Frank’s Corner

It seems like so long ago when I was researching ways of getting traffic to our web site and decided a blog, where I could talk about the family, business, what we do at church, how we solve the inevitable difficulties which crop up and new or at least different, if not novel, ways of doing things, would be a good way of enticing people to the web site and eventually cause them to think of us for their videography needs. I’m finding like so many, and so much wiser people, before me that life has its own way of dealing with our plans and changing them, sometimes in small almost unnoticeable ways and other times like being hit with the proverbial “ton of bricks”. As the dust settles I find myself still standing -well sitting here- looking for ways to grow our business and I think we’ve got one, but have to do allot of research to on do it and probably some equipment buying to make it work. More on that later.

Yeah, that was a good title and a good start - To bad I wrote it a month and a half ago, somewhere around the mid June and now we’re almost through July! Well its more like being hit by a railroad train named “tired all the time” I’m under it on the track, its going real slow, I turn my head so I can see the sky between the wheels. Sometimes I even get so far as to stick my head out, but before I can completely roll out from under here come the next set of wheels and I just seem to be stuck here.

We’ve been doing blood work every 2 weeks and over the last 3 months my platelet count has averaged 63 without going over 70. At my last Dr’s. appointment we talked about my being constantly tired and my wife told the Dr. she could always tell the day I took the Prednisone, slow healing of cuts and bruises, the spiking of my blood sugar levels, damage to the immune system, and that continuing the Prednisone could also lead to Osteoporosis. We talked about a Splenectomy, to which we said no because CT & PET scans did not show it to overly enlarged and therefor not necessarily involved in the ITP or CLL and its something we could not undo. Dr. suggested looking at Rituxan, which although not approved for ITP yet, has had at least one good trial and she’s used it on several patients for ITP with good results and my insurance should cover it as it is approved as a front line treatment for CLL. Of course Rituxan has a whole host of its own possible side effects, but continuing the present course is not really an option anymore so this seems like the best next step for now. Turns out my insurance approved and they got it in so quickly I start my first 4 week round Wed. 6 Aug.

Now I’ve put in a date so I’d better get this post finished and up.

Here’s a scheme to think about. With the price of regular gas topping $4.30 gal and milk, at least in NY, hitting $4.37 gal any place we can save a few cents is looking good. So now I actually look at the Re in most of my spam and if FREE is there about 50% of the time I’ll open it. One of the things I opened recently was for Freebieforce. I watched the video and then Googled it, there were 25,000+ entries. I looked at 20 or so in the first few pages and found them about 95% positive. You join look through a host of free or money saving items and services. At $10.00 monthly membership , on just coffee, bagels or Burger King you can easily save twice that. Even better if you sign up and anyone signs up though you you get $1.00 per person. Well like I said free is free and saving is something I’m looking for so I signed up. I’ve decided not to send their letter to everyone on my mailing list and definitely not to buy any mailing lists or to buy into any of their training. What I have decided is to leave a link to FREEBIEFORCE here and also to use everyone who sends me spam as a mailing list. I’ll see what comes of it. In the meantime even a free box of Cheerios a week for the month saves me more then the $10.00 If free or coupon discounted merchandise or services interest you check it out.

Seems like only yesterday I was whining and complaining about not knowing what I’d actually managed to do or not do in the 6 months previous. And now I’m looking back on a month saying Wow “How did all that happen?” - where’d the time go!

Let’s see, first there’s Brooklyn’s birthday. (Yeah, I know, that happens every year, but this year I have no idea what he may want or what to get him.) Well hey, turn a light bulb on over my head - He said he’d like to figure out how to market MILK & CHASE merchandise and we’ve already made bowling shirts, I’ve got the logo files. We want to sell footage and stills for the business and there was a time when when I was doing some research on this stuff - what’d I do with that? Found it, I can set up a pro account at Photo Stock Plus for selling stills and products made from them. Then I can order M&C shirts and mugs from myself for his birthday and see what kind of a job they do on their products at the same time. (He liked them so much he had me set up files for the 4 main characters of M&C the comic and then he ordered a mug of each and a poster showing the 4 of them for himself, which he ended up hanging in the video control room at church.)

Army Dude finishes AIT and is coming home for 2 weeks of Hometown Recruiting before leaving for his first true duty station in Korea (Where he will probably not be coming home from for at least 6 months and definitely not be phoning as often from.) Only two weeks and he’ll be working and mom’ll be working and his brother’ll be working, but it’s over Easter so everyone’ll be around and together for at least one day. Well everyone was working, but we did manage some family time and some individual time with him and we did get the computer and third screen at Church working as correctly as possible in the time we had - After Easter pastor asked if we could put his notes up on the rear screen instead of the sermon outline we were putting up for the rest of the congregation on the front screens - of course the possibility of using multiple images on multiple screens was why they allowed the 3 projectors, screens and computer (specially built and programed by Army dude, Linux based with multiple video inputs and outputs) system we ended up installing. Naturally though, the original idea was to grow into the system and keep adding the new features over time AND that Army dude would either have already accomplished all the programing or be around to do it as Brooklyn and I got the wiring and video equipment in place to even send it all to the computer for distribution, let alone have the operators, much less trained operators to work it. Anyway, we just told pastor “sure, no problem.” Then the two of them went about figuring out how and making it work. Now pastor sends us the slides for the 2 services and a single slide of his notes and we set up the 4 slide presentations, 2 front and 2 rear. Some day we’ll get additional switching equipment and run the other video lines from the control room to the balcony for the projection computer, for now the projectionist just switches between front and rear slide presentations. Anyway, the boys said their goodbyes and mom and I got Army dude to the Airport (where, with no amount of moms pleading would they let “we’re his parents, he’s in the Army and going to Korea” us go to the gate with him.) and as far as security would allow to the gate. We’ve had a couple emails from him and he seems to be doing fine.

Let’s see Brooklyn’s birthday, Army dude finished AIT, was home for hometown recruiting and left for Korea, we got some work at church finished, I set up a still photography account to compliment our video stock account, we celebrated Easter with family, and Oh Yeah at the end of March mom retired. Everything had been piling up on mom for a while- She wasn’t happy at work, then they changed her job, son the younger wasn’t happy with college so he joined the Army (He did do the research and got a good deal and a contract guaranteeing the job he choose, but HE JOINED THE ARMY.) Son the older having graduated college and being hired where he had been interning and hating the 4 hour a day commute moved to Brooklyn, and then dad (me) goes and gets cancer so I guess yeah mom had allot on her plate, so we looked into and revised and revised and revised her retirement plans again and again and then she just decided this was it and did it. Mom’s still settling into getting used to being retired, but I think it’s difficult for her to understand I really do things most of the day most of the time. When I “retired” both boys were still in school and mom was working so I just continued going about things as usual except for going to “work” and then replaced that with working at setting up and growing a family business based on synergizing our complimentary talents and interests with what we were already doing at church. In other words putting together a business which allowed us to have to buy the equipment we needed to make the technology we were pushing the envelope at church with work. So I never had huge vacant time periods to deal with that mom now has. I only hope I’m smart enough to put aside time from some of the “stuff” I’m doing to really spend it with her now that we can. We’ve taken a couple days and gone to the beach and a couple parks where we’ve just walked around and taken some cameras so I’ve gotten some stills for Photo Stock Plus and footage for Brooklyn to edit for Shutterskock. And of course we’re going to Cape Cod for several days to visit an old friend, who just happened to be pastor at our old church. Also it’s like only a week after our 35th anniversary—-.

Admittedly just learning to do the web sites Army dude had been handling and working at growing the business much less adding a new large web site and dealing with the idea of having cancer has not been as easy as I thought it would. And while I Know GOD never allows us more than we can handle I don’t Believe that means we’ll always handle it as well as we could, so yeah it’s been a pain in the butt and that means I’ve undoubtedly been one also. With my platelet count stabilizing, the Dr’s been getting the Prednisone cut back further and further to the point where lately my count averages just about 100,000 and I’m only taking 2.5mg every other day, which has finally gotten me feeling almost the way I think I should - well at least I’m not exhausted all the time. So, even though it’s still watch & wait with the CLL for symptoms to show up and have to then consider what, when and how to do about it, it’s back to life as usual. (I hope.) Which unfortunately included catching up with and taking care of those mundane things like the bills I’ve never liked doing anyway and therefore found being tired a really good excuse for not keeping up with. Yeah, that didn’t work for long - you don’t pay them, they just send you more, you still don’t pay them they just start calling you and send you more till you do pay them. Anyhow with mom retiring it’s only right to start off with everything in order, so of course our newest and we thought best running vehicle decides to roll over and play dead - for keeps! It was replace the engine or the car and as the car was a ‘96 we decided to replace it. We found a ‘98 with only 64,000 miles on it, the price was right and mom liked it - so we bought it.

In his comment Brooklyn (MilkandChase) asked “Will the next installment reflect the negative aspects primarily? or will you still try and spin it in a positive way? Or is this a PR exercise, leaving M&C.com to tell the nitty gritty technical details?   Let’s think about this a second or two.  Think back to the sound system of years ago, a mic at the pulpit and another at the lectern, an on/off switch to an amp and two speakers (we know - we found most of that equipment and salvaged it from the loft and other storage places, remember?)  Then somewhere along the way they added a Lapel and two hand held wireless mics.  Later a cassette tape recorder was added. That’s about where we came along, do you really think those who put together what we inherited didn’t have any difficulties moving from “speak louder” to what they handed off to us?  The point is from where they were to where they got was progress and that was good.  Our journey from where we were to where we are is progress and that is good.  We both see a great difference from where we are to where we believe we should be, you see our not being there yet as negative and I simply see it as still having a great deal of work to do.  So yes, my story will always be positive.  And yes I’ll leave it to M&C.com to tell the nitty-gritty of breakdowns of archaic equipment and the heroic efforts of the people working with it to constantly find new work-arounds and ways of getting the job done, besides you always manage to do it in an entertaining and informative way.

Looking back I realize while I pretty well covered what we do at church I didn’t hit much of what we or in particular I was doing otherwise.  We started the year with a paying job for BCS (paying in this case meaning covering materials and hopefully coffee and big gulps.) wiring their building and all the classes and offices for internet.  Of course as soon as we finished the job their PA system went bad and their tech. blamed our Ethernet wire being next their wire for the problem - we knew it wasn’t, but had to pull all our wiring out of the classes where it was in proximity to theirs to prove it, then of course we rewired them all putting in our own conduits.  Then (soon to be) Army Dude gave us a price (parts only)  to bid on building, programing and installing a new computer for the sanctuary  projector system.  Then we managed to talk Gram into buying us the Grizzly  PTZ remote system, which meant we could buy a single unit system off eBay and a new disc copying tower also.  We used the Grizzly system for the West Islip Spring Concert, which turned out to be the last real paying job Army Dude (enrgeeman.com)  got do with us as he shipped the week before the LIYM Golfouting, which we pulled off by using the Grizzly system and asking Cowpie Productions ( Mr & Mrs Dein, from church) and 2 of the young people who were part of the church Video Ministry to work with us.  Other than a few minor things our next paying jobs  through Sept. ended up being 2 shoots on the same day, which we only managed because they were both at the same location as 90% of our equipment - namely church.  The first and real job was the documentation of the assembly celebrating BCS’s 30th anniversary, with State Senator O. Johnson attending.  We used one of our GL1’s,  a borrowed HD camera from Cowpie and a borrowed HD camera from Atlantic TV, the idea being for M&C.com to eventually do series on the relative merits of each of them on the shoot. (never has been completed)   The second shoot of the day was a wedding in the early evening in the sanctuary.  Some of the family couldn’t make it and we were asked if we could do a live edit to DVD to send to them or be played over the internet for them. For this shoot we relocated 2 of our camera locations in the sanctuary and used 3 GL1’s.

May was Graduation for (soon to be) Brooklyn (B.F.A. in Film making from Five Towns College) his internship with Atlantic TV became a real 5 day a week job, with dad transporting him daily to and from Babylon RR station until he moved to Brooklyn Dec 1.  Of course nothings quite as simple as it seems, he wanted to start a web comic but decided he couldn’t draw so dad offered to lend a feeble hand and things were going pretty well till someone wanted a M&C logo for posting on the web comic (80X80pixels) naturally I had to draw the font pixel by pixel to make it fit,  once he liked that it was “make it a desktop” then Make it a bowling shirt for the bowling team (we bowl every other week in the Sayville Methodist Churches league)  That’s what I was working on there when October came.  Since October he’s been drawing his own comics and doing a better job then I ever did.

At church I was working on the coordination of the installation of the carillon, a gift in memory of a long time member, elder from his family.  We were also getting ready to host the CNN Worship Summit simulcast on Nov 2 & 3.  The first contracted dish installer backed out without letting us know, so on Nov 1 I’m still going back and forth with Chicago and Colorado trying to get an installer lined up.  Nov 2 the gentleman they got left Jersey thinking he had plenty of time, but arrived in Babylon at 10:30 - we got the dish installed and actually had the video up at 11:57:23 with the telecast starting at 12Noon.(I guess he did have plenty of time.) It was a good 2 days and we learned a great deal.

Yeah, It was June 13  when Army dude shipped out and it suddenly dawned on me anything that was going to be done on any of the web sites we were handling would now have to be done by me as he was the one who had built and maintained them for us.  Rather than admit how long it had been since I did any real coding or having to relearn HTML and then the other languages he interspersed in the coding I found it easier to breakdown and buy the Serif web10plus.  I have in another post related my wonderful time working with that when we lost power and it crashed.  After rebuilding our site, clenchpics.com, and our churches site, 1stpresbabylon.org, I actually brought in a couple new  paying sites.  I then started researching SEO and Affiliates to draw traffic to our sites hoping to scare up some real paying business so mom would also be able to retire, but then came October.

Next time from October to present- I hope

To understand some of what has and hasn’t been done probably requires a small understanding of our family dynamics. Their are the four of us Mom, dad and two sons. Together we form the partnership ClenchPICS LLC, whose acronym PICS had to change mid 2007 from “Personal Image & Computing Specialists” to “Professional Image & Composition Specialists” because son the younger, our resident I T genius and builder of computers, joined the Army to become a satellite communication systems installer - maintainer, which left doing the business (what there is of it) to Dad and son the elder, our resident video genius (B.F.A. in Film making from Five Towns College) who moved to Brooklyn in Dec. Okay we have Army dude, enrgeeman.com, Brooklyn guy, milkandchase.com, dad (sometimes referred to as Frank) who tells everybody we can do anything digital (and then worries out how) and Mom, the backbone of the business as she’s the one whose “real” job salary has been the true family income. Oh, yeah, in case you didn’t realize dad’s retired and, as both sons remind me, old.

I always liked gadgets and photography, so as the boys came along and video was becoming family reasonable (at least in my mind) and mom thought (translate, I convinced) looking at the videos would be more enjoyable then just the photo scrap books I acquired our first VCR. As this is the late 1980’s I’ve also started playing with these new fangled personal computers and even convinced mom computers would be such a big part of the boys lives we should get them each their own. So from about 1986 there have always been at least 3 computers in the house and I hate to admit it but truth be told if we could get even 10 cents on the dollar for all the “old” software (from still readable 5 1/4″ , 3 1/2″ ,CDs & DVDs) , old computers from 286’s up and the parts, cases and monitors around here I could probably pay 90% of our bills. As we heard of it or it came out we usually tried it, we still have like 6 of the original old Aviator wireless network creators from WebGear, an original Dazzle as well as a Dazzle DVC-50. In fact we’ll be putting much of this and a good deal of video equipment we have (including a working RCA ProWonder VCR) up for auction on eBay under my AOL screen name of gismomaker.

Yes, mom did like all the cute videos and no we probably haven’t watched most of them in years, but we do have them and can watch and hear them whenever we want and that’s the important thing. As the boys were growing up we started attending First Presbyterian Church of Babylon because of their Sunday School and other programs. The boys both played instruments (violin and cello) so it was natural for mom to usher them into playing in the Chime and later Bell choirs. While I always videoed their school concerts they were simply family affairs, but when we videoed the chime choir and music ministry concerts at church mom started asking me to make copies for the other parents, as the years past more people were asking for copies until we were typically making about 3 dozen copies.

About this time Brooklyn teamed up with two friends at church to make a short film Elijah’s Cave, which actually got the 3 of them invited to a film festival in Switzerland from which time his path to videoland was certainly etched in stone. Of course this lead us to bring a camera into the sanctuary to video baptisms and then give copies to the parents. That lead to “can we show a simulcast in Fellowship Hall for Easter in case of the usual overflow from the sanctuary”. Of course we were told go ahead, but it has to be with your equipment as the church doesn’t have any - so we did, 2 cameras, projector, switcher, about 1200′ of cabling, more than a weeks work from both sons and the help of about 6 young people on Easter Sunday. With the cameras and cabling already in place and the young people game to do it again thus started the Video Ministry. For a while we had Saturday afternoon video sessions where the young people not only had some fun making a number of short films , but really learned how to use the equipment, direct and produce the videos as well as do some editing.

When the bells needed overhauling and maintenance the music ministry asked to hold a concert with offering to try covering the cost, we were asked if it would be possible to somehow project some old video of the bells and possibly some animated video of bells as part of the concerts and oh yes could you make a DVD of the concert - we said of course, (more long nights, much more wiring and a number of added pieces of equipment) then realizing the concert was in fact 2 concerts on 2 nights we started planning what turned out to be the DVD S(ave) O(ur) S(ongs) “the best of both nights”. This naturally lead to a bell concert of the mostly high school seniors as their last concert together and the DVD “Blaze of Glory”

It was only a short step then with all the equipment in place and the enthusiasm of the young people working with us that we started recording every Sunday’s services. Some additional equipment, alott of experience and work from a dedicated group of young people and we were soon doing live edits to tape of every service. Additional equipment and it became live edit to DVD and copies available the day of the services.

Then the question is we’re showing video in Fellowship Hall and saying we have a contemporary service, so why aren’t we using video in the sanctuary. While our sanctuary doesn’t lend itself to a single screen and is over a hundred years old, it could have taken less then a year to agree on and put in the two screens and projectors we did, but it was worth it. This is where Army dude really got involved with the video ministry. (up till now he had only serviced all churches computers, networked most of them, got the copier online as a network printer and as part of our business completely wired BCS our churches school for the internet at cost.) He designed and built a computer, Linux based, to handle all the video inputs and separate outputs we could think of possibly needing or using at the time, which was good because we soon realized a 3rd screen was needed for the rear wall so the Praise team, leader, pastor and choir (we now use the projectors in our traditional service also) could see what everyone else is. This pretty much brings us up to last October with what we do at church, which is why we keep buying equipment for the business and praying we’ll eventually get the work to pay for it. Much of our week to week adventures with this ministry have been chronicled at milkandchase.com, which by the way is a whole story of its own, but if you want that story you’ll have to go the site and ask for it in the comments or emails.

From October to present next time.

This was at the time intended to be the first of possibly 8 or 9 posts on monetorizing our web site through means other than our core business, however life in the form of medical problems intervened and its taken this long just to get back to really feeling alert enough to attempt catching up with most of what I left undone for a month and a half.

AFFILIATES
Posted by frank at 9:29 pm, October 10th 2007.

First things first – Why Affiliate? Of course the obvious answer is “to make money!”, why else would I put my time and effort into it? To overly simplify it, the principle which allows us to make money by becoming affiliates is real easy; when someone else sells something to someone else, or gets the information they want from someone else we get paid. The principle really is that simple and that is why there so many people out there clamoring to get in the business of “monetizing” their internet space through affiliates. Of course, it’s also why there are about a zillion other people out there telling us all how easy it is and how they or their service can just do it all for us, sadly its this last group of unknown person (s) making the majority of the money, mostly from selling their products to the rest of us.
We, as affiliates, must make the hard decisions for ourselves; If we already have a site of our own and have been researching and studying how to get people (Traffic) to come to our site one of the things many experts are telling us is that we should become affiliates in order to capitalize on the links they’ll give us to other sites.
If we don’t already have a site, but want to make money on the internet those same experts tell us we should – you guessed it – become affiliates, because that’s how to make money without ever having to have or touch a product.
And then, if we’ve become affiliates to make money on the internet what do those same experts tell us to do – guessed it again – get your own web site (which of course they will design and/or host for us ,at a small fee.).
Now mind you, most of these experts are trying to do what? SELL YOU a package to either set you up with affiliates or build you a web site, which they pretty much guarantee well be in the first page of the search engines. Either way they are GIVING you the information that you can make money on the internet (the carrot) but that you need a product like theirs, because it’s the best, in order to make that money (the stick being you must pay them for it).
Why do “we” get taken , after all we’re all smart enough, at least deep down,to understand if it were really that easy these experts would be making those millions themselves and not be giving away all the secrets. Right? Well yes, but its only $20, $30, $50 or even $100 and if it works I can make 100 times that back in a day and then just think how much good I can accomplish. Never mind that the original outlay is only the start – you need to teach yourself or pay someone to
1. Get you a domain (the name can be very important, as can whether it is or isn’t a top level domain)
2. Find some place to host your web site, unless you have your own servers and plan on leaving them on 24/7, you’ll be paying monthly for this.
3. A program if free you usually must acknowledge whose software you’re using on your page, in other words advertise for them. Or you buy a program. Or learn HTML just to building a simple page. Or you’ll be paying someone to a good deal of money to build your site. This will be an on going expense unless you learn FTP and how to properly write your updates and anchor your copy.
Once you have your site its still not all sunshine and roses, you now have to be concerned about where your site ranks with the search engines, which leads to a whole new experience learning SEO (search engine optimization) which leads right back to among other things affiliates, key words, meta tags, keyword density, and many other such goodies.
Please, before you jump into anything, do your homework. When it comes to being successful making money “on line” its no different then any other endeavor; the more quality time and effort you put into the project, the better you plan it and the harder you work that plan the luckier you’ll get which increases the probability you’ll reach your goal.
Next time maybe something on that old traffic problem, the paradox of in order to get traffic, you need traffic.
Frank

Having reread this posting I believe if I were to have written it today the second question I would have asked is how would I measure the success of this blog? Would it be in terms of traffic to our web site, monetary gain, personal satisfaction, or bluntly EGO?

Can you tell if your blog is successful?
Posted by frank at 9:52 pm, October 3rd 2007.

How does one measure blogging success? I wish I knew. I do know if we Google “blog” we come up with about 1,470,000,000 pages, if we Google “blogger” it drops to 175,000,000 pages and if we Google “blogging” it drops to a mere 114,000,000 pages all of which tells me there are a lot of us spending a great deal of time and energy trying to put words on the internet that many other some ones out there will, for one reason or another want to, or at least be willing to, read. Sounds crazy doesn’t it? So why do we do it.
I cannot and will not try to answer for anyone else, but for myself it’s really twofold;
1. I never could resist a “soap Box” and I can think of none with the possibility of reaching anywhere as many people.
2. Just about everything I’ve read about good web site design and attracting traffic (viewers) to the site includes a great big statement to the effect “give them something for nothing, or at least something which doesn’t really cost you much” like a news letter, coupons, or a blog you can get them to subscribe to with an RSS feed so they’ll keep coming back. (That RSS feed will be coming soon, as soon as I figure out how that is.)
Well in the bluntest of honesty I’m looking to grow our family business CLENCHPICS LLC. We are videographers who specialize in multicamera videoing of any legal event, taking those images and editing them to produce a pleasing video of the event and authoring a DVD of the event. We further duplicate and supply as many copies of the DVD as our client requires in as simple a form as paper sleeves or as slick as DVD case complete with cover and insert. We can edit your video of an event or vacation for you and produce an authored DVD or we can duplicate your DVD. We also design and host web sites.
What I propose to give you in return for viewing our site and hopefully reading this blog is really very simple;
The solutions we find for overcoming problems we run into in our business.
Interesting, at least to us, anecdotes we acquire or have happen in the course of doing business.
Tips, tricks or short cuts which we find or learn about that may be useful.
Things we find we can or cannot do with our equipment and why they do or don’t work, including our opinion why.
Lastly and mostly for myself, thoughts on family and possibly some insight on why I’ve made or make the decisions I do.

I’m thinking my next posting will have to do with questions of using affiliates as way of increasing traffic and hopefully income.

Thanks for stopping by,
frank

Originally published 9/24/07 using Serif’s WebPlus10 and their server resources. This was actually the second post I attempted, but as you’ll read I lost the whole fist blog when I went to upload this. I’m posting the three entries from the old blog here mostly because I want to have as complete a record as possible. - Thanks for your patience.

Publishing Headaches
Posted by frank at 6:38 pm, September 24th 2007.

Now I really show my ignorance. In trying to get this just right with the Serif program I somehow managed to delete the whole blog as I was putting this entry up. My complete first entry is gone unless someone out there can tell me a way finding a residual copy somewhere to repost and the original posting date for the first paragraph of this entry was 20 September 2007

It all started Monday morning when I decided to up date our churches web site to announce the 30th anniversary assembly of our school (BABYLON CHRISTIAN SCHOOL) on Friday, 21 September 2007, which I had just found out about because I had just hung up the phone after they called and asked if we could video and author a DVD of the assembly for them, as Senator Johnson will be among the honored guests who will be there. (YUP, that’s right we’ve got a paying shoot for Friday, business looks good.) I had just powered up my computer and entered my web writing application (Serif WebPlus 10) and opened the site for church and the sites for the school and the Worship Summit we’re hosting as I had some work to do on those also and I link both the school and Summit through the church site .

Continued September 24, 2007
I really do apologize for leaving in the middle of a thought and not getting back to finish it for days, it was that kind of a week and I’m sure we’ve all had our share of them, without further interruption here’s the rest of my tale of woe–
I just get everything open and am ready to make my up-dates when we seem to have a power spike, the lights flicker, the computer I’m using hic-ups and our internet connection goes dead, along with any number of appliances and clocks in the house. I get this computer running again only to find I can no longer open the Serif Web program, because I only get a message “Document failed to open” and the program proceeds to shut itself down. I’m a slow learner so I have to try this 5 or 6 times before I understand I really have a problem. Well I leave this to go take care of the rest of the house - you know re-set clocks, turn back on those appliances which should be on. Last on my list is getting the internet connection to work again, of course this is the area always handled by my partner and number 2 son who just happened to have enlisted in the Army, has only finished basic in August and isn’t far enough along in AIT to be able to have his computers with him to fix our problems even if I did call him. I gingerly enter that area of the basement we’ve been carefully avoiding for the last few months and start looking around for familiar lights on various pieces of equipment - DSL modem? anyway the connection to Verizon its on but only blinking and I know the lights should be solid, so lets pick it up turn it over and around till - yep there it is the re-set, press and hold, let go , watch the lights come back on and YES they are all solid now. Next, where are the routers? Let’s see one wired and one wireless the wireless needs to be re-set, OK done, the wired one is on and about a zillion lights are all blinking at me, but it’s on. I know it’s hooked up to the server? I think that’s the computer under the DSL thing, well it used to be running but now its not , so lets turn it on, now the room sounds better, because now I hear all those fans going. Still the lights on the wired router are all blinking, I follow the wire that’s different from the rest to oh yeah this computer’s supposed to be on too. Now the lights start going solid, I hope its a good thing. Go check, yes the internet is once again accessible.
Now for that Serif program maybe its got something to do with not having registered it when I installed after Army dude left and I found now I had to do our web sites and didn’t remember enough HTML or have any clue as to how our resident genius made the various sites work with the combination of the programming languages he seemed to haphazardly put together. Anyway it was easier to buy the program and then reverse engineer the Html for the things it would not let me do the way I wanted. Of course feeling it was enough I had paid them for the program and they had no need to know how I was using it I not only didn’t register it, but I also try to remove their mete-tag from the HTML pages when I remember. OK, on the opening screen, here’s the phone number, and only a phone number to register. It’s now about 4:30 pm I call the number and of course get a computer telling me “the office is closed, please call back during business hours…” So much for Monday.

Tuesday. First things first, take number one son, and course one of my other two partners, to the train station at 7:10 am. He has a “real” job in the city, happily he not only likes his job but it’s even within the broad field he went to school for and wants to be in. As I get home I get to say good-bye to my life and other business partner, the “better half”, have breakfast, check email and usual web sites, now it’s time to call Serif. No, not registering should not have caused anything like the problem you’re describing, but let’s go ahead and register the program anyway. Done. And of course they were correct it solved nothing, back to the drawing board. I try not once, but several times and ways to access and open the program; from the desktop icon, from the desktop “my Computer” to get to the files and use the executable file, from Windows explorer both the name and the executable file. With a flash of brilliance I decide to get out the Cd I originally installed the program from and to simply try reinstalling or repairing it, only now it not only will not auto start but not even let me get to the file system. All this gets me past lunch and well into afternoon. I go to the Serif web site start looking for help nothing in the FAQ or any of the other material on the site, which just leaves me with the contact us. Serif’s contact us does not list any phone numbers and the only way to use it is to email them the problem, which of course they will not let you submit without first exhausting the FAQ area and then feeding this back to you as possible answers to the problem as they see it and telling you if this does not work they will possibly get an answer to you within 48 hours. Just what I need, I’ve already lost 2 days and now I’m looking at possibly 2 more.

Wednesday, same morning routine and hey here’s an email from Serif, wait it’s just an acknowledgment of receiving my problem and there’s even those pesky FAQ again – they’ll get back to me. A lightning bolt hits me, the one way I haven’t tried getting to the file system on the Cd is by using the Windows explorer to open the file on my Cd drive. Well, this actually works. I locate setup, hit enter and wait, it works! And I even have a choice to repair rather then have to completely install, which I know would lose all my material (Which of course I haven’t copied or backed because I didn’t want to spend the time and anyway nothing could go wrong.) Hey, let’s open this and get on with my life.
Only one small problem, remember those three sites I had opened to begin with – well two of them did not manage to get saved when the power dropped Monday so I spent the rest of Wednesday and Thursday morning trying to rebuild them before getting to up-dated this. Well the last bit I had written was the moral if any of my story was you should always, always, always backup all of your material because you never know when it would save a series of days like mine had been and to the effect that while I hoped you‘d had a better week then I had so far, I still considered this a great week because we’ve gotten 2 real paying jobs for the business.

I was now finished with my second blog entry and ready to post it I hit save – And then my day went ugly, instead of updating the blog I got this lovely message “your connection has timed out” and lost everything I had just typed. As you could see I did start over. But I got a phone call and life just happened and the first real chance I’ve had to sit down with a clear head was this morning.
I do promise to be get better at this and make sure I write here regularly, hopefully every third or forth day, as so much I could write about has happened in only the last five days.
Thanks for dropping by,
frank