YMT vacations has been delivering affordable travel options to customers since its founding in 1967. Back then of course you’d have visited the company directly — like a travel agent — to plan and book your travel, but in recent years, YMT Vacations has gone online with its signature travel packages. How does a company like this compete in the online realm amid Sasquatch-sized grizzlies the ilk of the big travel companies? By consistently providing BETTER customer service (not too difficult to do if you’ve ever tried to tussle with one of the big travel guys’ so called customer service lines), MORE AFFORDABLE and intriguing vacation destination packages to places like Hawaii, Alaska, and even Oberammergau, Germany.

In the very near future what I really liked about YMT vacations website is its impending “Vacation Desktop,” a flexible and customizable user page that will allow site users and prospective YMT travel customers to plan their vacation options, share photos, email friends and family with the details of their trip and route, access global weather, trip finders, contact a travel agent, and book a trip all from the same place. This type of personalization finally draws the line in the sand.

But the topic of home renovation can quickly inspire a bucket-load of consumer “pain” especially the loss of big bucks to home remodelers that are…well, BAD and a big rip-off. Just consider the popularity of a resource like Angie’s List that allows consumers like you and I to publish reviews of home contractors of almost any sort. Here is a more level playing field.

Larry Judson, founder of K-Designers, dialed into his customer base early on and has since capitalized on the biggest source of customer/client pain. He specifically offers services to customers seeking more than what your local handyman can deliver. So what’s the “K”-difference? K-Designers specializes in customized renovations that allow home owners the chance to create environments with character, as well as build-in exponential worth. Even more proof of K-Designers emphasis on quality is their library of free whitepapers available on their home website. I dig whitepapers and believe that any company willing to take the time to address its specific industry trends and issues is taking a giant step in the right direction.

“Sak” as he’s affectionately called, spends all of his free time fishing. But like any good analyst, he digs deep into the fish, the nature of fish, into the science of ichthyology. Most guys stop with the ability to be able to spot a bass and identify it from a trout or perch. But Sakwinder Narwal wants to know it all.

He’s well-travelled, but not for business. He’s been all over the world seeking the hottest fishing spots. He’s sight-fished the Florida Keys, cast for shark off Montauk Point, NY, and loves a good tussle with a Louisiana redfish.

I’ve worn contact lenses in the past, and at times they’ve been exactly what I’ve wanted. However, I keep two very different pairs and styles of eyeglasses that I’ve taken to wearing in the last 2 years–they are great for creating a new mood and look whenever I want it. Playground be damned—”four eyes” is definitely NOT a social slur anymore.

I only wish that even 10 years ago I had the resources available with Eyeglasses.com. I could have browsed styles I never had the chance to see in my local optical shop.

Already this ministerial organization has provided a backbone that’s allowing Roman Catholic communities everywhere the chance to recover and cast a wider net to current and potential parishioners.

In 1976 the seeds of RENEW International were sown in a diocese in Newark, New Jersey. There two parish priests lamented the loss of spirituality in their Catholic community and surmised that if it was happening to them, could it not be a new spiritual epidemic threatening to drag down other dioceses? Thirty years later the organization continues to successfully transform downtrodden and discouraged dioceses nationally and now internationally.

I just finished reading an MIT article written 2 years ago underscoring the dire real estate market. In the article Jeff Barcy comments from his perspective as institutional RE investment pro–his position at the time with Hearthstone. Barcy lamented back then the biggest “difficulty” was convincing RE investors that the market could ultimately rinse out with big rewards for gutsy investors.

Ridgeback, with Jeff Barcy at the helm, are digging hard into a market that’s garnering some new and big buzz: “distressed residential opportunities,” wrecked mortgage securities, and more of the REIT debris that could ultimately prove a win-win for all involved.

Think MacGyver knife armed to the teeth with data tools:

looks like a Swiss Army knife

blade like a Swiss Army knife

scissors, file, flat-head screwdriver…

oh, but wait….

here’s the clincher:

32 MB flash drive–removable– or what V. calls “memory stick” (flips out like a cool blade that fits in your computers USB port)

and a data encrypted fingerprint sensor so you can lock all your most secret stuff on deck, so to speak

on-board laser pointer

Bluetooth remote

All I can say with my eyes rolling around in my head is, “Wow!”…it’s gonna be so mine come Christmas.

Officially available later this month….

Word has it the price will be $330. But check out Victorinox’s line of Swiss Flash knives and you’ll find a wide array of equally cool and ready to do battle knives with built-in flash drives, laser pointers, even ball-point pens, in easy prices from $34 to $140

On the Pro version it’s all about that snazzy fingerprint sensor…how Mission Impossible can you get?

But I’ve stopped getting myself all “vechlempt” over a holiday that between me and my mom is simple–Flowers. My mother, now 86 years old, is a fireball–still taking jazz dance class and rocking it in senior aerobics. Really. And up until about 5 years ago the gardens around her home were amazing. My sister and I had installed a number of high-end perennial gardens 17 years ago–they’re mature and have overgrown their edges and rock walls to the point that for my mother they are unmanageable. If you garden then you know the kind of natural “out-of-control” to which I refer. But on Mothers day I’ve finally decided that flowers are the ticket.

The landscape/garden shop I used to work for has stopped doing floral arrangements, so I tried 1800flowers.com a few years ago. I recall exactly what I ordered (AGONIZED over the final decision)–2 dozen fresh cut yellow and red tulips–delivered right to her home–when I couldn’t be there to do it in person. To be honest I had been reluctant, especially having been a professional in the gardening business. I thought ordering flowers this way would assure me some boring and bland funeral-styled arrangement, so the actual experience was a big bang for both she and I. Scored points for that.

Remember, here is a woman whose gardens dish up some pretty juicy perennial flowers each Spring and Summer, so Mothers day flowers that arrive via delivery truck had better be pretty special in order to get her  high on being  my mom. She and I understand that flowers on Mother’s Day are unsurpassed, they aren’t lame, or too much of what-everybody-else-does…they are absolute essentials for celebrating life.