I’m not too sure what’s going on with email at the moment. Anything going through the server doesn’t seem to make it to the recipient and on top of that, anything going through Gmail doesn’t seem to do it either. At this point, knowing full well that Gmail isn’t that faulty, I think I’m having some trouble with Thunderbird because that seems to be the only option at the moment. I’m going to just log directly into the send mail and see if things work from there, if they do then I may have to reinstall Thunderbird because that’s the only option at this point. I’ve been looking into new a new Mailing Lists Company as well, the mailing list I’m working with now isn’t working out that great for me either. It’s like some outside force doesn’t want me doing anything. I know that I need a vacation but being unable to contact people just adds more stress to the situation.
Archive for the ‘BLTV’ Category
Uninstalling, Reinstalling, and still not getting anywhere.
Wednesday, August 29th, 2007Vendstar
Thursday, August 2nd, 2007Now that I’m no longer living there, whenever I come across something that’s based out of New York I tend to zoom in on it and pay close attention. I did this before I moved down to Delaware too, oddly enough.
VoIP Phone Systems for Businesses
Wednesday, July 25th, 2007If you run a small business and have shown an interest in VoIP phone systems, than this entry is for you. Today I came across a website for Xpander Communications which is a company that specializes in hosted PBX small business VoIP phone systems. This system is for companies looking to improve and explore new technologies. With the rise in broadband for business, naturally working with your old phone setup is going to seem kind of pointless. VoIP is proving, time and time again, to be a pretty decent service to use. Xpander offers the most user friendly phone systems available thanks to it’s focus on simplicity, reduced costs and drastically reduced maintenance. Small businesses with office branches scattered across the country can share the same phone system on the same private list of extensions. So say you have an office in California and you’re looking to get in touch with someone in your Denver Colorado branch, you just dial their four digit extension and you’re instantly connected. I think it’s a pretty interesting route to take.
I know that my server master, Tony, works at two different datacenters. They have the same kind of VoIP setup so he’s able to contact his boss easily at the main branch while he’s at the sub branch a few towns over with just a few clicks of a button. Sure you can easily keep someone’s number in your phone book but going through this system stops you from having to pick up your cellphone and spend money where it doesn’t really need to be spent.
I think it’s worth checking out, honestly.
Keeping in touch.
Wednesday, July 25th, 2007With running as many sites as I do, I make it a point to have Mailing Lists setup so it’s easier for me to get in touch with a large number of people with out having to keep a huge address book on Thunderbird. I have quite a few contacts that I’ve built up over the years, I don’t use them for regular mailings, but when something big is going on with say AGn Listings, for example, it’s good to know that I have that database to get in touch with the members.
There are many resources out there for running your own mailing-list. It’s important to know what kind of resources you’re going to need in relation to them as well. Don’t figure that the moment you launch your site that you’re going to have over 30,000 members on your mailing list and then purchase some $600 script to manage them all. When you first start out I’ve found that self-hosted scripts are pretty reasonable, and 99% of the time they’re free OR can just be found through your cPanel installation.
Naturally someone running a large business wouldn’t take this route and they’d look into outside companies like ResponseCom‚Ñ¢ to handle these things for them. Marin Worldwide is one of the largest and most successful mailing list providers in the nation which offer you customized mailing lists, Telemarketing lists and fax lists to both small businesses and fortune 1000 clients. If you’re looking for something on this scale then checking out martainworldwide.net would be a good thing for you.
New Resource: PowerOpt
Wednesday, July 18th, 2007I’ve been involved in the stock market for many years, it’s mainly because family members have had stock built up over time that was left to me in a will or just my own investing in general. I don’t pay much attention to the stocks but I do know that one of them is housed with AT&T and since the iPod craze is hitting, I’m certain something has improved. I’ve looked into a few different options to keep myself up to date with things and I came across options trading by PowerOpt. It offers you the control of automatically sorting filtering and analyzing over 2,900+ optional stocks and 190,000+ options online to find investments to meet your profit goals. There’s a 14 day trial so I downloaded it to test it out, I’ll have more information about this program in the future. So far it seems pretty cool but I’d have to play around with it some more to really get a good feel of how it’s going to work out for me.
Business Credit Cards
Tuesday, July 10th, 2007What I’m typically not too open about is the fact that I do own a credit card for business based purchases. I was lucky enough to come across one on creditcardsearchengine.com that gave me basically everything I’d ever need without any major interest rates that I couldn’t afford. I’m also lucky enough to have a high enough credit score that it helped the high interest rate as well. I use it to make a few purchases here in there, mainly bulk ordering when it comes to domains and other hosting related supplies. Three of five servers are being paid for through the card as well. It’s a rather nifty little thing to have, honestly. I don’t want to have a personal credit card but I can understand where having one, from a business stand point, is rather important.
IPITV Magazine
Thursday, July 5th, 2007I came across a new company today called IPITV which is a full-service publishing company that specializes in creating new ideas and different approaches to forming partnerships with travel tour operators and today’s business product solutions. It’s currently partnered with more than 100 clients worldwide. They’re in Pompano Beach, Florida and recognized as one of the most successful publishing companies in South Florida.
I attempted to do a little bit more reading into them and couldn’t come up with much else but I was able to find out that, from the beginning, their mission has been to deliver the highest quality programming to their viewers, sponsors and networks. It’s unique style of programming demands cutting edge content for today’s sophisticated viewer. They capture the latest trends and provide access to the constantly changing world we live in with a fresh new look.
In laymen terms, they’re another TV production company out there with a mission to change the world. I wish them luck because, people these days are a bit too stubborn to step outside of their boxes.
I think it’s time for a new car
Thursday, July 5th, 2007For the past couple of years, Sean has been having some trouble with the radiator in his car. I think he’s replaced it about three times at this point and while I’d originally thought it was based on a malfunctioning thermostat, I later found out that the thermostat was new. I want to assume that the new one was faulty but either way more than enough money has been spent to get something fixed or replaced than there really should be. He currently has a Chevy Beretta which is basically what the Cavalier was based off of, so since it’s over 10 years old, naturally there are going to be some problems here and there.
What I found out through some random online information to be directed to a new resource, radiator.com, there are also a lot of problems with Integra radiators as well. There’s something about the new models of older cars that bring random faulty issues here and there. It’s not just the radiator though, it’s also cooling components as well.
Either way I think it’s time for him to start looking into a new car, I know Karen agrees as well. If something is 12 years old and causing nothing but problems, more than likely it’s time to move on, you know?
Anniversary … fast approaching
Thursday, July 5th, 2007Our anniversary is fast approaching and I’m itching to find out what exactly Sean has in store for me. I know we’re going to dinner and he, being as convincing as he is, managed to get what his gift was out of me. I’ve bought him a 19″ wide screen LCD monitor because the one he’s using now, my old one, is on the fritz – we think. We’re unsure if it’s his adapters, graphics cards or even just the monitor in general. However, the color quality is so screwed up that everything on the screen is literally too blurry for words so either way he’s getting a new one and that’s that.
This doesn’t help me out though, I really want to know what he’s got in store for me. I’m kind of wondering if a surprise flower delivery is going to show up. Maybe something special will be happening at dinner, I honestly don’t know, either way I’m itching to find out what it is. He won’t tell me anything and right now he’s trying to hide his credit card from my sight while he’s surfing around online, I have no way of figuring out what he’s doing over there either. I’m just a very nosy person, heh.
Going through the morning rush…
Thursday, July 5th, 2007I received a strange email before in regards to the price of gold coins, silver coins, and even bronze for that matter. Spam can be a rather strange thing, but I get bored enough to google things on the topic if it seems even remotely interesting to me. I’ve come across monex.com, a site I’ve used in the past, and found that while gold is great and all, there is a HUGE market for buying silver these days. I came across this quick web release about silver:
There may never be a better time for buying silver bullion than right now. World demand for silver now exceeds annual production, and has every year since 1990. Above ground stockpiles of silver bullion are low, shrinking rapidly and approaching zero. Since the end of WWII, for example, the U.S. government – once the largest stockpiler of silver on the planet – has dumped billions and billions of ounces of silver bars onto the world market, effectively depressing silver prices. Today, that government silver hoard is gone . . . and now the U.S. government is a silver buyer. For these reasons, silver bars represent an outstanding investment opportunity.
Either way I think an investment in anything isn’t a bad idea, I think that’s why people spend so much time on the stock market. They want to get everything they can for their money and there really isn’t anything wrong with that. I’m still peeved that my father didn’t invest in Google or Yahoo when I told him about them, he chose to stick with AT&T and I guess that’s fine now considering the iPhone is out, who knows what’ll happen with that stock. However, I hear there’s a lot of issues with the phone so I can only feel sorry for everyone having those shiny new two year contracts.
Still searching high and low.
Wednesday, July 4th, 2007It’s really to the point of just being too hard for me to come across an accredited distance learning school. I was set on AIU, considered Westwood and I’ve blogged about Capella University in the past but they, unfortunately, don’t offer me the courses that I’m interested in taking at the moment. The only thing close is a bachelors in Graphics and Multimedia but that’s not where I want to be. I want a web programming course, I just need someone who’s doing it at home to tell me if their school sucks or not but no one seems to know anything about it. I could still put everything on hold and just get my degree in medical billing and transcription, which down here would probably make me quite a bit of money considering in this complex alone 80% of the residents are all over the age of 60 so at least I know there’s a job base, I could just shoot down to Bebe Medical and apply but that doesn’t mean it’ll work out well for me.
My problem is that I’m still in a somewhat New York state of mind. While some people are looking at $30,000 for an entire college course (all semesters) as being rather expensive, compare it to the tens of thousands of dollars one would have to spend at a campus based college per semester if they went somewhere like CW Post. Sean attempted to go to CW Post but tuition was $17,000 per semester and then after that it was $400 per course, per semester. So figure he’s taking five courses, which is $19,000 per semester. He goes for his bachelors which is four semesters so that brings the total of a campus based degree up to a whopping $76,000. This is before you’re paying for room and board, before you’re factoring in the price of books and supplies, that could easily take what you thought was only going to be a $20,000 loan straight into the world of $100,000 loans and sooner or later, debt for the rest of your life. Now you see why I don’t want a campus based school.
It’s time for an upgrade
Thursday, June 28th, 2007We have a small fridge in the office, Sean’s probably owned it for years but lately it just seems too small for the both of us. I buy in bulk when it comes to water, and once that’s all in there it’s hard to hold his 2 liter bottles of soda when he’d like to have more than one in there. It’s not even that I’m taking up a lot of room, it’s just the fact that the fridge is oddly narrow so it’s hard to really fit anything in there anyway.
The fridge in the kitchen is a lot smaller than it looks as well, so the freezer in there is kind of overflowing as well. I’ve been considering investing in getting a second fridge this way the fridge itself offers more room for Sean and I and we’d also have extended freezer space for the kitchen. I’ve poked around Sears and PC Richard, the two places I would normally shop up in New York because they were so close to my house. Unfortunately there isn’t either one in the immediate area for me. I’d have to travel all the way to Salisbury, MD or straight up to Dover, DE. I’ve looked into both General Electric (GE) and Samsung Refrigerators. A few places have brought me towards Best Buy but unfortunately they’re up in Dover as well so in the long run, I’m kind of stuck.
Other searches have brought us to considering an old-school freezer in the kitchen, there’s enough space behind the bar where we could place a low profile one, just to extend freezer space in there. Unfortunately that doesn’t help us in the kitchen. I assume that when Sean gets rid of the CRT monitors and finally upgrades to LCD’s, that we’ll be able to move things around in the office and maybe fit a larger sized refrigerator in there as well.
I’d discuss this with him right now, but he’s officially passed out – so much for staying up and watching TV with me.
We need to get out of here!
Sunday, June 10th, 2007With the unwanted house guest, Sean and I are looking for any excuse possible just get out of here. She’s now asleep on the couch and I’m damn sure she’d have issues with people walking around the house. Karen is now stuck without a computer so she’s just sitting on the uncomfortable chair watching TV, all I can do is feel bad for her at the moment.
Sean and I feel as though we need a vacation, and no this isn’t based on just the last 24 hours. We’ve wanted to get out of here for a while, we work too hard and just need a break from it all. I’ve always wanted to go to Florida, he wants to go to Ohio to visit his brother. I got lucky and found Discount Disney Tickets, but as of this moment he seems uninterested in going. I can kind of see where he’s coming from though, it’s even hotter in Florida than it is up here, and there’s also heavy tourists walking around as well, worse than here and that’s considering that we’re in a resort town.
Either way we just want to get out of here and really have no idea how we’re going to go about doing so. I’m sure we’ll figure something out soon. I hear Maine has some rather mild summers, and as long as it’s not 90¬?F (32¬?C) for a few days on end, I’m pretty sure we’ll wind up looking north instead of south – that’s for sure.
Fathers Day Fast Approaching
Thursday, June 7th, 2007With Fathers Day fast approaching, I’m confused as to what I’m going to get him. Sure, there’s always the typical Fathers Day Baskets but I’ve done those so many times that I feel sort of repetitive with it. Another thing that needs to be factored in is my fathers BIRTHDAY is the following Tuesday so I either need to do a large gift that will cover both in one shot or two little gifts, either way I’m stuck for ideas.
I came across gourmetgiftbaskets.com not too long ago and while I like what they have to offer, I don’t know if my father actually would. Now he appreciates everything, don’t get me wrong, he’s on a diet at the moment though so I’m not sure if sweets are really the way to go for me. I know he’s into meats and cheeses but considering his diet, not sure he’d take to it quite well either. I certainly couldn’t get him any candy, though he’s a fan of trail mix at the moment considering he’s eating it all in moderation. He’s lost about 15-20lbs and is starting to get himself back towards his college weight, that seems like so long ago but he was happier back then, so were his back, neck, shoulders and legs.
I did find a lot of their other baskets to be rather interesting though. They’ve got these cool beer baskets with all different kinds of goodies in there. There are also theme baskets and any other kind of basket that you can really think of. They’re a bit on the pricey side, then again the one I figured would be perfect for dad is in the $150 range and that’s just my personal taste. They also have baskets in the $70 range and considering they overload them with tons of nifty gifts, it’s worth the price. I found a couple in there for Baby but we’ve got other plans for our anniversary anyway, no reason to spend all the money on a gift basket containing food he’d probably never touch (very, very picky eater), we’ll stick to our vacation plans.
At the end of the month I’m going up to New York to visit dad and my sister for their birthdays. I guess I should start getting some baskets together now, shouldn’t I?
Online Schooling – Capella University
Sunday, June 3rd, 2007I’ve spoken about Capella University in the past and quite a few people have asked me questions about them. I’ve dealt with quite a few internet based school and I fully understand how beneficial online courses can be. They’re a great resource for high school and college students, they’re also an excellent resource for people who are looking to further their career or even those just interested in learning a new certification program.
Capella University was founded in 1993 and is a fully accredited online university that offers graduate degree programs in business, information technology, education, human services and psychology. They also offer bachelor’s degree programs in business and information technology as well. With these areas of study, Capella currently offers 82 graduate and undergraduate specializations and 16 certificate programs. The university currently serves more than 17,900 students from all 50 states and 56 countries. Their goal is to provide high caliber academic excellence and pursuing balanced business growth. If you’re interested in learning more about this school, please visit capella.edu or call 1-888-227-3552 (1-888-CAPELLA).
This blog post was based on information provided by Blogitive. For more information, please visit Blogitive.com.
Flea Market Fun
Saturday, June 2nd, 2007Tomorrow we’re all heading up to Laurel because there’s some flea market and when I go to places like that I like to check out the jewelry, you can typically get some fairly decent deals on anything that you buy considering the vendors are either getting their items at cost or they gave up on having a yard sale and it’s just items that they’ve got sitting in their house that they’re looking to get rid of. Ebay is really considered to be the flea market of the internet, if you think about it. The one thing I always make a point of doing before going to a flea market or bidding on something online is the current gold price because it’s important to know what you’re getting yourself into when buying gold based pieces.
I don’t think I’m going to be bringing any money up with me though. I’m sure that I’ll come across something but knowing my spending habits around funky looking things and the fact that my father’s birthday is coming up, I’m going to make it a point to not go crazy and just keep the money in the bank. That’s going to be hard for me but even just spending the day looking around a 15 acre lot, I’m pretty sure that I’ll be too tired to even bother with whipping out some cash.
