My sister-in-law has just come through a messy divorce and I try to call her at least once a week to talk and keep her spirits up. She waited until the youngest graduated from high school and then hot footed it over to the divorce lawyer’s office to get out of that marriage. She was miserable for years and finally has her freedom. But she lives in a small town and dating is really tough - there aren’t many eligible men around for hundreds of miles.

So I suggested she start getting online and meeting people on the internet. She surprised me and agreed that she’s willing to do that. But the big problem is that she doesn’t have a computer and knows almost nothing about computers. So I guess it’s up to me to buy one and get her set up.

Since she’s going to be using it mostly for internet stuff and maybe a little bit of word processing and spreadsheets, there’s no sense buying a big system. So I’m shopping around looking at both inexpensive laptop computers and inexpensive desktops for her. I tried a few of the local electronics stores, but haven’t found anything special. So I’m looking at the internet for deals and bargains and found a website called Superwarehouse.com with all the major brands and good prices on all their equipment.

I found this website when I had to buy 2 projectors for the office conference room and board room, and our IT guy recommended it. It’s the same place where he bought our company’s color laser printer and all our toner. Even our Purchasing Manager is a fan of this site - she says that the service has been wonderful and the prices have been great.

It’s good to see that the price of laptops has come down. You can get a decent laptop for about the same price as an inexpensive desktop now. I found good prices on Toshiba Laptops and at the moment I’m thinking that might be the best way to go.

If she’s going to have a computer then I want her to have a printer, too. It doesn’t have to be a fancy multifunction printer, but I would like it to be a good photo printer so she can print out the photos from her digital camera and the photos that I will be sending to her via email.

I’ll be really glad to see her online. I want to teach her how to use instant messenger and I’ll invite her to some of the gaming sites that I like to use. That’s a great way to meet people and it will give her something enjoyable to do at night now that she is on her own.

Business contacts from the past keep popping up this week. I have to believe that it is karma - good things come back to those who deserve it. I’ve always been careful about not burning my bridges. There isn’t a former employer out there that wouldn’t hire me back in an instant if I wanted to go back to them. But I usually left for very good reasons and I tried going back to one of them, which didn’t work, so I’m not making plans to rejoin anyone again. But the networking and business contacts that I’ve made over the years is invaluable.

The managing broker of an agency in Alabama has offered to open a branch office for me if I’m willing to come to work for his company. It’s a tempting offer and I think that we both can bring something to the table. So when he called this morning I was trying to keep an open mind about taking it on. I don’t really want to move to Alabama, but if I can commute and make use of the internet and cell phone for most of the communications we might have a deal. So we’ll be talking.

When I bought this house I knew it was going to be a fixer upper. The previous owner was honest and up front about all the repair issues, which is why I was able to negotiate the selling price down a bit when I bought it.

The worst repair was the roof. It had three layers of shingles on it and I don’t know how they got away with putting the third layer on there, but they sure could not get away with putting on a fourth layer. So I had to pay roofers to come re-do the entire roof.

Now I need to replace the soffit and gutters and I’m going to use vinyl instead of wood this time. In fact, I’m going to go ahead and replace the windows this autumn and put up some new shutters. I never liked the red and cream color scheme of the house exterior, so I’m going to have a putty colored gutter and soffit to replace all the cream paint, and I’m going with a dark slate for the exterior shutters and the front door.

The old shutters are wood and really outdated. When my neighbors started painting their houses and replacing their windows and shutters it made my house look even worse. I want to get new vinyl shutters and found a web site with a huge selection of shutters. I never realized how many different styles of exterior shutters are available - I got a little giddy just looking at all the different styles and colors. There are louvers and panels, straight tops and arched, and dozens of colors. After lots of deliberation I picked out what I want and they have free shipping, so it’s a done deal.

Now that I know what I want to do with the shutters I can move forward with the rest of the project. Just need the heat of August to subside a little and the cooler weather of September will be perfect for getting the work down outside.

It was the wee hours of the morning and I couldn’t sleep. The TV was on the same channel as the news that I watched at 10:00 and there was a progression of shows that I never watched in prime time or never even knew existed, as the morning hours crept away and I tossed and turned in the bed. I should have gotten up and put in a DVD - I have bunches of them great for putting me right to sleep. But I kept thinking that I was about to drift off to sleep and getting up would have re-awakened the body which was counter productive.

At some odd hour there was a show that came on with a guy named Danny Lipford. He was talking about a home remodeling project and I couldn’t stop myself from watching the entire show. Although it was practically an infomercial for Home Depot and some of their suppliers, the show was entertaining and informative. I found it inspiring and motivating.

I even went to Home Depot Sunday afternoon to poke around and see what kind of home repair projects I want to take on this autumn. The house needs new gutters and exterior paint, and soon I’ll need to replace the windows. I have a list now. Just need a few tools and materials, and I’ll be ready to start swinging a hammer again.

It wasn’t that long ago that I was working for the Wicked Witch of Wilson County, helping her with marketing packages and property management for her commercial real estate business. She was not a big fan of computers and extremely paranoid about the internet. I could not get her to put up a web site or do any office administration on the computer other than integrated word processing and spreadsheets that I was forced to design myself. I think she is still using those same spreadsheets and manually producing the monthly invoices and checks. It’s just crazy to keep wasting so much time with those chores when you can easily obtain programs designed to do all the basic functions required to effectively manage properties.

I know that the people who designed Buildium’s property management software put together the perfect package to handle her monthly chores and what the professional property managers need to run their office. The program does it all - general ledger, invoicing, bill payment, and even maintenance work orders. I really like the way it is all handled online and it is all integrated so you can do it quickly and with less errors than the manual methods we had to use.

I wish she would take a look at the Landlord Software by Buildium and realize that managing property has come out of the dark ages. You can do everything online - you don’t even have to install an software on your own computer system. They offer a 15 day free trial so you can try it out without putting up any money. So how can you lose? someone needs to talk some sense into her. If I hadn’t quit years ago and left her in the dust, I’d do it.