I am finally back in the groove. The back is back and the physical therapy feels good. Amazing what a couple of months "off" can do to upset the rhythm of the enterprise.

Our after-Christmas backlog stayed high because no one canceled unshipped orders. Plus January sales were strong. My engineering business got real busy too, so my plate is pretty full. In the midst of all this, I bought Adobe Pagemill and have about finished the design of Technacraft's first web pages.

The software is fairly easy to use. This software comes with a small getting started book and the rest of the help is on disk. I miss a good old-fashioned manual to refer to when I'm learning new software so I supplemented the software with a "how to" book.

I hope to upload the web pages in a couple of weeks, but if you look for us and we aren't there, I probably just got behind. If you eventually visit our site, please give me your feedback. I'm trying to design a good-looking site with no glitz and sufficient information on our products and how to order them.

Our new candle product is stalled as I work out some production problems. Should be back up and building these soon. Marketing this product has stopped until the quality is where it has to be. It took several years to develop our market for Sunchimes and I expect that the same will be true of the candle.

Our customers are very wary of trying new items. Small gift shops have little room for buying mistakes. We'll keep the price low and provide samples. This May will mark the beginning of our ninth year in business. Hindsight being 20/20, I would have done a few things differently, but it's all about learning as you go. We are still building products, making payroll, pleasing customers and planning for the future.