Most of my MINI Cooper pics are up on the Picasa Google image database if anyone is interested:

For the last few years we have had a Rear Projection Sony TV that was nice but a bit dull and a bit clunky. So I sold it on Craigslist in a few days to make room for a Pioneer 60″ Plasma that completely knocked my socks off. I had seen in the last two years at the CEDIA show (trade show for custom home automation and home theater) and finally broke down and got one. It completely rocks. The blacks and the detail in the shadows are amazing. Skin tones are perfect and the bezel design is so clean and cool. I also happen to be a partner in another venture that does Home Theater and Home Audio equipment with a friend of mine so getting wholesale pricing on all of this fun stuff makes buying it a bit easier which is VERY nice.  So the TV is new and I sold my Sunfire CRM ribbon speakers and got some Martin Logan Fresco i’s across the front, a new NAD T755 AV Receiver, and to top it off sold my Sunfire True EQ 2700 watt dual 10″ sub and now have 2 Martin Logan Depthi subs. Each sub has 3 - 8″ subs that completely shake the whole house…..and yes there are two of them which makes 6 - 8″ speakers. Movies will never be the same.  When my 9 year son plays Lego Star Wars on the Wii it sounds Darth Vader is actually landing in my living room. Does anyone out there care about this stuff? If so, drop me an email so I know that I am not wasting valuable HTML space.

Okay for the last 3 years of having a ‘real’ phone number for the company I have also had a healthy phone bill that I prefer to ignore most months and I usually just close my eyes and send the check. It gets expensive. About a year ago I bought two VOIP phones with plans to hook them up and never got around to until about a month ago. What is cool about them is you can hook them up to any ethernet cable on your network (or any network, anywhere) and direct calls to that phone regardless of where it is. And it costs much less than normal phones as a result of using bandwidth I am pretty much already paying for via our internet service. So anyways, I went through 3 companies trying to get the features and service that I needed and settled on Vocalocity after trying Packet 8 and ViaTalk. Packet8 requires that you use their phones but their interface for setting up the phones and the menus is great. I had already spend 600 on new phones that ended up not working.  They said they would work when I signed up. Wrong. Canceled service after 1 week.

ViaTalk was a mess as they never quite allowed me to set up the phones the way I needed them to operate. I needed a menu driven system that would allow extensions to be selected and to have access to a digital voice mail, etc. 2 weeks later I canceled that service as well.

Vocalocity is working out great so far aside from some glitches with existing routers and modems which were supplied by AT&T which I was able to finally resolve. So we have a new number and a fancy menu system that routes calls as selected. It is totally cool. We have a new number too! 614-656-4315. Don’t be scared of the menu system. I am still answering all of the calls and replying to all of the messages and all that fun stuff. I just wanted to be ready to handle the call volume as we grow into needing additional lines, more people and all that ‘big business’ stuff. For real though, the phone system makes Out Motoring sound much bigger than it is. It is pretty much like Alice in Wonderland behind the wall.

VOIP stands for Voice Over Internet Protocal. It is the same technology that Vonage uses but in business applications the equipment is a bit more robust and allows for more flexibility to create phone networks that are much more modern and easy to manage than most business phone systems for small business.

I am sure the Out Motoring warehouse may seem very odd to the outsider. You see, we are in a business complex with a tutoring company on one side and a Insurance company on the other along with a commercial heating and cooling place in the mix. For the most part they all keep their doors shut all day long. If it’s remotely close to 70 degrees I would much rather turn the air off and open the rear bay door and the front door and enjoy the breeze. Most days I get a few bees and a few flies which is irritating but manageable; I guess I just like to feel like I’m not locked up. Maybe I should have been a farmer,  a landscaper or something. Although I hate mud and I am not really into overalls and animals. I guess selling MINI Cooper parts is a good compromise; as long as I can leave the doors open sometime….

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Okay, when March ended I thought I had seen the high point for the year but then April and May had a little surprise in store. A fairly nice surprise. And then came June which was nearly 2- 1/2 times sales from last June. It could not get any better….it must have been a fluke. Maybe everyone did their taxes late and finally got their returns in June? Then July came and went. Again leaving me speachless and worn out. Double last years July. It must have been a fluke. August. Same deal. I think things are really catching up and even though the economy is trashed people still love their MINI’s more than ever and I think more and more people are ditching their gas guzzlers and getting MINI’s. The other thing that is happening is the the tens of thousands of used MINI’s are coming on to the market at reasonable prices and are attracting new buyers who either want to upgrade the car or have to replace a few things here and there. As a result Out Motoring is getting bigger every month. I will keep running the business as long there are still orders to ship and questions to answer….

Well, I am still recovering from our completely over the top crazy July that was about 30% higher in sales, phone calls, emails, orders and such. I was not able to carve out time to make many posts to the blog but I am getting back to a consistent schedule. Oh, and I finally did my taxes from LAST year so that is a big relief.

Anyways, this last week or so I got some time to take pictures and add descriptions of 3 new Tire Pressure Gauges, 3 new rear Fog Light Lens kits, a few new Tshirts and a few other tweaks to the website. Keep an eye out for the goodies on the site. Here is one of the Tire Gauges (and the coolest).

Well, this last weekend we had quite a good time with visiting Detailing Master Ted Hersey of Ted Hersey Auto Care. Ted took our local MINI group through the basic steps of professional care washing using techniques to keep scratches at a minimum and how to get the best results. With a steady flow of questions Ted was able to cover a lot of topics including the wheel arches, the two bucket system, washing tools and tons of other stuff. The second half of the presentation focused on polishing using the Griots Garage Random Orbital Polisher and the range of polishes and Best of Show Wax to get nearly any scratch or surface imperfection out of you paint. Based on the feedback we received after the clinic, this was one of the best events of the year. As it is now in its second year, we think it will become an annual event. Check out the pics here.

http://picasaweb.google.com/OutMotoring.com/DetailingDemo2008

I can’t tell you how much I appreciate seeing and using products that are designed for not only perfect function but flawless design. To contrast that, nothing pisses me off more than something that was made, packaged, marketed, sold (and purchased) that flat out sucks. Theres nothing quite like the rediculousness of someone making something that does not even function in doing it’s core purpose. Nothing comes to mind immediately but there are numerous things that I have used that simply don’t do what they were meant to do. Whomever produces such garbage should be stuck in a room for the rest of their life living with the useless things they create…….okay so that’s a bit mean. They can have some food occasionally…and a bathroom and a window.

The 2008 Business Week design awards were just posted. It’s one of my favorite things to browse through the designs and see who designed them and of course check out the textures, forms and such. While I may someday get back into designing products for non MINI related markets, I still keep tabs on the industry as it inspires me to do stuff closer to my world. I have a few things I have been wanting to design for the MINI market that I have yet to execute but someday I will have time. In the meantime check these cool things out.

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/08/07/0717_idea_winners/121.htm

I finally got around to shooting some of the new shirts that were released last week. Check them out:

“Enjoy Your Ride” Long Sleeve:

Logo Hoodie

AlphaMINI Shirt : Adult

AlphaMINI : Kids

“Fastest Fun”

“R-Series” Shirt

“Logo Polo”

“Full Throttle” Shirt:

After a very strong fall, winter, spring and now summer, I realized that our old server had been taking a lot of abuse and was barely keeping up with the traffic that we have been getting over the last few months. So last night at Midnight we went to a fresh, brand new super mega server on a clean T1 line that will make for much faster surfing of our site. Enjoy! This should put an end to some of the sluggishness that even I saw at certain times throughout the day when our site load is especially high….plus I get to host the other 10 or so personal and other experimental sites that I have cooking. Some day I will put together a list of all of them with their intended purpose and domain names, etc….some are just URL’s, while others are sort of designed and populated with various content….