Dear Friends,

I am sitting in the airport waiting for my flight to Hong Kong. It has been a whirlwind travel schedule so far as another fantastic ASMC (Apple Specialist Marketing Coop) conference has wrapped up, this time in Albuquerque, NM. I had meetings with Apple, other Apple resellers, and a couple of vendor fairs thrown in, too. It was nice to be in New Mexico for a couple of days, but I really noticed the desert dryness. I did see, off in the distance, the balloon festival with hundreds of colorful balloon floating in the Albuquerque sky.

I have been able to spend some time in the Key West store recently; in fact, Grace and I ran the store by ourselves on Saturday! It was great to talk to a whole new group of customers and we had a long, but productive, day. Our new sign arrived for that store and Sean is down from our Manchester, NH store to help with organizing and training our new employees. I’ll be back in Key West after this journey to HK — ahh, life in the fast lane!

I got a new car a couple of weeks ago, too. The lease was up on my other car, an Infiniti, and since I liked it, I decided to buy their hybrid that is similar. It comes with Infiniti connection and an iPhone app, too. Theoretically, I can lock and unlock my car remotely with this app. I think I’ll have Grace go outside and watch as I do that remotely from literally the other side of the world.

In Hong Kong, I will be attending a couple of trade shows and visiting my friend (and our man in China) Simon Laio. I will also be visiting the factories of some of the companies that supply us with products for our Hammerhead and Chill Pill Audio brands. When I go, I am looking at working conditions, observing things such as ventilation, etc. and generally getting the feel of the company.

I remember one company that I visited had a big banner in the entry that basically translated to “Quality is Nothing, Speed is Everything.” We decided not to do business with this company. One of the life lessons we are always talking to our partners about is that out of three things — fast, good and cheap — you can pick any two . We are always interested in good, but fast trumps cheap for us.

It looks like some new products are coming from Apple soon if the rumor sites are to be believed (or if you believe in Santa)!