Week 4: There is an app for that!

With the holiday season soon upon us and the driving need we all have to get the best possible stuff for the cheapest amount of cash possible, one thing that is for sure: people will be running short on is patience. When you have been shopping all day and had to drag a screaming, tired child from one store to the next, it is actually very easy to get turned around and think you parked your car on one side of the store when you may have actually parked it elsewhere. My idea for an app, keeping track of where you parked your car. While it may seem like something a person wouldn’t forget, there are many things that could actually happen that make this app seem not so foolish. Do you know your license plate number? Unless you have a vanity plate odds are that you probably don’t. You are driving a brand new white Honda civic? Congrats. So are maybe a thousand other people in the city. Wonder why your doors aren’t unlocking even though you have pressed the unlock button a number of times? Take a look genius, that isn’t your car.

                Especially here in Vegas where you have multiple levels of parking structures, perhaps you might think that is your white Chevy Impala on the second floor, but yours is actually 2 floors up. What if you are just visiting a city? Perhaps you aren’t familiar with the street names or even the district that you are parked in (i.e. Financial district, the Art district). No problem. Tell the app to connect to the GPS system on your smart phone and mark the place where you are currently standing as the location of your parking spot and shop away!

Week 3 EOC: My Demographics

I am a Gen Xer. According to the textbook, there are many distinguishing attributes of my generation. Some of these may be true in my case, others might be more accurate for other members of Generation X. I can definitely agree that the statement “It was the first generation of latchkey children—products of dual-career households” as both my parents did eventually end up working full time jobs.  My brother, also a fellow member of the Gen X community, and I often spent many days “…without adult support and guidance than any other age cohort” While this did make me more independent and more adaptable, I don’t know if growing up without my parents watching my every move made me more cautious or skeptical, because I feel like I did the same stupid teenage stuff that anyone else in “Generation X” did.

            I do think that as a result of us being the “first generation of the latchkey kids” we are the “generation…” that “primary target for marketers promoting family-oriented products and services” because we want to provide for our own family what we might feel like we were missing in our own lives and want make sure that we can ensure our own kids will not feel left out. 

One thing that I do know for sure as was quoted “As one Gen Xer noted, “I don't know anyone in my age group who's ‘where they want to be’ from a financial perspective.” I think a lot of Gen Xers feel like we are doing everything we have been taught to do growing up, but still are getting ahead on life.  My generation is still struggling to make ends meet and to also try and save for our futures.

Week 3 EOC: Making money for good

Walgreen’s is on the corner of Happy and Healthy, and are apparently working to make that street corner in every city known to man. It’s a really simple concept, for every shot you get at a walgreens pharmaceutical store, they will donate a portion of the cost of that shot to the united nations to cover the cost of what could be a life-saving shot to a person in a country where it might not be as developed.

Flu (Fluvirin) ages 4+

$31.99 per dose2

This screen shot from the Walgreen’s website shows you just how much an average flu shot cost for an individual, with senior citizens forking over 20 bucks more for a higher dosage.

I think it is great that they are so willing to help but the (*) shows just how willing they are to do so. There is also apparently a “cap” on how willing they want to be, because they are a business after all, and doing the right thing is great, but not when it cuts into a company’s net profits.

So thanks walgreens for your kind service of providing us a cheaper place to kindly and nicely get poked… but at $31.99, and only a donation of $0.22, I think there is enough profit margin there to donate just a little bit more.

Information taken from https://www.walgreens.com/pharmacy/immunization/shot_at_life.jsp

Immunizations are one of the world's biggest public health success stories. But not all communities have the same access to vaccines. Get a Shot. Give a Shot.® helps provide lifesaving vaccines to families in developing countries through the United Nations Foundation's Shot@Life campaign.

*From September 1, 2016 to August 31, 2017, for every immunization administered, Walgreens will donate $0.22 to the United Nations Foundation, up to a maximum donation of $2,000,000. For more information, go to Walgreens.com/GetaShot. Vaccines subject to availability. State-, age- and health-related restrictions may apply.

EOC Week 2: The Boston Consulting Group Model

• Chuck Cruser
  EOC Week 2
  The Boston Consulting Group Model
  
  
  The video game industry has been pretty strong since the 1980’s, but no industry is impervious to hard economical times.
  
  
  •  Stars: To say that there is a star in the video game industry is hard. The stars of the show have been doing daily appearances with two showings on Saturday. At this point the only stars that either system has going for it are the ones on the horizon… meaning the new games that are usually coming out for the holiday season.
  • ▸ Cash cows: Both Xbox and PlayStation are in this phase. Either console has been around long enough to have quite the collection of games backing them, but one thing PlayStation is doing that is making their cash cow more profitable is reformatting their biggest sellers on the PlayStation 2 and re-marketing them to give them on last little bit of profit
  • ▸ Problem children: The problem child, as I see it, is the new virtual helmet that PlayStation is bringing forth. This is either going to be a really big hit or shrivel up and die in less than a year.
  • ▸ Dogs: The Dog of the video game world are the hand held consoles and the WII. Most of these no longer have new games coming out or the product support to keep these consoles in the category of children’s Christmas must-haves. 

Week 1 EOC: Great customer service

A great customer service experience I had was actually a little over a year ago. My wife and I had just sold our house in West Valley, UT in order to relocate down to here for her newly acquired job. We had made a trip down here previously in order to find an apartment for us to stay in, and luckily for us my sister works for company as a property manager in Arizona. The company she works for also owns and operates some properties here in Vegas, and with neither wife nor I having lived down here before, we had no idea where to start looking. My sister was able to give us a couple of suggestions on where to start looking. When we finally decided on a place, it wasn’t going to be available for a month. Well, it turned out another apartment became available a week after we first moved down here. We were staying at my wife’s step-mom’s house out near Lake Mead, and while we were grateful for a place to lay our heads, it was mid- August when we made the move down here. Being as the place we were staying in didn’t have running water and very little air conditioning, when given the opportunity to move in sooner than expected, we quickly jumped at the chance. There was some paper work required that we got filled out and turned in, and a deposit was required the day we got the keys. When the day finally came to move in I had my dad in town helping me load up our furniture and bring it to our new place from the house at Lake Mead. It took us longer than expected to pack everything up and were running late.  Not only that, we had issues with the trailer we were pulling and lost a vital piece mid-haul. By the time we were able to get ourselves to the property the office would be closed and, seeing that it was a Friday, wouldn’t be open again until late the following morning. The assistant Manager worked with me in arranging to have the keys waiting for me, and met my wife—who rushed home from work early—in order to allow us to move in.  He was not only kind enough to allow us to have the keys while the office was technically closed, he also arranged for us to begin moving in so we had a place to sleep that night though he didn’t yet have our security deposit. I had the check book, and was still 30 minutes away. This assistant manager didn’t have to help us. In fact, he could have lost his job if we had turned out to be dishonest people, but his willingness to do so is exactly why it wasn’t just great customer service, it was AMAZING.

Week 1 EOC: My Voice

In my opinion, a web designer isn't just a person who designs a web page, a web designer is an interpreter of ideas, an interpreter of dreams, an interpreter of vision. When a person has a vision of what they want or expect things to be, it is up to a web designer to interpret that vision and make the idea, dream, or vision into a reality.  As a web designer I look forward to helping my customers bring life to what it is they envision, modifying where needed and ultimately creating a masterpiece of which any artist could be proud. I look forward to combining my creative expertise in web design with what people envision and I hope to not only meet their expectations, but exceed them as well. If the military taught me anything it is the ability to adapt and overcome. This is definitely a quality that I am sure I will be using quite frequently throughout my career.