Buying Gifts Online?

My friend Hayden who owns Festive Living just rolled out a new e-commerce site. It's amazing how fast non-technical people can create a e-commerce website with payment processing tools. Her POS software had a template system which automatically imported the product data. My understanding is that most data was pulled from the POS system and graphics for each item had to be manually entered. Long term site maintenance will be difficult because vendors are frequently discontinuing items, but I am confident that she will find away to manage this problem.

The new pages should also increase her visibility on search engines. The site now has a wedding registry and online store landing page.

One of our neighbors had a baby on Tuesday - I think this camo stripe binker would be a cool addition to his collection. Maybe I'll make a run to Victor this week.

Long Days in Jackson

My past 6 days:

• Tues/Wed/Thurs - rock climbed at the gym
• Fri - kayaked
• Saturday - Hiked/Skied 2000 vertical feet, golfed 12 holes & attended a keg party
• Sunday - Kayaked, Golfed 18 holes & attended a keg party

This made for a sore Monday morning.

Cell phone chargers

I recently misplaced my cell phone charger for 3 days. Luckly my phone (a Q) charges through the mini USB 2.0 port. I grabbed one of my handy mini USB 2.0 cords and charged away. My camera, ipod, video camera and GPS all have mini USB 2.0 ports so loosing the cell phone charger had zero impact. No rushed trip to town or an overnight delivery from Fedex was required!

The variety of cell phone chargers is a nightmare. I believe that the USB charging standard will become the industry standard within the next few years. However, lower end phones dont need USB ports and manufactures might hold off on the adoption of this technology because they make extra money selling spare chargers.

After today, I will only by a cell phone with a USB 2.0 adaptor. It's one less cord that I need to carry around.

Local Specials

In resort towns many local business establishments offer specials through the off-season. This helps businesses maintain cash flow during lean months and allows locals to soak in the varied offerings of a resort community. The specials range from 2-1 dinners, discounted hotel stays and reduced prices for spa treatments. Today I took advantage of 2-1's at a local Mexican restaurant and we are considering spending a night at Spring Creek Ranch with a group of friends in May. Spring Creek offers one of the best specials in the valley: dinner, a hotel room and access to the spa for $99. Here is a link to the webcam that points out the view from the hotel. Quick math leads me to guess that this plan will save about $150 on the full cost of the room and dinner.

I’ll keep you updated if I run across other good deals.

Earth Day 2007

Tree
Originally uploaded by krughb.

Did you pant any trees? I did.

4:30am in FL

img155.jpg
Originally uploaded by krughb.

Today we left Florida at 4:30am to return to a cold and snow showery Jackson. We past time during the last 7 days by playing golf and tennis, swimming at the beach and lounging in the 80 degree weather.

At 12pm we jumped off the plane to snow showers and 37 degree temperatures.

The view from my desk for the next 1 week

The view from my desk
Originally uploaded by krughb.

Walking Around NYC

img149.jpg
Originally uploaded by krughb.

We spent the past weekend inNYC walked under the Empire State Building on Friday. We had a great night walking around the city amongst millions of others wandering around at 11pm. We even stopped at PinkBerry - the new hip frozen yogurt rage sweeping NYC.

7-8 inches?

I skied on the pass today after reading that a few remote weather stations were claiming that 7-8 inches of snow fell in the past 2 days. I think the weather station was in the middle of a snow drift because I did not see anything deeper then 4 inches.

It was dust on crust at its best! 3-4 inches, firm smooth crust and some sunshine.

It's All Over

Sunday marked the final lift service day of skiing in Jackson. After a sunny and warm Saturday Easter Sunday was nondescript with gray skies and a rain/snow mix. The skiing was aweful and I didn't stick around for the closing festivities. Generally the last day is full of snowball fights, warm sunny weather and hanging out one last time with your "winter friends". The clouds, rain and bad skiing were not enough to keep me around for late afternoon Easter party.

Life in a resort town is based around the seasons: Winter, Summer, and offseason. Due to the varied number of activites in each season you will develop a set of friends for each season/sport. This is the defanition of winter friends -- people you ski with on a regular basis but folks who you dont often run into outside of ski season. One person might be a regular fly fishing fool while the other will be mountain biking every weekend. Even though you both still live in the same town, you are evolve into "winter friends".

Today it snowed 7 inches at the top of the pass so I might head up for an evening powder run. This could end up being my last powder run until July. More to come on July powder in May/June.

2 More Kiva Loans

I received notice that 2 more loans were generated by blog readers today! That is a total of 7 loans from readers plus 4 from the author.

The matching grant is complete

I have funded 4 loans at Kiva. Thanks to the support from my friends and family for forcing me to match 3 loans.

My loans are to the following people:
1. Sarah Nartey in Ghana
2. Nuru Mbaraka in Tanzania
3. Maria Paula Martina Espadas Noh in Mexico
4. Juan Quinto in Ecuador

I wish the business leaders the best with their respective endeavours. I'll provide random updates about the status of their businesses when I receive information from Kiva.

Success!

The Kiva matching grant campaign was a success. I know of 6 loans that were made to Kiva by readers of this blog. Two people posted the loan information in the comment section of the previous post and two others made 4 loans and notified me over email.

I made 2 matching grants today and I will make the third grant this afternoon. My last loan helped to fund a bar in Ghana.




I hope this loan is fulfilled in the next few days! I will post another update after I make the 3rd matching grant.