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.

The " Economy" Crisis

By now I'm sure everyone in America who has a TV or reads a newspaper or listens to the radio is fully aware that there is a huge gigantic unstoppable crisis about to ruin the personal financial security of every single individual in the entire Country and only the Federal Government can stop it. After all, the creators of the "crisis" should be the experts on how to fix it. They say that this is a credit problem. They say that without credit the Country will be unable to function and will slip into an extended recession. I say that we need to stop accepting the current standard of how the economy works. Does anyone else out there see that everything we need on a daily basis costs way too much? I saw today on the news a graphic showing home prices dropping 30 percent over the last year. Well, since most homes are in my opinion 150 percent or more overpriced, 30 percent is only a good start. If a small business needs to rely on a bank to loan it money to cover its daily operations on a regular basis, then that business needs to rework its operating model. We used to only need to get loans to buy homes,then cars. Now though, we are having to finance appliances, TV's, Stereos, etc. You name it, we can't afford it. This is a glaringly obvious problem to me, but no one else seems to notice. They just whip out their credit card and buy. No one uses cash anymore. And guess what? That credit just costs you more. So if I seem a little insensitive to the fact that your home value is dropping, it's not personal. I just think that the banks control over the economy is way out of control and the more banks that fail, the better off we will be in the future. I think that we need a huge pullback in the general cost of living, and that people need to step up and stop accepting the necessity to finance everything we want. Cars that cost $30.000? I don't think so! More than $150.000 for an average home? Not any more! $4.00 per gallon gas? Not here Osama! Things might get tight for a while, but if you don't buy it if you don't have the cash in hand, you'll find that after awhile, you'll start having more cash in hand. Cash is King! The old saying rings true now more than ever. We need to return to a simpler time. A time before the banks ruled and the Federal Government subsidized them, a time when a person could save up for a new car and pay cash, a time when businesses didn't have to borrow profits, they just made them. Maybe I'm just a dreamer, an idiot, or just altogether out of touch. But I'm OK with that, because whether or not there is a crisis,( which I doubt), my family is going to be just fine. You see, We never really bought in to the whole bank thing, people gave us shit about it and now I'm kind of feeling a little like we were right. (and they were wrong so now they have to sing a song). So if things get worse out there, you can hate me because I'll probably be watching with a sense of satisfaction thinking that maybe things will return to the point where my kids could possibly have a chance to buy their own home, and own it outright someday, fill the gas tank in their car that they have the title to for less than thirty bucks, and buy a weeks worth of groceries for less than a hundred dollars. Maybe someday.