Sunday, September 26, 2010

Mentally preparing for getting an iPhone...

I am getting ready to get an iPhone...so I have been surfing and came across the following...not quite about the iPhone but interesting nonetheless...

From WiseGeek:

"Stewardesses" is perhaps the longest common word that can be typoed with only your left hand. If you consider more obscure words, however, you'll find that "aftercataracts" and "tesseradecades," are the longest words at 14 characters. Using only your right hand, the longest word you can type is "lollipop" but if you permit the use of dashes, then "Johnny-Jump-Up" — a type of flower — becomes the longest word you can type with only the right hand. Other words that you can type only with your left hand are "retweet," "gazette," "eraser," and "seatbelt." Other right hand words include "homonym," "unholy," "polyp," and "monopoly."

Other word oddities:
The longest word that you can type with alternating hands is "leptothricosis," which is an obsolete term for those diseases caused by the bacteria Leptothrix.

The only two English words with three consecutive sets of double letters are "bookkeeping" and "bookkeeper."

"Queueing" is the only word with five consecutive vowels; the word with the most consonants in a row is "latchstring."

I always liked homonyms :)....

Monday, September 20, 2010

News Headline and Comment

I saw a headline this morning: "Michigan Announces $25 Million Settlement for Alleged Price Fixing Conspiracy."

Nobody is ever going to accuse our company of price fixing!

We have worked for 10 years to lower the price of natural and organic foods.

I remember when I started my natural food distributing business back in the late 70s. There were 4 large natural food distributors in Los Angeles. They all worked on the exact same 25% profit margin. They all had the exact same discount structure. The only difference in their pricing, was one of them rounded their prices to the nearest half or whole cent, and the others charged the exact price (.333 cents for something versus rounding to .335).

My goal then - as it is now - is to sell our products at a small profit. We don't look at other companies' pricing and say, "wow, we could charge double the price like they do." We have been the discounters, the renegades, the people that "ruin the industry's profit margins" - and we're proud of it.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Travel

The next 5 weeks find me out on the toad...

This week, I head to Seattle for the Natural Foods Association Northwest show.

Next week, is a 3 part trip....to Minnesota to visit a pickle producer, then to Appleton for a visit at our Organic Corn cannery....ending up in Chicago with a distributor visit.

The following week is a trip to Idaho to see a bean plant.

Then the next week is a trip to New Mexico to visit a customer in Albuquerque, see a chiles plant in Deming, fly out of El Paso into Los Angeles for a couple more vendor meetings, then home...

And finally, the week of October 11th is Boston and Expo East.

So yes, I am back to traveling a lot and racking up those United Frequent Flyer miles and Marriott points :)

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Jody's Mom's 89th Birthday



September 9th was Jody's Mom's 89th Birthday. Jody and Pearl traveled back to Pa to help her mom celebrate...they picked up a few of Mom's friends and all went out to Olive Garden to celebrate. On the right are Jody, Jody's Mom and Pearl. On the left are the friends whose names I don't know :). A good time was had by all...

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

More cats

Dear Gary and Jody

I use the Natural Value Pate Style Tuna and Chicken Dinner
cat food (UPC code 706173500117) as the only way of getting a
critical medicine into my cat. I mix the medicine in the cat food,
and he eats it. I have tried other flavors and other brands of cat
food, and other ways to try to get the medicine in him, but this is
the only successful way, and the only one he will eat with
the medicine.
in Russia means love and he is a LOVE

I have four Siberian cats, the one needing the medicine is Kochko,
which means LOVE in Russian. The others are named Maksim, Sasha
and Mischa, also all Russian names. ALL of them LOVE your cat food
and will not eat any other canned cat food.

Sasha, a love sponge! Extremely affectionate.
Maksim (the Russian name for Maximillian).
Mischa…By far, one of the cutest and sweetest kitties I have ever known.