NEVER JET HOT

We just changed the vendor-supplied template on ThatRestlessMouse.com - it solved an issues with search in firefox browsers, and more importantly, made it much easier to change the quantity on items in the cart. Of course, this has no effect on orders or shipping. It just looks different. Many thanks to Foodgirl.com for mentioning our Corndog scented car air fresheners in her newsletter. They must have a large, devoted following; we had a HUGE run on those. In fact we got 72 today but only a few left now! Ordering more.

We were having a problem where Ebay multiple-item orders were being charged $4.99 per item for shipping, instead of $4.99 for the whole shipment. Of course this involves me having to come up with a workaround, all the while bowing and scraping like the chastised waiter on Ferris Bueller's Day Off. It annoys the customer and makes us look like we either don't know what we are doing, or worse yet it makes us look like we are pulling a fast one. Anyway, turns out the problem was as simple as unchecking a box on one of the shipping settings screens at my web store provider's site. That thing is truly cumbersome and puzzling to me, it's a Rube Goldberg contraption, and I always hesitate to monkey with it. I think that's how they like it. Again I apologize to those who were temporarily thwarted in their purchasing efforts.

The flock browser has 7 windows open, using less than 100k! I was using Firefox earlier under about the same load, it was using over 400k of memory. So far I like this new browser...

Checking out this Flock browser, supposed to make blogging, posting to flickr, etc. a lot easier- Looks like it does that, and I like the intro screen that presents your recent sites, etc. without any tweaking first. It made me a bit leery at first, took a long time to install (by modern standards) and seemed to be doing a lot of fiddling with my computer's internal dials and switches. Does seem to run faster than Firefox though. More on this later. PHOTO: Teresa at the Everett "Sausage Festival" in 05. I thoughtfully included porta-potty row in this picture. Blogged with Flock

I got to thinking, maybe those Ebay customers who are only wanting maybe one giant pen, or a Cubes delivery guy, maybe they are put off by the $4.99 flat rate shipping - So I made a deal in the auction/ebaystore template whereas we will send them a no-strings coupon worth $3 on their next order if the shipping is more than a dollar over what our shipping cost is. Nevermind the fact that there is more to shipping than just postage, we have to buy the non-priority boxes, plus there's bubblewrap, all sorts of tape, and equipment like you would not believe. Plus the tape-gun repairman is taking two of our tape guns to the shop for complete rebuild and destickify process. Also and most unfortunately for us tax-wise, we live in Washington state, them in Olympia and some other fat-cat friendly states are setting up tax-collection rules that will swat tiny internet businesses like the fruit flies around the festering trashcan of business that we are. OK, my analogy got a little haywire, bu...

The Restless Mouse fully and without hesitation supports the effort to get a star on the Hollywood "Walk of Fame" for Weird Al. Parody is an important aspect of the music scene. And before you scoff, check out The list of stars . If Mariah Carey gets one, Weird Al should have three.

Wasn't sure if I had ever gotten around to blogging about Bookmooch. Just noticed that between Teresa and myself we have "mooched" over fifty books! and given away three dozen to other moochers. It's all free except for the outbound postage. I have found lots of treasures there, Teresa likes trashy romance novels and there's plenty of those too. You probably won't find books on the NYT best seller list right away, but later there will be plenty of copies, did I mention they are free? I know, the postage to send one is a bit more than you would pay at some thrift stores, but it's so convenient. This guy has written a good article about how to use bookmooch. The one thing I disagree with is his assertation that you should get books from the free pile at library sales and post them (you get 1/10 point for every book posted) - excuse me, I don't want to wade through your garbage. I have also noticed that there are booksellers who try to cherry pick valu...

We just got an order for a bunch of our #GG1222 Naked Lady pens from a major company for an office party. Wish I worked there! My "night job" at a factory would never allow that... They don't want to offend anybody, but they don't realize that a strict PC policy is killing office morale. There has to be some happy place between a starched-shirt strictness and a junior high locker room.

I was just going to purchase Aston Windows Shell online, I had it a few years ago on my Windows 98 machine and it was kind of cool. So I click Paypal, it brings me to a screen which demands that I type in all my details, down to phone number and bra size if I was a girl, nevermind that paypal already has my billing details. But I figured, well, I have a website that does that to customers, (they say it will be fixed in the next release) so OK, I dutifully type in all my particulars. To my shock and dismay, at the order confirm page, they add $3.00 for "manual processing" - Why do they have to "manually process" a PAYPAL order? I still wanted the program though, so I backed up to switch to a credit card (I was going to use my Paypal debit card- nyaaaah!) ... But all the information I has so laboriously typed in was GONE! So I gave up and blogged. PS I went to tell them about the problem but could not find an email link on their home page!

I just picked up a new handy tip reading in the bathroom... If you lose a tiny object, put a bare light near the floor, which will cause the lost object to cast a shadow, making it much easier to find. (This sounds like a job for our #HP0641 Handy squeeze LED flashlight! ) I am concerned that I will become an annoyance to younger people when I am older, offering advice that no one listens to (Get out of the room, old dude! I dropped my cellphone on the floor somewhere!)

I took Daphne to the BECU annex at the Albertson's so she could open a savings & "checking" account. I was going to have her get checks too but the teller (?) said that a lot of people don't get checks anymore, since you can use "online billpay" and BECU will send a check on your behalf, free of charge. Upon perusing my checkbook, I see a few instances where that wouldn't work; checks mailed that require a detailed explanation or a copy of the original invoice, such as to The Jethro Gazette (for multiple subscriptions) and the Herald (Special price, although I am not going to renew my newspaper subscription because they pulled "One Big Happy" from the comics) Or written on behalf of someone else, as for Daphne's yearbook. Other than that, I might have abandoned the checkbook entirely. Some people are abandoning their land telephones in favor of those horrible annoying intrusive tiny-handset tiny-button cellphones, but I will give up my ...

I was just reading that a couple in China has applied to name their baby "@". (In Chinese the english "at" sounds like "love him", I am told.) People used to say that "Coke" translates to "Bite the wax tadpole", which is making me hungry. I hope this mom in China doesn't decide to make this a theme, with the punctuation, and naming the dog asterick, etc. She'll be calling out the back door, @!! #!! &y! (andy) $! Get in here right now! Get * out of the driveway! They will know they are in trouble when she calls them all at once with the middle names too- @)#!&y^$$ (calling them) @)#!&y^$$ (swearing) What's in a name? # will go on to work for the telephone company. Expect big things from $. That is all I got.

We changed to one of our cart vendor's extra-fancy whiz-bang store templates for our main novelty store at ThatRestlessMouse.com - One of my favorite features is that "You May Also Like" suggested other items box. We think you will like it too, at least subconsciously. Grokdotcom.com says; "Early-stage buyers, on the other hand, are still gathering relevant information with the intent of eventually making a decision. They're still task-oriented, but their task is to decide what to buy, or from whom to buy it, instead of actually buying it. What they come for is insight, and the more of that they find on your site, the more time they will spend with you." ... The downside is that we have to go through all of our over 300 items posted there and convert it to "WiKiTeXt" for "forward compatibility". So until we finish that, some items will have bunched-up text and possibly no picture except the thumbnail. We have also noted the problem wher...

We changed to one of our cart vendor's extra-fancy whiz-bang store templates for our main novelty store at ThatRestlessMouse.com - One of my favorite features is that "You May Also Like" suggested other items box. We think you will like it too, at least subconsciously. Grokdotcom.com says; "Early-stage buyers, on the other hand, are still gathering relevant information with the intent of eventually making a decision. They're still task-oriented, but their task is to decide what to buy — or from whom to buy it — instead of actually buying it. What they’ve come for is insight, and the more of that they find on your site, the more time they’ll spend with you." ... The downside is that we have to go through all of our over 300 items posted there and convert it to "WiKiTeXt" for "forward compatibility". So until we finish that, some items will have bunched-up text and possibly no picture except the thumbnail. We have also noted the problem wh...

This is an excerpt from a bit of spam I got today; "The power of the internet has given this event the opportunity to reach hundreds of thousands of people just like you who want to know more about what's happening in the raw, vegan, veggie and living foods world and how you can easily implement it into your life for maximum happiness, health and joy." Wait... living foods? What are they doing, swallowing goldfish? I almost barfed up my Cheetos when I read that. I'm all for trying desperately to cling to your last vestiges of youth, Hey I'm working on a model train, but living food? My food strategy basically involves eating nothing that occurs in nature unless it has been frozen, baked, microwaved at least twice, refrigerated and lightly salted and/or sugared. It's been good to me so far, I'm almost as old as my jokes yet I live on in reasonably good... health (sorry for the pause, got winded from typing too fast)

Our sites often get hits from people looking for local novelty stores, I.E. "Novelty Stores Vancouver" or "Novelty Stores Peoria". Yes, I understand the appeal of visiting a bricks and mortar novelty store, esp. a huge one like Archie McPhee's in Seattle. That being said, much of what your local novelty store stocks is available on TheRestlessMouse.com, without the sales tax (except for 8% in Washington state), probably at a lower price, sure there is a shipping fee, but it's only $4.99 for standard shipping. So you have to wait a few days. Anticipation makes it more fun!

Another web 2.0 service with a clever name, I installed the Lijit search on the sidebar here, what's interesting to me is that you can search this blog, but on the search results page you can expand it to search other blogs... Now, I know I'm not an expert on a lot of things, but we here at The Restless Mouse are getting good at locating novelty items... Other people are experts in their fields... When they come back to the barn you can ask them stuff. Try it! It's kind of cool!

I mentioned in an earlier post that I had given my dad a subscription to "The Jethro Gazette". Jethro is a fictional town located somewhere near Yakima, WA. - that is the real merchants who advertise in it are located there. Recently Google has been sending me folks who apparently are looking to obtain copies or subscribe to the Jethro Gazette. Email me and I will send the mailing address, or mention the word "Jethro" with any order and I will wrap your order in at least part of an old copy of The Jethro Gazette! Because I support the arts.

Here is a banana dancing to "Peanut Butter Jelly Time" . I moved it to another page because you might be viewing this at work, and if you are skating on thin ice like I am at my night job, it might be the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.

"Life is like a shit sandwich. The more bread you have, the less shit you have to eat." -unknown author Sometimes maxims such as this are filled with meaning in the hours of darkness, but the test is whether they hold up to the cold light of day. This one does. I have thought of changing my name to "Unknown Author" and waiting for the money to start rolling in, but it probably doesn't work like that.