Where's James?

James is in the office!

Things got very busy at WiebeTech, especially in Q2 of this year. We were preparing the introduction of our RTX product line - it's now been shipping since June and is a success! Sales, margin dollars, profits are moving up. July was the best sales month since January (January's always huge) and August looks like it will easily move past July. Thankyou, hardworking WiebeTechers and faithful customers!

I spent July 1 through July 18 in Alaska, on a short term Church affiliated mission trip. The public view of the trip may be found on another BLOG:

http://saltshaker07alaska.blogspot.com/

There's lots of pictures there; also some posts which I wrote.

The reality of this trip was a little more adventuresome than what was posted. We were turned back by wind & waves; we were in overloaded boats; we were in risk of being swamped (had we not turned back) and that would have lead to bad things; we spent 18 hours in 'whale camp' at Elephant Point, somewhere between Kotzebue and Buckland, Alaska, waiting for weather to improve. (Ultimately, it did not improve; we returned to Buckland and flew back to Kotzebue in Cessna Caravans. We gave up on boats.)

Anyway, I survived and learned a lot about Eskimos, Christian faith, and how to survive with a large group of high school and college age youth in the wilderness.

I also developed a new hobby. Kind of. I've taken digital pictures for several years; and always wanted to pursue print my own pics. I recently purchased an Epson R1800 printer, and am now printing superb 13 x 19 inch prints using my Exilim 10mp camera.

This activity is bringing me a little closer to the WiebeTech digital photography customer base -- a great customer segment with enormous storage needs.

Later this week, I'll be attending the Leadership Summit which is put on by Willow Creek Church across the nation. Friday evening, Kathy and I are heading down to the PGA Championship in Tulsa. We'll bake, along with Tiger and the rest of the professionals.

I have trips scheduled out to HTCIA / San Diego later in August, also a week long sales swing through DC with my sales manager and my east coast sales rep (Jeff Hedlesky and Jerry McLean, respectively). Jerry worked for Lacie (WiebeTech's largest competitor in the commodity storage space) for 7 years prior to working for WiebeTech. Both of these trips are planned for our trusty corporate airplane, N206KJ.

On Labor day, (Sep 3), I'll be firing up the Cessna and flying out to Idaho for a camping trip in the remote parts of the wilderness. I should come back with some amazing pictures.

See ya.