Eric’s folks live in the San Diego area and do not get online very much. We used to be neighbors and are still friends, although it has been a long time since we visited each other. They are older, retired, and very active outdoors with all that the San Diego area has to offer. They save money and use dial up for their internet access. It is all they need, as they do not use the internet for gaming or for streaming videos. In fact, Eric’s parents are so frugal that they still have a VCR and watch old VHS tapes at home rather than going to the movie theater and paying up to $30 for a night at the movies.

Even though most of us have used dial-up internet at some point in our lives, many have upgraded and only want the fastest, the newest, the biggest, the fanciest, etc. But for many people, dial up is all they really need and they see no sense in paying anywhere from $20 to $50 per month for cable internet when the cost for dial up is only about $10 a month. That is a huge savings – especially for retired people living on a fixed income.

She is not used to living in a college town and gets very frustrated having to accommodate everything that goes one there with Duke University. she is amazed that the local TV stations will pre-empt prime time TV shows in favor of televising Duke basketball games.

Good thing she can watch her favorite TV shows on the internet. A lot of the hit major network shows are available online, either the same time they are broadcast on regular TV or within 24 hours of the original broadcast time.

Movies are available online too. So if her husband wants to watch the Duke basketball game on the TV, she can sign up for a service like Netflix and watch a movie on her laptop and they both get to watch what they prefer.

I was very much against the brokers getting into selling businesses. There is a unique segment of our industry that specializes in business brokerage and there are very good reasons why it is considered a specialty. For one thing, there is an incredible amount of time spent by the broker on valuing the business and preparing an extensive marketing package. To prepare the marketing package requires a lot of paperwork gathering and analysis, and a lot of research.

The amount of data that is collected for any type of business sale is staggering and it is confidential data that must be safeguarded while parts are being made available to potential buyers. A good solution for storing and managing this data is using an online resource, such as the professional VDR solution for IPO process.

Because financing has been so difficult to obtain from American banks and investment companies, some of our buyers are turning to foreign banks and investors. The problem with dealing with banks in China or the Mid-East is that many of the legal documents must be translated for the foreign banks to review, analyze and present to their loan committees. For those kinds of deals, we can use the Merrill Brink translation services and have a high level of confidence that the data maintains its integrity.

I’ve worked with a technical translation services provider before and it can be very difficult or it can be very easy. I think the first time you try to do an international deal it will be difficult. But once you learn the process and get a deal done, the next ones are much easier.

They work with you as partners in finding leads for advertisers. It is as simple as that. There are different ways to find those leads, from running banner ads on the sidebar of your blog, to dedicating your entire web site to being a catalogue of products for rent or sale.

This is easy to get started. All you need is an established web site and an idea of what type of products will be attractive to the people who visit your web site. Then search the top affiliate networks to find out who is making money and who is successful.

A popular affiliate concept is the cash advance affiliate program . This industry is relatively new and using a variety of advertising methods. Some people respond well to an online transaction, for convenience and privacy. Other people prefer to use the internet for research before they make a decision. Either way, if they click though as a result of something they found on your website, then it is your lead and you will get paid for a portion of the business that results from their click through.

My server has had a couple of glitches. The web site would not load for a few minutes here and there because they were doing maintenance or upgrades. That was no big deal. My my friend Wendy has been having horrible problems with her server company. Her web site has been totally down for 9 days. The hosting company was sold to a different company and they moved all the data from one location to a different one. But the data migration had a lot of problems and her web site suffered the brunt of the problems.

That kind of problem should be rare, but when it happens to you it is very upsetting. I know that she looked at other server companies to see if it made sense to move. She was comparing prices between the top 10 best hosting services. She read the hosting reviews and tried to consider more than just the monthly cost. She was just about ready to pull the plug and then her site came back up yesterday.

I hope that the site stays up now and that the migration problems are all solved. I feel badly for Wendy, but I trust that she will give them one last chance and if necessary she can change web site hosting companies at any time.

Of course, this is not going according to her plan at all. She thought that once she retired from her 25 years at the phone company that she was going to be able to stay home and just be a retiree. Maybe even a Red Hat Lady.

But, if you remember my mentioning it, her husband was in a terrible car accident about two years ago and has not been able to work since the accident. So my sister is back to being the breadwinner again. It looks like she is going to have to work for at least three or four more years. So she checked out the Walden University’s online degree programs for something different. She is looking for something that she can get certified in quickly and will have enough demand for her to be able to find work relatively quickly once she finishes the coursework and gets her certification. I wonder what she will choose this time?

Found this puzzle on a Facebook page. According to the instruction on his page, you look at this puzzle and try to find three words. The first three words that you find describe your personality.

And then some people think Poke is a dirty word. So it worries me that if I was to poke a woman on Facebook would she think I was being suggestive? So I just don’t do any pokes.

I know a lot of people have painful memories of the old dial up internet, but things have changed a lot since the early 1980′s slow connections. I remember trying various services using the telephone line, and even went to the extreme of installing a second lad line so that people could call the house phone and have a chance of getting through. If you only had one phone line back then, people would just get a busy signal all night and not even be able to get through to the answering machine to leave a message.

Of course, all of that has changed now. You do not need a second line and almost no one uses answering machines anymore, either. Unless you are downloading movies and playing high level games on the internet, you can save a lot of money on basic internet service by ditching the cable and going back to dial up.

Of course, other PCs were already on the market, such as:

the Apple II
the Commodore PET
the Osborne 1
the Tandy TRS-80

You have to admit, that even with the other PCs, the IBM PC was the first full featured, ready to use personal computer that was affordable for most businesses and many homes.

The IBM’s system ran Microsoft’s Disk Operating System, known as MS-DOS and booted from a 5.25 inch floppy drive. It sold for $1,565 with no software except MS-DOS. In today’s money, that would be a little over $3,700.

I remember the very first game I played on a computer. It was a puzzle, adventure game. You had to type in each move as DOS code. You started out in t forest and you had to type in each move, going north or south, up or down, etc. It was totally addicting and everyone at work would try for weeks to solve the puzzle and beat the game.

Then we got a new computer that was pre-loaded with solitaire. The secretaries at work and anyone with a private office would spend hours at their desk playing Canfield, often caught by their supervisor and getting in trouble for playing games when they were supposed to be working. There was a lot of uproar among the ranks about feeling entitled to “take a break” and play a game or two on the company’s computer.

Now the computers allow us to get online and play thousands of games, often against real people from all over the world. It is amazing to be living and playing in the digital age.

His wife is from Hawaii originally – they met in college at Berkeley. So now they have graduated, worked a few years, saved some cash and are headed back to Hawaii to buy a house and start their family.

I was talking with a golfing buddy who is looking into a medical teaching course as a way to give back to his industry. I think that is a great idea. I know a lot of industries have opportunities for experienced members to teach in various capacities.

Even if you are not interested in becoming a professor at a university, you can contribute by teaching a medical management course or something that interests you.

My good friend who retired from teaching last year after 24 years in the classroom can still contribute to her field. It is good to give back to your industry – it is a Win-Win situation. Students need to learn from an experienced person – not just read a book. Although it is good to have the internet as a resource, too. Sometimes we still need a good reason to get up in the morning and put on makeup, dress up and get out into the real world. Teaching part time and sharing what you know is a great way to help others.

My golfing buddy is looking into a teach the teacher course to stay to get a start in teaching other doctors. I have to give him credit for being so generous with his time and experience.