So far the Gator has chewed up 129,259 words.

Gator Byte

Computers & Entertainment

Webhost Reliability

Posted on August 18, 2008 - Filed Under Business, Internet | Leave a Comment

When you do any kind of work online it’s very important that your websites are up as much as possible. Even though I love the plan we have with Bluehost, I find that the downtime is a little excessive. Sometimes it’s down every day for a few minutes up to a half hour, [...]

Read More..>>

Rearranging Time Again

Posted on August 18, 2008 - Filed Under Business, sale | Leave a Comment

It’s barely been 5 months in the new location but I feel like it’s time to rearrange things already. A lot of space seems to be wasted with the current layout, but with the store being so narrow it’s hard to move things around much anyway. The long counter down the side is [...]

Read More..>>

Bar Code Scanners

Posted on August 18, 2008 - Filed Under Business, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

One of these days we’re going to get a little more high tech around here and add in a bar code labeling system. Scanners are pretty cheap now, starting around $100 for a decent one and most POS software has a built in option to print out the coded stickers so the transition would [...]

Read More..>>

American Dollar Gaining Strength

Posted on August 15, 2008 - Filed Under Business, News | Leave a Comment

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been keeping an eye on the American dollar since it was steadily rising for a few days in a row. It seems to have settled around the 1.06 mark which is about 6 cents more than it was worth during most of the summer. I held [...]

Read More..>>

Used Stuff Updated

Posted on August 15, 2008 - Filed Under Business, gaming | Leave a Comment

I just updated the Used Games page again to include some new goodies we’ve gotten in this week and delete the stuff that sold. Items of particular interest are a Nintendo Wii (which honestly seems to be more of a weight loss products than a gaming system), some more Rock Band gear for the [...]

Read More..>>

Online Meetings

Posted on August 14, 2008 - Filed Under Business, Software, management | Leave a Comment

Back when I started this business and we were buying/selling store returns we’d normally take a couple trips a year to Toronto to meet up with our suppliers and pick out the goods we wanted to buy. Travel isn’t cheap though, along with the air fare and car rentals you need a hotel and [...]

Read More..>>

Label Makers

Posted on August 11, 2008 - Filed Under Business | Leave a Comment

In a business like this having some sort of label maker is a necessity. Movies and games for sale and rent all need index labels so we know where to find the disc and so we can find them in the computer. Everything for sale needs price stickers, computers in for repairs need [...]

Read More..>>

AVG 8.0

Posted on August 11, 2008 - Filed Under Business, Software, computer repair, computers | Leave a Comment

AVG has been my favorite virus scanner for quite some time now because it doesn’t take a lot of resources and seems to do a pretty good job. Version 7.5 free was pretty good but they ended support for that a while ago. When they killed support for 7.5 they cranked out a [...]

Read More..>>

Showcases, Racks and Desks for Sale

Posted on August 11, 2008 - Filed Under Business, sale | Leave a Comment

I have several showcases and racks to get rid of, and some desks as well. I’ll add pictures later, but the showcases start at $50 and some of the racks are as low as $10. The desks are just a rather plain 5.5′ long by around 20″ deep, I’ll let those go for [...]

Read More..>>

Routers Dropping like Flies

Posted on August 10, 2008 - Filed Under Business, computers | Leave a Comment

Typically after a bad thunderstorm we get a few people in with fried modems or network cards, but this summer it seems to be routers that are suffering the most damage. It’s not a lot really, just a couple here and there, with Linksys routers in particular this month. I’m not saying Linksys [...]

Read More..>>

9th Anniversary is Upon Us

Posted on August 10, 2008 - Filed Under Business | Leave a Comment

Another year has come and gone, I almost can’t believe we’ve been in business for 9 years now. There’s been ups and downs, like with any business, and some changes have been better than others. While I like our newest location, I do miss the size of the first store. We had [...]

Read More..>>

Don’t Just Click, Clicksmart

Posted on August 6, 2008 - Filed Under Business, Internet | Leave a Comment

The yellow pages are becoming less and less useful these days when it comes to finding businesses and service providers. Large comprehensive online directories are fast taking over and it’s easy to see why, even a basic online directory listing contains a lot more information than you can find in a paper booklet. [...]

Read More..>>

Marketing on Facebook

Posted on July 15, 2008 - Filed Under Business, Marketing | Leave a Comment

Over the last month or so I’ve been trying to use Facebook to do a little marketing. It’s not too bad, and during the month I only spent a little over $5. Overall I’m not sure how much extra business it’s brought me, but I can credit it with the sale of 10 [...]

Read More..>>

Gator Shirts

Posted on July 10, 2008 - Filed Under Business | Leave a Comment

Lately I’ve taken to wearing ‘nicer’ polo style shirts instead of the typical ‘free video game promo’ shirts that I’ve been favoring for the last couple of years. I’ve looked at doing company logo shirts and the pricing isn’t too bad really, especially if I already own the shirts. For a few bucks [...]

Read More..>> keep looking »