Blog » September 2007

#23 in our ongoing series, "Reasons You Don't Want a Website"

If you have a website, people might find you.  You may innocently put up some sort of "Contact us!" page on your site, and think nothing of it.  But you know what happens?  Google happens.  Then some potential customer can just type your name willy nilly into practically any search engine, and BAM! Information on how to find your business is delivered right to them.

Obviously, this is nothing less than disastrous.   They might call you.  They might email you.  They might even wonder if there is a way for them to exchange some form of money for your goods or services.  And then what?  Who is going to respond to those emails?  Who is going to fulfill all those orders?  What in the world are you going to do with all those customers?

The path is clear:  you'll have to hire an underling.  You'll have to teach that person how to work in your business, how to make your clients happy, how to jam all that cash into the overflowing till.  You'll have to figure out how to break the news to your CPA that you've just jumped a tax bracket, then you'll have to give your underling some vacation, during which time he or she will undoubtedly be eaten by a shark, and you'll be back at square one.  

All because of that stupid website.  It's definitely not worth the hassle.

Here is a little secret:  Aaron and I are not particularly skilled in the realm of 'electricity'.  We are not the type to solder in our spare time. And yet, we just installed our own solar panels!  Here is what it involved:  472 trips to Home Depot.  (By "Home Depot", we mean "Home Depot and Lowe's and our local Electrician's supply store, because none of them ever had all of the things we needed, and they all thought we were loons.")

We wanted to do the work ourselves because we are stubborn that way.  That, and there are very few solar installers in our area.   Also, if something starts acting oddly or shooting out sparks, we know what to do (RUN!!!).   We read a bunch of books, talked to some experts, then took a deep breath and flipped the switch.   Then:  power!  It's kind of a giddy feeling, like picking the first tomatos of the season in your garden. 

There is, of course, a learning curve. 

• First lesson:  charge your batteries fully before using them.  
• Second lesson:  pouting will not make the morning fog clear any more quickly.    

We will learn more lessons, and we'll share them with you here when we do.

Readers, meet some baby birds:

This is a new foray for us: raising our own meat. We've been raising ducks (for eggs) for a few years now, and we thought it was time to branch out. Since chickens and ducks have pretty similar housing requirements, we figured it made sense to start with them (rather than, say, beefalo).

We know that we shouldn't get attached to them, so we have named all of the yellow ones Pot Pie. All of the black ones are named Marsala. The yellows are Cornish cross, which is the uber-generic meat bird in the US today. The black ones are some sort of hybrid called "Kosher King", which I think is a hysterical name for a bird breed.

They came to us through the USPS, and spent their first day recovering from their arduous journey. They have a wake:sleep cycle of about 4:2 minutes, and they'll just stop and fall asleep wherever they're standing. Even if it's in the food.

Welcome to our blog! We're hoping to use this blog as a place to chat about all manner of things -- technology, renewable energy, life in rural America, chickens, and so on. We'll try to put up some starter posts in each of these categories over the next week or so.

Let us know if you have any questions or great topic ideas!