I’ve turned down business twice in as many days. Don’t think I’ve gone crazy; I had good reasons to turn it away.

The first thing I turned away was a request from a company to create a system that would allow their website visitors to sign up for regular email messages containing coupons or a newsletter or something. They needed a way to manage the contacts and a system that would allow recipients to ‘opt out’ of the email marketing. I’d be doing the customer a disservice if I sold them something that was already built and is better than what we could build for a reasonable amount of money. I referred them to Constant Contact, which for a small monthly fee, meets all their needs.

Secondly, I turned down some web-hosting business. We currently rent an entire server from Go Daddy. After you add administrative and support costs into what we’re paying for the server, there is no money to be made on a small scale in hosting. Our philosophy is because of the convenience to us, we’re happy to host our customer’s sites for no more than our direct cost.

If we marked hosting up at all, without overloading our server (which many providers do) we wouldn’t even be price competitive. We’re happy to make money for what we do well (development) and break even on what we consider a commodity (hosting).

I definitely have no desire to be a “hosting” company.

Happy birthday to my brother-in-law Cabe who is 35 today! Below is a picture of him standing next to the Standard Taxi. To get the full effect, you really need to click on the photo and enlarge it to be able to tell how old he really looks.

(Click to Enlarge)

While riding in the car with me tonight (at about 8 p.m.), my eight year old son looked at the electronic thermometer and said, “Boy you can really tell it’s Fall outside, it’s cold.”

It was 70 degrees fahrenheit.

I ordered an RV backup camera to replace the one that was stolen while it was in storage(!), and five days after I ordered it they sent me an email saying that they couldn’t fulfill my order. I perceived their email as basic insincere form letter stuff, here is what it said.

Hello,
We apologize in the delay in notifying you.
We are unable to process your order at this time.
Our site is being redesigned at this time to reflect current inventory.
We have cancelled your order below.
We have NOT charged your credit card.
We apologize for the inconvenience.

Electronets.com STAFF

Because I was annoyed at their delay in not notifying me very quickly that they weren’t able to fufill my order, I sent them an email stating my annoyance. The strongest words I used were “Thanks for nothing.” and “I’ll be sure not to order anything from your company again.”

I realize that I’m just being an ass. I’ve been cranky lately for some reason and just looking for an argument. Here was their reply to that email, which I really didn’t even expect.

You are welcome. Obviously not too intelligent though… we were genuinely apologetic and this is what we get from you.
You are trash.

Electronets.com STAFF

I responded to inform them that I’d post their response on my blog for all to see, and here was their response to that.

Yes, and we will be happy for you. Make sure you post the fact that you obviously didn’t read our policies regarding our website that you agreed to.

Good day !

I tried to send them a response, but oddly enough my mail is being rejected by their SMTP server now. I sent my reply through another account, but that was also a no-go. All I wanted to do was explain the difference between libel and slander, since there seemed to be some confusion on the meanings of each.

I don’t know which policy they’re referring to which would prevent me from letting them know that I was annoyed. Unless maybe I didn’t read it closely enough and it read, “We don’t have your camera”. I know I would’ve remembered reading that part. So that can’t be it.

A while ago (okay so it was almost two and a half years ago, so what), I mentioned that I had gotten a tattoo while on vacation in Hawaii. It’s on my right bicep. I’ve just now finally gotten around to taking a picture of it. The characters mean Mercy and Father (oh dear Lord I hope I wasn’t wrong about their meanings), which makes the tattoo mean merciful father or affectionate father.