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Everything Work RelatedSaturday, February 05, 2005
Starting a small business
My girlfriend for a while has been making hand-made tote bags and selling them. She became rather famous too! She was featured in Elle Girl magazine, the local newspaper did a big article on her and one of the local TV stations Saturday morning shows interviewed her.
Unfortunately, all the press had a downfall. She became overwhelmed with orders and dealing with flaky customers. It ended up such a hassle and she ended up basically throwing in the towel.
Well fast forward to now. With the need for some extra cash flow and something to do fashion related it’s time for small business take two!
This time however things are going to be different. There were many problems with how the business was run last time. The lessons of what not to do are now known and we’ll be trying to make a go of it doing it proper like.
Notice that I said we. The biggest change this time is I’m here and going to help her out. Now, I’m no expert at running my own biz but I do have a certain area of knowledge that I can help her out with. That’s technology! Technology alone cannot make your business a success but it can make it easier to manage and operate when done properly.
This was one of the major downfalls of her previous attempt. All her sales were through her website but she did the entire product listing by hand and used email for sales. There were too many instances of customers saying they want to buy one of her one-of-a-kind custom bags but would never go through it. They’d say they’ll mail her a check or money order but then a week or two would pass and no money shows up. All the while others want to buy the bag too but she can’t because she believes someone is going to pay. Then a month later the person finally contacts her and says they changed their mind or they couldn’t get the money, etc, etc.
This time the major change is we’re going to run a true e-commerce site. It’ll be a paypal/credit card driven click to buy site. Customers will have to pay up front immediately.
So, last night she came over and we sat down and started brainstorming. We didn’t do anything to structured. It was mostly just bouncing ideas off each other, looking back at the previous attempt and finding out what went wrong and what we would do different.
I’m going to try to keep a running play by play of everything we do here because honestly this is pretty interesting stuff. I’m sure my GF will make posts from time to time about our activities too so feel free to stop by her blog Critics Darling as well.
Monday, January 31, 2005
How to kill yourself in 4 easy steps
Step 1: Drive 10 hours straight to New York City on a Friday.
Step 2: Spend all day on your feet Saturday roaming around the city.
Step 3: Drive 10 hours home on Sunday.
Step 4: Go to work on Monday and load 1500 boxes into semi trailers.
Oy is my back sore! It was a really really really fun weekend and worth the pain. I got to go on a little road trip with the love of my life. We saw some beautiful areas of the country while on the road. We got to spend another weekend in our favorite city!
We saw some wonderful pieces of art at the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) and then some really stupid pieces that I don’t know why they would be in a museum. I’m sorry folks but painting a canvas blue and calling it “untitled” is not art. It’s laziness! I’m not an artist and I know I have zero artistic talent so if I see something that I could do in 5 minutes then I refuse to consider it art.
Anyways, I’m tired as heck as I’m sure my car is! Poor thing got a major beating this weekend. It must have run over hundreds of potholes, been running at high speeds for hours and put more than 1200 miles on it in. Other than the crappy seats with no lumbar support the car (2004 Chevy Malibu LS) gave a wonderful ride.
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Apparently, it was all a lie!
I remember back during peak season (the Christmas holiday) at least 2 managers at UPS said it would slow down drastically during January. They told me that it would be possible to get an entire week off because they would have too many people and end up sending people home every day. If you asked your supervisor, he would gladly let you just not come in because it’s easier for him to plan knowing you just won’t be in all week.
BULL SHIT!
My girlfriend and I are planning to drive to New York City so that she can pack up everything from her apartment there and move back here to Ohio. Ore plans were that we would head off Thursday morning so that we would have all of Friday and Saturday to pack up and spend one last weekend in NYC.
I asked my super today if I could have off the two days next week. He just laughs and says we don’t have enough people that come in to guarantee I can get the days off. Now I think that’s crap. Just for the record I’m doing about 1200 boxes on Mondays and it tapers off each day of the week to where I do only about 800 pieces on Friday for my truck. During peak I would do 2500-3000 average per day and even once I did 5000! Last Friday we had 5000 pieces for the whole area!
I think they can live without me for two days personally. We only have 12 people on the roster for our area and they only run 9-10 a day anyways. The problem apparently is that too many others don’t show up for work, which I find hard to believe. I’ve see the same people every day at work for the last few weeks. Where are these supposed slackers that don’t show up? I’ve never seen any strange faces of these mysterious employees just appear once a week or anything.
I know I’m not exactly the model employee but I sure work hard. I think he could be a little nice and work with me on this. Since I’ve been working there I’ve only asked time off twice and missed one day of work. I asked off once for a job interview and once to pick up my girlfriend from the airport. The one day I missed was during the last big snow storm. Our area was under a level 3 snow emergency. For you that don’t live in snow areas, a level 3 is basically the worst. It means most roads are un-drivable and in fact if the police, sheriff, or highway patrol catches you on the road they can pull you over and give you a ticket! So there was no way I was going to go to work that day.
So Mr. Supervisor, let me get this straight? I come in to work every day, where I’m usually the first there and usually the last to leave, I bust my hump and help out wherever I can. All I want is two days off, when the load will be low anyways, but you can’t give it to me?
Thanks for nothing!
Sunday, January 09, 2005
Getting back into the programming groove
I decided today to get back into programming after being burned out from work for so long. I work at UPS loading boxes every day. Loading boxes all day is about the most brain-dead a job you can do. You would think I would come home and want to programming just to use my brain. Yet, I just don’t feel like it.
I haven’t written a line of code since the middle of October. So, today I made the effort to get back into coding. I had started several programming projects a while ago and just stopped. They projects were add-ons for the ExpressionEngine web publishing system that I’m using.
I really haven’t done any coding today. Today was just prep and setup. I’m making a FreeBSD 5.3 test server to do the development work on. Right now I have the OS installed but I’m doing a buildworld on it in order to update everything and patch security holes. Tomorrow I’ll get apache, mysql, php, etc installed and running. The next day I’ll finally get ExpressionEngine installed and my special backup/rollback procedure configured and running.
Then after all that I’ll actually get around to start coding!
I’m sure I’ll have enough on my plate for a while but I’m already thinking of some other programming projects I’d love to work on so we’ll just see how much I manage to get done.
on 01/09/2005 at 10:43 PM
Blogging • Computers & Technology • Work • BSD • ExpressionEngine • (1) Comments • Permalink
Thursday, December 23, 2004
not working today
Well with the bad weather we’re having around here I didn’t go into work today. Between the roads that are complete trash and the fact that the driveway is covered in 2-3 foot snow drifts I couldn’t even if I wanted to!
I called in around 8am this morning and asked if the noonday sort was still running. The lady in motor control said they were which made me a bit upset because I hoped they would just shutdown for the day. She said lots of people were calling off and the truck traffic was low so even if I did show up there probably wouldn’t be much package volume today.
I sat around for about 30 minutes deciding if it was worth the effort to try to dig myself out and head in. I ended up say screw it and so I called the main office and said there’s no way I’m coming in today. Actually, they have an automated voicemail system that you just leave a message but whatever.
So here I sit waiting for the diesel lawn tractor heater to warm up so I can get out and plow the driveway. I hope the roads improve today. I was planning on going to the movies with the girlfriend tonight. We’ll just see I guess.
Sunday, December 05, 2004
Applied for another job
Well I sent out my resume and references to the local library. They had a job posting for a Library Page in the newspaper. It’s part time for night and weekends. They said 10-15 hours a week. I’m assuming probably minimum wage.
It would be a nice second job to pick up. After loading trucks all day at UPS pushing a cart around and shelving books would be a wonderful change! I could handle it easily and it would be a great job. Shelving and stacking books in a nice quiet environment for an hour or two every night. Pure bliss!
I cranked out a cover letter and stuff my resume into a letter and headed downtown to the post office to drop it in the mailbox. It should get delivered tomorrow so I hope I’m one of the first to get my resume in.
I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed.
Saturday, October 30, 2004
Yes I'm still alive
Sorry for not posting more. Work has just been killing me. I get home from work after loading boxes into trucks for 4-5 hours straight and just collapse. Just getting enough energy to check my email can be a struggle. It’s starting to get easier though. I guess I’m getting into shape and used to the work.
I got my first paycheck Friday, finally. It was $188.19 gross and $154.90 after taxes. Not to shabby for 22.14 hours of work! Thanks UPS!
Of course I’ve already spent that and part of next weeks check. I bought a plane ticket to NYC. I’m going to see my girlfriend again next weekend. I got a good deal on the ticket. It was only $202.89 round trip. I’ll be flying out Friday the 5th right after work. I work close enough to the airport that I can get out of work and be in the airport ready to board the plane in 20-30 minutes tops. We get the whole weekend together and I’m taking a 6:30am flight out of NYC Monday morning. It works out perfect because I’ll be back home an hour and half before work starts so I can head right from the airport to work. Convenient!