Don Loper

You have dreams in which you have dinner with the parents of your contractors.

Joshua Steimle — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:53:44 +0000

This one isn’t on the original list, but I thought it appropriate to add it. Yes, you might be an entrepreneur if you have dreams in which you have dinner with the parents of your contractors. But that’s not even half the story.

Yesterday I was thinking about one of my contractors and thinking “You know, if this contractor would just…

UPS Store – Run Your Business From Anywhere?

Joshua Steimle — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:41:13 +0000

Maybe radio advertising has a future? I keep hearing these ads for “The UPS Store” that have been intriguing to me because the UPS Store appears to be able to solve a few problems I have:

1. Driving to the post office to check my post office box only find out I didn’t get any mail that day (The UPS Store…

Microsoft Office Small Business 2007 encountered an error during setup.

Joshua Steimle — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 20:27:32 +0000

I’ve been using Office XP Professional for several years and haven’t seen any reason to upgrade. Anything that was sent to me in a newer version of Word or Excel could be converted to work with Office XP. That is, until last week when a client sent me an Excel spreadsheet that had drop shadows in it. Apparently this was…

Wordpress Automatic Upgrade Fails

Joshua Steimle — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:26:00 +0000

Between my own websites and those of my clients I manage about 12 blogs, all of which are running Wordpress. Today I’ve been upgrading all of them to Wordpress 2.8. I use the automatic upgrade process that Wordpress provides because it makes upgrading quick and easy…at least for my clients who aren’t on Mediatemple’s servers. With my non-Mediatemple-hosted clients I…

Typing – The Most Valuable Skill?

Joshua Steimle — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 18:45:32 +0000

This is an email I recently wrote to my family:

It has come to my attention that some of my nieces and nephews are lacking when it comes to what I feel is one of the most valuable skills a person, especially a young person, can have today. This skill affects how educated you will be, what kind of grades you…

Online Invoicing. What Do You Use?

Joshua Steimle — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:28:00 +0000

I’m not looking for suggestions for myself, but rather for the freelancers and contractors I work with and who send me their invoices. I especially like it when I get an invoice that has a button in it allowing me to pay using PayPal or a credit card. It saves me the effort and inconvenience of cutting and mailing checks,…

If your fax number were accidentally disconnected, how long would it take for you to notice?

Joshua Steimle — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 22:23:15 +0000

The alternate title for this post could be “Today I lost a good friend…”

So, if your fax number were accidentally disconnected, how long would it take for you to notice? In my case, five freakin’ months. I guess that shows you how much I depend on fax technology. Here’s how it all happened…

MWI has had a block of several 801-495… numbers…

If you feel the need to advertise it, then are you?

Joshua Steimle — Sun, 31 May 2009 04:50:40 +0000

A leader. The simplest definition of the word leader might be “one who is followed”. But I’d wager most of us have more complex definitions than that. I’d suppose that most of us see a leader as someone with some sort of admirable characteristics, even if we may disagree with how those characteristics are used. There are people whose speaking…

Interferometer – Want to buy one for $50K?

Joshua Steimle — Tue, 19 May 2009 17:49:37 +0000

For those of you who are regular followers of this blog, this post might come across as pretty random, but allow me to explain. My father is a retired optical engineer who used to work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. He worked on the Hubble Space Telescope for a number of years as well as many…

Inc. Magazine Has a Problem

Joshua Steimle — Fri, 08 May 2009 21:33:01 +0000

Every year Inc. Magazine publishes its famous ranking of the 5,000 top private companies in America as determined by growth, with certain revenue thresholds, one would assume. The point is there has to be some sort of growth. So what does it mean that I have received upwards of 20 emails inviting me submit my company to this list this…