We heard gull squawking outside, a bit louder than the normal melody at this time of day so Keith ventured outside.  Turns out a Bald Eagle has caught a gull and the rest of its clan is yelling at Mr. America.  A fellow washing his car next door watched the capture and reported, with awe, that the Eagle caught the gull mid-flight.

Sabrina just noted the Eagle cry we’ve been hearing was the parent calling for his immature offspring, who has just arrived. What a gift to watch the nature’s less gentle side unfolding out our windows.

I love this town.  As sad as this afternoon is for that poor gull,  this kind of drama beats the heck out of drive-by shootings, armed robberies, and the other crazy stuff that happens in the cities.

Spring has arrived at the beach.  And it is good.

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Create Visibility For Your Business on Facebook: Top Ten Ways
By Christine Gallagher

With Facebook recently overtaking MySpace as the number one social networking site, it is definitely worth taking a look at if you are in business.

According to a study done recently by the Aberdeen Group companies are using sites like Facebook to improve the interactions they have with their customers. The study showed that companies that use social networking sites are 17 times more likely to improve customer satisfaction than companies that don’t use them.

If you already have a profile on the site but aren’t sure how to leverage it for networking, brand visibility and gaining feedback–check out these top tips for boosting your reach through this hot social tool.

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This was a fun project.  Don Couch, President of Sterling Pacific Corporation, had a clear vision of the function of his site and of the general feeling he wanted the visuals to convey.  He also had a lot of trust in us to give him a professional site that would meet his needs and that is music to our ears.

Here’s a not oft-admitted nugget-o-knowledge:  When you give us more freedom to do right by you, we give more free add-ons because, well, it’s fun and we have the time since we can rely on our expertise rather than jump through hoops.  Trust is something we don’t take lightly around here; we try to always repay it in greater measure than expected.

So, when Don told us he was happy to let us have freedom in the decision making along the way so long as his objectives were met, there was a little happy dance on the part of the web team, followed by the dreaming up of ideas we could give Don that would improve his online presence without compromising the machine-like and precise presentation we expected his clients to appreciate.

We also especially enjoyed this job because we got to learn a bit about an industry with which none of us were familiar.  You see, Sterling Pacific is in the business of, amongst other things, doing appraisals and certifications of BIG airplanes around the globe.  We hadn’t even heard of FAA DAR Services, so Kathy’s search engine optimization research opened a new world for us.

Now we’re looking forward to peeking back in six months or so and seeing if the precise terms chosen bear fruit.  Stay tuned…

We’ve just learned from one of our website hosting providers that they’ll be upgrading RAM memory sometime in the next week or so. This is going to help improve performance and increase up-time and is part of the process to really improve the performance of the server machines.

They, and then we, will announce more details once dates are confirmed.  There will be about 15 minutes of down time, which will happen off peak times.  We don’t expect our –or your– customers to even notice but we like to keep you informed.

It’s hard to believe we’re already in full swing getting the summertime festival and event materials ready for the coming season.  This winter seemed to fly by!  Maybe it was the snow.  More likely it was not having a summer last year making the actual winter seem short in comparison to the prior year’s 9 months of rain.  Hmmm.

Ragan Andrew at the City of Long Beach is on the ball this year and not only has her schedule in place for SummerFest, a series of activities and street performances in downtown Long Beach, WA on summer weekends, she’s updated her rack card advertsing key events.  Go, Ragan!

If you’ve never made it to our lovely spit of sand during the summer months, really, this is the year to make it happen.  There are festivals and other happenings most every weekend, frequently in each of the string of pearls known as the towns of the Peninsula.  Here’s a good place to start:  http://funbeach.com/events/summerfest/