A few practical things

We are waiting until 7 a.m. Wednesday to give you time to vote for which artwork you think we should use for our company logo. Please send us an e-mail or go to our Facebook page to cast your vote.

While we wait, we'd like to mention a few practical things we've learned in the past two weeks. We hope you will follow us as we try to build our business, and we also hope this blog will provide practical help to others who try to start a business.

First, the technical support from GoDaddy.com has been very good since we opened our account. But after 5 or 6 attempts, they still have not been able to fix the link to our Facebook page. Their technical support folks are very friendly and helpful and patient with us non-techies. We've called and bugged them about numerous things, and we were not put on hold for 20 minutes waiting for someone to answer. They are always happy to help.

Second, one of the things they taught us last week was a little trick for posting photos on blogs and Facebook pages. We've bugged our graphic artist friends to save images into JPEG format to load onto Facebook and our blog, but we learned that you can use the "print screen" key on the top right of your PC keyboard and save it in a format that works.

We wanted to post the sketches that Stormer-Brooks Illustrations produced for consideration for our logo so that people could vote on them. We opened the document on our computer screen and pressed the "print screen" key. Then we opened "Accessories" from the start button and opened the "Paint" program. We pasted the saved screen image into Paint; then we edited them and saved them as "PNG" files, which Facebook and blogger accept. Voila. No bothering friends for JPEG files anymore.

Now for a bonus. If you live in the Little Rock area and have any problems with your fireplace, we want to recommend Jason Ward with ABC Chimney Sweep. Ever since we bought our house, the damper would not open very wide and would not stay open, so we had to wedge a block of wood to keep the damper open. Recently we called a chimney sweep and were told they charged $50 just to come to our house, and they assumed we would need a new damper installed at the top of the chimney for about $300. Then we called Jason, and a few days later he came by. A nice gentleman, he came in and within five minutes had the damper open and working fine. He suggested we buy PB Blaster, a better version of WD-40, to remove the rust on the screw on the handle. It worked like a charm. As he walked out, we asked how much we owed him. "Nothing. It's just one neighbor helping another neighbor." Thank you, Jason.

Votes are trickling in. Please take a minute and let us know which artwork you recommend we use for our logo. Have a good day.