Joe Pryor.com Realtor Oklahoma Investment Properties

Inman News was just great. Having to miss the January meeting do to pressing health issues, it was a year since I attended. I was impressed about how different this meeting was. The first day in the blogosphere felt like a blogging PHD study compared to earlier meetings. I will write some in depth observations, but I wanted to share some highlights.

Number One. Jim Cronin of The Real Estate Tomato did a seminar on WordPress Hacks. Now he did say that is a misnomer since it is an open source platform, so he did share his favorite widgets and plugins. Using an Easter Egg was one of them, or having underlying messages in certain phrases. He was big on My Category order, putting the most important at the top, and in no particular order, All in one SEO, Facebook Connect, and Share This. VFlyers was a fave of his, and The Tomato has launched Tomato Twitter and Listing Press. More about that later.

Number Two. Twitter, Twitter, Twitter. Yes I know 70% of people online don't get it yet, but do you want to ignore 30%? And do you want to ignore a jump in use of 1298% in one year? We learned about cool Twitter add ons and site. One allowed you to set up scheduled Twitter feeds, so in the morning, you set up five and let the program do the rest. There was so much on Twitter that it deserves a comprehensive post. The only thing talked about as much was.....

Number Three. Facebook. This is where America and the world is. To ignore it is foolish. I did a post not long ago about how I wanted friends, not fans. The conference told me I was wrong. I will work on having two business sites on Facebook, and they will be like web sites. I will post specific blog post to them. Facebook has too much action to be ignored.

Number Four. Copyblogger. Sonia Simone, the senior editor gave a first day keynote address. Copyblogger is a daily read for me. It helps me be a better blogger than any other feed or site out there. Highlights were on how to be a friend and an authority at the same time, or to take it a step farther, be also a neighbor. Do special reports, and put them on a separate downloading page. Do an F.R.O, Frequently Raised Objections rather than a FAQ and answer truthfully. Do not ignore email. And remeber that a blog is a tool in a marketing plan, not the whole plan.

Much more later and with detail and some food reviews. It was San Fran, after all. I need to go over my notes, which are many. The good news about being an Inman Premuim member is that I will go back and watch the broadcast of what I liked best, and check out what I could not make. You all have a nice weekend, you here.

Charlene and I are big fans of quality foods. We have a dehydrator to do raw foods, eat fresh fish, and love organixc produce. So why do healthy people feed therew dogs kinds of food that as humans we wouldn't touch? The Barking Dog can help you. First, they do all natural dog bones they make. Ingredients like bananas, honey, are used with fish to create a tasty and healthy bone. If your dog has allergies they also have no wheat and corn treats. The salmon-swwt potato treat and the lamb-rice cakes are fit for the finest podles on earth which happen to live with us. Hope the standard is very picky and goes for the salmon, but Henri the toy loves them all, We have a birthday party coming for both this month. Hope will be 7 and Henri 3. We will choose from two diffent birthday cakes, one for each. One will be an organic csarrot caske, and the other will be a lamb-rice cake. We can also get party gifts and we will besending out their birthday party invitations for their favorite buddies, all from Barking Dog.

Barking Dog Bakery is located at 7710 N. May in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73116. They can be accessed on the web at www.barkingdogokc.com. Hope and Henri give the Barking Dog Bakery two paws up!

I am luck that Avalon Seafood market is just down the street from me. Located at 7712 N. May Ave. in Oklahoma City, I can go down one hour before dinner and get the freshest seafood in town. Last night we got Ahi Tuna for sashimi because we were leaving the next morning and didn't want to cook. In other evening and it might be Escolar, a buttery tasting ivory white tuna, or Marlin, or Yellow tail, or green mussels. We eat lots of seafood, and when they say it is fresh, it is.

Avalon also has cooking classes, where small groups get hands on experience, you bring your own bottle of wine or beer if you desire it, then you sit down to enjoy your creations. I always love places that build a sense of community while offering great service, and this is one way they do it. If you want a restaurant review, ask them which one got their fresh fish from them that day. That always works for me.

They also have one of my favorite things, a website! And they update it. On the days they get in their new arrivals, they publish on the site what's for cooking. It was hard to resist the grouper, and their crab cakes which they make daily are a revelation. If you want to enjoy the catch of the day, drive over to meet the friendly and helpful staff, or go to www.avalonseafoodokc.com. Tell them that Joe sent you. They will know who you I am, just like all the other patrons.

Let me state my first disclaimer, I am not smart enough to have the answers to health care reform and neither are you. In fact, I am wondering who has the smarts. Whatever comes out of Washington it will be imperfect as all major changes are. I know the American public has lost faith on a grand scale that D.C. can govern wars, foreighn afiiars, the budget, or here is where you throw in the kitchen sink. Second disclaimer, I am an unabashed and unapologetic liberal, and I also don't think conservative is a curse word. In fact the only problem with labels is they are usually employed as a personal attack and I refuse to be shoe horned into it. Third disclaimer, I consider myself flexible. I may be a liberal but I believe in tort reform as a part of solving this puzzle. Fourth disclaimer, if you don't think the system is broken, then do you feel that the cost that 15 years ago was $900 million has risen to $2.5 trillion with no end in site is acceptable? No more disclaimers, get to the point!

I have experienced the health care system up close and personal. As a $500,000 cancer survivor who went to MD Anderson and got great care, I can see how great medicine comes at a cost. I was also lucky enough to have the ability to put out about $30,000 of my own money in a year. For the wealthy, health care is just fine, thank you. I have had Doctors who were into the science and discovery and felt that is more important than an extra 5000 square feet on their Taj Mahal to ego. FYI, I still want choice in a new health care system, so hold off on your socialist tags. Now the next paragraph is about America and freedom.

This is really the point. I have been in real estate for 20 years, I have been with a franchise for 17 years of that, and I have a Realtor plan for health care through Blue Cross. Recently I was hit by that periodic disease, wonderlust. I wanted to explore options into a new business model. These included starting my own company, or going with a small but highly technical and internet based local group. Here is my rant, I can't leave. I am an indentured servant to my franchise because of health care. Now that I have had cancer, I can't lose or change any part of my current coverage, because to start over is a really big obstical in a pre-existing condition that would either keep me from getting coverage or cost a fortune. Since I am in an opt in program, I have to go to another large company that has the same program through our state association. If I start my own company, I have to wait 45 days to get on the program which means I lose my current coverage so that's out, and the small company can only apply once a year starting in April but not taking effect until June 1st 2010.

I could go on, but let me tell you from personal experience, this is NOT RIGHT. One of the things that makes America great is freedoms like crossing state lines without an identity card, or being able to switch from a dead end industry to a growing industry, like maybe going from assembling cars to assembling wind turbines for example. I have owned a retail business in a previous life, and all I ask is to not restrict my ability to be an entrepreneur. Yes I do still have choice, but for someone less than eight months from my last cancer treatment, you really want to call that a choice, not to have health care? All I ask of our elected officials is that while you are taking money from lobbyist representing insurance, AARP, trial lawyers, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, and again thow in the kitchen sink, please stop acting like heroin addicts getting free heroin, and think about what makes America great. Also remember that besides the rsing cost, we are a world leader in infant mortality among other horror stories, and please do the right thing to make it better. Also remember middle class people like me, working our buns off, paying our taxes, and who contimue to vote in hope that the system can still work.

And all I ask is to remember my little piece of the American dream, which is to be my own boss. Right now, I am a prisoner of a broken American health care system.

I know that it is hard to make a dry cleaners sound sexy, but Parkway Cleaners in Edmond Oklahoma does just that. The owner, Mark Neighbors is passionate about cleaning, and he is advanced beyond most places in the country, like bloggers and social networkers go one step beyond in marketing.

First, let me talk to about technology. Mark hired an Italian company to build the largest conveyor belt dry cleaners system they had ever built. When you walk into Parkway and give them your name for pick up, the system automatically starts moving. When your laundry and/or dry cleaning come down to the floor level, automatic arms pick it up, put it in a bagging area, and automactically bad your clothing. Everything is bar coded for a fool proof system. When I bring in my clothes I have two different bags depending on what i bring, and it not only knows the clothes are mine, it knows that I want cold wash and no starch. It knows if I want shirts folded or on hangers. I love to come in just to watch.

Second and most important, Parkway believes in being Green and they have won national awards. They recycle hangers, and they only use biodegradable bags. The plant is run on electricity 100% from wind power. The steam for pressing that lies unused in the pipes, rather than being allowed to evaporate is sent back to an energy efficient heat exchanger and reused. They have even with a dramatic increase in business cut the solvent use to 1/10th what it used to be, and it is used 100% of its total. Once a month a lab in Germany test the solvent for purity. Parkway has the only CO2 cleaning machin in Oklahoma which uses chilled comporessed liquid carbon to clean the clothes. This is the only method that has won EPA approval as environmentally neutral. It is actually more environmentally friendly that washing in water! It also eliminates a solvent most cleaners use called perchloroethylene, which is now known as a pollutant, and a potential carcinogen.

I am proud to have Parkway as a preferred partner that I am adding to my web sites. I should also mention that Parkway in the same block has a world class mens clothing store, men and womens shoe store, and office buildings that house 4 restuarants, and a space for University of Central Oklahoma jazz musicians to practice and play concerts. Mark Neighbors and Parkway are another Oklahoma Gem that I am featuring in the month of August. Go by 140 E. 5th St in Edmond, Oklahoma 73034, call them at 405-341-3211, or visit them online at www.parkwaycleaners.com.