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Mary Anne Carter

Mary Anne has her own blog now

Jun 13

7

Yard signs and window clings

Posted by Mary Anne on 06/07/2013
Posted in At the Office • Business • Computers and/or Internet • Family and friends • Shopping  | Tagged With: , , ,

My mother was asking me to help her find a place to order discounted yard signs and window clings. She was telling me that the old signage at her shop is looking rather old and beat-up. That’s not surprising, since they haven’t replaced any of their signage in fifteen years! I told her that I’d start out by looking into the pricing of wholesale yard sings at zooprinting.com and see what they had to offer with their yard signs and window clings. Thank goodness for the Internet – I love letting my fingers do the comparison shopping!

Jun 13

6

Energy audit

Posted by Mary Anne on 06/06/2013
Posted in Business • Computers and/or Internet • Home Improvement • Life • Local • Opinion  | Tagged With: ,

There is a networking meeting that I go to every week where a lot of businesses send a representative to the meeting to try to drum up business for their company. One thing that I’ve noticed is that a lot of the people that go to the meetings really don’t seem to be interested in helping each other out at all, which is a little bit disappointing because the entire concept of a networking meeting is to help each other, right?

What’s even more disappointing is the fact that some of the people that go to the meetings seem to claim that they will give you a free offer of some kind, in order to drum up business for themselves, but when you contact them and ask them to do it, they don’t even call you back!

For example, there is a guy there that is a home insulation contractor that goes every week and will stand up and tell people that his company will perform a free energy audit and he hands out business cards with the web page address of his company, saying that they have a list of energy saving solutions on their web site, but when I tell him that I want to schedule an audit for my house he never gets back to me! I have even gone to his web page and filled out the request form and they don’t get back to me! Is that any way to run a business?

Jun 13

5

Bimini tops for boats

Posted by Mary Anne on 06/05/2013
Posted in Fun • Life • Opinion • Shopping  | Tagged With: , ,

When I first bought our little paddle boat several years ago I did not realize how much I would have liked to have a bimini top on the boat. Of course back then, I didn’t even realize that you could buy bimini tops for boats as small as a paddle boat. I just had gone into the local Big Box Warehouse club, saw the cute paddle boat on display and bought it on impulse. Our family did use it from time to time, but I think that we would have used it more if it had that top to provide us with shade. It gets really hot out on that lake!

Jun 13

2

The complicated business of the Internet

Posted by Mary Anne on 06/02/2013
Posted in Around the House • Computers and/or Internet • Life • Local • Shopping  | Tagged With: , , ,

I have been encouraged by a lot of people to create more of an Internet presence to promote my little side business of crafting and decorative painting. I teach decorative painting through our local County Parks and Recreation department. I would ultimately like to teach it through my home studio. Being keenly aware that I am new to the area, and on a very limited budget of both time and money, I have been cautious (perhaps overly so) to spend a huge amount of money on paid advertising. I have been putting up fliers and depending on free advertising as much as possible. But the lure of the Internet is always there. I see flashy web pages promoting products and services and have to wonder just how effective going into advertising on the Internet, through my own website would actually be. I am loathing spending large amounts of money on ineffective advertising.

I have spoken briefly with a brother of mine about my thoughts on this. He makes his living working on computers and has his own set-up of lots of machines upon which he apparently actively acts as the servers for people’s websites. He is a webmaster, and creates web pages for businesses. That is how he earns his living.

He has suggested that I go to the website www.webhostingchoice dot com. He says that this website has a lot of good information that I could use as a starting point to learn about Internet web hosting resources. So, I guess I’ll be going to that website and see what I can learn about the process.

May 13

29

Home security is a good dog

Posted by Mary Anne on 05/29/2013
Posted in Around the House • Family and friends • Life • Opinion • Pets  | Tagged With: , , ,

I was dismayed to read my friend Tina’s post on recent break-ins near where she lives. I know that for many years she has felt that her area was one of the most secure places to live. Unfortunately, the continued growth of gangs is having an negative effect on even the most remote areas.

As far as I’m concerned, when you live in such a rural area as Tina, it is all well and good to buy a home security alarm. One that makes a lot of noise would be great. Realistically, though, the alarms that call the police are not really going to be of much use when the nearest police station is over thirty minutes away! By the time the police will get to the site of the alarm, the damage will be done. That’s why I encourage anyone who lives in a rural area to get a dog or two.

Now I don’t like to listen to dogs barking all night and day, but a barky dog is very good for deterring would-be burglars. If you make sure that the burglar(s) cannot look inside to see what kind of dog(s) you have, just the sound of a dog barking might be all that is needed to discourage someone from breaking in. After all, the burglar cannot know for sure if the dog is just making noise or if the dog would actually attack.

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