Warming Up

Once again I'm working on my blog on a Saturday. Mainly because of work. You see, for the last four days (including this one) I've been trying to get a game running on my computer. For most people this probably wouldn't qualify as “work”, but it certainly does for me. EverQuest Next Landmark has gone into Beta testing and Sam McDowell managed to get me a key. So, I need to get in there and start checking out its features. It's one of the games that's going to bring money to gamers. That's actually part of the future of gaming and one of the up and coming branches of the entertainment industry. Either way, I digress. The point is that my computer is installing updates for Ubuntu (an OS kind of like Windows) for the six or seventh time this week. As a result I can't do anything with it and have time to work on my blog.

In other news: Spring continues to get springier around here. Last night when I went to bed it was right at 82 degrees and it was 65 when I got up. In the next couple of weeks it will probably be getting up into the 90s and will stay in the 70s even at night. Ah, the South Carolina weather, lol. Of course, the kids are loving it. They've been spending hours a day outside. Abby and Caleb both learned to ride a bike over the past few days. So, they've been out riding up and down the road a lot. Titus is crawling around faster and faster and building up his mussel mass. We're hoping he'll start trying to pull up soon. We want to get him walking :)

We've taken a few pictures during the week. We need to take more... Either way, here's what we've got:


Once we've got the money to go anywhere or do anything these posts and pictures may start to get more interesting, lol. In fact, in the long run I'm thinking about doing two different blogs. One will be our “travel” blog where I'll do daily posts about our adventures abroad. The other will be my “normal” blog where I post once a week about things I'm thinking about. I'll get to that in a minute though, I still need to finish the local news...

Work is going very well. We invited a number of new testers into the Alpha this Friday. A number of bugs were fixed this week and the team has begun to use a tool called Mantis to track bugs. I like it because it sends me an e-mail every time the status of a bug changes. Needless to say that helps me keep my fingers on the pulse of our progress. As we get more and more testers in we're going to get more and more feedback and make Worlds of Magic better and better.

We currently have three different publishers looking at us. One of them said they would make a firm decision by the end of next week. Personally I'm hoping that we end up in contract negotiations week after next. I'm more than ready to have a publisher lined up. I've had enough interviews and e-mails with potential publishers. I want to have the deal “signed, sealed, and delivered” as they say. Of course, it's all part of the job.

Either way, it's time to change gears now. This is the part of the blog where I just talk about what's been occupying my mind. For the last few weeks that has been Dominican business. Now, some of you find this incredibly dull and dry. However, not everyone does. In fact, not everyone who reads this blog replies to my posts here. Some actually call me on the phone to discuss the things I've posted about. And they call to talk business, politics, religion, etc, etc, etc, rather than talking about the kids learning to ride bikes, lol. That's why I said that I may eventually break this into two blogs. Some people are interesting in one of my themes, some the other, and still others both. So, in time I may do two blogs. For now, however, just read the part you like and ignore the other. I don't mind doing both :)

Now, on to business (as they say). Just to recap: Over the past few posts we've established an imaginary meat packaging plant (this also handles eggs), a chicken farm, a fertilizer company, and a feed company. We've also got a number of small trucks and full time drivers that pick up raw goods and deliver finished products. We're now going to expand all this both for domestic use and export.

Before I go any further I want to say that I'm very in favor of a more balanced world economy. So, although Dominica should be exporting chicken to the US (and elsewhere) rather than importing chicken from it, we don't want it all to be one sided. Dominica should import things from the US (and elsewhere) that it's can't produce locally. The country should be importing things from steel to golf carts rather than chicken. Imports and exports should help both parties involved. I mention this just because I'm about to talk about more exports. In time we may get to specific imports, but for the moment just keep in mind that Dominica is always going to be importing things from the countries it exports to.

After this post I plan to move on from food, so I want to try to hit all the major food points real quick. First, with the infrastructure we've got in place we can easily expand production to include pigs, goats, and cattle (we might even want to look into sheep production in time). All of these animals are already being raised on the island. We would just be streamlining the production process. Once again, we would start by buying from the local farmers and then expanding production with our own farms. This would have the added benefit of expanding both our feed and fertilizer businesses.

It would also open up the possibility of milk production. One of the most jarring things about Dominica to me, as an American, was a lack of fresh milk products. It's a market just waiting to be explored. They currently import milk to fill demand, but it could be met locally and demand increased if the island had its own full size dairy. Not only could we offer local fresh homogenized pasteurized milk both for locals and tourists (people from the US and England are used to fresh milk), we would also be able to produce cheese, ice-cream, and other diary products to export for our Nature Island brand foods. We could easily make a market for Mango Sherbet, lol. Another side product would be leather, but we can touch that later (or not as the case may be).

After we have all this rather ordinary food production in place we can start to really expand. First we should start making our own milk chocolate. At this point we'll be able to get all the ingredients locally. The chocolate can be hand made in a small facility. Again, we can focus on the Nature Island angle and push our brand of candies as being all natural. There would be a ready market for this just from tourists that come in on cruise ships.

Of course, we want to be even more bold at this stage. We want to try to get permission from the government to farm land crabs, giant crayfish, giant frogs, and other native species. Again, we want to raise them both for local sales and export. These are things that could be considered delicacies in other places in the world just because they're not local. We could also help build up wild populations. (Dominica recently had to change it's national dish from “Mountain Chicken”, which is giant frog, because the wild population was decimated a few years ago.)

Now that we've got our local food production in place we can start to work the tourist angle a bit. Dominica really needs to develop its own cuisine. Its restaurants should always have land crabs, giant crayfish, and giant frogs on the menu. You should also be able to buy fresh fish caught daily (which you probably can). In truth I need to visit a number of restaurants when we go back. This is an area where I really don't know what's already available. Still, whatever is available at the moment certainly isn't going to be hurt by increased local production.

In truth this is just a cursory overview. We could (and probably should) do even more with food production. However, for the point of this blog I think we've thoroughly explored the subject. Next week I want to focus on the other jobs that our farming industry has created. From there we'll go on to higher tiers of production and what advantages Dominica has.

This post has run long enough (maybe even a little longer, lol). So, for now at least, goodnight from South Carolina!