I woke up this morning to the phone ringing at 6:30am and on new years morning no less. Looked outside only to see the streets covered in snow and howling winds. As of this writing (4 in the afternoon) the snow is 4-5 inches deep on the streets, it’s 0 degrees and it’s still blowing hard. Whatever happened do dry hot deserts? Oh well at least we are starting a snow pack. After last years lack of rain and the water being shut off to my friends that are farmers, I guess I should be grateful.

However the reason for the 6:30 call was about Google. I’m trying to get everything done to build this company. To that end, I decided to spend this time around Christmas and New Years to work for my company instead of the clients. To that end I studied up and figured out with the help of a friend to set up Google add words. It seemed to be set up fine, however little did I know that Google would take care of that. Google the “Do the right thing” company, hasn’t figured out that screwing with their customers doesn’t fit that motto at all. Thankfully Saad had caught the problem as he was on the his way to work today and gave me a call to warn me.

Buried in the ad words set up is a simple little on off button. It simply states that if you don’t turn it off (it is on by default) that after 7 days Google will start adding words it wants to to your ad campaign. They had added 72 phrases, none of which pertain to our business, so much for their vaunted ability to understand things. These added phases which I had no interest in had in the 2 days cost me close to $50.00 for searches and clicks that had nothing to do with my business.

So on with the learning curve, I now have google analytics set up so I can better track the website usage so I can change it more accurately reflect your needs. I’m slowly filling in the pages I had created and now on to adding user guides and such to give a single unified location to get help. I now have to figure out how to add a knowledge base to the website to better serve your questions and let users share tips and tricks on how to best use the software.

Never fear though I still have added a few things. You can now export the data form the product listing report to our FTP site so you can get all of the raw data in a .csv format. I’ve started adding an export function to allow you to export all the data for other use. In addition I’m back to finishing the tracking forms. You can now call up a pet, look at all of the information on that pet, including sales order information, Invoices, and Payment records. You can now see who accessed these files, when and for how long. You can see exactly who changed any of the information and exactly when. Should make it much easier to track changes when you may not know who or when they were made.

So as the sun sets, it still snowing, blustery, and cold, it’s not supposed to get above freezing till around noon Friday and then only for about a half hour and only by a degree. Not the most auspicious start of a new year, but this way it can only get better?

Probably the number one question people ask when the discover what I do. So here goes.

There are three different types of pet cremations. Most crematories offer all 3 though some only offer the Private and the Communal Cremations.

Communal Cremation

Communal Cremations – Everyone agrees on what to call this. Pets are placed together with other pets for a communal cremation. Ashes from all of these pets will be co-mingled and then disposed of in the manner that your crematory chooses. Often scatter somewhere convenient, on a field behind the crematory, or at sea or over a local lake. You will not have any cremains returned to you.

Separate Cremation

Separate, Segregated, Individual, Semi-Private. No one seems to be able to agree as to what to call this. However they all mean the same thing. Your pet is placed in the crematory with other pets, they are separated in the crematory by some means, different crematories use different methods. Then the pets are cremated together. In this style of cremation there is some limited co-mingling of the pet’s ashes. Some small percentage of the ashes you get back belong to other animals as some small percentage of your pet’s ashes are returned with other pets.

Private Cremation

Private – If the crematorium started out doing human cremations, they may refer to this as an individual cremation. If there is a question in your mind just ask and they will be glad to specify how your pet will be cremated. With a private cremation your pet is placed in the crematory by itself. To the best of the operators ability all remains from the previous pet have been removed from the crematory before your pet is place in. The ashes to the best of their ability will be all yours and there is no co-mingling with the previous pets ashes.

Urns – with both the Separate and the private cremations your pets ashes are returned in an urn of some type, Often just a simple plastic box. However you generally will be able to upgrade to a more attractive urn for a price. Ask your vet clinic or crematory at the time you leave the pet to see if they have a book or web site with optional urns, they will be happy to help with your selection.

Last comment. Make sure you know what you want, many clinics try to get you to upgrade the type of cremation as the make much more from a Private Cremation than they do a Communal. Conversely the crematories are busy places and most will try to cremate your pet as fast as possible, so if you change your mind from having you pet cremated as a Communal Cremation, it is not impossible to change once your pet has been cremated.

Again if you have a question, please feel free to ask.

Cheers
Jay