It's That Time Again

It's grocery store day! Wait. Hang on. Why is everyone running away?

Well I wish I would have thought of running away. But I'm too big to hide. Barb would find me.

The grocery store isn't all that bad. But it probably is the least favorite thing I have to do. Put that in the big picture, and I guess I'm doing pretty well then.

And I am doing pretty well.

The lumps on my head from screwing the frame to my head for the Gamma Knife radiation treatment have finally gone down and aren't feeling nearly as sore. I don't really feel any after effects from the radiation anymore either. So, at this point I think I'm ready to put all that in the past. Overall that's a much faster healing than I'd experience through traditional surgery.

I've been working pretty hard on business related things so far this week. I had a spell a few years back where I was working almost exclusively on web design projects. Than that took a switch and suddenly I was working almost exclusively on print design projects.

Now I'm back on the web design work again and I can just see the big chunks of rust falling off me.

The web just keeps moving and changing. Take a month off and you've missed a lot. It's exciting. But it can be frustrating too.

I'm getting to the point in my life where I want to start building my role in the business as more of a manager or director, and contract young designers and programmers to do the work. It's a natural progression. I'd still have to have my hands in things. I'd still have to make sure that everything that leaves the studio meets my expectations. But there is no shortage of young designers or programmers out there. We've been getting cold calls from them asking for jobs.

I wish I was in a position to start interviewing and meeting with some of them.

When the economy sinks the first thing that most companies cut is marketing expenses. On one hand, I can respect that because they're trying to protect employees' jobs. On the other hand, when sales are rough, one of the keys to building sales is successful marketing. So...

The second richest guy in Marietta has predicted that the economy will start to turn-around at the end of this summer. I think he may be on target. But of course it's a wacky, wild, unpredictable world.

I've been working on a rebuild of my Web site. I should be ready to release it in about two-weeks. Don't be surprised if I send a link to some of you before then asking if you would kindly click through the pages to help me test it and make sure everything is working on the diversity of computers and computer components that exist out there.

After the relaunch of the site we're going to start another targeted marketing campaign to see if we can generate any interest. I should get a good feeling then on exactly how well the confidence in the economy is doing.

In January we executed a postcard marketing campaign to select companies we felt we could be a good match for. I've done this kind of thing many times through the years and have always gotten a 5- to 10-percent response, which is considered very good. In January, however, we had no response, a big zero, for the first time in my career.

So we'll see.

I'm trying to get the 9 to 5 grind going again. Well before I'd work more like 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. But this time I'm going to try just 9 to 5.