Looks like I got it mostly fixed.. I should go through and 301 all of the new navigation, but I really don’t care.. Let Google take care of itself for a change..

Not sure exactly where the problem is, but things got broken with the last WP update.. I suppose I’ll sort it out when I get the chance.. Good thing this isn’t a business blog..

I try not to rant too hard on the jewelry trade.. It does feed my family after all.. But I was reading this interesting Time Magazine poll about retail jewelers.. It seems that the number one complaint of 2000 polled consumers is that their jeweler, or jewelry salesperson doesn’t always know as much as they could, or should, about the product that they are selling..

Poll shows need of retailer knowledge

Did you notice the publication date on that page?? 1947.. Yup, 60 years ago people were complaining about the lack of knowledge in the retail jewelry trade.. Take a tour around any of the online jewelry forums.. A common complaint that runs through all of them is the overall lack of knowledge and skill of the people behind the counter.. The stories are nearly endless..

So why is this?? Why are we 60 years down the pipe from this first poll being published and still seeing the same complaints?? I have some guesses..

I think that a lot of it has to do with the traditional nature of the industry.. Information was passed from father to son without a lot of outside influence.. This causes bad information to become fact in a very short time.. I don’t know about you, but I still have trouble telling my dad he is wrong about something..

But, I think the larger problem is simply one of laziness.. There is so much good information out there, easily found, yet so many people in the trade would rather make up an answer and try to bullshit a customer than admit that they don’t know something and ask for help.. A piece of advice for those of you that do this.. our customer probably knows as much, or more, than you do.. And making up an answer on the spot will cost you the sale.. And even worse, that customer will most likely jump online and post their story about the idiot jeweler.. How is that for advertising??

The jewelry trade isn’t the only one that has this problem.. But it really isn’t that hard to learn the basics quickly, and gain more in depth knowledge with just a little effort on your part.. It’s been 60 years.. Get off your ass and learn something..

After running coppermine here for a while I’m moving the gallery to flickr.. It’s mostly for drive space and bandwidth considerations..

I’m reasonably happy with flickrRSS but I may experiment with a few other tools I’ve seen out there.. this was just easiest to set up..

It’s been a while since I posted anything relevant to anything else.. I blame real life.. And these 70 hour work weeks..

I got the Bangles and Brides pligg front end installed and working finally.. Launched it Friday I think.. It’s all a blur.. BaB has been growing slowly and steadily and I really think that allowing our community to submit news stories is a great idea.. Technically they could before, but it wasn’t as easy to do.. Plus I was the only one that could see the submissions.. The new pligg interface is very digg like and it looks to be a good thing for the site..

Also launched the generic store over at Images Jewelers (osCommerce) to compliment the custom jewelry site over at ImagesOnTheWeb.Net. The site is already selling and starting to rank well for a few easy to grab design lines.. I’ll be working on that for the rest of the year at least.. Thankfully we finally got some help doing all the data entry to get the product listed..

I’ve also been registering random domains with cool names lately.. Not sure when I’ll have time to work on these.. But I need to get the new deep link directory up and running soon.. We’ll probably do the first 100 links for free or something.. At least until we get some decent weight to toss around.. By then we will probably be near Christmas and the jewelry thing will be eating up all my time again.. Maybe I’ll get than new portal launched next year.. gem-carvers.com is a great name for a gemology / gem carver site

Or should it be a light sampling of Westmont?

I don’t know, but it definitely wasn’t as good as last year.. Especially when it comes to the food.. I started going to the taste last year with CrankyDave and MrsCranky and loved it.. This year, eh, I think we would have been better off going fishing or something..

The biggest issue was the food.. Or lack of food.. There were far fewer food vendors this year and it really hurt the eating.. Bub’s was great, love the BBQ, and the Lion’s always have great corn, but I really really really missed the ribeye steak sandwich from Don’s..

The music was great though.. We caught most of Flat Cat, great jazz music.. And Brian Howe from Bad company was the headliner.. But the star, or stars, of the night was Mister Sister.. Wow.. They were great.. Three female lead singers an a band that can really play.. Everything they did was spot on and a ton of fun to listen to.. And Chuck, wow, I need to find out if he give guitar lessons..

Check them out on their myspace page http://www.myspace.com/mistersistertheband or better yet, catch them live sometime.. You will not be disappointed..

Let’s fill this pig up!! Actually, I am in the bad habit of tossing pictures online in non searchable directories and then can never find what I’m looking for without logging in through ftp and scanning for that picture I need.. Yes, I am that sad.. So I tossed in a picture/video/audio gallery that may or may not see much use.. Yeah, Coppermine, yet another open source project..

Yes, I used a stock template.. Yes, some day I plan to integrate it visually with the rest of the site, but for now the stock hardwired works fine for me.. For now there are just a few pictures in there.. Mostly jewelry that I have made and designed.. I do a lot of design work for Images Jewelers but not a lot that is all me.. We do a lot of work by colaberation so it’s all part me, part Bob, part Joe etc.. The pieces here are all me.. I don’t get to work on the bench very often anymore so my bench skills are going to hell, but what’s a guy to do??

If you want to take a look - great! Leave a comment and let me know what you think.. I really do like to hear what people think about my jewelry work..

Fey