Back to business

Michigan Renaissance Fair, second weekend. Lots of people to help out. Diane, Heather, Lindsey, Rossana and a new girl samed Sam.

Despite unpleasant weather we managed to have another kick ass weekend. It was made even better by the fact that we could actually take credit cards!! My current machine went wonko about two weeks ago and would not work. Thousands of dollars in sales were left unprocessed. It got so bad I actually had my minion Diane driving around her neighborhood in her pajamas trying to get a signal for this stupid machine. I am eternally in her debt. In the end, I told my merchant account provider in no uncertain terms that they had failed me for the last time. (Alas, my Jedi powers are not sufficiently developed for me to shoke these bastards over the phone).

I contacted a new company called Merchant Warehouse. I recommend them highly. I called on monday and was set up with a new machine by Friday. The new hotness is called the Way System (waysystems.com) and its pretty sweet. Essentially, they grafted a credit card swiper onto a cell phone. It's small AND it gets signal at the Michigan sight. I pray it works at Great Lakes but I won;t get to test it for a while. For now, I'm up and running. I was able to manually enter the previous weeks sales info so I will soon be seeing my money. Shameless plug, if you are interrested in a merchant account or taking credit cards, contact me and I'll put you in touch with the guy I worked with. For every person who signs up I get $50. Let me say though that even if I weren't getting a kick back, I would STILL recommend the Way system and Merchant Warehouse (which had the best price for the unit bar none).

There is no rest for the wicked though, we're off to the Ohio Ren Fair site in a day or so to clean up and repair our booths and do planting etc etc. I managed to rent out my tent to a nice fellow who is new to the show. This should help defray the costs of buying the tent. Money coming in is a good thing.