Dr Copa Scrip for Success

We drink soda every once in a while. When you only drink it once or twice a week, it does not make sense to buy soda in the big 2-liter bottles, as they go flat within a day or two of being opened for the first drink. So our preferred soda container is the aluminum cans, which are recycled and easy to handle.

The cans go on sale every once in a while, so I like to stock up when they hit a certain price point. Of course, the cost depends on where you buy them. The most expensive place to buy canned soda is usually the convenience store or gas station. A 12 pack of sodas at the c-store will run about five bucks. On the other hand, the regular price at the grocery store for name brand canned soda is usually about $3 – $3.25 for a 12 pack. When they go on sale for under $3, I’ll buy two or three of the 12 packs, and then those will last me about a month.

My wife came home from work today with a horror tale to share.  The business she works at had a major computer server meltdown today and they were unable to process any orders from their customers until after 7pm.  The manager had called technical support at 9am and a tech arrived at 2pm.  The employees had been directed to tell people that they could return at 3pm and could pick up their orders.  Well, at about 3pm the technician advised them that the server was fried and that he was trying to find a new one.  That took hours!  And when the new server was located and delivered, the technician found that the stored backup data was not working properly and he had to do a lot of extra work to get the system up and running.  Her company easily lost over $20,000 in sales alone that day!

I can’t even imagine why the company did not have a backup server on site, or an online backup in place so that when the server crashed the system would simply re-direct to the backup server, alarms go off to notify the technician that the main server was down so a new server could be brought in to the store and put into place.  In this day and age, to have the entire business shut down for the entire day because the corporate offices are too cheap to invest in a decent back-up plan is really stupid.  For just a few dollars a month, this could have been completely avoided!

One of my new friends that I’ve made on Facebook is a Native American Indian who lives in the mountains of Georgia. Silentfeather makes and sells Indian crafts and jewelry on the internet.

Silentfeather asked me and several of his friends to post a link to his web site to help increase traffic. But I realized that he actually needs help with adwords management and optimizing his web site.

There is a lot to learn about marketing web sites if you are trying to earn a living from selling items on the internet. There are new and evolving techniques for increasing web site traffic, such as search retargeting. It is getting to the point that anyone but the most dedicated and savvy person needs help from professionals. You just cannot do it all by yourself.

If it was my own web site, I would not hesitate to talk with an adwords management company. Just like any other business service, optimizing your web site and making the most of your internet presence will effect the bottom line. And, if you are not doing this to make money, why are you on the internet at all?

Sometimes when I can’t sleep, I’ll get up and go into the living room and watch a little cable TV. Last night I was flipping through some channels and came across a Three Stooges marathon on one of the channels. That was funny!

When I was growing up, we visited our grandfather and grandmother on their farm at least one weekend every month. It was a long drive, so going for a visit meant that we would have to sleep over at least one night. That was fine with us kids – we loved visiting the farm.

I remember my grandfather showing us his covered oak rain barrel that was sitting behind the house, explaining that he harvested rain water for watering my grandmother’s vegetable garden. He did not worry about watering his crops of field corn, soy beans and hay. But grandma’s vegetables had to be tended to and watered regularly.

I hadn’t given any thought to rain barrels lately, but today I discovered that harvesting rainwater is becoming a popular option for homes in the suburbs and not just for farms. Of course, the barrels used for a residence have to look nicer than the black or green plastic utility styles that you find on farms.

I found rain barrels for sale on the internet and am totally impressed with the new look and designs of the barrels. Many of them look like planters and some are even made to look like window boxes, with removable trays for flowers over top of the tubing that collects and stores the water. This might be an option for us – especially when I get the new shed.