The (Amazon Affiliate) trickle returns

Now that Amazon and the State of California have come to an agreement whereby Amazon will start collecting sales tax next year, Amazon has reinstated all their California affiliates. So I setup a new account (I had already closed mine) and will start linking to products again and hope that people use the links as well as the search box on the right side. While I don't expect to earn a ton of money off the affiliate links, it does basically pay for hosting this site. I'm happy that the affiliates are back, but the sales tax thing may end up being worse depending on how much we buy from Amazon.

iOS App Store's ups and downs

At the beginning of August, I released MovieConverter to the App Store. I created the app to fill a personal need and decided to see if it met the needs of others. My goal, financially, was to recoup the cost of having an icon created for it; icons are not cheap and since I can't design one myself, I had to commission one. I used Jordan Langille of One Toad Design and was pleased with his work, so he got my business again.

Within a few weeks, I managed to reach my financial goal and things have still been going; it's not going to make me a million dollars, but it's enough to buy a few dinners.

That's the good part of the App Store; no advertising and I get money. The bad part is the user reviews. Despite my full description and warnings that it may not work on all videos and the videos must play in the Photos app, I'm getting some bad reviews. Most are because people don't read what the app does and expect it to do something it wasn't designed to do. Is there anything a developer can do? Nope. Oh well, the app still sells and serves a need.

I wish that Apple would provide a way for developers to respond directly to reviews like MacUpdate does where it clearly indicates that the developer has responded; with the App Store, some developers (against Apple guidelines), post 5 star reviews and respond. If apps I publish on the App Store where my sole means of income, then I'd be really annoyed. However, this is just a side project, so it's not a huge deal to me.

The lights are off, but someone's home

As anyone in San Diego knows, last Thursday there was a major power outage that covered the entire county of San Diego. When the power went out, I didn't think much of it as it was hot and I thought it was just a rolling blackout. I was on my way out the door to pick up flowers for my wife for our 10th wedding anniversary. While not very romantic, I was off to Costco to get the flowers; after all these years, my wife knows where I get flowers and likes them nonetheless. It took me about 45 minutes round trip to make it to Costco; the store, like just about every store was closed. On the way home, I decided to take a shortcut through a parking lot as I didn't want to deal with another traffic light that was out. On my way through it, I saw people going into Albertsons, so I stopped and went in to see if I could get flowers.

Right inside, I saw people loading up on ice, so I grabbed 2 bags, then decided to grab 2 more. The store ran their registers on a generator, so they were raking in the dough. I paid by credit card and was on my way; I wanted to preserve cash just in case.

When I got home, I started thinking if we were prepared. I dumped the ice in the fridge and managed to save most of the contents. My wife and son arrived home awhile later; it took them almost 2 hours to come home from SeaWorld; normally a 25 minute trip.

It was still quite warm outside and we made the decision that we were going to camp outside since the temperature in our house was too high to be tolerable. With flashlights and candles, we were pretty much set for the night. My wife slapped together a dinner using our supply of canned tuna and some salad fixings.

While the power was only off for about 10 hours (it came back on about 1:45 am), it really got me thinking about a real disaster. The news touted that San Diego was pretty well prepared; however, I think the gridlock shows that we still have a lot to do in order to be prepared. Personally, we weren't too bad off; we have a gas grill ready for cooking, we have food, a can opener, batteries, flashlights, etc. The only things that I think we need to do better is get on a schedule of restocking supplies such as batteries, water, first aid supplies, and food. We have a pool and chlorine, so water wasn't going to be an issue. I have bottles of water, but due to them being in plastic, I need to make sure we replenish them.

The one major thing I didn't have was a portable radio. I used my car's radio to listen as well as followed @KPBSNews. Cell coverage was spotty as cell sites were pretty much clogged.

So, what have I learned? I've ordered a solar powered, hand cranked radio (the reviews on them are so mixed, I just have to take a chance). I'm going to pick up additional bottles of water and have setup a calendar where I've started to put a schedule of when things need to be replaced.

Can San Diego survive a major earthquake? I'm not sure. It was kind of scary as I had no idea how long the power would be out; we're so reliant on power and technology that without it, people kind of go crazy. Maybe this will serve as a wake up call for everyone, including me.

Digging out from the deluge of email

I've been dealing with email for about 20 years now and the amount of email that I (and everyone) receive has increased over that time. In addition, the email has become more and more important. It's no longer forwarding of jokes, continuing chain letters, or just quick "hello" messages, it is absolutely vital to businesses these days.

Unfortunately people are having a hard time dealing with the deluge of email they receive. For many, every email is extremely important and when you receive 100+ email messages a day, your entire day is spent dealing with email. So some people simply just don't read or respond to email. This, of course, creates a problem for others that rely on replies. In extreme cases, I've heard of people that go on vacation and when they return, send out a message saying that they deleted all their email (on purpose) and to resend anything that is important.

I'm probably in the minority in that I handle a large amount of email everyday with very little effort. My strategy for dealing with email is quite simple. I go with the inbox zero principle in that every message that I haven't dealt with stays in the Inbox and I try to clear it everyday. Next, I skim subjects and to/cc recipients. If the message is unimportant, like out of the office or "free tomatoes", it immediately goes in the trash. If I'm in the to/cc line, I spend a few extra minutes on the message and see if I need to act on it. If I do, I try to act on it quickly so that I don't forget about it. If I'm not in the to/cc line, I see if the subject is something I need and then skim the first part of the message (I'm also a fan of "top quoting" where the most recent part of a message is at the top of the message). I'll act on it, if necessary and then move on.

I also deal with email throughout the day so that it doesn't pile up. It also doesn't hurt that I have very good time management skills and can handle a large amount of data at a time.

Maybe I should hone my skills a bit and start teaching classes "how to deal with email quickly and effectively".