Getting Closer

I've been amazed at how much a good straightening up today made the building look much better.
C. was up there and she helped get things straightend up and they are looking ready to go. I need to get bellsouth to get my router up there so I can get on the interenet.
It's killing me.
We really could move in monday. There are more things that need to be done but it's looking pretty good for the home team.

Another dilema that I'm facing. What color to paint the front to the building. Right now its a bright blue color. The top (on the other side of the awning) is red (brickish color). I have a red building on my left and a white building on my right. What colors do you like?
Not pink. No lavender.... but what else...

I've been hanging fabric on the walls on one side like wall paper, using a staple gun and fabric glue it's actually looking better than I thought it was going to look. C. has been a good encourager on that front. I also have a display window that I can put something in. What do you put in a display window when your product is a service? (Web design...hosting...custom apps etc....)
Maybe plants? If I had the big bucks, I could put a plasma screen in there with a power point about our company -- but lets face it -- the average joe walking down main street can't even spell the word "web." We don't live in New York or anything.

Give me some feedback. I need some help here!

Isn't there a song about this?

I've been "working on a building" now for the past couple of days. I keep thinking that there's an old Gillian Welch or Allison Krauss song about that. I had my buddies Adam and Robert come help me finish the nailing and hanging the wall fabric last night. We finished off the rest of the beer from Saturday. (Not bragging but reporting....) It certianly helped the morale of the work crew. We ended up having to make a Wal-Mart run -- or as I call it "hell-mart" trip to get some more supplies. While we were there we saw out local vet who has taken a shine to a single mom friend our ours. While he wasn't looking we took a bunch of flowers and put them in his cart. He didn't notice for a minute, but then he started looking around trying to figure out who had pranked him.
It was funny. He was befuddled. I love that word.

I've talked about this before but I had a meeting with Cingular last week. We are going to be testing one of their wireless devices that uses WAP to browse the web. I can't wait. I used it while I was down there with them eating lunch and checked my email and told employees what to do using it. Anything that isn't extremely expensive that helps keep us getting more done each day is worth it in my book. If its 400 bucks, but can help me bill an extra 5 hours a month, for the next year.... you better believe I'll be doing that!

Check back soon, when I get my digital camera working again I'll post some photos of the building in action. We need a good name for it. Maybe "Big River Headquarters".

Also, my buddy Robert is starting a carpet / floor cleaning business. He's looking for a name. Any ideas? We thought about "Prisock Indoor Management Pro's" he could go by the acronym "PIMP." Maybe it's not as good as I thought, but I got a kick out of it.

I'm leaving on a jet plane

Well, I'm not leaving as much as I'm moving offices around the corner from where I am. I have about a 15 X 15 office right now. We are renovating and moving in to a 12 x 50 building now. It was a building used for storage for the owner who also happens to own two other businesses right down the sidewalk on the same block as me. They are good clients of mine and when he said he had some space, I was excited. I ended up making a deal on the building (renting) and would be moving in on the "first." My friend and I talked every day or so to see how the cleaning out of the old building was going. Finally at a standstill, I took my employees down there and cleaned it out and started getting ready to move in.

We took down some old painted plaster / wallpaper that was cracking and gross. We ended up deciding that we would hang fabric on the wall that was in bad shape (not structurally) but to the eye.
Well, the night before I started working on this project with the office. I had a rough night of sleep. My neck had a crick in it that was awful. I felt like that robot on Star Wars, when I looked left I twisted at the hip. I was painting, scraping, lifting, cleaning etc... for the last two days. Finally, it seemed to have lightened up some. I hope its gone for good. I wish I had a massage therapist in my family. Oh, wait, I do have one, she just freaking moved to NYC.... Good call Gertrude, we could have used you here you know!
So back to the cleaning, I had my boy Robert helping me doing some painting. Robert is a SR at MSU and will be finished in a couple of weeks. He's going to start his own business too, he's got a pretty mean work ethic when there's beer involved so I did the logical thing. Got 2 bags of ice and a case of beer. Then I was struck with this question: "Do you want to be known as the guy who is down town throwing back the cold ones??"

Well I didn't want to be known like that so we had to sneak the cooler in. It helped with the morale of the work crew. But I don't know about the quality of the work. I was hoping to be moved in on Monday. I can tell you that is NOT going to happen. Maybe Tuesday. If I can get some more helpers!

Anwar no more

Anwar just got kicked off... I'm crushed, I can't believe it. What will I ever do?
I'm just kidding, I never liked him. I'm sure he'll be like Clay Aiken and sell more records than Bo who will probably win.

What a day, I've never had a week where I've been more broke, but so busy. I've got three proposals to get out ASAP and I've got a meeting about a new product collaboration with Cingular to offer one of our web-based products with one of their PDA devices.

I did have a bright spot in my life the other night talking to liddy. She's got a blog and it's funny. Keep up the good work.

Thank Goodness It's Friday

Had a great day at work. Well that is except for class out at the school. I just don't like the talk-back I get from some of the kids out there. They didn't ruin my day. I got a chance to talk to one of my clients for a while today. We are finishing up their site and it was great getting to chat with them for a while. I really appreciate them a lot.

We had a great time tonight eating at Harvey's in Starkville. About halfway through the meal we heard some sirens. Our waitress came and told us "You should be glad you ate here, Barnhills Buffet is on fire!!!"
I was glad. Didn't seen any flames when we got done with dinner. I was going to go get some marshmellows and a coat hanger but didn't have enough open flame to cook on. Maybe next time.

Well it's that time again...

Batch's birthday is here yet again. Happy Birthday buddy. I hope you aren't as old as I think you are. Let's just leave it at that.
We have been stinkin busy around here. I've had quite a time with Big River rolling along. Lot's of stuff to do, but seemingly no income this past week. I invoiced out another 4 or 5G's this week, so maybe we'll get paid soon. I did pay my taxes. It did hurt, but I survived. Somone please remind me to estimate those things this year so I don't get killed. We also hired a new girl this week. Her name is the same as my youngest sister, but spelled completely different. She's been learning. We hope to have her up to speed by the end of this month. She'll be full time after she graduates in May. She'll then get married, take another week off... and then come in full time after that.

We also had the privelidge of seeing Louisville newest resident. Her name is Haley Virginia.
She's the daugter of L. and T. some good friends of ours. We went to Jackson to visit them in the hospital. Our car broke down.... but it was just some corrosion on the battery terminal that I was able to fix with the help of the rent-a-cop in the target / olive garden parking lot.
I also had the distinct honor of eating my supper about 10 feet from Ligon Duncan. I spoke to him and he was very helpful with suggestions about the car getting fixed. He also drives a Nissan (so he said) and reccomended a couple of places for me to take care of us if we needed it.
Thanks Lig... we got it done!

So, i'm going to see if this post to the blog via email thing works.

So if you are reading this, you can see that this is posted up there. C has been sharing the joys of being in JA... Junior Aux.... that's one of those womens groups that does civic stuff. I won't say anything bad, not that I think people from town even read this. I'll have to post more later.

Thanks for the props

I recently updated my template links. I had a broken link to Joseph's blog.
C. is telling me some stuff...
I'll have to write more in a little while

Wind

I've never seen it this bad... But wind is so bad right now that it's blowing down our side street and blowing our door open... I had to lock it.
That is pretty bad. I've recovering from this past weekend. Lots of things going on. Last week was the busiest one that I've had in a long time -- maybe ever. I felt like the week of final exams when I had a F in CAL I that I had to bring up to a D to graduate. Not a good feeling. Now I feel like midterms are over, but I really need to buckle down.

UPDATE: Vonage
I used my Vonage phone today. It works great. I just wish I could sync it with my cell phone and put all those numbers in there. I have some 240 numbers in my cell phone, I'd love to be able to dial them from my land-line phone... It sure would help. This vonage thing is really just a router that handles VoIP. You can plug any phone in to it that you want and call nation wide for about 26 bucks a month. Now thats great. Why hasn't Bell South given us that option yet? Probably because their revenue would go way down. It is just WAAAAAAAY cheaper than anything else that we could have done.

Trying to get one in real quick like

Well, I'm at work (when am I not at work?).... I have tons to do. But I just wanted to update my life very quickly..

• I have 12 people to call back
• I have 2 people to talk to about joining the company here
• I just paid my property taxes that Regions Mortgage screwed up
• I paid an extra month on my principle of my loan for the house
• I have a pretty fair amount of taxes that I need to pay
  
• I sold 2 websites yesterday
• I'm now the president of BNI in Starkville
• Chandler and Ragan are coming to town this weekend
• The Winston County Relay for Life is this weekend
• The RUF Crawfish Boil is this weekend
• We are terminating the relationship with our pastor this weekend and starting the search process
• I'm getting ready to move in to our new building on Main Street
  

So anyhow... now you are all up-to-date. I'm doing the best I can. But I feel like I'm not quite getting everything done that I need to do.

I'm back to work!!!!