Posted by DJ on December 31st, 2009 My best friend runs her very own printing company in California and she called me for some advice. She knew that I have some friends who are very computer savvy and she wanted me to find out if they would recommend her buying used poweredge servers or if she should spend the huge amount of money on some new ones.
Her computer guy has told her that used servers bought from the right company can work just as well as brand new ones but she has only had him on staff for about two weeks and does not know if he can be trusted just yet. I told her not to worry and that I would find out and give her a call back soon.
I dialed up my buddy Jim’s number and explained the situation to him, he told me that if she chose to go with used poweredge servers that she should use this company that he had before and then he would approve it. If she does not know the company that is trying to sell her the used servers, then she might not get a good reliable product.
I called her back and gave her the company that Jim recommended and told her that he said if she used them to get her used servers, then she would get some really nice servers and a good deal.
Posted by DJ on December 30th, 2009 If I could only keep the money in the tech fund from constantly being used for other things then I may be able to save up enough to get those used proliant servers that we so desperately need to help our office run more efficient. When our current servers go down, like they usually do, three or four times a month, then we are losing money until the repair guys can get there and get us back online.
I have asked for the three thousand dollars it would take to buy the used hp servers to replace the old ones and the higher ups always tell me that the money is just not there. Last month, I thought that we were getting pretty close and even thought about ordering the used proliant servers then but the copy machine upstairs broke down and the company chose to replace it with a big new up to date one.
I am not sure why everyone seems to just think that the used hp servers idea is not valid. I guess that they do not know how many of thousands of dollars are just going down the drain during the hours we are offline every month. I guess that I may have to write a report on it and hand it out at the next budget meeting. Maybe they will get the point then.
Posted by DJ on December 28th, 2009 My only problem with our current janitorial products supplier is that I do not know the site just yet and ordering takes a little longer than I would like to. I had put my secretary in charge of handling it but since she has taken a maternity leave for six months, I need to learn to do it.
I think that she was the one that found this new cleaning supplies company that started to save us a lot of money since we started using them. I would love to find someone in our office to take over her job of ordering until she comes back. I may even call her and offer her a flat fee for handling it from home.
She would only have to do it once a month and I could just email her everything that we need. The extra money might come in handy for the extra things she will need once the baby gets her next month.
Besides the small ordering issue that I have with the janitorial products supplier, since the switch, I think that we have saved almost six hundred dollars; I guess dealing with it for a few months is worth it.
Posted by DJ on December 28th, 2009 The only thing that I requested from the guys downstairs was that they start looking into other office supply companies that may have better prices. I have noticed that what we pay for office supplies seems to be a little high. I priced some online companies to what our current company charges and the difference was a little ridiculous. I thought that just maybe our current provider gave us a deal that I did not know about since we were such a good customers but I now know that they do not give us any breaks and we are paying just as much as the guy that they just signed on last week.
Four days later after making the request to the guys in ordering downstairs, I was happy to find out that they had in fact located a discount office supplies company that had the same products for considerably lower prices. I am so happy that I told them to find a new office supplies company or they would have stayed with the same one, it is not their money, and they do not worry about the prices ever. The discount office supplies change will wind up saving me about five hundred dollars a month that was a good change.
Posted by DJ on December 23rd, 2009 I finally talked my Aunt into shopping for a better life insurance quote. She has always paid a high rate because of her imperfect health but is too afraid to shop around thinking that she will get turned down. I explained to her that she did not need to drop the life insurance policy that she had currently until she definitely found something better.
She finally understood so we sat down on the computer and went to work requesting life insurance quotes all day. It actually was not too bad to be honest. We had all her medical records there even though most of the time they were not required. Everything else was just personal information and stuff.
For the most part we requested quotes on the no medical life insurance because of her health. This is where she thought it would be an outrageous amount, but I told her it can’t be more than what she was already paying for life insurance.
We got all kinds of insurance company responses and it was not long before we found her a much better life insurance rate. It was the same type of no medical life insurance coverage she already had at a fraction of the cost. We were both very happy that she was going to save money each month on life insurance.
Posted by DJ on December 22nd, 2009 I think that the only thing that could be worse than your public finding out that you did something stupid, would be that your mother did. This is why ReputationManagers.com is on my payroll and will remain there as long as I am in the public spotlight. I would love to be like the average Joe and just be able to walk the streets and do as I please, but it is not like that for actors and actresses in Hollywood.
I think that so far, ReputationManagers.com has been doing a great job, I have had a few little minor hiccups in my career that have been downplayed thanks to them. I would love to be able to completely erase those moments from my memory and everyone else’s, but ReputationManagers.com has made it so that they are just not major news.
I do not believe that my mother was made aware of any of this. I think that just that fact alone has made every penny ever spent with ReputationManagers.com worth it. This is why they remain my number one reputation people, just in case I ever slip up again. I would hope that maybe that will not happen but you never know.
Posted by DJ on December 21st, 2009 I need some replacement parts for my 7600 series used cisco routers. I have had them for over five years and they are finally showing signs that they may fail me at any time. I cannot afford to have any of the servers go down at all, so I am slowly but surely having the cisco repair company come in and replace the parts as I find them.
I got the idea from my mother who took her printer to the local electronics store to have some things replaced on it. The man at the store told her that all the parts were working and they did not need replaced. She informed him that she knew that, and that she wanted it done anyway. After all the parts were changed the man let her know that there were two parts that looked worse after he got them out and they may not have lasted much longer.
For this reason and this reason alone, I have made it my goal to have the most used cisco parts replace by the end of the year by the cisco repair company. Even if they do not think that I need to do it, I am doing it anyway.
Posted by DJ on December 16th, 2009 I was given a list of general contractors in Raleigh to contact to see if they would be willing to do some work on the local women’s shelter for free. I knew that not all of them would, but was just hoping for one of them to say yes. After placing five calls to different general contractors in Raleigh, I got a yes but they could only contribute two guys for three days and I knew that it was going to take a little longer than three days to make all the repairs to the shelter.
I was thinking that just the kitchen remodeling alone was probably going to take at least two weeks, with a full crew. For that reason alone, I kept calling and found two more companies to say yes and these both gave me the two weeks with the crews so I knew that we could get it all done.
Most of the materials were being donated for the kitchen remodeling and what was not donated would be covered from some fundraising money that we had in an account that was earmarked for these projects and only these projects. I know that all of the women would be very grateful for all of the work that these general contractors in Raleigh were about to do for them.
Posted by DJ on December 15th, 2009 My sister and her husband live in France. My parents live in Portugal, and I live in the States. I have recently been given a big raise that will allow me to purchase property for sale in Portugal and property for sale in France. This way, whenever I can get away, I can visit either one of them and have my own personal space.
I had priced some property for sale in Portugal about four years ago, right after I first got out of college and it was way out of my price range. I knew that if I waited, that it would become more affordable and I could have my own house there someday.
I had never priced any property for sale in France, because I never thought that I would want to be that close to my sister until she had my niece and nephew that is. Now, I could go and visit them every week if my schedule would allow it. This way, I can have somewhere of my own to stay and my sister can drop off the kids sometimes if she needs me to watch them.
I am excited to start my new house hunting in two very different countries in the world. I am hoping to have everything all done on both houses by the end of the year.
Posted by DJ on December 9th, 2009 My sister called me the other day and was so excited about this new website she had found. She said that just before she handed over a bunch of money to this new web company in town, she was surfing the web and found these SWiSH website templates that you download and customize to fit your needs.
I had no idea what SWiSH website templates even were but I kept listening. She said that she only needed the one page to be built from this company, and they were charging her an outrageous fee, but if she found a few of the SWiSH designs that she could make work for her company, she could do all the work herself. She knows about enough to be dangerous, so I knew that she could do it. I asked her what the name of the website was that she had found the SWiSH designs on and we started looking at them together but about two hundred miles apart. That is the beauty of technology. We looked for about an hour and kept going back and forth on which she should buy and then made a final decision on our favorite SWiSH website templates.
She was able to put in all of the information she wanted on this page in about a month. She called me the day it was officially on the internet and we cried together but of course, two hundred miles apart.