Towards that end, she is going to need to buy a Shipping Scale to help her to determine the postal rates of items that she will be offering for sale.  Scales are vital because she needs to know how much the item weighs (including the shipping box and stuffing) in order to calculate the shipping charges that she will have to quote on Ebay.  She has already accumulated enough boxes to get her started as far as that end goes, and she has lots of old newspapers saved up for stuffing the boxes.

I suggested that she try to find one that is compact so that she can tuck it away into her cupboard when she doesn’t need to use it.

It’s really too bad, but certainly understandable!

In the RFID process, each item is tagged with a special tag made with special tag printers.  Each tag responds to a radio frequency similar to the way bar codes respond to a bar code reader.  HOWEVER what is so cool about this is that each individual tag does not need to be scanned.  An entire bag of products can simply be passed by the reader.  Or, the entire shopping cart can simply be walked by, without even being unloaded!  The reader picks up the signals from the special tags and then the customer pays for the merchandise, and is then given a receipt that is printed out from one of the special Intermec printers that are designed to be used as part of the system.

Intermec is a company that sells all of the products needed to set up this kind of data collection and management equipment to be used in an RFID environment.  They even sell portable equipment that can be taken out in the field and used for hours without the need of any electrical outlets!

This is really cool technology we’re talking about here, but it does make me worry about the job security (or lack thereof) for cashiers and baggers!

 

So poo on Lexmark and ABBYY for your horrible technical support!

But my blog being beside the point, blogs ARE making a big difference in the world.  People are sharing, and reading opinions and thoughts and spreading them throughout their social network that they have built through their blogs.  That is why blog marketing is a big part of almost any business marketing strategy if the business wants to expand beyond their own little town.  The Izea Company is a marketing company that utilizes the social marketing advantages of the blog networks and offers their clients several different types of innovative marketing strategies such as product sampling, blog posts, and blog sponsorship.

I am so very happy for the hostages and their families that they were rescued, and I have to say that this is ONE thing that has happened that was good during George Bush’s presidency.

He sure keeps his name in the spotlight, doesn’t he!

She told me that there is some kind of controversy going on in the sports world about athletes having Lasik done to improve their vision to give them a competitive edge on their sport.  She said that some people think that is “cheating.”  I think that if the person really had vision problems and needed to wear glasses anyway, having Lasik for vision correction is not cheating.  However, if the person already had perfect vision and didn’t need glasses and had Lasik to give them “superior” vision (I heard that is possible) then I think that there would be grounds for calling that “cheating.”

Anyway, I suggested that perhaps they need to consider checking out some online personal loans to see if they might be able to help them while they are waiting for the final settlement on the accident lawsuit.  I think that a Personal Loan from www.personalloansleader.com might be the best solution to their short term situation, giving them the money they need to get buy while waiting for the lawsuit to end.  They offer quick and easy loan processing, extend credit to customers with good OR bad credit, which is exactly what my sister needs right now.