Dear Friends,

Wow, what a week! Autumn has burst upon the scene with some of the most brilliant fall colors in a long time. If you are waiting for “peak foliage” in Vermont to take a visit, you’d better get on your horse, because it’s now. The local public radio station’s weatherman keeps mentioning different “Signs of Fall;” the one I liked this morning was that one has to “turn the light on to get dressed in the morning.”

The financial crisis was the biggest news this week, and with it, a couple of those troubled banking companies downgraded Apple’s stock. Now, let’s get this straight—the same guys who need our tax dollars to keep them from going out of business because of their greed and stupidity are downgrading Apple? Come on now; this is the same Apple that is continuing to grab market share, that has $20 billion in cash in the bank (I hope it’s a good bank) and who continues to provide innovative products that lead the industry. One source reports that Apple now has a 35% market share based upon dollars, and their notebook sales are up 35% while Windoze-based laptops are down 1.5% In other news, ComputerWorld reported that Mac OS X market share is 8.2%. This means that based upon 40,000 websites, 8.2% accessed those sites using Mac OS X. By the way, one of those other little innovations from Apple—the iPhone—already has a 0.3% market share for those same websites.

You may have noticed the new image of us on the left—Hammer and I were cover boys on the cover of Vermont Business Magazine this month, that included a feature story about me! It was fun posing with Hammer at the studio. I just read the article this morning, and I had fun talking with the author, Joyce Marcel, while at the interview. I got a copy of the cover shot from the photographer, Glenn Moody, and gave it to my mom for her 88th birthday on Tuesday.

The Garage Sale continues and we have been scrambling to catch up with all the orders and get these bargains on the way. They are a lot of fun, but it does stretch our resources a bit in the fulfillment phase. By the way, a couple of readers pointed out our error in starting the sale on Rosh Hashanah. My apologies; I was out sick, or I would have caught that (I might catch something from my mom for that oversight!). At any rate, Happy New Year 5769!