What fun! I buy a liquidation of many thousands of parts and get and education in trademark law for a small extra fee. When buying the remains of the entity formerly known as Smittybilt, how was I to know all the fun adventures that would happen?

Now we are required to put the following at the bottom of each page on our retail site, LiquidParts.net

The subject discontinued products do not carry a factory warranty. Replacement parts for the discontinued products are not available and all technical questions must be directed to Liquid Parts at 1-800-785-8077. Smittybilt is a registered trademark of Smittybilt Automotive Products, LLC. Liquid Parts is a liquidator of inventory and is not affiliated or associated in any manner with Smittybilt Automotive Products, LLC.

So just in case there was any confusion - Smittybilt is a registered trademark of Smittybilt Automotive Products.

My friend Greg is getting his new Tiki site off the ground. Go to Go tiki to see it. He is importing thousands of Tiki products with each container he gets in and the stuff is incredible.

I came across this site that lists all the sites that you can bookmark your favorite sites on. Make sense? 3spots.blogspot.com is what it is called. Maybe one day I can invento something that will rate being there… probably not.

I was reading the latest issue of Business 2.0 the other night, and a VC wants to put a Blackberry on the steering wheel of your car with a heads-up display. Not a bad idea, I thought, since people are using the things while driving anyway, laws be damned.

The part that gets me is that he is willing to back it with a COUPLE OF MILLION dollars to see if it works. Why not just give me a Blackberry and a hacksaw? A little careful cutting, some duct tape, and a mirror to reflect the screen image onto the windshield and the proof-of-concept is done. It would take two days and less than a thousand bucks to see if the idea works. Why the need for millions?

I moved back home. Not in the sense that I am living with my mom - in the sense that I moved my work location to home. My office is a gigantic two miles away, but it is filled with very competent people, so there is no need for me to be there everyday. So now I work from home, on all the big picture, important but not urgent projects that have been piling up for the last two years.

I bet everyone at work is happy I am gone too.

The change has been interesting. There is far less going on at home, despite the fact my wife works here, the nanny and Troy “work” here - but it seems much much quieter. So I get more done. And then I worry about the office, and call, and they tell me not to worry, and then I get more done.

At least there is always something to eat here.

I have found that keeping track of customers is pretty useful if you want to provide them with good service. There are many choices, but I have been using SugarCRM. Another useful site is this one because they actually have all the patches, upgrades and different versions available for downloading.

Ah yes, the sad truth -

After Goldwater’s landslide defeat, two Republican progressives who later became conservatives, George Gilder and Bruce Chapman, wrote a brilliant book called “The Party That Lost Its Head,” detailing how and why the party’s liberal wing responded so anemically to the conservative challenge. But it was too late. The party of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt was destined to become an annex of the conservative movement.

Most people (including me) have a hard time reconciling the fact that Lincoln and Roosevelt were Republican. What would they think about the party of Bush? Its funny to me because I would have considered myself a Republican right up until Bush was elected. I am Canadian, so I don’t get to vote, but I am pro-business, anti-regulation. By the way, have you ever tried to pay payroll taxes for your employees, or file a corporate tax return? If you have, you would know why I feel the way I do.

But back to Bush. It is very hard to reconcile his free spending ways with conservatism. What happened to the idea of a balanced budget? I am willing to think that there is a major upset coming in the Republican future.

Time will tell.

Article on the Post

If you would like to find out what the great minds are thinking, Google has introduced a new search engine called Google Scholar.

Here is the link http://scholar.google.com

So there has been a flurry of activity at work recently, some visiting inlaws and and more things to do with the completion of the new house. In other words, real life getting in the way of this blog.

So the question of the day is - what do you do with a two year old that insists you carry him everywhere? Today my son was thrashing about on the floor because I wouldn’t pick him up. He thrashed for about 20 minutes. I went outside and sat in my hammock, and my wife stared in amusement. He was so committed to his thrashing that he didnt get up when I came back in - he lay there screaming as I walked right over him.

So we did what any normal set of parents would do - we bought him a 42″ plasma tv to watch Sesame Street on. Can’t start too early with the bribes, we are training him to be a politician.

Funny how a simple wishing of a happy day can become so politcal. Screw it. Happy Christmas, Merry New Year.