Sad Day

One year ago today, Midnight, our poodle of 12 years, was put to sleep in Bartlett, TN. Simultaneously, I was babysitting this dog in Farmington, MN. I was unaware Midnight was being put to sleep and it came as a shock to me.

The dog in the picture is named Mickey, and I can hardly wait to own my own black poodle one day again. They make great football buddies, love to see you when you get home - and they're just flat smart.

R.I.P. Midnight Shadow Nowlin.

Record Week

We had a record sales week at our business. This is a good thing.

Good Week

This has been an excellent week. I've gotten one car completely mechanically sound and into the detailer as of today, and another car should be picked up tonight with a parts list. Should not be difficult to get everything going on it once I have parts. I'm pumped, in other words.

This is all the good news I will publicly share.

Number One Idiot Question of the Day

"When you say the engine, does that include the transmission, or just the engine?"

Help me Captain Obvious, Defender of the Known...

Looking at Several Improvements for My Office

I'm registering a vehicle with the state right now and I'm taking the time sitting to note a few things I'm working on to make my company more profitable:

1. Streamlining the paperwork process. We are looking at several options that would link three programs we use (Act!, Microsoft Access, and Quickbooks) and allow us to bypass cutting and pasting information between programs. This would save us a considerable amount of time and eliminate clerical errors.
2. Switching to a VOIP phone service- if we switch to voice over IP, we would immediately see an 80% savings on our outgoing calls and maintain a similar cost level on incoming 800 calls. There are companies that we could cut costs with on both ingoing and outgoing, but they don't seem as reliable.
3. Doing a better job selling part and labor warranties. This would give many of our customers a peace of mind about their purchases, extend their part warranty, and cover their labor in the highly unlikely event that they have a warranty problem, in addition to making our company more profitable. It is truly a win-win situation.

Also high on my agenda, but highly unlikely, is teaching my father how to do basic things around the office. He can sell like the dickens, but he's pretty much infantile when it comes to doing very basic things like looking up tracking numbers for customers. He then wastes his time and their time by getting someone else to do it, instead of just making 4 mouse clicks and finding it himself. Bad dad! Bad!