after 19 years of accessing the internet via dial up modem I have finally decided to go with DSL. At some point around 7pm this evening my service will kick in and I will be able to surf the web comfortably. No more waiting up to 10 minutes for a page to load (I have literally vacuumed the living room floor in less time than it has taken for some things to load . No more hour+ hangs on the email because someone has sent me a 5mb attachment (that won't open too often) I can now watch suggested videos without the up to 20 hour download time (and the vast majority of these I delete). The photos on my website will now load all the way with no refreshing. I will be able to upload videos to this blog.
I am stoked about this upgrade in my life.
Showing posts with label Email. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Email. Show all posts
Friday, April 24, 2009
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
A Farm Share Update
A year ago if you asked me if I was doing a CSA as a marketing strategy I would have sneered and said been there, done that, ain't gonna do it again. What a difference a year makes. As regular readers know, we did a small and short (12 week) winter CSA. We limited the program to 6 members, though we could have done 10 easily. Doled out the shares every other week starting in mid November and went til the 3rd Saturday in January, than we stopped. There were few problems on our end-Christmas week was a bit dicey on scheduling due to the pick up day being 2 days after Christmas and the second to last pick up was rescheduled due to bad weather (ice). the week after the last pick-up we had a combo of snow and ice and a lot of both and 2 hoop houses came down (but they were put back together within 2 days). So I would say we ended the winter farm share program just in time.
We did the winter program to see if we still had affection for the CSA style of marketing produce and I found I still loved it. So the decision was made to drop the Tuesday farmers market that we had help to found and had been doing for the past 13 years and revive the Boulder Belt farm Share Program in earnest. So I put together a Farm Share Page on the Boulder Belt Website in December so people interested in our FSP could go there for more information. Than I did not do much about the 2009 season for a while. I had the winter program to deal with, the holidays, etc.. In January I revived the Boulder Belt CSA page on Local Harvest because they sent me an email saying they had cut the commission 50%. And since some people like to use a credit card for such purchases this site allows us to go that route without getting our own credit card account (which we do not want to do for a variety of reasons). Than last week I decided why not put up an ad on Craig's List. So I did and saw a huge jump in hits to the Boulder Belt website and specifically the Farm Share Program page all coming from that add (I also get a lot of CSA hits from the Cincinnati Locavore blog). But while there seemed to be interest in this farm share idea I was not getting many bites. I did get 2 or 3 people to say they were seriously considering our farm share program and one person who committed early after sending out an email to my list in early January.
So after a few weeks of not doing much marketing on behaft of the FSP and not getting any people signing up I got nervous and started doubting my instincts. Maybe the cost is too high, maybe people are turned off by the on farm pick-up. Maybe I should change everything or maybe I should just drop the idea and figure out something else for the upcoming season to make up for the weekday farmers market we dropped. Maybe it is the economy and everyone is out of money so no one can join (okay that did not last long as I feel that what we do will not be all that effected by the economy crumbling-folks gotta eat, after all).
I mean after all, I had one member and a couple of maybes and only 8 weeks until the season starts. So I decided perhaps before I change everything or simply ditch the whole idea perhaps I should send out another email to my list. You know do some marketing, let people know what we are up to. So yesterday afternoon I composed an email about our FSP and sent it out to several hundred people. This morning I had my first hit and by noon had 6 people firmly commited to joining up. Perhaps by Friday the FSP will be 50% full at least through may. Since we have a monthly option later months will fill later on in the season.
So if you are planning on joining our FSP or another farm's program you need to get on the ball now and sign up as things are filling up quickly
We did the winter program to see if we still had affection for the CSA style of marketing produce and I found I still loved it. So the decision was made to drop the Tuesday farmers market that we had help to found and had been doing for the past 13 years and revive the Boulder Belt farm Share Program in earnest. So I put together a Farm Share Page on the Boulder Belt Website in December so people interested in our FSP could go there for more information. Than I did not do much about the 2009 season for a while. I had the winter program to deal with, the holidays, etc.. In January I revived the Boulder Belt CSA page on Local Harvest because they sent me an email saying they had cut the commission 50%. And since some people like to use a credit card for such purchases this site allows us to go that route without getting our own credit card account (which we do not want to do for a variety of reasons). Than last week I decided why not put up an ad on Craig's List. So I did and saw a huge jump in hits to the Boulder Belt website and specifically the Farm Share Program page all coming from that add (I also get a lot of CSA hits from the Cincinnati Locavore blog). But while there seemed to be interest in this farm share idea I was not getting many bites. I did get 2 or 3 people to say they were seriously considering our farm share program and one person who committed early after sending out an email to my list in early January.
So after a few weeks of not doing much marketing on behaft of the FSP and not getting any people signing up I got nervous and started doubting my instincts. Maybe the cost is too high, maybe people are turned off by the on farm pick-up. Maybe I should change everything or maybe I should just drop the idea and figure out something else for the upcoming season to make up for the weekday farmers market we dropped. Maybe it is the economy and everyone is out of money so no one can join (okay that did not last long as I feel that what we do will not be all that effected by the economy crumbling-folks gotta eat, after all).
I mean after all, I had one member and a couple of maybes and only 8 weeks until the season starts. So I decided perhaps before I change everything or simply ditch the whole idea perhaps I should send out another email to my list. You know do some marketing, let people know what we are up to. So yesterday afternoon I composed an email about our FSP and sent it out to several hundred people. This morning I had my first hit and by noon had 6 people firmly commited to joining up. Perhaps by Friday the FSP will be 50% full at least through may. Since we have a monthly option later months will fill later on in the season.
So if you are planning on joining our FSP or another farm's program you need to get on the ball now and sign up as things are filling up quickly
Monday, February 25, 2008
The half Wit
My friend Amanda sends me many jokes daily (she must have a facinating job to be doing so much emailing to me...) and today she sent one that is Boulder Belt Blogworthy
The Half-Wit
A man owned a small farm in the south west of WA.
The Department of Consumer & Employment Protection heard that he was not
paying proper wages to his employees and sent an agent down to interview
him.
"I need a list of your employees and how much you pay them,"
demanded the agent.
"Well," replied the farmer, "there's my farm hand who's been with me for
3 years. I pay him $400 a week plus free room and board. The
cook has been here for 18 months, and I pay her $450 per week plus free
room and board. Then there's the half-wit who works about 18 hours
every day and does about 90% of all the work around here. He makes
about $10 per week, pays his own room and board, and I buy him a bottle
of bourbon every Saturday night. He also sleeps with my wife
occasionally."
"That's the guy I want to talk to --- the half-wit," says the
agent.
"That would be me," replied the farmer.
Friday, January 11, 2008
E-mail Woes
For the past 3 days I have been dealing with a big clog of digital information in my email pipeline. Before I went up north one of my e-mail buddies, Prosser, sent me a huge 10m file of a really funny advertisement for Aussie Beer. In turn sent that out to several folks and apparently clogged up a few email boxes by doing so. Those accounts bounced back to 10m email to me thus filling my box with a lot of useless digital information.
Okay, that was bad enough.
Than, while I was away, our buddy Wyatt (who was farm sitting so knew we were away) sent me a lot of 2m mp3 files (many I was able to download to I-Tunes, though I have no idea what percentage of the files he sent I was able to download). Oh yeah, and than there was the Redneck Innovations from my friend Amanda and few large items from my Bro-in-law, Dave.
All this became such an information clog that I was not even able to access my email account via my ISP's website. Okay, that's a lie, I was able to access the account for a couple of hours yesterday and I was able to delete around 1200 emails from that account and around 120MB as well. The problem was the account still had over 420MB of information on it (why I do not know as the limit to the account is 25MB). After deleting those emails the account froze up and told me I had nothing in my email or trash folders (I knew better) and nothing would download to my email client I use on my Mac.
It now looked like the only solution would be to call my ISP and have therm manually remove the offending emails and this morning that is what I did at 5:30am. And now the problem seems to be fixed. Emails are trickling into my email client and I have complete access to the Core Comm email account where I am happily deleting all the old emails while enjoying a cup of fair trade coffee.
Okay, that was bad enough.
Than, while I was away, our buddy Wyatt (who was farm sitting so knew we were away) sent me a lot of 2m mp3 files (many I was able to download to I-Tunes, though I have no idea what percentage of the files he sent I was able to download). Oh yeah, and than there was the Redneck Innovations from my friend Amanda and few large items from my Bro-in-law, Dave.
All this became such an information clog that I was not even able to access my email account via my ISP's website. Okay, that's a lie, I was able to access the account for a couple of hours yesterday and I was able to delete around 1200 emails from that account and around 120MB as well. The problem was the account still had over 420MB of information on it (why I do not know as the limit to the account is 25MB). After deleting those emails the account froze up and told me I had nothing in my email or trash folders (I knew better) and nothing would download to my email client I use on my Mac.
It now looked like the only solution would be to call my ISP and have therm manually remove the offending emails and this morning that is what I did at 5:30am. And now the problem seems to be fixed. Emails are trickling into my email client and I have complete access to the Core Comm email account where I am happily deleting all the old emails while enjoying a cup of fair trade coffee.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
New Email Address
The other day the phone rang. It was my ISP, CoreComm. They called to tell me I was getting a new email address. So after 6 or 7 minutes my email address, goodows@infinet.com was no more. Though you can still use it to get to me for another 3 months or so.
I will miss the old email addy, we had some good times together. Long walks on the beach, sunsets, educating the masses about food and agriculture, etc..
I won't miss all the spam that has attached itself to that email. Amazing how much spam builds up over 10+ years. My spam catchers (I have 2) glean over 100 a day from my inbox and I still have to manually rid myself of another 25 or so daily.
I don't like having to change my email addy on all the lists, groups and forums to which I belong, its a long list. Several of the email lists, for some reason, are not well set up to change an email addy so one has to unsubscribe and hope that one can resubscribe to these lists. I believe on at least two I have dueling accounts. That, or I have no accounts at all, I am not sure which yet. Ah, well I knew eventually this would happen to me but frankly I figured I would keep the goodows@infinet.com addy until I switched to a DSL provider. It is strange to lose something you have used for the past 11 or so years.
The new email address is boulderbeltATvoyagerDOTnet (change the AT to @ and DOT to . and you will have my new address)
I will miss the old email addy, we had some good times together. Long walks on the beach, sunsets, educating the masses about food and agriculture, etc..
I won't miss all the spam that has attached itself to that email. Amazing how much spam builds up over 10+ years. My spam catchers (I have 2) glean over 100 a day from my inbox and I still have to manually rid myself of another 25 or so daily.
I don't like having to change my email addy on all the lists, groups and forums to which I belong, its a long list. Several of the email lists, for some reason, are not well set up to change an email addy so one has to unsubscribe and hope that one can resubscribe to these lists. I believe on at least two I have dueling accounts. That, or I have no accounts at all, I am not sure which yet. Ah, well I knew eventually this would happen to me but frankly I figured I would keep the goodows@infinet.com addy until I switched to a DSL provider. It is strange to lose something you have used for the past 11 or so years.
The new email address is boulderbeltATvoyagerDOTnet (change the AT to @ and DOT to . and you will have my new address)
Monday, July 16, 2007
A Strawberry Crisis of Minute Proportions
We had a very busy weekend that was quite profitable for us. Kona Bistro in Oxford does an annual local/organic foods week at the restaurant and ordered a lot of food from us and he Saturday Farmers market in Oxford was busy as well. That mean harvesting double the usual amount of food and having no strawberries for Saturday's market which bummed a lot of people out.
Harvest started on Thursday, mainly for the store (which is open Thursday, Friday and Sunday 11am 'til 7pm) because we were short on some things, like strawberries (because I made jam out of the ones picked over the past weekend and early in the week that did not sell at the Tuesday market) and onions which are just starting to come in and beans because beans need picking every other day or so.
The store was reasonably busy Thursday. 6 people came in most wanting strawberries which has never happened before. Usually the berries are a slow seller. I didn't care because I had already sold 15 pints to Kona and any extras would sell at the Saturday market. Than I start getting emails from farmers market customer ordering large amounts of strawberries, Again, something that has not happened before. Than I go out in the late afternoon to pick more berries and find the patch that has been giving us 11 to 13 pints per day can barely cough up 6 pints. OH NO! We have hit he mid summer lull. So I quickly go back to the store and pull all the berries off the shelf, now realizing I will barely have enough to fill Kona's order and none extra for market if I sell any more at the store. I tell all the emailers that I will not have any berries at market so cannot reserve any for them.
Friday I go out late in the day to harvest more berries and once again find the harvest is low. But I do get enough berries to fill the restaurant order and all is good.
I should have gotten the berries in the morning but I had to harvest and pack a lot of chard, kale, cauliflower, broccoli, onions, carrots, peas, green beans, beets, basil and other items for both Kona and the Saturday market.
At 6am Saturday Morning I load the van with a lot of food and we drive down to Oxford and set up and sell a lot of produce at market, despite having no berries. After market we stop at the Top O' The Hill Day lily farm and buy a couple of expensive lily corms (which we will pick up next Saturday). I had never been to this farm since it stopped being a horse farm. I was well aquainted with it as a horse farm as I boarded a horse there in the late 1980's.When I was a little kid all the teenagers in my neighborhood (the subdivision across the street) had horses and boarded them here. And that starerd my addiction o horses which is in a lull a he moment. After the day lily farm we picked up our raw milk and han went home. Took a nap and than got back in he van and drove back to Oxford for a pool/dinner party at our friend Chuck's. Had a great time swimming, eating and communing. It was good but long day and we will do a virtual repeat next week minus a big restaurant order-have to pick up the lilies, and milk and in the evening we go to Lisa Biales's CD Release party in Oxford
Harvest started on Thursday, mainly for the store (which is open Thursday, Friday and Sunday 11am 'til 7pm) because we were short on some things, like strawberries (because I made jam out of the ones picked over the past weekend and early in the week that did not sell at the Tuesday market) and onions which are just starting to come in and beans because beans need picking every other day or so.
The store was reasonably busy Thursday. 6 people came in most wanting strawberries which has never happened before. Usually the berries are a slow seller. I didn't care because I had already sold 15 pints to Kona and any extras would sell at the Saturday market. Than I start getting emails from farmers market customer ordering large amounts of strawberries, Again, something that has not happened before. Than I go out in the late afternoon to pick more berries and find the patch that has been giving us 11 to 13 pints per day can barely cough up 6 pints. OH NO! We have hit he mid summer lull. So I quickly go back to the store and pull all the berries off the shelf, now realizing I will barely have enough to fill Kona's order and none extra for market if I sell any more at the store. I tell all the emailers that I will not have any berries at market so cannot reserve any for them.
Friday I go out late in the day to harvest more berries and once again find the harvest is low. But I do get enough berries to fill the restaurant order and all is good.
I should have gotten the berries in the morning but I had to harvest and pack a lot of chard, kale, cauliflower, broccoli, onions, carrots, peas, green beans, beets, basil and other items for both Kona and the Saturday market.
At 6am Saturday Morning I load the van with a lot of food and we drive down to Oxford and set up and sell a lot of produce at market, despite having no berries. After market we stop at the Top O' The Hill Day lily farm and buy a couple of expensive lily corms (which we will pick up next Saturday). I had never been to this farm since it stopped being a horse farm. I was well aquainted with it as a horse farm as I boarded a horse there in the late 1980's.When I was a little kid all the teenagers in my neighborhood (the subdivision across the street) had horses and boarded them here. And that starerd my addiction o horses which is in a lull a he moment. After the day lily farm we picked up our raw milk and han went home. Took a nap and than got back in he van and drove back to Oxford for a pool/dinner party at our friend Chuck's. Had a great time swimming, eating and communing. It was good but long day and we will do a virtual repeat next week minus a big restaurant order-have to pick up the lilies, and milk and in the evening we go to Lisa Biales's CD Release party in Oxford
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Reality (NOT) Shows
Things I get sent via email. Today it's a casting call
Now I am neither Male, unmarried or under 30 so the CW has 3 strikes with me. Another vehicle to further exploit Farmers. Though I am sure it will pay the farmer they use well by small town standards but merely a pittance by Hollywood standards.
The CW network (formerly called The WB & UPN) seeks REAL FARMER / RANCHER to STAR in network romantic reality show
Ideally our Farmer/Rancher will have REAL farming or Ranching experience such as working a farm/ranch, been in the rodeo circuit or even an heir to a ranch/farm empire.
The guy needs to be:
SINGLE
AGE 23-30
Confident both in real life and in his environment.
Must be in decent shape, have a good-ole-boy attitude and able to charm the ladies.
If you or someone you know fits this description, the CW Network wants to hear from you.
Please email us immediately with the following information:
Name
Age
Contact information: email, phone numbers
How they fit description: rancher/farmer/cowboy
What experience they have on the ranch/farm
PHOTOS: 5-10 showing: face, body, at least one with the shirt off, anything showing them on the ranch/farm.
Now I am neither Male, unmarried or under 30 so the CW has 3 strikes with me. Another vehicle to further exploit Farmers. Though I am sure it will pay the farmer they use well by small town standards but merely a pittance by Hollywood standards.
Monday, February 06, 2006
In This Evening's Email
With Spermamax
You think you are not able to father, Spermamax will change your world.
You
Spermamax can help
Now just how is this possible? Having more sperm than water in the oceans... I mean talk about blue balls. And what if the woman just ain't in the mood? I mean wouldn't the guy pop if he had that much sperm running around in his testicles? I would think this would make the chances of conception go down if for no other reason than these oceaned sized blue balls the poor chap would be sporting. That would be enuff to make most women run away fast.
And let us not forget the fact that I am not a male, I cannot produce sperm, no matter how much Spermamax I take and I am not planning on breeding decendants. They pretty much struck out on me, it seems.
You think you are not able to father, Spermamax will change your world.
You
Spermamax can help
Now just how is this possible? Having more sperm than water in the oceans... I mean talk about blue balls. And what if the woman just ain't in the mood? I mean wouldn't the guy pop if he had that much sperm running around in his testicles? I would think this would make the chances of conception go down if for no other reason than these oceaned sized blue balls the poor chap would be sporting. That would be enuff to make most women run away fast.
And let us not forget the fact that I am not a male, I cannot produce sperm, no matter how much Spermamax I take and I am not planning on breeding decendants. They pretty much struck out on me, it seems.
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