He's one of us!

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Both J and I have the entrepreneurial spirit. I'm in the process of getting Glutenada, my 3rd business, off the ground and J is all about working for himself and always looking for ways to increase what he's offering and the direction he's headed.

Then there is our 15 1/2 year old son. He's big into online gaming (Halo, especially) and has recently discovered just how much fun putting together your own custom PC can be. He's got a custom case, hig-end motherboard, etc, etc. He's also done some banner work for his fellow gamers and at one point thought about having a website where he could sell his banner services to other gamers and people on "his forums."

I have to say, my mommy heart just swelled with pride at the thought of him looking to start his own mini-business. But that pales to what I felt last night when he came up with an idea that is sheer brilliance!

And that's all I'm going to say for now. There are some rather nefarious folks in the world and I'd hate for someone to step in and steal his big idea before it can come to fruition.

I'll post more info as this progresses. I know he's my son so I'm just slightly biased, but I really think he's on to a *great* idea and the few people I've talked to about it agree.

Yay for the Flea! He's got that entrepreneurial spirit just like us!

BFO's

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

There has been a step in the packaging of my fudge that has driven me batty. I finally ended up paying our son to do it as I was ready to rip my last remaining hairs out.

The shrink wrap band. Now, this is the first time I've ever dealt with applying these things so I have no idea what they're supposed to be like. I asked the supplier for the size needed and then bought a bazillion in that size.

Here is the steps to getting them on..

1. Hold jar flat on table and with both hands, open shrink band and place over back of lid.

2. Now gently slide it on from back to front.

3. Oh, it popped off on the back. urgh...

4. Start back at step 1 - again gently sliding it over the lid and easing it over front of jar lid...

5. Drat! It folded under on the front. Remove and try again. ARGH...

6. Popped off again - now it's looking a bit mangled and doesn't want to go on at all. Discard and reach for another.

7. Repeat steps 1-5.

8. Make it all the way on this time. Now to move it down.

9. Applying *gentle* pressure, slowly twist the band around with one hand while holding jar stationary in other hand. It's slowly moving down, down - ARGH! The perforation split!! :high pitched screaming ensues:

10. Yank off and go back to step 1.

11. Get to step 9 and see stars and red as perforation again splits. Slowly and with cold fury, rip off shrink band and grasp the edge of the table for emotional support. Breath deep. In and out. Calllmmmmm....

12. Repeat steps 1-5.

13. Finally, after 30-seconds to 2 minutes (or more sometimes!) the blasted thing is on. Discard the pile of warped and broken bands and move to the next jar, taking a brief time out to beat head against brick wall.

Because the bands are so tight, doing a few dozen of these gives me a chaffed hand. It's oh, so incredibly time consuming. And frustrating to be throwing away 10 times the number of bands as actually are applied. And did I mention how frustating and aggravating and time wasting it is?!

I was at the office yesterday, looking at supplies for the deluge of orders I have to fill from a recent sale and I just about broke down over the idea of applying hundreds of bands. I honestly wanted to just dissolve into a puddle on the floor.

And then it hit me - I wonder if they have bigger sizes.

Now here is where the BFO (as a member on a forum I'm on calls it - Blinding Flash of the Obvious) comes in because as it turns out, there ARE larger sizes. A whole bunch more!

This whole time we could have just been quickly slipping those things over the top and then shrinking them down.

ARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.... so many hours and days wasted! So many hairs on the floor! So many needless Tylenols and Aleves popped from the wall-banging headaches!

Thankfully I found this out *before* the huge packging day we've got coming up. I ordered them and paid for 2 day shipping so they're here in time. My son is nearly delirious with joy over not having to fight with bands that are marginally larger than the lids they're going over.

Whew! Wish I would have come to this realization a year ago. But, as this BFO goes, better now than next week after I'd been admitted for delusional and unstable behavior following a marathon session of appying shrink bands that were TOO SMALL!!

what is with people?!

Sunday, October 07, 2007

I love what I do. I really do. I love working with new people to create a website that they are thrilled with. I love getting to know them and their products and I enjoy so much when the see the payoff in the form of increased sales and exposure. I love every aspect of it.

With the exception of just a few people, I'm still working with every single one of the folks I've done websites or work for. I take great delight in surprising them with how quickly I take care of the mundane requests and perform their updates. I guess I'm pretty simple at heart - things like a request coming in and my taking care of it 34 seconds later makes me giggle.

But then, every so often, something happens that just makes me stop and say, HUH?

That's what happened tonight. I had a job I was working on and I've just been fired because I wasn't "friendly enough". I wasn't "enough of a mother." I wasn't "warm and comforting" and the other person was having to do all the work.

This is bad enough to hear in any situation but this was told to me over the phone. It's Sunday and I took time out of my oh-so-brief family evening to call this gal because she was having some second thoughts about working with me. I don't know many other developers who would call someone on a Sunday night, way outside of business hours. Well, my hours are all over the place, but still.

But, when I saw that she had written and asked me to call, me being me, I set down to call her. And what I got was certainly not what I expected. I was utterly flabbergasted to hear the things she was saying and I think she had amped herself up to talk to me because I wasn't able to get a word in edgewise so we could try to work something out. Instead, I was treated to a rant about the things I wasn't doing that I should have been.

Apparently there was a game plan for this job and I wasn't issued a copy. It's a bit hard to know your place in a play when you've not been told your lines. I guess she had an expectation of what I would say and what I would do and when I didn't do this, she lost it. Too bad I wasn't told about this first! Might have changed the outcome.

I think I'll go finish making my scrumptious Cheesy Chicken Pot Pie. Yum!