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

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….

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….

Okay, so every once in a while I get the hankering for some late night music when my kids are asleep and listening to my setup at less than moderate listening levels is just good enough…so, I got my first set of REALLY sweet headphones. In fact, they may be one of the best set of headphones on the planet and boy do they look the business. The AKG 701’s were recommended to me by my neighbor and parter in crime (co-owner of www.ParkAudioLabs.com) and I can’t say enough about them. What do they have to do with MINI’s? Absolutely nothing, aside from the beautiful retro modern design aesthetic and phenomenal performance. Listening to headphones has never been so good.

For those audiophiles out there I happen to be addict and have a constant flow of equipment coming and going in my house and currently have some Martin Logan Vantages powered by Nuforce Ref 9 V2 amps and a Cambridge 740C cd player that I use as a DAC which goes to a Parasound preamp….all the cables are Kimber Hero and Monacle X. The Vantages are on the way out in favor of the new Spire from Martin Logan…..

Part of running a small business and being mostly a one man show means I have to wear lots of hats. One of them is the accounting hat which I don’t like to wear. I usually leave it buried deep in some dark closet most of the year and pull it out a few times to work some magic. Each year I have to go through all of the years records and prep them for my accountant whom I have been working with for nearly 9 years. It’s flat out one of the most painful things I have to deal with every year. Here it is, nearly June and I still have not done LAST years taxes. I guess I should pay someone to do it because I just hate it. Lesson learned. Luckily I use digital checks and credit cards for nearly everything related to the business so the paper trail is easy to track at the end of the year.

So, back to the grind I go. All I need to finish my paper trail is my Visa and Mastercard charges for the year and I will be sending this mess of numbers to my accountant in California. What a guy.

I have a thing for chairs. I don’t dare count how many I have in my house because it’s overwhelming. While I have the normal dining chairs and such I have a collection of ‘design’ chairs that are somewhere between sculpture and art. I use them around the house but most people look at them as more of decoration than a useful object. One of my favorites is by a designer named Konstantin Grcic. The ChairONE is one of the coolest chairs I have ever laid eyes. Most may not share my opinion…I like because it looks so much like the Stealth Bomber with the planar surfaces that look uncomfortable to sit on yet in reality is quite comfortable….

One of my other favorites is this Eames LCW (I have it Walnut):

Somehow I manage to keep growing my chair collection even though I don’t recall ever having enough people in the house to actually utilize them….my wife thinks they may need to end up at the office which would not be the end of the world…..