business

Testing Coin Shipping Processes

By / May 22, 2013 / 2 Comments

Yesterday the coins showed up as a big pile of boxes. I also had shipping supplies stacked in various corners of my house. Today Janci and I sorted through all of it and set up the garage to be a warehouse for shipping coins. We assembled the first 100 sets of coins and packaged up the first 100 orders. This test of the process gave us time to figure out a dozen small things, like we need two glue dots per coin instead of one. Which means I had to place an order for six more rolls of glue dots. We also realized that the Maxim 11 key drop does not come with a ring. We ordered those express shipped because it really doesn’t seem fair to sell key chains without rings on them. We’ll draw the line at actually attaching the ring. It only takes a minute to do one, but doing a thousand would seriously crimp the mirth around here. There were half a dozen other problem spots that we identified and resolved. It took us six hours of work to set everything up and test it all. But now we have a process and it works. I’m sitting right next to 100 packages of coins which will go out with tomorrow’s mail. On Friday we start assembly lining this project.

My garage turned coin shipping warehouse, not pictured are a row of four more coin types:

The Coins Arrived

By / May 21, 2013 / 8 Comments

Today Janci and I spent four hours organizing the work spaces, sorting invoices, and generally cleaning up so that coin shipping could proceed. This flurry of activity was triggered by the UPS packing tracking stating that the coins were out for delivery. And they were. My garage is full of coins. I spent an hour sorting to pull out samples of all the types of coins. They had to be inspected. Later this evening I spent another 90 minutes making sure all the addresses were in order and everything is cleared for test shipping tomorrow. That will be the day when Janci and I start putting packages together and trying to figure out how everything works.
Total coin shipping work hours today: 10.5

The coins are gorgeous. Holding them makes me very happy. I would be more eloquent about that if I were not so very tired.

Bits and Pieces of Posts

By / May 20, 2013

This week and next week I have so many irons in the fire that there is hardly any room for a fire. I’m not likely to have brain enough to write full and thoughtful blog posts. Yet my brain is thoroughly trained to notice things, think about them, and then hold them until time to write. My brain fills up with fragments, each of which would be a lovely post, but time and I have to march onward. By the time I have space to write there will be some other thought more pressing. So I shall record some of the fragments in the hope that if I pin them down with words, they’ll stop fluttering around in my brain begging for attention I can not spare.

No one told me that the sales people would begin circling the minute my child completed her ACT and declared her intention to both graduate from high school and attend college. Circle they did, first with suggestions of the importance of commemorating high school. Surely my child needed a ring, a jacket, a hoodie, photographs, a tassel, graduation announcements, all with her school logo. I was assured that these things would be forever treasured, just like her years in high school. The brochures were pitched to appeal to nervous/nostalgic teens and parents alike. We got her a tassel. While the pitches to commemorate high school were still in full force we started hearing from colleges. All of them wanted us to know that they were very impressed and giving Kiki a very special opportunity for a fast-track application. They very carefully did not say how much they want our education dollars. Kiki applied to a single school, got in, and began bouncing the rest straight into the trash. I thought that would be the end of it, but today we got the first of a new onslaught. Our child is going to the dorms, surely we want to buy her a super value kit of bedding, laundry hamper, toilet kit, all at extremely reasonable prices. Every where I turn someone is hoping that during this transitional period in our lives we’ll be ready to throw around some money in an effort to appease our emotions. It makes me think of the stories Howard tells about the shark-like tactics of coffin salesmen. They’re worse than used car salesmen because they prey on the bereaved.

This morning I gave the final go ahead for the printing of Body Politic. I will next interact with that book when it shows up at my door. As usual, I do not have time to luxuriate in something completed. Instead I am immediately setting to work on the reprinting of Tub of Happiness and even more critically on the shipping of 30,000 coins. Latest word says that those coins will arrive at my door by Wednesday. Tomorrow I’ll begin triaging to figure out how the shipping processes need to work.

We’re in the last rush to complete school work before the year is over. It makes me resentful of the one last complex project that Patch has to complete. The other three kids mostly have at-school things left to do, not homework.

I spent this morning re-creating financial data after my hard drive crash. It was tedious, but finally validated my tendency to keep paper statements. I’m still maintaining a list of data lost. So far it is only four items long. This is good.

I wish I had more time to luxuriate in the process of helping Kiki prepare for her CONduit show. I would love to do right by her there. Particularly since her latest birthday was not everything she hoped it would be. Yes the circling sales people are right, we are a bit emotional during this transitional phase. I just don’t think that buying her the perfect dorm room trash can will make up for whatever lacks there have been in the past eighteen years. Instead I’ve been trying to soak up normal before normal changes. She graduated from Seminary on Sunday. Next Thursday she’ll don the classic cap and gown and march with her classmates. I don’t know where that will put us all emotionally. We’re in uncharted territory here. The kids afterward will have a road map that they can follow or avoid. For now I’m doing small nice things for Kiki daily between now and the beginning of June. It won’t be enough, or rather, if there hasn’t been enough to date, no last minute effort will fix that. But it feels like the impending launch is a good one. We’re nervous, but ready. Also, we’ve still got months. Graduation closes off high school, but it does not begin college.

Howard is feeling better, for which I am daily grateful.

I read a novel draft for a friend. It was how I spent my Saturday instead of the ways I’d assigned to myself. I love when a book pulls me in and earns my tears. Note, there is a difference between pulling strings and really earning sadness. Also, I love it when I can love the books of my friends.

My poor correspondence box is gathering dust. I hope to write letters again in June.

It is late and there are more irons in the fire for tomorrow.

Deciding Whether to Attend Conventions and Conferences

By / May 18, 2013 / 4 Comments

The other morning I read a post from a woman who deliberately stayed home from LDS Storymakers conference because she has discovered that writer’s conferences are a negative experience for her. The post got me thinking about my experiences at conferences and conventions. They are always a mixed bag for me. I usually come home very glad that I went and exhausted. Yet there is almost always a time during the event when I wonder why I’m even there. Suddenly all the differences between me and the other attendees loom large, I feel outside, like I don’t belong. One of my least favorite manifestations of this is when I go home in the evening and spend the next several hours stewing over how everything I said was dumb and convincing myself that everyone was offended and/or thought I was an idiot. None of those things are true, at least not from an outward perspective, but they feel true to me in those moments and those moments are definitely part of every convention or conference experience.

I think there are those who experience these conferences and conventions differently. Perhaps in their regular lives they are constantly misunderstood or disregarded, then they arrive at the conference to discover it full of people who are passionate about the same things. For them convention attendance has a profound feeling of coming home to a safe place. Over time a few events have developed that feel for me, LTUE is like home, CONduit used to be, but isn’t anymore, Storymakers began to feel like home just this year. An event feels like home when people there are glad to see me and I don’t feel like I have anything to prove. All the other conventions and conferences in my life have me feeling like a stranger in a strange land. I spend lots of time observing and thinking.

I was at a convention last summer where Lois McMaster Bujold was also in attendance. She is one of my writing heroes and so I watched her for things I could emulate. I saw many things, one of which was that she went to panels and presentations as an audience member. I almost never do that anymore, in part because many of the panels cover topics that I’ve already heard a dozen times. Yet I admire that teachable quality and I do try to seek out those people from whom I can learn. There are some teachers who pour out good information even if the stated topic is not something I particularly need. Most of my best convention moments come from quiet conversations that happen in the green room or the hotel lobby. Then the chaos of an entire convention narrows down to a conversation between a few. These are the moments when connections are made, hearts are healed, and the beginnings of new opportunities are begun. Those moments would not happen if I did not come to the chaotic show. These days my primary defense against feeling out of place is to find someone to talk to and ask a hundred questions about their life.

Even having acquired a suite of emotional management techniques for conventions, there are times when I decide to stay home. This past year I stayed home a lot. It was what I needed to do. I’ll be staying home again in September when Howard goes to Worldcon. The primary reason for this is bad timing, Worldcon lands the week after my kids start school. They need me at home to provide stability. There is a lesser, but still significant reason as well; Worldcon has been really rough for me the last two times I went. I’ve spent a couple of years stepping back and figuring out which emotional strings to disconnect so that the event will no longer turn me into knots. The process is not complete, but I think it will be by 2014, so perhaps I’ll attend Worldcon then. There are other shows I’ve skipped and been glad that I did. Sometimes staying home is the right answer.

The thing I have to remember is that my presence at a conference changes that conference. I add something to it by being there. This is hard to realize because the conventions and conferences are big and it is very obvious that I am irrelevant to most of the people there. All that accumulated irrelevance is what sends me into spirals of self doubt. Yet I never know when a comment or class from me will be the piece that another person desperately needs. Sometimes I never find out that I helped another person, other times I get to see it happen. I love when I get to see it, but I have to remember that these effects are often invisible. I can’t help others if I don’t show up.

In the next year I’ll be venturing forth more, at least I think I will. I have to consider each event individually to decide whether going is right for me.

Adventures in Computer Hardware

By / May 15, 2013 / 3 Comments

Last Thursday I uploaded the final files for The Body Politic to our printer in China. When I clicked to close the ftp program I noticed that the machine was behaving oddly, like it had to think extra hard about what to do next. I use this machine all the time and I could tell something was significantly wrong. Sure enough, halfway through the back up process it failed completely. Diagnostics at JPL Computers have diagnosed a hard drive failure. No data is retrievable from the drive.

Hard drive failure is never good news. Yet, as with Howard’s recent hard drive failure, this one happened as conveniently as possible. I was in between projects and in a schedule lull. Reconfiguring my computer was not how I wanted to spend this week, but at least I have time for it. Also, in the wake of Howard’s computer failure, I stepped up my back-up habits. They’re pretty good. Most of my writing in progress exists in dropbox where I still have all of it. Using my back up drives I’ve been able to switch most of my processes over to Calcifer, who is supposed to be my writing machine, but he’s been great about stepping up and handling business tasks for me. My desktop machine has been out of commission for almost a week and I’ve been fine.

Later today or tomorrow the desk machine will come back to me with fresh new drives. I’ll have a clean slate on which to install my programs. In some ways that appeals to me. I like having things be organized and new. Unfortunately then I’ll begin to discover the gaps in my back up processes. I know that there are pieces of data that I will need which I’ve missed. There will be some things I’ll have to re-create. Yet I don’t think I’ll have lost anything that is worth a $1500 drive reconstruction to get back.

The most astonishing thing about this adventure in hardware failure is that I haven’t panicked even once. This is the sort of event which is tailor made to send me into an emotional spiral of doom, sure that everything will fall apart. I did have a moment of shock “Are you sure it is the hard drive?” I asked twice, as if I could make the answer be different just by wishing. But after that moment of disbelief most of my reaction has been to shrug and get to work putting things back together. The story would have been quite different if we didn’t have the money to get the new drives, if I did not have a laptop that could be re-purposed for a few days, if I hadn’t been using dropbox as a storage medium for my writing, if I hadn’t run a bunch of back ups last week, if the timing had been different. So many ifs. I’m grateful that even with a bad thing so many good things fell into place.

Book Editing

By / May 8, 2013 / 2 Comments

My day began with this:

Each of those little paper flags sticking out of the pages is an error that needed fixed before Body Politic could go to print. I went through flag by flag and fixed all the errors. There were at least 80 of them. It always amazes me how many dumb mistakes I make when putting a book together. Then I print it out on paper and suddenly they are glaringly, embarrassingly obvious. When all the things were fixed, I exported the book to a PDF and paged through it again. I found 30 more errors. I fixed those and exported again to PDF and handed the file to Howard. He found 14 errors. This is always the process. We go through iterations of book creation, each time focusing our attention on a different way of reading. Sometimes I read every word. Other times I just flip pages and look at image spacing. Eventually my eyes glaze over and it all looks like a blur and possibly even a bad idea. At some point we declare it done and I send it off to print. It is out of my hair for a couple of months until it comes back home bound in paper. By then I’m not tired of the book anymore. We’re excited as we open the boxes and see the book made real. But I guarantee that on that first flip through we’ll find a mistake we missed. It happens every time.

Cobble Stones Available and Switching into High Gear

By / May 2, 2013 / 1 Comment

See the lovely book cover lingering over there to the right? This morning I finally put the newly re-sized Cobble Stones books into the store. I’m supposed to take delivery of Cobble Stones 2012 on Friday and can begin shipping as soon as I do. This means you can place your order now, I’ll start shipping on Friday, and the books can be in your hands–or the hands of a mother you know–before Mother’s Day (if you live in the continental US.) At $5 per copy these books are a great giftable size and price. If you’re local, I will have both of these books along with Hold on to Your Horses available for sale at LDS Storymakers conference. The conference itself is sold out, but the bookstore they run is open to walk-in traffic. At 5 pm on Friday May 10 there will be a mass signing that is open to the public. Just come to the Marriott hotel in Provo to meet a room full of authors who will be happy to talk with you and sign books. I’ll be there and I’ll have my books with me.

In other news, I’m behind on all of my work. I was already behind on all of it when I spent yesterday on a 4th grade field trip shivering in the cold wind out by Utah Lake to learn about biomes, invasive species, adaptations, and to have a giant walleye fish leap out of the ranger’s hands right at me. I may have made an alarmed noise because it was a big fish (easily three feet long) and they’d just finished showing us how it has teeth. Fish attacks aside, I’m glad I went along on the trip because Patch was obviously thrilled to have me there. He’s why I went, even though I was ready to fall asleep on my feet and even though I got so chilled that it took the rest of the day for me to feel warm again. The trip and the cold shut down my work brain.

It did not help that when I finally warmed up enough to think, I had to spend all of my thinking to help Gleek put together her history fair project of doom. I’m only sort of kidding about the “of doom” part. Anxiety has been an issue with her these past few months. Her science fair project in February was a series of emotional battles and stress. The theme of the history fair is “turning points” and while Gleek quickly became fascinated with her chosen period of time, getting her to narrow down to a specific turning point was difficult. “We need to show how all these escapes from East Germany made the world change.” I would say when she was dictating a barrage of facts about how the Strelzyk and Wetzel families made a hot air balloon and floated themselves over the border. I began feeling like that one character in the Star Wars moving, chanting “stay on target, stay on target.” I’m still not sure if the project hits the target in the way the teacher would like, but we’re in the vicinity and whatever we’ve managed to hit, we’ve done it very thoroughly. Gleek has not under achieved on this one.

Of course the most urgent work of the week is finishing up The Body Politic, which is mostly waiting on me. I’ve got copy edits to enter, footnotes to place, footnote boxes to build, and test prints to run. These things all need to be done last week, because this week I was supposed to be turning my eyes ahead toward Phoenix Comic Con and making sure that everything is lined up for Howard’s trip there. I’ve also got to help Kiki put together artwork for her two panels at Conduit, which is taking place the same weekend as Phoenix. Also, I should probably create and print up Kiki’s graduation announcements because the relatives would probably like to hear about that event before it actually takes place. With all of this rolling around in my brain the Monday night insomnia which made me so tired on Tuesday and Wednesday begins to make sense.

Time to get moving and do all of the things.

Snapshots of the Tayler Household Today

By / April 16, 2013 / 1 Comment

I sat on the couch next to Kiki, her legs draped across my lap as she told me about her friends. Kiki loves them and worries for them, but is not sure how to help them as they struggle. I listened to Kiki and tried to give her good advice, but mostly just to listen because the answers she finds for herself are better than any I can give. This is true for her friends too. They must find their own answers. But being the one who sees a good path, and has to wait for a loved one to stumble around blindly until they find it can be hard.

Link and Patch sat at computers side by side, Minecraft on the screens in front of them. Listening to them made little sense because the words seemed like random phrases punctuated with laughter, half the conversation was typed in text on the screens in front of them. Lately Link has been saddened by the fact that his gaming abilities far outstrip everyone else in the house. He wants to play with his little brother, but sometimes it is hard because of the skill disparity. On this day they’ve found a happy medium, a place where they can meet and have fun.

I sat with Gleek on the leather couch with the therapist across from us and we had no tales of meltdowns to share. I suppose it is good to be in that position, where most of the stress evaporates, but it does feel odd to have it happen just before the measures which were supposed to help have had a chance to affect anything. There are still things to work on, we’re not going to simply shrug and assume we were mistaken. On the other hand, the breathing space is very nice. Instead of discussing recent crisis, we talked about how it might be time for me to back off on managing Gleek’s homework. I went very hands-on while we were in the middle of the stress, it is time for me to back off again. Gleek didn’t like that idea much, she likes having a security blanket. This lets me know it is the right approach, because the point of all of this parental and therapeutic effort is to put Gleek in a position where she has the tools and strength to manage by herself. I expect it to take years, because really that is the entire developmental purpose of adolescence.

Last week Howard had diverticulitis which resolved fairly quickly with antibiotics. Unfortunately strong antibiotics have consequences of their own and these hit Howard hard yesterday. I can’t count the number of times when Howard and I have bemoaned how we just want to have an uneventful work week. Howard has a final push on the Privateer Press project, a final push on The Body Politic, and regular buffer work. We just need him to have several good work days in a row. For the moment, he’s sleeping late because, as he tweeted at 2am: “Exhaustion, dehydration, diarrhea, and insomnia: these are the four horsemen of my current apocalypse. They are very effective team players.”

Hours after the couch conversation with Kiki, just before bed, she came to my room and gave me a hug. She’d prayed for her friends and felt strongly that they would be fine. “Mom, I don’t know how anyone survives without prayer and inspiration.” I don’t know either. I know people who seek peace from other sources. I’ve seen those sources work for them, but I have to say that I’m glad to see my children choosing prayer and inspiration in times of stress. They are choosing resources that are familiar to me which means I am able to help them as they seek. It is really hard to not understand (and thus now understand how to help) someone you love when they are in pain.

I bought Talenti Sea Salt and Caramel gelato. It sits in my freezer waiting for the days when I write 1000 words of which 500 are fiction, a small treat to encourage me to write. It’s presence in my freezer demonstrates that the writing portions of my brain are ready to unfold again. The fact that it has been opened and the first serving removed is a triumph. I’ve tasted writing success for the first time in two months. It tastes of caramel.

“Can you send me some pictures of Kiki for the stylist?” the text said. So Kiki and I took some quick shots with my phone while giggling because neither of us ever pictured her getting to have the services of a stylist. Yet this is part of the package deal that comes along with getting to borrow an amazing dress for prom. The dress is being tailored to Kiki and she agrees to pose for a fashion photo shoot while wearing the dress. The dress designer has the satisfaction of seeing the dress worn more than just for a runway, the stylist has the chance to practice her art, the photographer also practices, and all of the professionals walk away with photos they can add to their portfolios. Kiki gets a dream come true experience and owes a few drawings to the dress designer. This is one of the things I love about being part of a creative community, people coming together to create something amazing just because everyone loves the idea of it.

“Gleek’s focus for the history project is not yet approved. She has some fascinating facts about East Germany, but she needs to show a specific turning point and how it changed the world.” It was not news Gleek wanted to hear, but she did not melt into a puddle of stress. Instead she and I talked through how to present various escapes over the Berlin Wall as turning points in the history of Germany. It is the escapes that fascinate her, the bravery and ingenuity of people who risked everything to change their lives, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. Once her project is approved, we’ll have a diorama to make. I’m certain that before this project is complete, Gleek will have ample opportunities to feel anxiety and manage it. So far so good.

It was time for me to drive Link to school and I heard conflict downstairs by the computers: Link’s angry voice and Patch crying. Link had gotten up from the computer to leave and Patch sat down and logged in. Using Link’s profile and password. Which Patch had memorized. It was a thing Patch had done dozens of times before, Link has been happy to share his Minecraft profile with everyone, however at that moment Link realized that he’d lost control of the profile. Patch was using it without asking. All. The. Time. Fortunately it is an easy fix. Link is right that he ought to get to control the profile he purchased with his own money. Patch is right that he needs to be able to log in without having to bother Link to type the password. After school we’ll sort it out and all will be happy in Minecraft again.

My house needs to be organized. Every room has piles in the corners. They aren’t big piles and mostly they’re full of things that sort-of belong in that room anyway, but it is cluttery. I’ve been too distracted to require chores and too tired to do it all myself. Yet on Saturday I tackled the front room. Looking around now, I’m really not sure what exactly we removed, but it is a nice place to be again. I hope in the next two weeks I can give other rooms the same treatment before the coins start to arrive and shipping begins in earnest. That will make a mess all over the house until it is done.

Challenge Coin Shipping By the Numbers

By / April 5, 2013 / 5 Comments

Invoices printed: 2245
Invoices pending, waiting on info from backers: 331
Coins to be ordered: approx 26,000
estimated cost of those coins: $80,000
Glue dots needed to fix coins to packing boards: approx 20,000
packing boards needed:5000
padded envelopes to order: 1500
priority mail boxes to order: 950
space in my house that will be taken up by boxes of coins: approx 52 cubic feet
space in my house needed for boxes of padded envelopes: 36 cubic feet
space in my house needed for packing boards: 5.5 cubic feet
space in my house needed for priority mail boxes: 19 cubic feet
hours spent this morning printing and counting: 6 (across two people)
toner replacement cartridges needed: 1 (so far)
Shipping is expected to begin the first weeks of May

Thoughts on the Kickstarter Close

By / March 22, 2013 / 7 Comments

Howard’s challenge coin Kickstarter made far more money than we ever expected. In the next month we need to pay to have 14 different coins printed and we’re likely printing at least 1000 of each type of coin. This is a crazy quantity. As soon as we have coins in hand, I’ll be shipping out over 2598 packages. We’ve already got some people signed up to help, but I’ve only begun to figure out what the process looks like. At least my test shipping supplies arrived today. I can begin to figure out the best methods to pack coins into packages. Then I have to figure out how to stage the work, how to schedule the work, etc.

There is also the accounting. I don’t know yet how much of that money has to go to coin printing, to shipping supplies, and to postage. I know it will be enough to fund the printing of Body Politic and the almost overdue reprint of Tub of Happiness. I am not going to have to carefully pinch pennies and chew my nails to make sure we can fund book printing. This is a huge gift. Beyond that, I don’t know. I don’t know what future complications will come. By June it will have all settled out, just in time for summer conventions.

For tonight Howard and I will just look at the huge expression of trust and enthusiasm that we’ve been given. It is amazing and humbling.