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I know it’s been a while since I last did a blog dump, but believe me, a lot is going on right now. Where do we start…

First off, JP and Sara got married. It was a very nice ceremony and a kick ass time was had by all. After the ceremony, the entire wedding party drove around for about 3 ½ hours in a nice stretched Hummer limo. Totally awesome! You can check out pics from the wedding and of the Hummer over at the moblog. ——->

The business is doing quite well. We’ve been ordering part for some system builds as well as working on a laptop. Things are at that stage right now where it’s busy enough that we aren’t bored, but not too busy that we can’t get everything done. For everything going on right now, I’d say that the business flow is at a most excellent pace.

Fall is finally in the air. In fact, Jess told me that the heat kicked on this morning when she got out of the shower. I love fall. This is going to be fun because this is the first fall Jess and I have been living together. Five years ago when I first moved in here was a great time in my life because everything was new. I was on my own for the first time, and what I remember most was the constant smell of fresh paint and the feeling of freedom and happiness. Well, that feeling is back this year. Jess is just about done painting the entire kitchen, a new roof is being put on, we have 2 wonderful (most of the time) kittens, and I’m living with the woman that I love more than anything else. This is going to be a good fall.

On the subject of Jess, she is putting together a little birthday arty for me next Saturday. It’s not going to be a huge party, well, maybe for this house it is. It’s mostly made up of family and very close friends. I wanted to go with Batman theme but all we could find was “The Batman”, that new gay cartoon which makes a mockery of the Batman name. So, instead we’re having a Transformers theme party. Still pretty kick ass for this big kid who refuses to grow up!

I think that’s about all I have time for before work. Although looking up that is quite a bit. I know I say this a lot but I am going to try and post a little more. Hell, I have tons of pics for the moblog that I just haven’t had time to upload. Maybe we’ll try to get some up tonight after the movie.

Oh, one last thing on the subject of movies. I opened us up a Netflix account over the weekend. I opened it up on Sunday night, our first movie shipped out on Monday, and we got it yesterday. All the rentals I want for $9.99 a month and I never have to leave the house. I am soo going to love this!!!

My good friend the Bertman (a.k.a. Jerry) has started his own blog. He’s a great guy, and it really shows in his ramblings. Show your love by checking it out!

Well…this is a good one. We get a call to the toll free number at i/o Computers. It’s a guy from right outisde of Loas Angeles wanting us to look at his computer. So, I called him back this afternoon and had a really nice conversation with him. He saw us listed on /. this morning, and visited our website. By looking at the site, he assumed we were a national chain and wanted to know where we were located in Southern California. First off, I think that is a great testimonial to the design of the website. But, this is where it started to hurt. He said that Dell was going to charge him $600 to look at his machine regardless if they do any work on it or not. All he wanted was someone to diagnose it to see it is the motherboard that is bad or something else. This is something very simple that we can do in the shop and takes about 15 ~60 minutes depending on the system config. He noted that we only charge $20 for a diagnostic and wanted to know how we do things. I explained our business model that with the $20, we assess what needs to be done to the system and what we reccomend you have done to the system. After that, it’s totally up to the customer to decide what they would like to have done. He said that that was exactly what he was looking for and he wished he had a place out there like us he could take his machine to.

We won a customer without even seeing his machine. Too bad he’s 3,000 miles away. Dammit!

Ok…here is what has happened so far this morning.

I got my first /. story published about the business.

Then, we get a voice mail on the toll free line from a guy who wants us to look at his system. The thing is though, his number is from Los Angeles…as in California.

It’s not even 9:00am and all this has happened. This should be one hell of a day!

Work has been hellacious lately. We’ve lost another manager, stress is at an alltime high, moral at an alltime low, and tempers raging. A lot of people wanted me to put in for the manager position. And, from what I heard, it would have been mine if I had wanted it. But that was the thing, I really didn’t want it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not afraid of hard work and I would have loved the extra money, but this is not what I want.

I came to a decision last week that has really got me excited. After mulling it around for quite some time, and talking it over with Jess, I am going to go back to school in the spring. Granted, it’s only going to be one class, but it will be a step in the right direction. If I had taken that position at work, I can see what would have happened. I took this job as a “temporary thing”. I needed a job at the time, so I took this one and told myself I would get a better job as soon as I got back on my feet. That was over 3 years ago. And yes, I will admit it — I got comfortable there. While everyone was trying ot get me to take this position, I kept thinking in my head, “take it for the money and then leave afeter few months. It’s just a temporary thing…” It was then and there and I really had made up my mind. This is a company I and trying to get away from, and I was about to put another leg in the grave with them. If I had taken it, I could have easily seen myself still working there in 3 more years being absolutely miserable. That’s not what I want out of life.

I’m going to be 28 in less than a month, and when I was 18, I had a totally different idea about what my life was going to be like at 28. Granted, I have hit one or two speed-bumps along the way, but I am sick and tired of putting things off. I’m not getting any younger and I’ll be damned if I am going to waste the rest of my life in retail. Therefore, I am going to start taking classes in AS400 programming and Small Business Management. The AS400 can land me a pretty decent job locally, and the Small Business Management is for i/o Computers. Our goal was to have a retail location in 3 years. This is one gola I really want to keep and not put off.