d be not-so-enthusiastic about anti-hippie ones for example).

Right after I start to “get” that, I also start to “get” out to construct my OWN Google ads, but that’s probably another topic.

Anyway, I’m pretty happy with the traffic I get although I notice it takes a minor miracle to get somebody to stick on a page longer than two seconds once they arrive at it. And I have reason to believe that so far I send very few people to any of my pages where they can buy stuff (they get to those pages but not necessarily through the blog).

I suppose that’s probably because there are a lot of good bloggers out there and I’m not really one, but if I can JUST learn to move Things out of the Preview category once I’m done previewing them, and point them to the pages where they can be converted (sold), or to the Postviews, I hope to make the whole thing a very handy tool in 2011, so please stay tuna’d

Some Days It Doesn’t Seem To Pay To Even TRY To Chew Through The Restraints

I hope you’ve noticed, if you’re a regular reader (if there are those), that I’ve tried to stay off the negativity for the most part since I started this blog. It’s supposed to be about business, and personal angst doesn’t belong there.

They say.

Sometimes I’m able to translate my own angst with some policy-bound bunch of idiots into a better procedure for my own use, but I’ve still tried to avoid talking about it here.

But today was just one of those days. I’ve been having 22 of those days in a row, primarily due to a little Problem with my former hi-speed ISP and my subsequent use of this dial-up account that’ll only stay connected with the long distance point from midnight forward. There must be another dial-up user somewhere between here and Sioux City.

Anyway, it’s been hell, but I’ve used my offline time to sort stock, straighten the shipping area a little, hone some culinary skills and review a lot of videotape I made in the early 90’s until the relatively new VCR ceased to cooperate on that project two days ago.

Today I was at odds with the world. I had to do something. I trundled up to the local cable place I visited last week and told them to sign me up, please, which they proceeded to do until we hit a little question like: who-the-hell-are-you?

Well, I’m a driver’s license and a credit card. Who is anybody? No, I actually DON’T have a Social Security card with me because when I had to have that replaced so I could get turned down for Food Assistance last year or so it said right in the letter that came with it: don’t carry this thing around.

Well, hmmm, maybe they could use the Driver’s License number to run the credit check. Well, hmmmm, what’s-her-name isn’t at her desk to ask. A delay………

I have actually allocated an hour to this project, so I watch television for a while but remember I need to go to Ace Hardware to get an orange plastic tip and some glue to prepare a toy gun for sale at eBay and batteries for the TV remote, which now doesn’t work in addition to the VCR. The receptionist thinks that’ll work, so I go get a PACKAGE of orange plastic things, they don’t have the right glue, I damn near forget the batteries, and I go get the glue from the stationery store.

Good news, says the receptionist upon my return, you’re good to go, no deposit required, no prepayment required, the guy’ll be there Thursday. I begin to explain there should have been at least one Bad Thing in my credit report because it was there a couple of years ago and pertained to the folks at Capital One getting all bitchy about having to settle with me for the amount of money that I originally owed them instead of the double amount they eventually came up with (I only mention this to the receptionist because this is what the Other Cable Company is in the process of doing to us right now). That was too much information.

Well, anyway, all I need to do now is wait until Thursday afternoon and actually know where I want my computer set up. My little room upstairs is ideal, but it’s bad when I isolate up there for over twelve hours in a row (apparently).

I put the new batteries in the TV remote. No dice. I don’t happen to USE the TV remote, but it’s an issue nontheless, especially for someone who can’t physically get up to change things, and here I am describing the TV’s primary user. Well, I can surely get a remote. I can probably get one for me, especially if I could, oh, stay logged onto the Internet long enough to do it. I’ll bet I can sell myself ten different kinds.

At this juncture, I elect to take a nap. I have ingested a couple of Super Burritos and a smaller-than-usual dosage of Potato Oles but the Potato Oles have made me tired anyway.

I glue the orange tip on the gun. There is a ridiculous Federal law that pertains to toy guns made after 1989 which dictates that they must have orange tips so that law enforcement officers know which are the real guns (as if painting them is going to make a difference to criminals), and eBay expands that rule to include virtually any toy gun. I know all that. It should be enough to drive me away, but anticipating my Thursday reconnection, I decide to rework the oldest thing in my file of stuff that has previously flopped, which is the ten dollar cap gun I have now raised to to fifteen to cover the cost of the package of orange things and the glue.

After the nap, I fight my way onto the Internet, slash away a couple of little issues and reconstruct the listing for the toy gun, which is instantly taken down by the eBay Trust And Safety bot BEFORE it runs and my Policy Compliance Level is returned to Low, which it has basically been ever since June because of this little cap gun.

I call eBay. We talk. Appeal it, the guy says, you’ll probably win.

None of this is about that (bet you’re glad to learn that after 800+ words). Throughout the past three weeks, having found it necessary to juggle my daily routine a lot, I’ve been returning a great deal to that question: what’s really important?

I’ve done nothing but wrestle with ethereal gibble-de-gook ever since the June Hacking and can claim a great deal of success. I pulled over 500 items from eBay and relocated them but maintained my sales volume anyway and developed two new channels, including my own.

But a box of store-brand brownie mix is about a buck and a quarter and if you even come close to following the instructions you get something good to eat inside of an hour.

At the end of the eBay phone call I think: well, it’s about midnight, that’s another good twelve hours of wrangling things around without really accomplishing much, think I’ll forward some of this adventure to my friend who actually OWNS the toy gun and go to bed.

My mail has some news: my ex-father-in-law has died.

This is mostly for the potential reader who knew the guy I guess, since I won’t be even trying to tell his story here, but I need to say that he always treated me straight. In the time we knew each other, either of us had our ups and downs and none of that made any difference. I don’t remember ever having any disagreements with him about anything. That’s rare.

He was the penultimate host. When I think about it, I couldn’t have been much of a son-in-law, unless I can somehow take credit for my kids’ relationship with him (which I can’t), but he was glad to see me any time I did turn up.

The last conversation we had was a long time ago. That’s mostly an accident of geography rather than attitude, and I didn’t mean it personally on my part, it was just a relationship that baffled me when “the divorce” happened. A LOT of stuff happened right in there and I didn’t see a lot of people again. I remember the conversation very well though.

I was trying to give him a message I knew he wasn’t going to accept and that I was in no condition psychically to deliver.

That was, oh, maybe fourteen years ago, maybe a little less.

Since that time I have learned that it isn’t so much psychic preparation that’s good for anything as spiritual preparation, and even THAT isn’t going to really alter anything that’s inevitable (remember-we’re generally supposed to look forward to the Next Life), but if it comes as any assurance to anyone, those who go before us are often remembered by those of us who are still trying to get that message right.

It’s strange……..throughout a DIFFERENT battle which accidentally culminated at the same time as all this other stuff, I accidentally sold a copy of my late mother’s high school yearbook with her senior picture in it, and prior to packing it to the winning bidder, I’ve been trying to get photos of that senior picture. My mother detested having her picture taken and I’ve got damned few of them. I kind of like the Honor Society photo as well, and because I’m so critically distracted by all of this important stuff, here I am, mailing it all way……..

duh

The Kid With The Lemonade Stand

Yesterday I went by a kid with a lemonade stand, except I think it was an iced tea stand judging by the color of the contents of his Tupperware pitcher. I quietly thought to myself: wow, that’s me fifty years ago.

Until I change it, the heading on my front pages says “Cardboard Lemonade Stand”, which was not chosen idly. Cardboard refers to my relative impermanence (economically), and Lemonade Stand refers to a summer I once had in a former life AND a guy’s lemonade stand at a local county fair (which is too long a story to go into here; if, however, you happen to be Bill Morton and are reading here: at my store, it’s “still a buck”).

The wide-eyed kid looked hot. He was sitting directly in the mid-afternoon sun and I noticed he wasn’t swamped by his business. His plastic pitcher was full. I had a couple of actual dollars (somewhat rare) and momentarily thought I should stop but I was pressing the Post Office deadline and my business is probably more important than the kid’s, so I made a mental note to stop on the way back.

Support budding entrepreneurs, etc. Independence.

The PO was a little slow and when I hopped into my twenty-five dollar van I thought to myself well, I’ll buy the kid an iced tea too.

Trouble was, by the time I drove the three blocks, the kid was just finishing packing it in. He was handing the pitcher to his mom. Nothing hurt, I thought-they can still drink the tea, I’ve got a couple of dollars for those horrible little cigars I’ve been smoking, the inconvenience store guy will be just as good for conversation as the kid would have been (which proved to be true because NOW the inconvenience store guy has to card everybody every time when he sells the horrible little cigars).

The kid missed out though, and he’ll have to postpone his first economic lesson. If you’re going to sit wide-eyed in the sun hoping for someone to come along and buy two of something, you’ve got to sit there longer than you originally imagined.

You might have to endure stuff like hackers and spammers and Thing-switching customers who loudly return stuff knowing full well it’s wrong.

It might rain. Tree branches might fall “at” you.

Mom might say “give me that tea back, it’s more valuable in my own refrigerator”.

By the time I got up today I’d made the price of the horrible little cigars back and another two-dollars and something-or-other peddling my own stash of rescued Things and some other guy’s talking clock about which I know nothing.

I happen to really like The Future, and at my age I suspect I’m supposed to resent it already but there’s one thing about it that’s a certainty:

You Must Wait For It.

Last Scary Lincoln Photos 3/12/10 (r.i.p.)

This was Mom’s car at one time, it’ll live in my memory for a long time.

Dave Williams’ organic eggs: Storm Lake Iowa

Story by Dolores Cullen, Storm Lake Times, reprinted with permission.

Storm Lake Times Newspaper

Chickens on the Dave and Norma Williams farm scratch in the dirt and walk wherever they please. They wander into a shed, peck at organic feed, then hop into a nest and lay brown, organic eggs.

And Williams is happy to report that the 100 or so eggs laid each day by the Black Beauties are barely keeping up with demand.

A big break for Williams happened a year ago when his eggs made it onto the shelves of the Storm Lake Fareway store. The brown eggs, obvious in their clear, plastic cartons, cost around $3 – twice as much as eggs produced in big laying facilities.

“People like to buy them because they’re locally grown and organic on top of it,” said Fareway Store Director Bryan Baumhover. The eggs always sell out, especially last winter when cold weather was slowing down the layers.

Other Storm Lake grocery stores carry organic and cage-free eggs which are produced elsewhere.

For two years, Williams has been selling his eggs to One Stop Meat Shop in Sioux City. Last Friday he had 43 dozen delivered to the business. He’s had inquiries from as far away as Minneapolis. One place tried to make arrangements to pick up three cases a week. It never materialized, but it assured Williams that consumers want organic eggs.

“I’ve gotten calls from people in Sioux City,” said Williams. (His phone number is on each carton.) They tell him they like the taste of the eggs and that regular eggs have no taste at all. They like the bright yellow yolks that don’t flatten into the frying pan like the regular eggs do.

The term “range fed”

Callers often ask what range fed means. “I tell them it means that I open the door every morning and if they want to come out, they can.” To call his chickens range fed, he’s required to allow a certain number of square feet per chicken. They wander all over the driveway and up to the north side of the house, but seldom do they get out on the road. They eat bugs. (Dave said they never have crickets in the house.) They eat worms and he’s seen one eat a mouse.

“Chickens are dirty animals,” Williams said, comparing them to a white kitten who wanders among the flock.

“But animals are meant to be free,” says Williams. He doesn’t like the idea that most laying hens spend their entire lives crammed into small cages. In confinements, young chickens have to be debeaked to keep from cannibalizing eachother. For that reason, many of his customers pay the higher price for eggs from range fed hens.

And each evening at twilight, the chickens know enough to go back into the barn and shed outfitted for them.

“You have to be committed”

Williams’ farm, located a mile northeast of Storm Lake’s gateway lighthouse, is certified organic, and the green and white “USDA Organic” sticker on each egg carton represents years of hard work and persistence without much profit.

It takes three years of chemical-free farming to earn the certification. Williams puts up signs to keep the county from spraying his ditches. He has to see that spray planes keep their distance. Transitional ground at least 25 feet wide must be maintained between his land and his neighbors’. Last year he planted trees on his 30-foot buffer strip, but they all died. He’ll replant them again this year.

Keeping the weeds under control is the big challenge. Weeds have to be managed mechanically. He’s not afraid to try new things. This year he’s raising a few goats to help keep the weeds down. He uses chicken manure for fertilizer.

“You have to be committed to it,” says Williams of organic farming. “There’s other people that tried it. They see the weeds come up and spray ‘em and quit.”

He knows of at least two other successful organic farmers in the area though. One whose corn and soybean yields are as good or better than farmers who use chemicals.

A premium product

Williams believes that chemicals feed the plant, but rob the soil. “Organic feeds the soil, which in turns feeds the plant, which feeds humans and animals.”

Last year he raised corn, flax, field peas, oats and spring wheat. These grains are mixed with organic pre-mix and fed to his chickens. The flax makes the eggs lower in cholesterol, he says.

The field peas and flax didn’t grow too well, but in the future, he will buy these grains elsewhere and focus on his crops that are successful.

A system of paperwork goes with the organic label so he can produce a paper trail for anyone who is skeptical that he’s organic. An inspector comes to his farm yearly to check that he is following the specified requirements. Even with oversight, much is left to the honor system, which Williams says he takes seriously.

Confident that the market for organic eggs exists and that he’s virtually the only producer in the area, Williams plans to increase his flock this summer. Currently he has about 200 chickens. He may add another hundred.
He’s required to buy the chicks at two days old and start them on their organic regimen. He’s glad the winter is over. The cold weather reduced the daily egg output to only 40. The deep snow made it more than a chore to go out and collect the eggs, which he tries to do four times a day.
Old five-gallon buckets on their sides make do for nests. He cares for the chickens much like his grandmother did a generation ago. Williams washes and grades the eggs in his kitchen. They are refrigerated in his basement. It’s nothing fancy.

Williams also raises organic grass fed cattle. Customers pay $5 for his hamburger at the Sioux City meat shop. Others come to the farm and purchase halves or quarters, as they do eggs –straight from Williams.
“It’s a premium product,” he says, considering the fruits of his labor. “I’m doing people a service and that is a joy in itself.”

Sunset Over The Lake Memorial Weekend 2010

This was out our back door last night.

Shipping Boxes

Dear God Don’t Make Me Shovel The Roof Today

thunk

As regular readers know, I have not been a happy camper this winter. Actually, I have clues that there are lots of unhappy campers, but it is my duty to affirm my angst and others will have to be responsible for their own.

I’ve mentioned a time or two that I’ve been shoveling the roof lately, and that’s because there’s an intake pipe up there which can be drifted over by snow at which time it shuts off the furnace so the furnace can’t kill us by failing to breathe.

I appreciate that.

I’m not so appreciative of the plumber who put the pipe there in the first place, and we should really talk about that sometime. If the winter ever ends, that it is. Mostly because he charges mileage just to drive out and talk.

Anyway, I’ve put away the antique ladder again, if not back on the fire truck from which I got it, and it’s becoming a challenge to put it back on the deck and go up there again.

The wind is blowing like crazy, there’s still plenty of snow up there…….

Work At Home (WAH) behind the eight ball

My lovely lifestyle once in a while sets me up and I drown.

If you have something expensive like the Worst Winter That Ever Was you’re going to miss your credit rating and if you pay for everything BEFORE you get it you’re going to resent others who seem to get by “on credit”.

Sometimes there just isn’t enough work.

Sometimes the workplace just goes insane with new safety rules or something (or worse, goes insane with a CEO who really doesn’t get it).

If you’re me, sometimes you’ll sucker for causes that you can’t help, and those suck resources twice as fast as just being stupid, which I often wish I were.

Separates the wheat from the chaff.

What the hell does that even mean?

I Wish My Board Of Directors Would Convene

(I probably also wish I were working on my taxes)

While the clock ticks, I need to decide how to react to eBay’s new pricing structure and present balancing of their site, taking place now.

Without running through the math here, it looks on paper like the best thing for me to do would be to upgrade to the Premium Store (or nomenclature just like that), which is fifty dollars a month. In exchange for that I get all kinds of stuff.

However, in exchange for LESS than that, I can get all kinds of stuff in other places.

One of those other places, Amazon, is easier to use, at least through the process of listing media.

One of them, Ruby Lane, is more tasteful.

One of them, my own site, affords me the most control.

That’s where the issues are: control. eBay deconstructed the “flea market” at least a couple of years ago now, and “flea market” was one of the things that was so cute about me. Now they’re Costco, and I’m not.

Then they beat up the sellers, assuring the shoppers of a good time. I survived that with flying colors only to get bruised over weird stuff like encouraging gambling and illegal activities by selling Coke Rewards Point codes and used High Times Magazines with articles about Jerry Garcia.

The management I originally admired is running for Governor Of California. The Community people I knew are gone. I’m not a Category Voice anymore.

The forward momentum that I enjoy at eBay due to my sterling reputation there does count still in one category: Antiques. They haven’t found a way to slaughter the Antiques auctions yet, and my bread and butter is in there.

Yes, the Premium store looks nice with the bargain Fixed Price rates that are going to be as searchable as they once were before the “rebalance”, but um, the Store Format is irrelevant to that Antiques business.

I don’t have an easy decision to make here, and it’s pretty rarified territory. It’s times like these that I miss the Board Of Directors I’ve never had.

Survival Techniques

Today I learned how to crawl over the snowdrift to the antique fire truck in the other yard and drag its wooden ladder to the house and crawl up on the roof and unblock the pipe that gets covered with snow and makes the furnace go off.

If I had been one of the Brave Pioneers crossing the prairie, when we got to this area, I would have definitely said “I don’t care about the crummy black dirt, this place is just wrong, let’s not stop here”.

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