PKG Enterprises, Inc. Blog “Building Our Web Business”

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The Mutant Surfing project has gotten a full quarter year under its belt and has yielded some better than expected results. The results are better than expected, partially, because there were no real expectations at the project’s inception. The main goal was/is to try out some ideas while exploring aspects of web 2.0 and social media in general. Plus, have a little fun in the process.

Instrumental surf music was chosen as the “scalpel” to dissect these aspects for a few reasons.

First, we like instrumental surf music!

Second, it is a commonly held internet marketing practice to drill down to the most focused niche/audience to maximize and measure results. For Mutant Surfing, the hierarchy is entertainment> music> surf music> instrumental surf music. The only further down we could have drilled would have been the instrumental surf music played with a blue 1962 Fender Jaguar guitar, or some such.

Finally, “Izzy” was the first artwork and animation ready for some practical application and “branding”.

Albeit a tiny market, using the Live365 platform for the MutantSurfing.com radio station, we have progressed from #7036 to around #800 in overall station rankings, and from #8 to #2 in the surf music genre. However, this is not a competition to see who can be #1. We do not seek to increase our listening audience at the expense of other stations. Rather, we are looking to make a bigger pie, to divvy up, by finding new listeners. This appears to be having some success. Since our inception, surf music station #1 has grown its own audience, as well, by as much as 30% at one point.

One of our early questions was, “How long would a listener stayed tuned in?” In internet surfing terms, you have 10 seconds (if you are lucky) to grab and hold someone’s attention on a website. With the radio station, we are retaining the listener for about 45 minutes on average. Needless to say, but it will be said nonetheless, a self managed Live365 internet radio station could demonstrate some serious “bang for the buck” as a supplement for any company’s website. The possibilities here are tremendous and yet, they have been mostly overlooked.

Another question was, “Geographically, where would we find the listeners?” Thus far it’s all 50 states and 50 countries. It has proven to be a very easy way to get some international exposure.

As we move forward, some aspects of Mutant Surfing are complete.
• The animated radio station widget is complete and will be ready for its viral launch any moment.
• The “Izzy Gear”, e.g. T-shirts, etc., from the PKG Graphics Shop are available.
• The affiliate merchants are in place.
• The Twitter account has been set up and is active.

Some aspects are not.
• The website/blog needs a quick overhaul of its appearance and the content expanded.
• The SEO needs tuning.
• We have yet to do a MySpace page for “Izzy”.
• One thing we are especially looking forward to, will be making arrangements with a band to combine a piece their music with the “Endless Izzy” video so we can send him on a road trip to YouTube to see what kind of interest it prompts.

We expect to complete these needs by the end of summer and let Izzy loose on an unsuspecting world!

It’s been a while since there’s been anything woth talking about, but this week we’ve launched our website, Mutant Surfing and its Mutant Surfing radio station.

As the “About” page on the site states- Mutant Surfing exists to revisit the things that made the early to mid 1960’s culture fun!
We’re here to pay tribute to:

· INSTRUMENTAL SURF MUSIC & DAYS AT THE BEACH

· BLACK & WHITE SCI-FI AND HORROR MOVIES

· HOT RODS & DRAG RACING

· SLOT CARS & SKATEBOARDING

· ED “BIG DADDY” ROTH & RAT FINK

· FRANKIE & ANNETTE

And, by way of a modern perspective, we look to honor those who honor them!

Plus, the Live365 radio station plays continuous instrumental surf music for those who appreciate that genre!
Furthermore, Mutant Surfing schwag will be available shortly, as we open our Cafepress store to the public.

Lately, my time has time has been spent either sifting through inventory for our store, “The Chrome Nun” or juggling investments in the stock market. I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to look at the performance of Spiderman and the S&P 500 Exchange Traded Fund, aka SPDR (stock symbol SPY) as investments, over the past few years. Disclaimer: I’ve done this for fun; do your own due diligence!

First the framework of this little exercise. For the S&P 500 ETF, hereafter referred to as SPY, I will be using the adjusted closing price of 5/31 on an annual basis for a single share. For Spiderman, hereafter referred to as AF15, I will be citing the published Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide value for a copy of Amazing Fantasy #15 (Spiderman’s first appearance) in Fine (6.0) condition unless otherwise stated. I’m using the 5/31 date for SPY in that the updated Overstreet guide is available by that date every year. I’m using a copy of AF15 in Fine condition, in that it would be more readily available in that condition and could be liquidated, fairly easily, via E-Bay, Comiclink or Heritage Auction Gallery. Since the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide reflects sales from the prior year, trailing twelve months in stock market vernacular, I’m using the time frame beginning 1999 (also because I misplaced my 1998 price guide!).

Here we go…
Year–SPY——AF15
1999–$112.94–$3000.00
2000–$125.16–$3000.00
2001–$111.52–$3500.00
2002–$ 94.84–$3600.00
2003–$ 88.13–$3789.00
2004–$104.21–$3900.00
2005–$112.49–$(unavailable)
2006–$122.17–$4500.00
2007–$148.78–$4800.00
2008–$138.85–$5550.00

Furthermore…
On 5/21/08 the closing price for one share of SPY was $138.00.
On 5/21/08, Heritage Auction Galleries realized a price of $13,145.00, plus buyer’s premium, for a CGC graded 6.0 copy of AF 15.

CGC, Certified Guaranty Company, LLC, is a respected independent party that evaluates the condition of the comic and grades it accordingly. Similar to the way Moody’s, sans the word “respected” (sorry, couldn’t resist the dig in light of recent events), evaluates the condition of a publicly traded company and grades its credit rating and risk.

On 10/10/08 the closing price for one share of SPY was $88.50
On 10/10/08 a lower grade, CGC 5.0 (Very Good/Fine) copy of AF15 was sold on E-Bay for $8706.69.

On 10/16/08 the closing price for one share of SPY was $93.77.
On 10/16/08, there was/is a sale pending at ComicLink for a 6.0 copy of AF15 for $15,450.00.

In a nutshell, if you had $ 6000.00 on May 31, 1999, you could have purchased 1 copy of AF15 and about 27 shares of SPY. By yesterday’s end those 27 shares of SPY were worth $2539.71, but you would have received $469.13 in dividends over this time period. $2539.71+ $469.13= $3008.84, pretty much break even. However, your copy of AF15 is minimally worth $5500.00, with a potential value of $15,450.00, a return on investment of 83% to 415%.

I can often be quoted as saying, “I should’ve bought two!”

This makes a good case for adding high quality collectibles to an investment portfolio. Not all comics have “blue chip” potential, but there are many. -PKG

Okay, we knew what we wanted for version 2.0 of The Chrome Nun. The question was whether or not we could obtain it without breaking the piggy bank.

We scoured the net for a collectibles store we liked well enough to emulate its design. Not out there. We searched through hundreds of templates and dozens of packages seeking exactly what we want. Not out there. We spoke to a few web builders regarding the design we want and thus far, too expensive. But, because we set a deadline to launch this project September 1st, we’ve chosen to use eBay’s ProStores as the solution. Temporarily, at least.

We had four basic requirements this time around. Low fixed overhead costs; capability to list 10,000+ individual items; relative ease to set up the store and good functionality.

We looked at the current eBay Stores set up… still too costly to park thousands of items in the store, too high in percentage of sales taken (8% +/-); but OK at $16/month for the actual store fee.

We looked at the Amazon e-commerce store… no per item fee, but a 7% chunk of sales taken, plus $60/month for the store.

We looked at Yahoo… no per item fee, 1.5 % taken in sales and $40/month for the store. This one warranted serious enough consideration to earn a tryout with a store we’ll be soon doing for PKG Graphics.

We looked at Volusion, whose package for our basic needs would have run $197/month, plus $129 for set-up. This was a possibility, but not a cheaper solution (compared to ProStores) until a threshold of $3300 in sales is reached each month.

We chose ProStores over Yahoo’s e-commerce plan simply for cost considerations. ProStores gets a .5% sales fee and store “rent” of $30/month. We also liked ProStores in that it was somewhat similar in nature to set-up as the eBay store with which we are already familiar.

Thus far, we’ve encountered a few likes and dislikes. We like the ability to automatically calculate shipping costs based upon weight and/or zone for multiple items. Neither our eBay store nor the first version of “DaNun” had that capability. We also like the fact that the size of the images can be increased somewhat without a surcharge the eBay store charged. We dislike the fact that the maximum number of items per page is nine. This means more pages than necessary as the inventory grows! We also dislike the category and sub-category navigation on the home page. It gives the impression that there is only a single sub-category for each category, rather than as many as three sub-categories in some instances. Finally, the overall graphics are boring (as we knew they would be) but the smaller “add-to-cart” buttons are really low resolution and cheesy.

So, to start, we put about 60 various items in the store to test pages and functions. That still leaves another 10,000 items or thereabouts, to add. Plus, we still have a litany of things to do. We have yet to build the page that will direct folks to our satellite store for the “exclusive” items; the page that will allow shoppers to buy “new” items we don’t sell and/or link to some of our favorite sites; our “want list” page, and read our collectibles specific blog.

I can just about see The Chrome Nun, version 3.0 down the road! -PKG

The original concept and version 1.0 of The Chrome Nun came to be in 2004. I wanted a practical application to explore the “ins and outs” and pitfalls of the e-commerce world. This was achieved via the creation of an online store to sell 40 years worth of pop-culture collectibles that I had been accumulating since I was a wee lad.

The course of action began with creating a brand identity and naming the store. This was a lengthy process that stretched over a period of about 15 minutes one afternoon, while I drove my daughter and her friend to the local shopping mall a few miles away.

I told her I needed a name for a store where I’d be selling old comic books, bubble gum cards, toys and any other oddball things that might be interesting. The name had to be unique enough to be memorable; not be limited to a single product category; a one syllable noun, preceded by a color adjective, for which a character could drawn and a slogan easily rhymed. With her assistance, the result was, “A little hit and run fun from the Chrome Nun.” Next, we commissioned the iconic artwork of “The Chrome Nun” from respected comic artist and good guy, Tim Truman.

Finally, we needed the actual website. I contacted an internet savvy friend who introduced me to someone who was packaging websites, and several dollars later, “DaNun” as we came to call the store, was up and running. It was customer friendly and had excellent graphics (remnants of which can still be seen if you do a search on the Alexa site). Inventory-wise, it had a very attractive mix of products to draw interest and be competitive. The administration end of the site was a little clunky but workable. The web hosting, however, was a disaster. It seemed the provider was a very small company without much (any?) redundancy in their servers to keep the site up and running on a consistent basis. Plus, “upgrades” to their system somehow never seemed to include a check to be certain “DaNun” was still functioning. To put it into terms owners of old Jaguars would appreciate, their electronics had three settings… dim, flicker and off!

Within the year, we opened a simple eBay store to compliment the “Chrome Nun” website. Within another year, the cost to attract viewers became a far better bang-for-the-buck on the eBay store, so we shut down the website. The eBay store costs at the time were $15.95/month for the store, plus $.03 per month for each item for a basic listing with a picture and a final value sales fee beginning at 5.25%. The cost to park a thousand items in the store was less than $50.00 per month at that time. Not bad at all. Access to the millions of potential customers was worth the loss of autonomy the store suffered as a result of participation within in the eBay store system.

The honeymoon ended in about another year when eBay hiked their fees. The monthly cost per item quadrupled to $.12 per month and the final value fee began at 8.25%. It was only marginally worth the efforts to sell anything under $25.00 and other options needed to be considered. I felt that our efforts became largely for the benefit of eBay and Pay-pal, and no longer ourselves. I’m also not a big fan of “loss leaders”, particularly when that might describe 70% of the inventory. We nicely told this to eBay as we responded to our exit survey. We also mentioned that we didn’t feel the necessity to help them pay for their $2.6 billion boondoggle, Skype (obviously, several other small store vendors must have felt the same way, because the current store listing fees are back to the $.03 per month rate, but with final value fees beginning at 12%). One of the real nice aspects of “The Chrome Nun” is that it is a truly portable business and can always be moved to greener pastures.

But, I digress. A few of the other “ins and outs” we experienced were that the buyers were depleting the “good stuff” faster than we could find more “good stuff” with which to replace it! We found that e-commerce retailing was similar to the brick and mortar world, with the strongest sales made in the weeks leading up to Christmas. However, we found sales to be surprisingly strong on into February as well. Keeping the store open only six months of the year was an idea. An impractical one, but an idea nonetheless.

With “The Chrome Nun” version 1.0, other points came into focus. If we were to profit by selling items under $25.00, we would need to have items unique to our store, a.k.a. produce them ourselves. We would also have to reduce the fees involved with sales (that, or find free stuff that we could sell). We also decided we wanted much of our autonomy returned. And so, the options were considered as we geared up for the future and “The Chrome Nun” version 2.0. -PKG

Early one evening I was on my way to a local get together of business friends and associates and needed to grab a quick bite to eat. I decided that some of those sauceless spicy hot wings sounded tasty, and swung into the nearby McDonald’s to get some. I must have stared at the menu for a good two minutes looking for them before it clicked that I should’ve been at a KFC instead. I didn’t see that attack of Middle Age Dementia coming!

So anyway, that little incident more than confirmed that a vacation was needed. Luckily, we had had a 10 day cruise to Alaska planned for quite some time and we were leaving shortly. It was your basic Princess Lines cruise for ten days, sailing from S.F. with stops in Victoria, Ketchikan, Juneau, and Skagway. All in all, it was to be a very enjoyable trip.

Since I have no “off-switch” for the businesses, I managed to get some work and “research” done for the Judge Brewing Company, PKG Graphics and “project #6” of the other, “as yet to be named 11”!

The work and research done for Judge Brewing Company required visiting three brewpubs, a small brewery, an English style pub and a gold rush era saloon. It was a rough job but I was up to the task.

Our first stop was in Victoria, in Canada. The first brewpub was at the Swans Hotel where we cheerfully sampled generous servings of their Artic Ale, Riley’s Scotch Ale, and Raspberry Ale along with hors d’oeuvres. They were all winners, but the 8% alcohol Scotch Ale was a consensus favorite. What a great idea…having a hotel attached to your brew pub when the customers have had too much to drink!

Our next stop was the Canoe Brewpub walking (yes, we could still walk) distance away. There, we even more cheerfully enjoyed their seasonal Summer Honey Wheat (my favorite), River Rock Bitter, Beaver Brown Ale, Siren’s Song Pale Ale and Red Canoe Lager along with some great appetizers, fried calamari with lots of paprika in the batter and rib lifters using Chinese five spices as a rub. Yum!

Our final stop in Victoria, in Olde English style, was The Penny Farthing Pub. Here, saturated in old English gastropub (their word, not mine) ambiance, we still more cheerfully imbibed popular U.K. brews such as Guinness and ate artery clogging poutine (French fries topped with cheese and gravy).

I confess I missed out on some of the brews here because it dawned on me that Cuban cigars were legal in Canada and I needed to quickly find some for when we returned to the ship later that afternoon. Mission accomplished!

While in Juneau, we visited the Alaskan Brewing Company. They have a great tour guide, named Tony, who did double duty as both historian and bartender. Tony started by pouring us samples of their Alaskan Amber Ale, and then took us to a room where the brewing tanks, etc. could be viewed. He gave us a quick history lesson and returned us to the bar/gift shop to try some Alaskan Winter Ale. Back to the history lesson and then back to the bar/gift shop for some Alaskan IPA, some Smoked Porter and some Stout.
Now this is how a tour should be conducted! Kudos and beer all around!

On our last Alaskan stop we stopped in the little town of Skagway and visited the third brewpub, Skagway Brewing Company. The only disappointment here was that all their beer was on tap and we couldn’t bring any home with us. We also dropped into the Red Onion Saloon, built during the gold rush in 1897, to check out the gift shop and, surprise, have another beer!

These few days of beer research emphasized, once again, that it’s not work if you like what you’re doing. Tomorrow, there’s another local get together of business friends and associates and I’ve recovered enough to hit the KFC for those spicy hot wings. – PKG

This statement immediately makes me think of the movie, “Used Cars”. If you’ve seen it, you know why.

At the bottom of many websites (ours too, shortly) you will see logos for helpful companies explaining that their presence on a site should evoke a euphoric feeling of well being, security and privacy for the user. How their seal of approval means that particular site has been bestowed with a level of trustworthiness a measure beyond that of the site without. I particularly like Honest Online’s, “Sheriff HONEST-e” character. It reminds me of Used Cars’, “Marshal Lucky”!

In reality, the trust you should have in a website comes down to the business ethics of that site’s owner(s). If you should have a problem, please be aware that these “seals of approval” reflect voluntary membership and self policing. If you should truly be harmed by an internet site, your best recourse is through the government agencies. Begin with your state’s Department of Consumer Affairs if the site operates from within your state, the USPS for mail fraud, all the way to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center for really nasty stuff.

Recently, my wife received an e-mail about one of those class reunion sites. It came from her trusted close friend, who had gotten her info from her trusted husband, who had received an e-mail from his trusted close friend, who had signed up. Both my wife’s close friend and my wife signed up looking to see what info they might find regarding their old classmates.

Here’s where things get slimy! The next thing they experienced was that class reunion website launching spyware to crawl through their e-mail address books and automatically spam each person listed therein with an invitation to sign up with this same class reunion company! !?!!@^$#!!#??!!

This was particularly embarrassing to my wife who, for I-phone synching purposes, had both personal and business contact information in her address book. She found herself getting out of bed at 2:30AM to begin writing and sending her letters of apology. What a hassle!

How did this happen? It’s most likely that somewhere within the intentionally boring, terms of service agreement was an indistinguishable box to quickly skip over, that was automatically checked to “opt in” and allow this company to go on a fishing expedition in her e-mail.

Make no mistake about behavior here. An ethical company looking to acquire this sort of permission would have a box set up for a manual choice to be made to “opt in” or, checked “opt out” as the default setting, requiring the user to actively give permission. There also would be a visual design to distinguish it from the rest of any TOS disclaimer! No “accidents” allowed.

My wife contacted (literally, picked up the phone and called to complain to a breathing human being) the reunion company to demand that they delete the information they obtained through their unscrupulous means. I’m sure they will

This, of course, warranted a second complaint of mail abuse to Yahoo. I wanted to inform them of the vulnerability of their e-mail system; requested them to at least flag that reunion site as an abuser if not expel it (and its advertising dollars) from Yahoo altogether. Off with their heads!!!!

My point is, this class reunion company had a Trust-e logo clearly displayed at the bottom of their web pages as did Yahoo on their Privacy Policy page. This, of course, precipitated the third complaint to Trust-e. I challenged their “manhood” to see what they would do about this class reunion company’s practice. I asked them if they had any teeth, or if they were just a worthless logo on a website. My intention is/was not to besmirch Trust-e, only to help them (in my own subtle way) understand that they might want to try being a bit more pro-active with their members’ policies and practices, and their own quality assurance standards as well.

Their system was set up to handle complaints as follows: 1) What’s your complaint? 2) Who is it with? 3) Was it resolved? 4) Do you want us to follow up?

Imagine, for a moment, answering those questions above if this transgression had been of a grievous nature. 1) Murder. 2) Your member. 3) The victim’s still dead. 4) Yes, please make certain they don’t kill the same victim again.

We were informed that the offending methods would change, but the damage had been done.

“Trust me,” they said.

My wife and her close friend both did. This reminds me of the Otter, to Flounder, quote in the movie, “Animal House”…

“Hey, you f****d up, you trusted us!”

I stated on our website that we actually use the companies we have listed as business resources, and we do.

Not too long ago, I spent part of a day at a weekend at a workshop on how to “Supercharge Your Blog”, presented by ours friends at Net Biz Experts. I felt a little overwhelmed with some of the subject matter…kind of like Dorothy Gail did when she first arrived in the Land of Oz. You might even say I was bit “Google-eyed”.

Lots of good information was presented. The first segment pertained to keyword searches, ad word campaigning, algorithms (not the abilities of our ex-veep to keep up with the tempo) and website content. I have understood with these concepts for quite some time, but was curious about one thing. The PKG Enterprises, Inc. website and the PKG Enterprises, Inc. Blog struck me as having had more hits than I would have anticipated for the few days that they’ve been up and running. Eyeballs are somehow turning this way.

How come? Could it be the numerous pop-culture references? Could someone have started an ad campaign without telling me? Could it be words that are repetitively used in my ramblings? Apparently, the great and mighty Google has read all the content, then extracted and determined “making money” is the crux of what the site is all about. This works for me!

As the information kept coming, it wasn’t long before I knew I needed to go see the Wizard, and ask for brain that would be large enough to hold all the incoming knowledge.

Segment number two of the workshop dealt with feeding blog writings to every search engine and directory in the known internet universe for distribution. I don’t want to put any sort of crimp in Net Biz Experts’ ability to earn their livings, so I won’t go into all the specifics. But I will say that it was well worth the price of admission for the enlightenment. Check out their e-book at www.socialmediasuccessnow.com .

One portion of spreading the word included registering with the company, Twitter, to let the world know what you are doing right now, and I mean right now! As part of the registration process with Twitter, you must answer that question, “What are you doing right now?”
“What do you mean, ‘What am I doing right now?’ I thought.”
I gave them the most obvious answer, “Right now, I’m attempting to register with Twitter.”
Silly? Yes. Worthwhile? Who knows? Time will tell.

The third segment of this workshop pertained to dressing up you blog with widgets. The little orange and white colored RSS logo is called a “chicklet”. I did not know that, now I do. I learned there are all sorts of neat little doohickeys (clocks, calendars, stock market tickers, etc.) that could be grafted onto a website or blog to dress them up. Cool! Too bad the blog template that I chose from Yahoo’s basic offerings was not “widget” ready. This deficiency is being corrected with widgets and doohickeys to follow shortly!

Just when you think you’ve got the idea of web 1.0 down pretty well, along comes web 2.0. Once again, I am both astounded and impressed by how far the internet has progressed in the past few years. I’m looking forward to adapting lots of the new things it now offers to enhance our own projects.

By the day’s end it was clear… we’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto!

Okay, we did it. We pushed the “publish” button and have started up the PKG Enterprises, Inc. website. There’s no turning back now. The competition’s underway!

Of course, the crew chief is still in the garage putting on his uniform, the jack man has yet to be hired, the next few sets of tire changes haven’t arrived and the crowd has yet to be informed that it’s time for them to come to the track! All to be expected!

I’m a NASCAR fan and I really like using this metaphor of comparing our biz with a lengthy stock car race. So, I’m going to continue.

Lap 1:
The site isn’t anywhere near what it needs to be to get seriously competitive, but it’s a start. It isn’t fancy, it’s not sophisticated, and it hasn’t been penned by a professional ghost writer. Right now, I realize we’re not unlike Marshall Teague’s 1952 Fabulous Hudson Hornet trying to compete for eyeballs against the current Hendrick Motorsports or Rausch Racing teams. We’re starting at the back of the field, no question about it. However, this will be a long race with plenty of time to make loads of adjustments.

We needed to get this, the hub site, up and functional for a number of reasons.
The first one being that we need to finish establishing a quite a few B2B relationships. The next reason is to begin getting some feedback from the fans via search engines, social sites, etc.
The third reason, to put a little street cred behind the contact letters we’ve been sending out, without the necessity to explain-
“Yes, we are a real company!”
“No, we’re not PTWs!” (PTW= Professional Time Waster)
“No, what we’re asking you in those letters is not a joke!”
“Seriously, we have one absolutely killer business plan!”
“It’s not a question of whether you’ll benefit, but only how much!”
“This thing’s a winner!”
“Honest.”

Our PKG Enterprises, Inc. hub website was assembled in only a few hours, and very inexpensively. We wanted to see how far the $11.95 per month with Yahoo hosting would get us. Not too shabby. It’s perfectly serviceable and flows well with elegant simplicity. Not unlike the 1952 Hudson Hornet!

This is simultaneously both our most important site and our least important site. It’s our most important site because it gets us into the race. It’s our least important site because we know we’re going to wreck it shortly only to rebuild it bigger, better, faster! -PKG

I’ve had a few calm days to relax before the storm hits and we need to ratchet up the efforts and pace with the projects, and the blogging of what really takes place in the building of a business. All narrated in a real voice, of course, and almost in real time! I thought I’d take this opportunity to chronicle the last of these days’ activities… for posterity and the possibility I may longingly look back to this day as a fond memory sometime down the road.

The pre-normal day begins, rising with the sun at about 6 o’clock. It’s a very pleasant sunny morning; I think I must be solar powered because there’s zero chance I’d be getting up anywhere near this early if it were winter time. Next, meander up to the kitchen to make breakfast. A six cup pot of coffee should be sufficient this morning.

I settle in at my desk in the family room and start up the Dell “Belchfire V-8” computer. It’s a very impressive piece of machinery with its two-tone silver casing and red fascia that glows with red lights; dual 320 gig hard drives, 500 gig back up, 2 megs of RAM, dual core processor, a pair of hi-res scanners and thumping 60 gigs worth of sound system. It might easily be confused with a 1958 Buick in appearance.

Time to check the e-mail. Only 16 new ones and spam this AM. Nothing of importance this time. I need to send out a quick note of apology for not responding to an invitation to a small business owners meeting.

Over to e-bay to check for new items in a half a dozen categories. Add nine items to the watch list.
Note to self: Transfer funds to Pay-pal account.
Notes to e-bay: Loose the new category search design. Old design= 3 mouse clicks to view desired items in one particular category; new design= 43 mouse clicks to achieve same thing… and while you’re at it, get rid of the bright white page background. You continue to cause snow blindness with extensive viewing of items on the site.

7 o’clock and time for more coffee. Play some Atomic Mosquitos on “Radio Belchfire”.
Begin drafting the next couple of blogs. I need some practical applications for a blogging workshop this weekend.

8 o’clock and time for some more coffee. Caffeine is one of the basic food groups, right? Play some Dr. Feelgood on “Radio Belchfire”.
Look over the most recent 55 prototype items created for PKG Graphics, add product numbers and make notes for a few changes.

9 o’clock and time for the rest of the pot! Play some Hot Tuna on “Radio Belchfire”. Assemble and send off concept material to begin the illustration work for the N.O.W. Collection Agency, Flathead Music, and Mutant Surfing “under construction” web pages.

10 o’clock and time for brunch. Play some Luther “Guitar Junior” Johnson on “Radio Belchfire”. Pay a couple of bills. Read the newspaper. Check the e-mail. I keep looking for the results of a copyright search that we have been awaiting. Still not here.

11 o’clock. Play some Colin James on “Radio Belchfire” and start drafting some B2B letters to send out next week.

Noon. It’s Peter Green time on “Radio Belchfire”…need to shoot out a couple follow up e-mails.

12:30, and its time to start winding down the day. “Radio Belchfire is now playing its Rory Gallagher set. Only two things left on today’s agenda. First, start looking through hundreds of pre-fab website templates until my eyeballs fall out. Ouch! I want to see if any of them offer possibilities for early stage use in projects. Second, continue to be on the lookout for the response to our copyright search that is past due and, getting past “due-er” by the minute.

Yep, it’s been a somewhat productive day of progress while listening to great tunes!

Tomorrow, ready or not; missing links, holes and revisions to come, notwithstanding…we launch!- PKG