Friday, May 30, 2008

It's Friday Night and I Ain't Got Nobody...


Awwwwww....Copper Top has a touch of fever tonight and is down for the count tonight. Bummer - he has his last soccer game of the season AND his BFF's birthday party tomorrow. I promised him I'd drug him till he was high as a kite to get him to those things (attn: DCFS - by "drugs" I mean, like, Motrin and gummy bear vitamins).

Anyway, since my date for the evening is under the weather, I've got little to do but blog. Random thoughts are as follows:

* Props to SANDRA in ITS -the Adobe contract is now in place! W00t! In plain English - all the student licensing I'm out of should be back in stock in, oh, say, 2 weeks-ish.

* Roland's gone. Vietnam. 3.5 weeks. Usually he drives me up the wall. Now I'm missing him after a day an a half. Is that sick or what?

* I totally need a manicure. Seriously.

* Props to Mike at WCC and Christian at LCC - your orders made my day. And paid my bills. Rock on! Oh, and Warren and Harry - thanks for pickin' up your stuff, too!

* I NEED, as my 5th computer in my 3 member household, a 24" iMac because my prices are so awesome. All suggestions on how to convince my husband of this fact will be greatly appreciated.

* Leaving for the Mothership Sunday. Big meeting there on Tuesday. Hmmmmm...big news may be announced. Could it be Apple's Back-to-School promo? Oooooh, the mystery. Who want's a souvenir pen or key chain?

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

New 'do, new hue and new price, too!


Got bored on Sunday, so I went out and had about 6" of hair hacked off. Short and shaggy now. I think it's cute!

Got bored on Monday, so I went to Kailua. Brilliant me, I thought, "Well, I don't want my shoulders burned, so I'll put some sunscreen on them. But my belly, that could use a little color." So I got color. A nice scarlet. It practically glows. If it were Christmas, I could put on a bikini and lead Santa's sleigh. Rudolph could use a break.

And I got tired of looking at my clearance iMacs, so I cut the prices another $50 today. I'm awesome.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

NEWS FLASH!

Here's the latest on the Adobe Student Licensing contract issue from the ITS Site Licensing Office:

"Great news! UH Procurement proposed alternative language for the Student CLP Terms and the Adobe Legal Team has accepted this change. They will make the new changes and have the draft sent to UH to be signed soon. Hope to get this completed within the next week. I'll keep you posted as soon as I can to let you know when you can place your orders again."

Blah, blah, blah. I know. Here's the English translation: I should be able to place new orders very soon and we can get some of those software titles we're out of back in stock. Wheeee!

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Under the knife


Everyone's having work done these days.

Called to my mom yesterday. Yeah, I'm a prize of a daughter. Seems she'd just gotten back from Northwestern Memorial in Chicago (I was a bit surprised - love how she keeps me informed of these things). She's getting ready for a stem cell transplant and Monday they did the harvesting. She's a former biology teacher and told me every gory detail with great enthusiasm. It was truly cringe-worthy.

Mariann's out for the rest of the week. Getting her tonsils out today. I'm sure she'll feel much better in the long-run, but can you imagine a Mariann with no voice for a few days? Poor thing must be going crazy!

And, as you can see, our department's having some work done, as well. Well, sort of. Campus Center is removing that concrete seating area that's right over our heads, so I guess they have to barricade some areas off so we don't manage to hurt ourselves.

Soooooo...in the spirit of things, I'm going to cut the price of our clearance iMacs by ANOTHER $50 on May 26th. Woo-hoo! (But don't no one tell Roland, k? I'm waiting to see how long it takes that guy to read this blog)

Friday, May 16, 2008

The price of gas is going down...HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!



Hahaha-wheeeee! Yesterday the government told us that the price of gas has declined in recent weeks. Inflation is under control! Laughed so hard, I thought I'd cry. Them boys sure got a sense of humor!

But since I still give you enough credit for seeing through the phoney-baloney numbers the feds crank out and realize that inflation is rampant (in all aspects of life except my paycheck, OF COURSE), we're gonna give you a break. We're taking another $50 off our clearance iMacs starting Monday, May 19. Then you can take the money you save and buy yourself a good half a tank, or maybe 1 gallon of milk and a dozen eggs, or, you know, whatever!

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Adobe Update


I had a customer describe me recently as uber-cool. What a way to stroke an old lady's ego. :) But today the ever-lovin' vog has me feeling uber-crappy. My head is splitting, so I've got my shoes off and am hiding at my desk pushing papers. Among the papers pushed: an inventory level report on our Student Licensed Adobe products. The good news: we've still got plenty of our most popular products. The bad news: you're SOL if you're looking for:
* CS3 Design Standard for Mac
* Photoshop Extended for Mac
* Acrobat Pro for Windows
And we've only got 6 of the CS3 Design Premium for Windows. Again, no word on the progress of the contract. So I have no clue when the new one will be in place. Sorry. Nuthin' I can do about it, but I'll let you know as soon as I'm able to get those back on order.

In further sad news - lost Jeff today. No, he ain't dead; just back on Maui for the summer. NOW who will give me brutally honest fashion criticism?

But, happy-happy joy-joy: Mariann is graduating on Sunday AND she got accepted to grad school for the fall AND she'll continue to work this summer. Yippee! Congrats, Mariann!

Monday, May 12, 2008

Pardon Our Dust...


Oh, yippee. I was told this morning that we've got more construction starting on Monday, the 19th. Seems Campus Center wants to rip out that concrete seating that, natch, is RIGHT OVER MY DEPARTMENT. Of course. And while they do that we'll be losing a little bit of space. As a result, we lost room for our MacMini demo. It'll be popping up on our clearance list sometime today. There's only one and it'll be cheap, so first-come, first-served.

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Fun, fun, fun on a Tuesday night!


I am now officially a soccer mom, which apparently means my life is over, or at least my measurable level of coolness is in sharp decline. The proof? I have nothing better to do on a Tuesday night than blog about work.

BTW, the Red-Headed Wonder shown above is Dave, my 7-soon-to-be-8 YO son. He's shown wearing his new AYSO season's jersey for team "White Lightning". Now, pardon me, but where I come from (Hampshire, Illinois, population >2000) White Lightning is another term for moonshine (for pop-culture reference, go to iTunes and download "White Lightning" by George Jones). I know this because in my youth every now and then my father would bring home a peanut butter jar full of the stuff from an appreciative customer who was cookin' it up in a still out back of the barn. The stuff was so wicked the fumes of it corroded the metal lid on the jar.

Ahhh, life in the country...

Anyhow...found out something interesting today. After a month of this Roland finally figured out we had a blog and took exception to the photo I posted of him. "That's why I never go out with you people! Pictures like this end up on-line!" Come on. It wasn't unflattering - just candid.

Work stuff: I was asked a question twice today, so I thought I'd write about the subject here, since it's obviously on folks' minds. The question was, "Will there be a better deal on Macs for Back to School?" My answer: yes and no. Look - this is how I buy from Apple most of the year: I call up Richard, my inside man, and tell him, "I need X number of units; can you gimme a break?" Richard e-mails me an offer, and then with these bulk orders I can offer y'all some pretty great deals. But at BTS Apple does a corporate-wide program, which is usually along the lines of "Buy a Mac and an iPod and we'll give you a rebate for the iPod". That's a killer deal if you need or want an iPod. The down-side is that once Apple starts that BTS offer, they turn off the discount spigot. Last year they announced it the first week of June. Probably will do the same this year.

So here's what it all means - I can only sell computers cheap as long as I bought them cheap. My PLAN is to - as much as I can - buy like mad between the middle to end of May and bring in enough computers to carry us through Back to School. That way I can give you a discount on the computer AND you can get the iPod rebate, too. The obstacles - first, sometimes it's hard to predict what model will be the big seller and buy accordingly (opinions about the next hot model? Please comment on this post - any and all help is appreciated!), which means I could run out. The result would be I have to buy more - and sell them - at a higher price. Second, space is really, really limited. My storage space has been cut dramatically, even as our sales have just exploded. It's a serious problem, where to put all the stuff once I buy it.

Sigh. Well, maybe that youth I misspent playing Tetris endlessly will come in handy when all my computers arrive. Wish me luck!

Monday, May 5, 2008

Is it Friday yet?

God love the lawyers...

Look, there are certain things we need to have contracts to sell. Adobe Student Licensing is one of those things. That's the software we sell for, like, pennies on the dollar. CS3 Design Premium for $299 (instead of the $3K you'd pay in the real world), for example. Now, we don't actually hash out that contract here inhouse - the University's ITS Site Licensing Office handles that.

Those are the folks who contacted me about 6 weeks ago to let me know that the new contract was in the works and was expected to be in place in "2-3 weeks". At that time I was asked if I had enough stock to get us through, and at that time I did.

But today I needed to place a re-order and found out the contract is still not in place. Seems UH and Adobe are passing it back and forth, and it will probably be at least another few weeks before that's settled and I'm able to finally place an order. Then it will be another 1-2 weeks before we get that order in.

We just ran out of CS3 Design Standard for Mac today, and we're getting low on a few others. So I'm really sorry folks, but there's just nothing I can do to get that stuff back in until the contract is in place. I'll keep y'all posted...

In happier news, we should have the new iMacs and the MB404LL/A (black) MacBooks landing tomorrow - at least so says FedEx. I SUPPOSE the delivery truck could get lost or something, but barring that we should get 'em. Please call before coming down though - bear in mind we don't know what time FedEx will drop, then we need a few hours after they do to get everything checked in and tagged. If you want a call or e-mail when they're good to go, give us a ring: 956-4317.

Friday, May 2, 2008

And the winner is....


Congrats to Darin, the winner of the grand prize, a free Epson printer, which we gave away for Jeff's birthday. Congrats to all the other winners, and thanks to all who came in to wish Jeff a happy birthday. A great time was had by all.

The party continued Tuesday after work; we all went over the the Garden and shared adult-type beverages with Jeff for the first time. EVEN ROLAND CAME (he usually avoids being seen with the rest of us in social settings at all costs). It was a momentous occasion. See photographic evidence below.



Other momentous news: we now have Brenthaven's Zero Impact line in stock - premium quality laptop bags and cases the are as friendly to you body as they are to the environment. ISkin sale ends tomorrow! And we've got 20% off iMainGo speakers through next week. If you haven't heard them, come on in - an AWESOME sound in a small package for a really small price!