Truck Stolen

My truck was stolen sometime overnight. If you're in Honolulu and you see it, please call me (780-7911) or the police. 1998 Ford Ranger, Green, License JFW-740.

Bummer.

Spice Up Your Life

I met Kai at a Hawaii Food Manufacturers Association holiday party. She’s the kind of person you just have to talk to, outgoing, pleasant, and very interesting. Since then I’ve gotten to know her better over coffee, at subsequent Food Manufacturers events, and at her booth at the KCC Farmer’s Market where she cooks up some great dishes.

Kai is the owner of Kaiulani Spices. She mixes and bottles spice blends that are just great. I use them almost daily. I like Hawaii Cajun in my scrambled eggs and omelets, the Kona Coffee Rub on chicken, and the mainstay Curry which makes a delicious dry curry rice with cranberries (hint: the trick is to use the jasmine rice that Kai uses).

So why am I talking about spices in my Business Operations, Rugby, and Golden Ox Publishing blog? Well, I need to help Kai somehow. She and her husband lost just about everything when their house burned down about two weeks ago. They were renting a house while their own house is being re-built. Their rental house burned to the ground suddenly with almost everything they own inside. So I was surprised to see her at the Farmer’s Market last weekend. She lost pots and pans and other utensils in the fire, but most of her market setup was in a separate garage so she was able to set up. Still, how do you go to the market and cook and sell spices when you’ve lost your house, clothes, furniture, and everything? She said she needs to work to keep her mind off the loss.

I asked here what I could do. She said the mostly need furniture and kitchen things, neither of which I have. I’m trying to live a minimal life, so I only have a couple pieces of furniture and just the essential kitchen gear. I offered my truck and my muscles, but don’t know what else to do. But I can blog, and I can give you the link to her website so you can buy spices. You need to eat and her spices make cooking easier and your meals tastier, so buy some spice.

Here it is, Kaiulan Spice. Enjoy (and remember, the jasmine rice really makes the difference).

Hawaii Rugby Games Tomorrow

SATURDAY 2/20/10

11:45am Rosters for the teams turned in..... 11:50 am 1st whistle...... 12noon ...... TAMA LAIE vs RAIDERS.

1:15pm Rosters turned in...... 1 :20pm 1st whistle ... 1:30pm ...... KAHUKU vs ISLANDERS.

2:45pm Rosters turned in .... 2:50pm 1st whistle .. 3pm ........ HARLEQUINS vs HPU.

4:15pm Rosters turned in .... 4:20pm 1st whistle ... 4:30pm .... MARIST vs UH

ALL GAMES will start on time, the 1ST WHISTLE of each game will be 10 MINS BEFORE KICKOFF , its more than enough for all the teams to get on the field, 2ND WHISTLE is the KICKOFF TIME.

Books Shipped

I shipped out another 5 books to Amazon today. That's up from the 2 on their first order. I saw that the two I had sent them were sold and my page says Temporarily Out of Stock. Not good. People won't buy if it's out of stock. I thought Amazon had a super-duper inventory tracking and ordering system, but it is not as robust as I expected. Millions of items to keep track of, sure, but if you're going to be that big you've got to have the systems to back it up. They're good, but they need some work.

So after a couple of days of waiting for an order from them I contacted them. I am impressed at how quickly they do respond when I send them a message, and they answer the question too. Not bad. They told me I can monitor the inventory and send them an order request when their inventory is low. Not the best solution from my point of view, but I will do that since I want to sell the books. As soon as they answered my question they also placed the order, which I promptly sent them today.

I also found out about Amazon U.K. It is a totally separate entity (operated separately). I can register with them and do the same thing I'm doing with Amazon U.S. - Except - I have to have a U.K. bank account to do that.

O.K., I thought. Can I do that and is it worth it? Being an American English book, how well will it sell in the U.K.? But I thought with all the internet banks out there now setting up a U.K. bank account shouldn't be too difficult. Oh, how naive I am. No Can Do. Apparently, without being physically present in the U.K. and having a U.K. address it is impossible to open a bank account. And it sounds like even if you have those it's not always that easy to open an account if you're not a citizen. Being a business, I'd have to set up and register my business in the U.K. before I could open a bank account there.

Probably not feasible at this point, nor even necessary. This is when I start to re-think signing up with a distributor, one who has overseas offices. Or this could be a wonderful excuse to go back to Scotland!





Golden Ox Publishing

Hawaii Women's Rugby

Got some info from Shelly. Seems Hawaii Women's Rugby is a force to be reckoned with. You Go Girls!

Clubs Laie Park Ladies, Teine Toa O Laie and HPU are in the Las Vegas Invitational, here are some of the results -

Laie Park Ladies 26 vs Iowa 5.

HPU wins their first game 5 tries to 1.

Teine Toa O Laie wins by forfeit against the University of Minnesota.

Laie Rookies 7 tries .... Las Vegas Slots 0

Teine Toa O Laie 7 ... Oregon Beavers 10

Laie Rookies 35 ... Rochester 0

Teine Toa not in contention

Laie Rookies 21 ... Flamingos 12; move to the finals

Finals: Laie Park Ladies 19 ... Minnesota Amazons 7

LAIE PARK LADIES are the LVI Champions!!! Congratulations to our Women's Clubs for their hard work and determination!


This is the list of teams on their website:

Womens Open 7's

BYU Womens Cougar Rugby Club
Flamingos
Laie Park Ladies Rugby
Rochester Renegades Women's Rugby Club

Tenei Toa O' Laie
The Satiated Beavers
Twin Cities Amazons
UC Santa Cruz -W

University of Minnesota
Velvet Piglets

Golden Ox Update

Not a lot of news, but a few updates on the Golden Ox Publishing biz.

The Small Manufacturer's Toolkit is selling, though not yet like hotcakes, even before my first ads are printed. I'm starting with some advertising in some APICS Chapter Newsletters around the country. Pretty low cost and should hit a fair number of highly potential prospects. Advertising in the APICS Magazine is a little out of my budget at this point, and although the magazine goes out to at least 40,000 people around the world, for that kind of money I'd want to target a more narrow manufacturing niche. We'll see what happens when the ads start to hit.

I'm wondering about Amazon U.K. versus Amazon U.S. I went to the Amazon U.K. website and my book is listed, but I'm wondering about the connection between the U.S. and U.K. operations. The U.K. price is still at the higher price the original publisher was selling at, not my new lower price. Also, the content I updated was not updated there. I know the original publisher stocked books in the U.K., but I think that was at their own warehouse. I'm thinking the U.K. operation is totally separate and I need to work with them as a totally separate entity. I've contacted them, so we'll see what they say.

Still got plenty of other things I still need to do, like updating websites and such. Got to squeeze that in somewhere.

On another note, I'm evaluating my first real prospect for another author's book to publish. So far I like what I see, but there's a bit of work to do before I commit. I've talked with several other authors, but this one is the first real prospect. Meaning the author is well along with the writing and serious about looking for a publisher. It seems a lot of "authors" talk more than they write, or aren't as far along as they think they are. Still, I have a few potential books I'm keeping my eye on.

Hawaii Rugby Photos

The Hawaii rugby season opened yesterday, and I missed it. But there are some great photos here. I hope I can make it out next week.