It’s funny the new things you can discover online. I was shown a link to Audemars Piguet offshore and I clicked on it expecting to be looking at some exotic travel destination and it turns out that it’s a company that makes watches!

It’s just like all the people who call my business figuring that I cut glass or make mirrors or am some kind of DIY store, but I’m a tarot reader and a hypnotherapist. That’s what I get for having a business called “Look Beyond Mirrors” I suppose.

Every once in a while I wish we could have afforded to get commercial real estate so that I had a place to do my readings that was out on the highway, but then I remember that it’s working pretty well for us in our location right now. I can meet people when it’s convenient and I can run to my own schedule still pretty well, which is the best bet with a nearly two year old.

Right now I have a Valentine’s Day Tarot Reading Special going on at the other site. I still need to re-do my price list now that my licenses are active again, but I’m waiting for the munchkin to nap so that I can take pictures of the cards laid out appropriately and everything.

In the mean time I got the exciting news that Tarot World Magazine which I write for has released their first issue. I need to decide what topic I’m going to write on for my third column! I always have a brain freeze on that for a while and then something comes to me when I’m not thinking about it. Hopefully soon. I’m pretty sure my deadline is April 2nd, and that’ll be here before you know it.

It’s been a fairly long day again today, mostly because of taxes. I’ve been working on our taxes since last night, and I think I’ve managed pretty well. Even with all the business and paid blogging we’re still getting all of the deduction that we were initially entitled to from hubbie’s paycheck. Unfortunately for us we don’t qualify from EIC, but we’re doing okay even with that. We’re getting a bit more back than we got last year.

Other than that I’ve been tidying up and decorating again. I haven’t eaten yet. I’ve got a roast cooking and some potatoes on the go, but if I work on that it’s probably going to be ten p.m. before anything’s ready. I think I’ll just make myself some chicken nuggets, still it’s going to be a while before I get to test out our foam mattress for the night, because I’m half way through sorting out the curtains. I realize I missed picking up a valance for the kitchen window but that can wait until my next pay check. I need to sort out the new price list for the tarot site too. It’s on my “to do” list. In the mean time I’m watching NCIS Season One, and it’s keeping me entertained. I’m not focussed enough to re-watch the first episode of LOST and try and make sense of that. Maybe once I get the taxes finished. I still need to sort out the mortgage portion, and see if I have to get the records of us buying hubbie’s car, but given it wasn’t anything posh like a hybrid I don’t know if we have to declare it.

My picture a day blog is back! Eryssa.net will be updated at least once per day with pictures of various things, and randomly also with notes of interest about media and gaming.

Two friends of mine are starting up a home business selling pandas! No, not that sort. I doubt they’d get away with that! What are you thinking crazy people? BuyAPanda.com is a fun site where you can find panda collectibles of all kinds from plushes to mugs to aprons to pictures for your home. If you are a panda fan or know someone who is check them out! I wish them the best in this endeavor. I know how hard it is to sort things out with an at home business. If you’re willing to link exchange with them let them know and spread the word and panda love!

You remember me talking about Akashik: Battle of Angels? Well, they’re now updating twice a week! Wednesdays and Fridays instead of Sundays so check them out! New comics abound!. The action is heating up. What will happen next?

As for us it looks like we will soon have a new washer and dryer! For the price of a heating coil. Fingers crossed this works out because then the money that we were putting aside can go towards fixing our cars.

Alright, I’m off to try and finish what unpacking I can that doesn’t depend on the carpet being laid down. Then I’m going to work on new layouts for various blogs and websites that I want to get running more efficiently for the new year!

That’s something I’m really needing to do, is come up with ways to o Energize my Small Business. I barely get any offers for work at all at the minute, but given everything going on right now it’s a good thing, but once we move I’m really going to need to work at marketing myself and getting my name out there.

There are lots of other interesting articles on the icontact site click here and you can find some of them. As I was saying to someone just now I often wonder when I write click here how many people actually do, or if it’s better to have links like the other one where the name is more descriptive.

I do really need to come up with some ways to market myself better. I have an advert in the local yellow pages, and I’ve tried to do ads in the local newspaper as well but they didn’t do much. I think with my business, being tarot reading, I need to find different local stores to put banners up in and things like that, the coffee shops and book stores and the gem store would probably have more of the sort of people who would be interested in my work.

One thing with the move is I’m hoping for the possibility of being able to work from home a bit more thoroughly than I already do. While I don’t think I’m ready for a huge overhaul and an office depending on how things go and our luck with electronics we may well need to get new phones. I wonder from time to time about using VOIP, and have Skype downloaded on my computer, but there are other options like Talkswitch, from Neobits.
One very nifty thing going for these guys is that they will come in and install your phone line themselves instead of having to figure it out, they also deal with broadband internet, which is cool. I’m pretty well versed in technological things, but a lot of times it’s nice to be able to sit back and let someone else do the work especially if you have a lot of other things going on, like we’ll have when we get moved, and especially once we find an office building it’ll be extremely helpful to have someone else doing all that, one less thing that we have to worry about.
I never realized how pricey these things can get, but it looks as though the company has specials going on pretty consistently.

Mum and I have talked several times recently about doing start-up for a business. We’d had a discussion about it a while ago but with things going on it’s been coming up again. She has several ideas about things she would like to do, but in all cases she needs to do market research first.
Anything I want to do requires the same. I’m paranoid that I would be starting up something that would be ill received in our area, and that we would close at such a loss and go bankrupt or something like that. I tell myself that I have no idea unless I try if things would work or not, but still it’s a scary step, and something which requires funding and all sorts of other things.
I’ve been told several times by other readers that as long as I put forth the effort with endeavors I should be able to turn to gold things which I touch, and that I can carve my own future, but that doesn’t stop me from being nervous.
Our area is not the best with regards being open minded, and I’ve seen other pagan/new age stores fail. We’re fairly close to Cassadaga which is a prime area for people who are interested in that sort of thing, but a lot of the stores there tend to be very specialized, and if I’m being honest a bit snooty…
…anyway, anything like that has to wait a little while as it is. There are a lot more things which I need to look into, business plans, funding, finances. A couple of friends of mine are startigng up a business doing organic coffee and tea, and also selling herbs and things like that. They’re going slowly as well. It’s the only way to go when you’re not quite sure of all the ins and outs.

I’m starting a contest on my tarot site as a way of promoting and building my client base:

Would you like a free tarot reading?

On the numerological fours of each month Look Beyond Mirrors is holding a contest to win a free four card tarot reading via email. On months that there is a fourth date you are eligible to win a free email Celtic Cross reading.

Here are the rules a little bit more spelled out.

1. Drawings will occur on the 4th, 13th and 22nd of every month for a free-four card reading. On such months as there is a 31st there will be drawings for a Celtic Cross reading. Or as soon as possible thereafter, if there’s a delay there will be a notification on site.

2. Four days before each reading there will be a post on site where people can comment to enter.

3. Reading winners will be contacted as soon as the drawing is done and posted here on the blog.

4. Once you have won a free four card reading you’re not eligible to enter for another one for another four months. Those who have won a four card reading are eligible to enter the bonus fourth drawing (for a Celtic Cross reading), but if once you’ve won a Celtic Cross reading you’re not eligible to enter for that or a four-card reading again for a year.

5. It is your responsibility to answer my “congratulations” email in a timely fashion with the information I require to do a reading for you so that the reading can be sent to you in a timely fashion.

6. Entry to the contest opens once the post is made four days prior to the numerological “four” of the month (1st, 9th, 18th (and 27th)) of the month and closes at midnight the night before the drawing.

7. Each person who comments to enter the drawing gets one entry. If you promote this drawing on your website you will get an extra entry on the drawing. Entrants have a maximum of two drawings per contest they’re eligible to enter.

NB: This site employs “DoFollow” so commenting on an entry also gets you track back.

If this contest proves to be a “dud” it will be canceled, once the most current contest has been completed.

The first contest will premier on Halloween. As it’s a 31st the prize is a Celtic Cross reading. As an added bonus anyone who helps me promote the premier contest is eligible for TWO bonus entries in the drawing for a total of THREE “tickets”.

I would be grateful to those who promote the contest. As said those who promote are eligible for extra entries in the contest. To make sure you don’t miss the contest subscribe to the feed for the tarot site.

I’ve been doing a lot of work with layouts and things lately. I’ve been trying for several months now to muster up the creativity to put ‘my wolves’ back on my livejournal layout, and I’ve finally been able to as well as do several layouts for clients and friends:

So, yes, there we are. I finally got my layout redone for BeyondMirrors.net. I need to sort out the content aspect as I didn’t expect it to transfer from the original site Look Beyond Mirrors. I need to fix that portion of things, redo the content and the pages, sort out why the pages aren’t showing comments any more…

In my quest to get the reman we bought working at a ‘decent’ level today I did the second memory upgrade and I installed a second DVD-ROM/burner.
Initially it had two 256 DDR chips in it mean it had a 512 RAM with a 160 Gig drive, which while not completely unusable was pretty rough considering the operating system is XP, which requires oooh almost all that memory to run.
Last year we upgraded one of the RAM chips to a 1 gig so we were running on a gig and a quarter which was nice compared to the crawl that would happen any time we tried to run a game. But now we’re running on 2 gigs ^_^ much, much better.
The next thing to get is an upgraded graphics card. I picked up the DVD burner as well because there was a special going on at the store I was at and the second drive I’d been ogling for a while was only $50. So, given my card also gives me 5% off on supplies like this I was all, “ooh *pounce*”

Overall the upgrade went well. The munchkin had to go down for his nap so I figured I would get things done while he was sleeping instead of waiting until tonight when he was due for bed. So, I popped open the case, grounded, and started to work. There was a general ICK to start out with because I’ve been naughty and not blown the dust out of the computer since we got it a year ago in June, except a bit of perfunctory when I upgraded the last chip before Christmas, so it was pretty grody in there.
Then I made a really dumb mistake. I hooked everything up and went to check and couldn’t understand why the heck the new drive wasn’t recognizing. I switched things backwards so it was master to the others slave, making sure I hadn’t set them both to slave or something silly like that, and no I hadn’t. So with switching things out I put everything back together, even the case as I was sure that must have done the trick. Boot everything back up again and still nothing.

Guess which moron hadn’t connected the new drive to the internal power?

Yep, me! So, I had to unhook everything again and connect the drive to the internal power and voila everything worked.

You know how you always have parts left over? Well, there’s my leftovers. See–I wasn’t kidding about the dust! Anyone for some reason need a 256 DDR RAM chip? I tried to offer it to a friend to help their limping computer but it takes DIMM.