The Empty Cabinets of my Mind

Cheap Car Insurance in Mississippi

I do like when PayPerPost advertisers give us the choice of disclosing on site or within a post, as I'd like to say right up front that this is a paid post.  Of course, if I didn't like the advertiser, I would not do it.  The fact is that I have never been in Mississippi, although I have met some awfully nice people from that state.  Most of them eventually went back, too, not just for a visit, but to stay.  For most of them, their primary reason for moving back is that they can live a good life cheaper there. 

So if you are one of those people and if you are looking for cheap car insurance in Mississippi then maybe it is only a click away. 

Cheap auto insurance is one of the reasons I drive an old clunker.  Well, it is in good shape inside and out and runs good, too.  Actually, after well over a hundred thousand miles my '96 Grand Voyager still purrs like a kitten.  Compared to most people I know, though, driving the same car for 16 years is kind of pushing the envelope.  But whenever I stop to think about all of the nice modern (think hi-tech) features a newer vehicle might offer, I always come back to the same point.  Higher registration and insurance!  Then, too, when a car is new one always has to worry about the little nicks and scrapes. 

Actually, I only had my present van a couple weeks when it was side-swiped by somebody in the middle of the night, hit and run.  BOOM, $1600 damage in a few seconds.  Naturally, I had 1K deductible. 

Now I don't even carry collision.  Just liability.  For California, I have really cheap insurance, but seriously, if I ever decide to get a new car, I might have to move to Mississippi in order to be able to afford good insurance.

Selling Stuff Online

I would not call myself a bad sales person, but I seriously don't like selling.  Well, selling something is pretty cool, but getting there is a bother.  I guess if I were starving...

But in a sense I am sort of a natural sales type because I do get all excited over products and services that I really like. 

However, working as a marketing consultant is something I could never do, and people can and do are just amazing to me. 

Coming up with words that do not seem to make sense -- and then making sense of them is more my game, so here goes:  SEO Essex makes sense to someone in England.

If it doesn't make sense to you, then hey, it is a link.  Follow the yellow brick road.

I love reading about online marketing.  I love monetizing my blog and getting paid for posting links.  Is that selling?  Not if somebody else does the work. 

Speaking of work, have you read up on Google + yet?  I haven't, but promised a friend I would do that today.  He warned me to make sure my Picassa settings are private before signing up though.  I sure hope I did that right because once before Picassa dumped ALL my photos into a public domain and there was stuff in there that belonged to a client doing forensic work that was NOT for the public eye.  I had to work very fast to get that cleaned up and sure don't want a repeat occurance.

Logo Design is Hard Work

I know, as my late husband and partner used to sell logo designs to help supplement our income back in the lean days (can you pronounce "Starving Student?")  I used to help him.  It was fun, but grueling.  The neatest thing was seeing people get good results because of the graphics we produced.

A good logo really helps a business stand out.  Of course, it cannot replace good products and great service, but it gives you a foot in the door, so to speak.

Finding a good logo design company got easier when the internet expanded as now people can get a pretty good idea of what kind of work different artists can offer without having to run all over the place and waste time looking at physical portfolios. If the logo company can make an attractive web page for themselves, you know they can make you a logo that will stand out. Of course the nice thing about shopping online is that it is so easy to compare the different vendor pages. One thing to look for when shopping for a design company is their guarantee.  Related to that issue is how many changes the company is willing to make if you are not happy with their design. 

Ordering a professional logo online is easy and convenience these days and not only can you get help with your design, but many of the logo design companies also include letterhead and business cards in their online pricing. 

Guitar Lessons

I was showing off my Android phone to a friend lately and the guitar application thereon made a hit.  I have not actually tried to play the guitar on my Google phone aside from pressing a few chords and random strumming, but the colors are very cool and it looks nice. 

Some years back I actually took guitar lessons for a whole year. Part of the process involved driving down to Tijuana and buying a well-made guitar there for pennies on the dollar to what it would have cost in the San Francisco Bay Area where I was then living.  I remember the price was $15.  Gas was not as expensive then as it is now.  I wasn't good at playing the guitar, but at least I learned how to read music.  In truth, I am more interested in learning to play the piano.  I have a pretty good keyboard.  I'll never be good at it, but I have gotten to the point where it is more relaxing than frustrating to sit down and try. 

I am not a big fan of music, at least not to the extent that most people seem to be, but I do miss being able to have Napster on my Google phone.  They have an application, but it just won't work on my Samsung Moment Smartphone.  Maybe it is time to upgrade!

A Donut After All These Years

I ate a Krispy Kreme donut today and told a friend that I had not had a donut in eight years.  I was wrong.  It had been fifteen years.  It was a Krispy Kreme that time, too.  There are some sporting events that I regularly attend where they always serve donuts.  I never eat one.  They are not Krispy Kreme donuts, so it is easy for me to resist.  Today someone said they bought some at Winco.  If Winco carries them I may be in trouble, as their prices will make them even harder to resist. 

On that note, it is only recently that I became addicted to In & Out Burgers and it is the fault Krispy Kreme donuts because I was in one of their shops about twenty years ago and decided to go for a burger after.  In & Out was right across the street and friends had been raving about how good their burgers were.  The one I bought tasted like cardboard and I didn't even eat half of it.  Yuck!  So I never tried any of their locations again until friends in the Palm Dessert insisted on treating me to a Double Double at their favorite location.   It was SO good.  Now I am a regular there. 

Austin Business Lawyer

Actually, I have never been to Austin, but it would be great if you clicked on this link just the same: Austin Business Lawyer.  Wow, thanks.   I had intended to take a short vacation in Texas this year, but it would not have been a business trip. 

In truth, it has been quite a few years since I even drove through Texas.  Being in that state was a memorable experience, however, because it is the only place I ever visited where the gas station attendants vacuumed the inside of your car when you filled up.  Gas cost about $.87/gallon back then, so it was a real surprise to get that kind of service.  They cleaned the windshields and did safety checks, too, like the tires and oil.  Now we have to pump our own and get nothing.  Oh, well.

The cheapest gas I ever bought was in Kingman, AZ back in the 60's and I had filled up somewhere east of there, but stopped again and topped off in Kingman just to say that I had bought gas for 23 cents/gallon.  That was a thrill. 

Recently I read a news story about a fellow who was not at all thrilled when he pulled up at a gas station and checked the price but after he started pumping the price went up in the middle of his transaction.  He got so bent out of shape, in fact, that he called 911.  Huh?

America at its Finest

I saw something so heartwarming today that I just had to share.  In these hard times when a lot of folks are grumbling and looking down, a smiling young man found a decent and honest way to make a living.

  
 His name is Anthony White and many of my neighbors have been talking about what a fine job he did painting house numbers on their curbs.  Since I am an artist I had planned to paint my own, but this morning I saw how cheerful and fast he was and what a good job he was doing, so I asked him to paint my number on my curb.  His price was so affordable, that I had him surprise my neighbor by painting her number on her curb, too.

Anthony will paint your curb in any color you like, but his specialty is patriotic colors. 

If you would like your number painted on your curb, just call Anthony at (951) 219-0546.

 

         Anthony White

 Curb Numbering Service

       (951) 219-0546

Anthony serves the San Jacinto, CA and Hemet, CA areas, and here is the best part:

              He also washes windows!!!

The Check is in the Mail

During the 1989 Loma Prieta much of an old brick Post Office on 10th street collapsed and unknown to me, in the debris lay one of my business mortgage payments.  Even before the grace period was up, some fresh kid from the mortgage company started calling me up at some ungodly hour of the morning and even after I had sent in another check. 

A few weeks (or was it months?) later, my first mangled check came back all by itself in an envelope from the mortgage company without a word of acknowledgement much less apology. 

They did me a favor, in hindsight, because the next day I found a bank that was willing to refi at a lower interest rate, which helped me get that mortgage paid off much faster. 

Back then if we had had the excellent home computer equipment and high speed internet services that we have today, it would have been much easier to find a better loan. 

Around that time, too, I would have benefited from having been able to locate and order business checks online.  I was a Beta tester for a company that was gearing up to sell a product that would allow businesses to print their own postage onsight without having to haul a meter into the post office periodically to get it reloaded.  That was very cool, but we still were not able to print our own checks. 

A Picture Worth a Thousand Words

Like many people, I was pretty good at art as a child until I got brainwashed into thinking I wasn't.  It started in first grade where we had a teacher who really wanted us to "stay within the lines."  For example, instead of allowing the class to color the balloons in a handout she gave us our way, she insisted that the ONLY way to color was by merging an endless number of tiny horizontal lines within the outlined spaces.   Clearly, I would rather have peeled the wrapper off the crayon, put it on its side and gotten the job done. When forced to do it her way I began to lose all respect for authority.   She made what should have been creative, spontaneous, and fun into drudgework.

But when computers came along, kids like me got even.   After having to pay a typesetter $40 for one line of type back in the late 70's I was very excited to learn that we could do our own digital phototypesetting using the DEC Vax PDP-7 back when   Early on, that was my main incentive for learning Unix, which was then the state of the art operating system.

I soon became conversant enough with Unix to be able to freelance as a consultant to artists involved with Business Logo Design.  Pretty soon, I was also editing and debugging software for a textbook publisher and designing textbook covers.  Those were enjoyable years.

PayDay Loans

This is not the sort of thing I usually blog about, but a nice repeat advertiser requested the words payday loans in the title of a post.  Why not?   I have a good friend who has had both ups and downs in her life that she probably knows way more on this subject than I do.

Personally, I have never taken out any payday loans and being retired it does seem rather unlikely that I will. On the other hand, I like to be informed about topics that might be of general interest.

For example, although I do not draw Social Security, I recently stopped at one of their information places and it was quite an experience. It was housed in the same quarters with some kind of employment assistance service and the place was packed.  Most of people there had drawn faces and blank stares.  They all looked sort of gray, too, with a lot of faded clothing and gray skin, too, like they smoked a lot of cigarettes.   It seemed to me that one of the people in the lines was not much interested in getting a job, because he had horns tattooed on his forehead in an apparent bid to look like the devil.  Maybe he could get a job one day of the year...on Halloween? 

The Social Security Administration's web pages are much more informative than they were the last time I looked.  Now people can even file for their benefits online.

For some reason this makes me wonder whether people can get payday loans against entitlements such as social security or VA compensation checks.