Thank you, Honda.

O.K. it's been awhile since I've posted. My life has been in a state of change for the last year. I got my first job when I was fifteen in high school and have been working pretty much ever since. There were a few years in my twenties when I owned my own automotive repair shop. We did Toyota service and repairs for the main source of income and then did a lot of performance and racing work to keep it exciting. Even though I was a young business owner, and a lot of people thought I was very successful, I still had to be there every day and it became a job just like all the others I'd had.
Marriage, several location changes, kids, and many other jobs later I find myself living in the most beautiful place in America, with a great wife and family, working to support them by doing automotive work from my home, and some welding and fabrication. It's been nearly a year since I've had to make a change. The last job I had was as a mechanic for an underground construction company here in town. I had a contract with them to take care of everything they had. They paid me a fat weekly salary, and I kept them working, fabricated all of the underground things they needed and even took care of their personal vehicles as necessary. As far as jobs go, that was a good one for me. Although I had to be there early, I pretty much made my own schedule and did my work my own way.
As good as it was, I could see that the construction industry locally was slowing down. In an effort to give myself a way out, I bought the service truck and tools from my boss. I figured that if they went out of business at least I could make a living out of my truck by taking care of some of the remaining contractors. I never thought that there would be no other remaining contractors. Well there are only a couple of contractors left here, and they are the big guys who have their own service crews. This leaves me having to go back to doing general automotive work and fabrication. There has been some fabrication, but the main body of my work has been automotive.
Now I have been an ASE certified Master Automobile Technician since 1984. I have re certified several times and have never failed an ASE test. I graduated 2nd in my class from Sequoia Automotive Institute, but the automotive industry advances so fast that that it is difficult even for me to keep up with the changing technology when I'm working from home.
Recently I have had to do a diagnosis on a Ford Probe. The timing belt had been mis-installed and the owner, who had just bought it, did not know that the belt had been done. I've done a complete air conditioning job on a 96 Pontiac Grand Am, and a water pump on a 95 Grand Am. Anyone who has ever worked on either of these vehicles knows what I'm saying when I say that the Witnss Protectection Program was created for American automotive engineers. Every mechanic in the country would be gunning for these guys because of the garbage they have designed if they could be found !
This week though, I had a nice experience. A breath of fresh air if you will. I had the good fortune of doing a head gasket job on a 1997 Honda Civic with a 1.6 engine. There was not a single bolt that could not be reached, nor a connector that could not be unplugged during the entire job. This vehicle is service friendly and I commend Honda and their engineers for that. A little forethought goes a long way when it comes to vehicle design. My customers save money, and I make money, and I feel a lot better during and after the job. So I have to say.......
THANK YOU HONDA11111

Whiskey In A Jar

2009 America

America in 2009.........
Obama Nation or Abomination?
Maybe both. Only time will tell.

War

WAR SICK PUPPIES
LET'S DO THIS
Faking falls
Stopping tall
Take it all
Fact is that I'm taking mine
I'm taking mine
Time is up
Out of luck
Should have stood up
But you're out of time
But you're out of time
Let's do this (fight, fight, fight...)
Lock and load
Rock and roll
Bitch it's all over
You're going down
You're going down
Get ready to settle the score
And get ready to face the floor
Cause it's time to remember it (war)
This is war
And it's on tonight
So get up and fight
Get up and fight
You had all your life
To run and hide
Step up, step up
Let's do this
Sat around
Going down
How about a little reaction, man?
You can barely stand
Bitch slap, slow attack
Man that was practically suicide
Next in line
(Go)
Fight X8
Get ready to settle the score
And get ready to face the floor
Cause it's time to remember it (war)
This is war
And it's on tonight
So get up and fight
Get up and fight
You had all your life
To run and hide
Step up, step up
Let's do this
Cause we're all about ready to break
And we're all about ready to break
Yeah we're all about ready to break
Yeah we're all about ready to break
This is war
And it never ends
So get up, get up, get up, get up!
You had all your life
To run and hide
Step up, so step up
This is war (and it never ends)
This is war (and it never ends)
This is war
Let's do this
Let's do this
Let's do this
Fight X 7
Let's do this

My Game And The Universe

O.K. so you'd have to have been dead or vacationing on some deserted island for the last six months to miss the news that things haven't been going well economically lately.
Around here we have been feeling it more than I want to admit. The construction industry, which is the main driver of our local economy has all but disappeared. This affected me directly because the underground construction Contractor who I had a contract with recently ceased operations. Most of the other Contractors in the area have gone away also. This left me with a Service Truck, a truckload of tools, extensive mechanical knowledge and skill, and a disappearing market to apply them to.
So I put up a garage, small but adequate, printed some cards and started doing mechanical work independently. This was fine for a few weeks, because everyone who had asked me to do work for them over the last year came in. But the thing about doing repairs is that if you do them right, you don't see your customers again until something else goes wrong. Think about it. How many of you woke up this morning and thought to yourself," I wonder if my mechanic needs some work?". My guess would be none of you. Now that I've blown through the initial wave of customers I now have to promote myself and cultivate a whole sustainable client base. Self promotion is a little outside of my comfort zone. I've never been a salesman or even been very social. Another thing is that I don't really like strangers coming to my house. I originally only wanted customers that I knew personally, or people that had been referred by someone I knew. Apparently I don't know enough people. My phone hasn't been ringing for the last few weeks
As a result, I have taken a part time job at a huge pay cut with an Auction House here in town. My beautiful wife suggested I go talk to them because I have had so much fun buying at their auctions. I agreed, thinking that the change might be good for me. We also feel that if I enjoy what I'm doing, I will be in a better allowing state and good things might happen. I only wonder if I'll be able to pay the bills working for so little.
I also have a second interview with a local Dealership for a Service Technician position. I know that I don't want this job, but if I can get the money I want, I almost feel obligated to take it. Some of you might be thinking, "What's he whining about? Most people would be happy just to have one job." Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the opportunities but in the past if I applied for a Dealer Tech job. I'd be hired on the spot. No waiting. No multiple interviews. I'd have the job before I walked out. It just seems like a step backward to me .
These are some of the things that have me a little stressed out. Now when I get stressed and don't quite understand what's going on, I sometimes start grasping for reassurance in odd places. Some people use Horoscopes, or Tarot, or just try to see signs of good things to come in everyday activities. Not me. I have a more accurate way of determining what the immediate future will bring. Today I learned that things are going to be turning in my favor very soon. How do I know this? You ask. Simple. Today my Son and I went to the Golf Course. We played a few holes and I have overcome the snap hook that has been plaguing me for the past five months. That's right! I'm hitting it good, and when I'm hitting it good, all is well in the universe. That's all there is to it. I hit it good today. So you can expect things to get better . The price of fuel will continue to fall. Those of you who are out of work will find awesome jobs. The weather will be nice. People will be nice. Why? because I'm hitting it good. You can all thank me, and pray or meditate or visualize or whatever you do that my game continues to get better. Because think about it, the better I play, the better the world gets. Just imagine how great this world would be if I qualified for the PGA Tour. That's the only job I really want.

Six Random Things About Me

I got tagged for my first Meme!

Here are the rules:
1. Link to the person who tagged you. Traceytreasure
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random arbitrary things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.



1. I'm jobless for the first time since 1988.

2. Out of my all of my brothers and sisters, I'm the only non-alcoholic.

3. I was born with a double hernia. I didn't know about the hernia until I had a physical to play sports when I was, 13 years old and the Dr. asked me about the scars.

4. I'm the only man who's ever given my wife an orgasm.

5. I can't resist kittens.

6. I miss my motorcycles.


I don't get enough time blogging to tag anybody. If you want to do it, leave me a comment and let me know that you did it.

Thanks.

Is Stores Online a Scam?

If you have heard of Stores Online and are thinking of signing up with them I can offer a little insight before you make your decision. You've probably been to the free dinner and are waiting to go to the training seminar. They are very persuasive at the free dinner and I thought I would at least give them a chance at the seminar.
The seminar was informative, but very high pressure. They pushed everyone to buy six websites using that number as the minimum number of sites required to be successful. They repeated that anything can be sold online, the marketing is the key, not the product. They also promoted using dropshippers, saying that they were easy to find and use. I have found these two ideas to be less than honest at best.

The Storesonline product itself I have found to be adequate, as long as you use the tech support phone number that was not readily available. We had to use their live chat line and call every number we could find before one of their reps gave us the tech help number that actually connected us with people who could help. The entire search for that number took about two frustrating weeks. Those two weeks were all that the sales rep at the seminar told us it would take to get the site up and running. Don't believe that for a second. Two months would be more accurate. Once we got the site up and running it seemed to work just fine.

The sales pitch also said that the site would be automatic if you used a dropshipper. Orders would come as you peacefully slept, the dropshipper would process the order, and you would see the money in your bank account. That is just what I was looking for because I already had a job that left very little time for anything else. Well, it doesn't quite work that way. All of the dropshippers that I could find required that you place the order with them as well as up front payment and they will then ship to your customer. This was not what I had expected, after what had been presented at the seminar, But by this time I had put too much effort into the site to do anything else, so we did it this way.

So now, my site was up and running, and since I followed the directions that Stores Online had outlined in their program and very carefully chose keywords in my domain name and throughout the entire site, I searched for my site, expecting to find it on the first page of the search engines, like they told me it would be, and voila... nothing! Zero, zip, nada. My site was nowhwere to be found. It took several more months, dozens of hours of link trading, search engine submission, and frustration before we even started showing up on the sixth or seventh page. Needless to say, we weren't making any sales. We were however still paying the site hosting fee,bank card processing fees, and for the actual purchase of the sites. Luckily we only bought three and only had one up and running,which took a large portion of our time. At least we didn't go for the six.

We finally tried using pay per click to try to make our site visible, and although it was expensive, we did find ourselves on the first page of the search engines using some fringe keyword searches. Then it happened. We got an order. A customer had ordered a couple hundred dollars worth of our products and payment had already been recieved. It was awesome, I was so excited! So we placed the order with our dropshipper right away, only to find out several days later that that item was out of stock and they would not be getting any more in. Now I had to contact my first customer and give them a refund, which cost us money in bank fees. Our fist sale was a loss!

We kept the site up for a while, making it a link sharing affiliate directory, only to spend money on ppc advertising without any affiliate commissions. Then we finally took it down, no longer willing to throw money into the seemingly bottomless pit.

So, would I call Stores Online a Scam? Although you do get functional websites, the amount of deception and misrepresentation at the sale seminar leads me to say yes. There are cheaper opportunities available on the web that allow you to acheive the same or better results. If given the opportunity to do it all over again, I would not.