Fracking whiner...

That would be me of course. I've barely moved in two days. I flip between cold and short bursts of fever where I sweat profusely. All the while generating huge amounts of lung butter and snot. The drugs seem to do nothing. I am getting very little done.

And then I remember my friend Patrick, who is undergoing Chemo and another friend who suffered a fucking stroke a week or so ago.

So at this point I will shut my damn pie hole about how bad I have it. I don't have it bad at all. I have a frackin cold.

My only worry now is getting stock and whether I'll be well enough to work this weekend. In my eighteen or so years doing this I haven't missed many work days. We can't afford to. The last time was food poisoning at the SCA event Gulf Wars. That took me out for two whole days and had me at half capacity the rest of the time. On the other hand I don't want to make my minions (or customers) sick. I have to go to Michigan, there's no avoiding that. But if I'm not better I might just hand the show off to them and keep resting.

Really Freakin tired...

The labor day weekend was, from a business perspective, ass-kickingly good. I think we broke our record up in Michigan. Ohio was slower, but was hampered by limited stock. Every one of my minions worked their asses off and it showed. I simply could not have done this by myself. Period.

The down side was that for whatever reason, I simply didn't sleep well at all. And by Monday I was dragging something fierce. I couldn't keep up. My throat was raw and my eyes hurt. Then I started getting call from Lindsey. Corsets were coming in with popped stays, corsets only a year old and gently worn. I had two customers with complaints up in Michigan. The cherry on this crap sandwich was a report that one corset came back because it had NO stays at all on one side. They hadn't popped out, they'd just not been inserted to begin with! Statistically, this is a really small number of corsets compared to what I sell every year, but I like to think I'm selling quality and durability.

I had to call Thomas, who was down at DragonCon (grr) and let him know that quality control needs to be reviewed. Seriously. I know it's not his direct fault, but he's the one I can talk to so he get to hear me bitch.

Oh, and the scratchy throat has now apparently blossomed into a cold. Joy.

Hacked!

I just discovered that one of my clients websites has been hacked. Needless to say, I am most displeased. How did this happen? Pretty simple. The client had a pretty easy to guess user name and password. Do YOU change your passwords regularly? Are they a combination of letters and numbers? Do you use the same user name and password on lots of sites? I bet a lot of you do.

Luckily the damage was minimal. They tried to redirect paypal payments to a disposable email account. A pretty unsophisticated hack. I immediately changed the user name and password to something much harder to guess, then I password protected the admin page itself with a different password. I then changed the FTP password. Then I tracked down the little bastards I.P. range. He's somewhere in Brazil most likely so I can't just drive to his place and mess with him personally.
My clients are my friends. And I don't like people fucking with my friends.

Did I mention the tornado?

When we left for Michigan on Friday we were running late. It always happens. You forget stuff, the phone rings the cats need to be fed. Whatever. We weren't worried because we set up the tent at Camp Jellystone near the Michigan Ren last week and all we were going to do at the site was drop off more stock.

As a result of leaving late we caught the Detroit traffic and by the time we'd gotten past it we ran into the "Thunderstorms" that weather.com had said we would experience. What this turned out to be was a blotting out of the sun and a wall of water that slowed us to a crawl for a half hour. This was actually a good thing. When we arrived at the campground it appeared that a tornado might have strolled right on through. Power was out and trees were knocked down everywhere. Several camping trailers had been hit by falling trees and half the tents in the little rennie camp area had been destroyed or knocked down or flooded. Honestly, it looked a lot like Biloxi again. We rolled in just as people were coming out of hiding to check on things. Luckily, no one was hurt, which is amazing as several people rode out the storm IN their tents. Our tent was hit by several branches which bent one support and tore a small hole in the rain fly. But we were still standing and dry.

People at the camp wasted no time. Chainsaws appeared and limbs were dragged into huge piles. Everyone chipped in. Within an hour our area was relatively tree-free. I was also a filthy mess. I offered our tent to anyone who needed crash space and we spent the night with our friends Monkey and Diane near Detroit. Power was still out at the camp on Saturday night but we stayed there anyway.

I took a few pics with my phone camera but they just don't do the damage justice.

The fair opened despite the weather, having suffered no great damage from what I saw. And we proceeded to have one KICK ASS weekend in sales. The vibe at the shop was great and the team worked very well together, including a new minion named Michele.

God I love the British

Not physically, of course. Their teeth scare me. But their sense of humor is just great and I enjoy fast paced work like this:


And if you like that, head over to fullyramblomatic.com for more of the same.

Pics from GenCon

Sadly, I didn't get to take very many. Too busy working. But I did grab a few and here they are.

The New addition to the family...

And here it is. Our new booth at the Great Lakes Medieval Faire. Obtaining it was an adventure fraught with stress and worry but in the end we got a good deal and a good booth.

Flooding???

We finished the three week marathon that was Great Lakes, Pennsic and GenCon. It was brutal at times but we made it and I am glad we did all three events. So what was my reward when I arrived home? A mysterious water leak in my house.

There is a trench or pipe that runs under the floors of the house. It's basically an air duct for the air conditioner on the roof. When I fired up the AC today to cool down the muggy house I heard a strange gurgling. It seemed to come from everywhere but we quickly narrowed it down to the pipe in the floor. It was completely filled with water. I tried sucking the water out with my shop vac but after thirty trips outside to dump the water I was making no headway. I went to the hardware store and rented a sump pump, but it was the kind you sit in a large flooded area, it didn't fit in the pipe. Back to the hardware store. This time we got a pump used for draining pools. We hooked it up and an hour later we'd emptied more of the water, but not all of it. I stopped and waited a few hours and the pipe has partially refilled. Of course this process made a huge mess in the kitchen where we were working.

I have no freaking clue where the water is coming from. We spent gobs of money to prevent just this sort of thing. There is a fucking rubber sheet covering the ENTIRE roof. The best we can figure is that the huge amount of rainfall has caused water to build up and leak through some small gap in our defenses. And water will just keep moving until it finds a way out. Maybe the water is from the side yard, maybe the roof, maybe a drainage line from the garage is broken. I have no easy way to know or find out. This is the pain in the ass of non-standard home construction. We are constantly trying to figure out how the place was built, why they did things the way they did, and how they fucked it up.

With the rain (hopefully) over I'm hoping the water leak will stop. If it doesn't then there's some kind of water line leak, which would be so bad as to be unimaginable. So far I don't believe this to be the case as running water lines make noise and I don't hear anything yet. What a great treat to come home to.

Let the feast of a thousand geeks begin!

Day Two of GenCon. The biggest gaming con anywhere. How's it going? well, its not the feeding frenzy I was hoping for. But its still pretty good. I had dreams of screaming corset groupies grabbing fr any corset they could get their grubby hands on, clambering for any product we could throw at them. The money would pile up on the floor in heaps. After the show, I would make snow angels in it.

Alas, it has not gone quite that way. I'm still not complaining as sales are strong. The event site is MASSIVE. Lots to see. Many shiny objects to distract. I bought another swords, because, well...I have a problem and can't say no. I tried to cover myself by handing it to Rossana and saying I got it for her (it did fit her hand well) but she could see right through me.

Not a lot of pictures yet, but tomorrow is the day of the costume contest. I have my camera at the ready. There is a pc gaming section demoing Crysis, which looks very cool. No other cool clothing vendors that I've seen so far.

Last night the wifi went out in the motel. A call to the front desk informed us that it was a problem with AT&T. Apparently they were having trouble keeping up with 60,000 geeks trying to such down gigabytes of porn on free wifi connections. Go figure.

The city of Indianapolis is creeping me out. It's clean, well laid out, has friendly and courteous drivers and good signage. What the hell is wrong with these people?

Gotta sleep now. The big day is tomorrow.

Pant...wheeze...puff...pufff

Back home from Pennsic and the last two weekends of the great Lakes Fair. So much, soooo much. No time!

The short form:

• Pennsic: A never ending flume ride through an oven.
• Great lakes: I was nearly decapitated by a porta john.
• Pennsic: Great Party
• Great Lakes: We bought a booth!
• Home: I get a mysterious scar on my forehead (really)
  

A quick stop at the the house and now we dash off to set up Michigan and do Gen-Con. Could life get busier? Yes, I may be merchanting at Pennsic next year. Holy Crap.

I'll post details when time allows. Stay cool out there.

Greatest prank ever

I appreciate a clever prank and this one gets top marks for creativity in my book.

The good news!

My Dad saw the doctor today and got the go ahead to start weaning himself off the neck brace! It appears that he's healing nicely and will likely be in good enough shape to take a planned trip to Germany this September. He sounded great on the phone, lots of energy and even talked about getting a replacement truck for his business.

Cool Beans.

Death Kittah

I have only three words for you: Grim Reaper Cat

This story is so strange it even weirds ME out a little.

Not bad...

Sometimes cruising YouTube yields interesting results. Here is a gentleman who seems to have built how own Bag End (complete with a *twitch* round door)

In hindsite...

I have read on the internets that Daniel Radcliffe (He who is Harry Potter) will turn 18 this month and when he does, he will obtain control of $40 million dollars.

Wow. I was, you know, going to get him a card...or something but uh...

Anyway. I can only hope that Mr. Radcliff will have wise and helpful hands to guide him away from the kinds of temptations $40 MILLION can buy. I am tempted to look back at my life and wonder what I might have done with $40 million when I was 18 and am forced to conclude that I would have no freakin clue. I would likely have saved some of it, but there would be some pretty large purchases that I would be regretting about now.

Like the full sized millenium falcon in my back yard, or the Hoth Base (complete with Imperial walkers) I built in Norway. Or perhaps the strip club with a Star Trek theme. The possibilities are endless.

What would you regret having bought or done with if you'd been given $40 million on your 18th birthday? And if you say "I would have invested it all in a broad range of well managed blah blah blah: you're LYING.