My Official Ramble On Page!

For a long time now I have wanted to put up a page where I could ramble on about whatever it may be on my mind at the time. Sometimes I even have some good stuff to say or huge amount of tips and tricks I have left out on the main web site which happen to come up while emailing someone. There just hasn't been enough time away from trap building to get the page up it seems, well that is my excuse. Then there is the well known fact that I love to ramble on web site and email so, maybe this page will keep me down to a dull roar, LOL.  In any event no one has to read this but if your interested check back because now that it is set up I will be adding more.

September 17, 08 - 

August 13, 08
This page is getting a little long but if you have been here before maybe you read the entry on my 98 year old mother that I'm taking care of. This (click) should jump you down to that section. Well, if you read that then the following will make a bit more sense, grin.
My mother has a real advance cased of dementia. To those who don't know what this is, it is a condition that a whole bunch of older folks get when they reach their elder years. Clusters of brain cells die away and of course that leads to memory loss and a whole slug of other problems. Until you have been around someone with dementia it is pretty hard to understand what it is like and one always has to remember that the person suffering with this problem and one must remember it is not really them when things get tough, it is their condition. Family members and even caregivers can go into overload when taking care of people with dementia. Attitude is truly the key to surviving the ordeal and I'm stating all this because I know there are millions of you out there with the same problem, it is important for you to be able to come to terms with this terrible condition which is said to be 14 million people suffer with dementia in the USA alone. To date there is no cure for dementia   

August 11, 08
Jeez, it has been a long time since my last entry! Well, my 10 days off as I previously posted ended up only 2 days off and the balance was spent building inventory. I swear, building crawfish traps and hearing back from the people who use them is addictive and I'm starting to wonder about myself, LOL. In any event I have been busting my buns trying my best to supply traps to as many people as I can and I am really sorry for those people that I could not supply traps to. Just keep bugging me for quotes and I'll get you some traps one way or another, grin. 
I do plan on slowing down my sales throughout Aug. & Sept. to try and pace myself a little better. I believe that by getting to tired is probably slowing me down rather than bulling my way through it. It would help if many of you planned ahead and ordering during off season times, granted there isn't much off season but every little bit helps. 

June 23, 08
Sorry everyone but I am taking the next week to 10 days off to rest up! This is not a vacation or anything like that it is the simple fact that I am really tired and need to get some rest. The demand for my traps have been so high that I have never seen the like before.  I did my level best to supply everyone who wanted to buy traps and I'm sorry to those that I couldn't supply quotes to who wanted to buy traps. I'm surprised my hands didn't give out but if I stopped moving I would fall asleep, LOL. I may catch up on my rest sooner then expected, who knows maybe I'm not as old as I think I am, grin. In any event, it never hurts to continue requesting quotes before I start up again. For those who must have traps right away well, I'm sorry I can't recommend a single trap out there except mine, as any previous buyer of my traps will tell you! I just had to state that, grin. I still look back and find it amazing how I was able to invent these traps. It sure wasn't dumb luck, it was trial and error with hundreds of errors, LOL. I wish I had kept a picture record of some of the contraptions I made developing the traps. It sure would have made for some great chuckles!  

June 3, 08
It is really great to know how popular my traps have become over the years and the demand for them has become unreal but what people don't realize I believe is that only so many traps can be made in a single day. So, only so many traps can be sold in a single day and when there are more people wanting to buy traps then what I can build then the line of people waiting to buy traps gets bigger. The only way I can control the amount of traps being sold is to only issue a certain amount of quotes in any given day. I issue quotes on a first come first serve basis to be fair to everyone and this way, should the quote turn into a purchase the traps are shipped out in a timely manner. How quickly I get through the list largely depends upon how the quote requests are received. If the contents of the email request is like, "hey, how much for a trap sent to 76543" well, that is what the delete button is for and I move on to the next one. If the quote guidelines are followed then a quote is issued. 

I have been asked many times why I don't expand and hire help to produce more traps. The answer is simple, I don't want to, grin. By keeping it small I control quality and can keep the price low. I can assure that my traps will continue to be the best worldwide, a great ego booster LOL, plus the biggie, the secret of building the best crawfish trap stays with me. Anyone can duplicate the construction of the trap but no one knows the process the traps go through after they are built and that is the key to making them great. 
Interesting enough, someone offered to buy me out last week. This isn't the first time this has happened but it was the most I have ever been offered. What the hell people will ask, they offered 750 grand for everything, for every detail on how to make the traps. Frankly, I didn't give it a second thought and turned them down. Life would be pretty boring if I wasn't building traps, so how lame is that, LOL. 

May 30, 08
Well, may has been interesting! I haven't worked this hard building traps since last May, LOL. I'm still 5 traps short of last year's May but it sure is not from the lack of people wanting my traps, it is being one year older that slowed me down, grin. There is still a lot of people who haven't received there quotes yet, Ottawa National Park placed their order a bit late this year and that really put me under the gun for sportsman orders. The Park's order is nearly complete and once completed the quotes will be going out. Speaking of quotes, the shopping cart will be going up soon but even after it is up I still suggest everyone should request a quote. UPS rates are almost half what the new USPS rates are considering USPS dimensional weight rate, dimensional weight does not apply for my traps with UPS, but UPS has rural surcharges and fuel surcharges so where you live makes a big difference on the rate. Still even with the surcharges tacked on UPS rates are still nearly half of USPS. OK, what I'm getting to is that sometimes the UPS rates to my own state can be higher then the rates to locations across the nation. The shopping cart has to have a fixed single amount per item so I'm going to have to set that amount to handle all the surcharges plus the base rate. If you feel you are not in a remote area and live close to a UPS depot you definitely should request a quote to save a few bucks on shipping!
The shopping cart will provide you with the fastest delivery but you will spend a couple bucks more per package. The good news is that the price of traps will not be going up this year even due for higher supply costs. I made a large supply purchase and I have raw materials for 9,000 traps and I'm not going to stick anyone by raising the prices because of supply costs like they do at the gas pumps, LOL. Trapping season is on for nearly all states! Everyone enjoy!!  

May 13, 08
My Goodness, I sure haven't been able to get time away from building traps to work on the web site! As everyone who reads this will find out the shopping cart is still down and it will be for a little bit more. Everyone needs to request a Quote by email to purchase traps now until shopping cart is back up. You can request a quote afterward too, grin. In any event, a Quote will give you your best possible price for shipping cost and I encourage everyone to request a quote. This Link, Requesting A Quote, tells you all about how to do it. YOU WILL SAVE MONEY WITH A QUOTE, the pencil doesn't get any sharper, grin. Remember there is no obligation to buy anything once you get a quote and there is NO charge to get a quote, its free. Also, with a quote personal checks are encouraged for those who wish to bypass PayPal but PayPal is also welcome too. OK, well coffee break is over and trap building is shouting me, LOL. Everyone have a good week and hopefully next entry will give some useful tips. Here is a quick one on bait, to anyone who has perch in their area. Perch is a fantastic bait and I believe it is every bit as good as shad plus perch is super easy to catch. I think crawfish will walk a mile for a perch, grin.

April 11, 08
I'm hoping to start sales sometime this weekend for next week's shipping. It is all dependent on how quickly I can convert the total delivered cost pricing indexes for all products. As it is working out, all trap prices will remain the same because of money saved by using UPS pickup. For those who are returning for reorder you will find that all additional postage for accessories has been dropped, as long as accessory demand is within reason of course. The reason for canceling the additional postage is because with UPS rates there is not enough difference in rates between pounds to spit at where with USPS there was a huge different in rates between pounds and zones, then now with the new USPS rate increase the difference is HUGE. This year UPS is very aggressively competitive to other carriers and are definitely making their move since USPS made their announcement for annual rate hikes. Even with the 4 different surcharges tacked onto their base shipping rate UPS is kicking USPS in the butt. So it appears my switch to UPS now could not be better timed for all of us. 

April 7, 08
UPS is the winner on shipping rates after USPS makes their rate hike next month. The UPS rep has been out and is currently setting up my account. Shipping rates will be cheaper then USPS and that savings gets passed onto you. USPS doesn't seem to have an interest in affordable shipping solutions anymore, their greed-a-meter remains high and delivery service is poor on a good day. That is life I guess but it will catch up with them. In any event, I am currently reworking the Shopping Cart, my Quote Software, and Layaway Software, to reflect UPS shipping rates. Once one of the purchase methods becomes available I will activate it on the web site for trap purchases.   

April 3, 08
My goodness, has anyone checked out the new postage rates starting in May? Unbelievable and, the USPS commissioners got a new law passed that they can increase the rates every year. Keep in mind that the news release stated it was only a 1 cent stamp increase but with packages, which BTW is 86 percent of USPS revenue, the increase for distance zones increase up $2.00 a package for my size boxes and higher then that for higher weight packages. Also, dimensional weight calculations are even smaller now which increase rates by over 300 percent, yep 300 percent! Is that deceiving or what but the greedy direction USPS has been headed, it is not surprising. I quit shipping with UPS at the beginning of 2004 because UPS had a huge rate increase for that year in order to pay for their new computer system plus USPS lobbied shippers to go with them, their statement was that they could beat all other carriers rates. They were openly and actively competing against UPS and FedEx. The first USPS rate increase after 2004 was enacted because a Federal law required that USPS must have a 4 billion dollar reserve, even though they were currently running in the black, they only had 1.5 billion in the reserve. The rate hike was healthy on the package end and in less then 30 days the shortfall in the reserve was met. It wasn't long and USPS was very healthy, way into the black but the USPS commissioners wanted another increase and got it because of higher fuel costs. Somewhere along the line I missed the part about the new law of annual rate hikes and in checking I couldn't find a news release on it. I'm betting it was probably about the time that USPS removed their link where the public could leave feedback or make complaints which is also probably the time period where Stamps.com stock value went into the dirt. If someone knows where the link is I sure would love to have it, grin. The upcoming USPS rate hike doesn't have a valid reason for an increase other then that they can now legally do it without permission from Congress. It is quite apparent to me that USPS has got exceptionally greedy and taking advantage of the huge increase of online sales over the years, plus the health of the Nation's economy is something they are not concerned with. What isn't apparent is what is happening to the countless billions of excess revenue they are receiving by inflated unjustifiable rate increases which is never passed on to the general fund. What USPS makes stays with USPS, so where does it all go and what benefit is passed on to the public? Frankly, I have no idea where it goes or what benefit we are going to see. In any event I am not going to pass on higher shipping rates to my trap buyers! I'm making changes now, actually it is taking a lot of changes, in my software and shopping cart which will do away with USPS. My software is a huge custom program which I have been adding to over the years but thankfully I carried a lot of my UPS functions along as I've developed it. The bad thing is that I've forgotten how far I took the UPS functions, the monster has thousands of lines of code, LOL. Oh well after 22 years of fun and profit of writing software code it shouldn't be to difficult getting through it, still it is a lot more fun building crawfish traps, grin.     

In a quick note in regards to the Mar. 31 entry, traps will be for sale soon. The family business is coming right along and it should be to long before I receive bids from UPS and FedEx. UPS was chasing me hard a year ago so who knows, grin.

Mar. 31, 08
I decided that today is the day to suspend all traps sales including Quotes for a week or so in order concentrate on family business. I'm surprised at how hard this is to do, it seems building crawfish traps is nearly as addictive as trapping crawfish plus I feel I am letting people down who want traps. Just to clear the air, the family business is not divorce or anything like that, the wife and I are as one. It is my mother, she is still alive and 97 almost 98 years old, very poor eye sight and hard of hearing. I have been trying for years to get her to move in with me but she is an extremely independent individual and would not do so even though I'm the last living sibling. Unknown to me Jan. of this year an assisted living group called Merrill Gardens came to her house and laid a huge money back sales pitch on her. Three days later plus $8,000 they had her under contract and actually had moved her in one of the cardboard boxes they call a retirement home. Five days later I found out about it and after visiting her I was in a silent rage on what they had done. I kept silent about the deal and after talking with her doctor I found out there was nothing that I could do because even though she was of extreme old age she was still lucid and any decisions to be made were hers alone to make. For her, the following days went badly for her health and to terrible to talk about here but finally after 26 days of ill treatment, improper medication, false sales promises, and lack of food, she managed to muster up enough of well something and march herself to the accounting office and told them she was leaving this hell hole. The next thing she did was to call me and tell me what she did then orders me to move her, NOW, grin. Even at 97 she is still my mother and the boss. This time I never had a problem with her moving in with me and my wife because she knew she could not stay on her own plus I was the last choice and her health was so poor at this time she didn't have much fight left in her. Just the short 26 days she was at Merrill Gardens she had lost 22 pounds, could barely get around without aid and was extremely depressed. Before she moved in with me it always bothered me why she wouldn't move in during the years past and it was only after she moved in that I discovered the reason why. Many people who reach the end of their lifespan experience many problems with everyday life, from eating to going to the bathroom, and it is horribly embarrassing for them to expose these problems to others especially family members. I've always had a great relationship with my mother and the simple fact was that she simply didn't want me to see the other dark side of her life. 

The reason why I went into a bit of detail above is a warning to others who have aging parents that they love. Merrill Gardens is supposed to be one of the better assisted living corporations out there and if that is truly the case then we have some very serious problems. Then again I guess if you want to send your parents out to die then go for it. Merrill Gardens advertises a 90 day money back if the resident decides for any reason not to stay there and moves out, they even advertise that on their web site. That is totally false and a total come on. My mother only stayed there 26 days and paid $8,000, when I went to get it back they wanted another $400. They train their staff better then the IRS does theirs and to say they have a racket going would be an understatement because had she stayed longer her fees would have increased. Needless to say I am not done with them. God only knows what the other places are like! 

There still remains the fact that I need to put my mothers affairs in order, not only just financial but ready her condo for sale and a slug of other stuff. I need time to concentrate on this stuff and the time demand for building traps is to great in order to do both at the same time, it is just impossible. I know the bugs are starting to get hungry but I am afraid time is growing short for my mother and as much as I want to avoid taking care of family business it needs to be done now. I truly hope that everyone understands and trusts that I will be back. All current purchases will be shipped today for those that might wonder.

I cannot recommend any other trap frankly I believe the others frankly are substandard. As I stated above all Quotes are suspended but you may still request a quote for traps. I will take all the email requests and put them in a separate folder and once I'm back I will provide quotes to everyone who requested one starting at the earliest time stamped request and then work my way forward to the current day. 

Thank You and I Thank Everyone for a Fantastic March! 

Mar. 26, 08
It just hit me again that I should explain a statement that I make throughout the web site, "My traps are Winch Boat Tough." I've been going to do this for a while but now that I finally got this page up a few days ago, it would be a good time to do it. To me the term Winch Boat is something that I basically grew up with and I would be surprised if even a small percentage of people know what the heck I'm talking about, grin. Winches have been used in the commercial fishing industry for nearly a century in one form or another. To shorten the scope of the topic and keep it focused on crawfish or crab, winch boats are boats which have a mechanical device to reel in ground lines with traps attached to them. Everyone, except me of course, uses a device called a crab block. Basically a crab block has a single power wheel run by a hydraulic motor that the ground line is fed through and as the line comes in it is fed into a garbage can as the traps are unhooked. 
I had to be different of course and had a custom built standing drum winch was run through a system of pulleys by a gas engine which used foot controls for stopping, starting, and adding power or releasing power to the ground line as it was being reeled in. This allowed me to have both hands free to remove the traps and dump the crawfish onto a sorting table without ever stopping the winch from pulling in the next trap. The drum was big enough and had power enough to hold two 1400 foot ground lines (100 traps) before I had to turn around and reset the lines. I had 500 traps to pull so it was necessary to be able to move right out! Now keep in mind that have indicated that both types of winches have a lot of power, well over 1400 pounds of pull and that is a lot, it is like towing a car actually more then that. If you didn't notice the shoreline in the pictures of the lake on the web site, most of the shoreline had big 700 foot cliffs of broken rock. It had the same type of bottom as well and a lot of the hunks of rock on the bottom were house size but most were the size of small cars. 
 Quite often when I laid out a 1400 foot string of traps the trap line would slide between two good size rocks on the bottom so when I went to pull in the line the traps would become wedged between the two rocks and I would have to apply full power to the winch to get the trap up. If the trap was badly wedged then I would have to power up the winch and also kick in the boat motor and run circles around the wedged trap until I found the right angle to free the trap. Now we are talking one heck of a lot of pressure applied to the wedged trap in order to break it free from the rocks. Well to shorten things up a bit, I had to design a trap which could stand this much punishment and not have to be replaced because it was ripped up. This is what I call "Winch Boat Tough."  I might as well add too that I designed the traps to pivot around the rocks or other obstacles as they were being pulled up in order to avoid being wedged. By having a centered pivot point on the trap also allowed the trap to always land on the river or lake bottom in a position ready to catch crawfish no matter how the trap was thrown into the water. Hopefully that explains my statement a little better and also to let you know this is the type of trap you are buying. There are no other traps built this way, everything else I've seen being sold or built for self use would crumble and break into bits even if a fraction of the treatment was being used, grin.  

Mar. 23, 08
 Last month marked my 8th year building and selling crawfish traps from the web site. I find this truly amazing, it sure doesn't seem that long. What is sad is that it did take this long to finally get my Layaway Program online and also to put up this ramble page! I do hope my layaway program will help ward away at least a small part of the, for lack of a better word, evil ways the credit card companies are doing. Frankly I didn't have a clue the interest rates were being manhandled the way they were until it hit the news a short time back. Well, at least the layaway program is a go and it takes little time away from trap building.

Speaking of trap building, it may become necessary in the near future to hike the cost of traps up a bit. All supply costs have increased several times just since the first of the year. Thankfully I buy such things as wire and net in large volumes which help in the cost and spans over several months so I can absorb much of the rest for awhile. But, a fair warning that I may have to do so. China is the big blame for wet pulp, (boxes), and wire, if they were not trying to buy everything in the world to sell their junk to us then it wouldn't be bad. Gas prices haven't entered into the picture yet that I can see but I'm sure there is a little stuck in there for good measure.