Shipping

An Accounting of My Past Week

By / August 14, 2018

A week ago Monday: Travel day for the first half, followed by unpacking, house assessing, business task triage, and hugging children. Had to do all the triaging, assessing, and unpacking while I still had a bit of momentum. Experience tells me that if I don’t get them done before I burn through the last of the convention energy, I will not get them done for a week.

A week ago Today (Tuesday): Crash day. Only not completely crash, because I had to go over to the school and talk to the counselor about my two teens’ schedules. On one hand it is really nice that she instantly knew me an was super ready to set things up for my senior girl. On the other hand, it might be nice to not have the school counselor know my kids because they didn’t need any extra attention. I also got to sit down and say “Now let me tell you about my kid whom you haven’t met yet.” I happened to be there at the time when the new school principal was also in her office. The same principal who used to be over the Junior High and who sat through meetings about my son. So when I asked for accommodations requiring administrative approval, he granted them instantly. Nice to be known and listened to. Maybe someday we won’t need that anymore and that would also be nice.

So super important meeting followed by brain sludge. I did manage to mail store orders that had been waiting a week for me to return from GenCon. I also began transcribing some of my GenCon notes. Or maybe I did that on Wednesday.

Wednesday: Had a business meeting with a friend I don’t see often enough. Then I printed out packing lists for shirt orders and sorted them. I think there might have been grocery shopping, but that might have been Tuesday. These days blur together a bit.

Thursday: Had a social event for much of the day. Spent the afternoon/evening printing postage for shirt orders.

Friday: Shipping day. Me and my helper went through about 100 packages. Currently the average temperature in the warehouse is around 80 degrees, so I always end up hot, sweaty, and tired by the time I’m done.

Saturday: 80 more packages into the mail. Then I came home to administrative tasks. I was still working through my post-GenCon to do assignments. I feel like I did some other admin tasks.

Sunday: Church, family gathering.

Monday: The morning was all about getting Howard and daughter out the door to attend Worldcon. They traveled over early because Howard has recording sessions for Writing Excuses. In the afternoon I prepared packing lists and postage for yet more shipping.

Tuesday: 90 packages into the mail. There are a few more lingering at the warehouse, but the remaining shirt packages are all ones that have problems of some sort. Mostly these problems are because the shirt company shorted me on shirts of several types. But some of them are error on my part. Others are a miss communication between me and the shirt company about which size/color combinations actually exist and which don’t. Sorting this all out is requiring a lot of organization and thinking on my part. I’ve reached the point where I have to physically set aside each order so that I can see what shirts I have left. That way I can work in batches and figure out which substitutions I can offer. For some of the shirts I’m waiting for the shirt company to give me their Fill Order which supposedly will give me all the shirts I’m missing. I still expect to have to do print on demand for some shirts in order to fulfill my promises to customers.

Thinking about shirts has filled my head up for more than a week. I’m hoping that by the end of this week I will not have to think about them as much, though I’m certain I’ll still have odds and ends that I’ll have to ship. I think it will be September before I’m done dealing with shirts.

What I want to be spending my brain on is new projects. I have things I’m supposed to be writing and things I want to be writing. I have Schlock books that I need to get complete and sent off to the printer. I’m not sorry to have done the shirts, but I will be glad when I can reclaim the brain space that they’ve been occupying. And I’ll be even more glad when we can set up Print on Demand shirts so that Schlock fans can have their shirts and I don’t have to touch them.

I guess an alternate title for the past week could be Post Convention Brain Mush Combined with Back-To-School, Convention Packing, and Shirts, Shirts, Shirts. An unwieldy title, but accurate.

Cleaning Up for Shipping

By / May 1, 2018

Shipping season will begin soon. I thought it would begin in a couple of weeks, but yesterday I got word that the bulk shipment of RAM will be arriving sometime this week. Fortunately I’ve been working to prepare the warehouse, because we never fully cleaned up after Planet Mercenary shipping and then holiday shipping. In fact, my warehouse space looked like this just a month ago.

This state of affairs was a problem since “shipment of books” means 4-6 pallets and there was zero floor space for pallets of books to be dropped off. We hauled off fifteen big black bags of garbage, two carloads of cardboard, a dozen wooden pallets, and two more carloads of assorted other waste items. As much as possible I recycle and re-use, but it still ends up being a lot of work to remove things that are in the way so that we can make space. The good news is that as of this morning my warehouse looks like this:

Four pallets of books will fit easily into that space. As will the shipment of shirts which I’m expecting not too long afterward. Also the shipments of boxes that I will use to mail the shirts and the books. The physical spaces are ready for work. Now I’m preparing shipping lists, combining orders, and generally organizing so that when the books (and shirts) do arrive we can send them on their merry way to homes where they’ll be loved.

Planet Mercenary Signing Day

By / June 24, 2017 / 1 Comment

We had our big Planet Mercenary book signing today. It took six people four hours to get 800 books triple signed and then re-boxed.

Space in the warehouse is a bit tight for this kind of project right now. Kiki and Patch had to climb up pallets of books and walk along top of them to get from one end to the other. Fortunately they thought this was kind of fun.

Alan and Howard were lightning fast on getting the signatures done. I was slower, in part because I just sign slower, but also in part because we could have used a seventh person so I bounced out of my chair to help with book shifting quite a bit. Now we’re all stiff, sore, and tired. There are still some Seventy Maxims books to sign, but those are small and light, so we’ve transported them to the house to sign at our convenience.

I will spend the first half of next week tooling up and preparing. A few packages will go out during the early part of the week, but the first big shipping day is likely to be Thursday. It is just going to take me that long to get all the shipping supplies and invoices ready to go. Start up is always slow, but once we get rolling the packages will go out steadily.

For now, I need to rest. Resting is as important a part of getting things done as actually doing things.

Books Arrived, Time to Do All the Things

By / June 21, 2017

The big shipment of Planet Mercenary books arrived today. That means it is time to switch gears and start sending packages out the door. My thoughts have been running a mile a minute since the moment I pulled up at Hypernode Headquarters and realized that I wasn’t going to have to sit around waiting for the truck, it was waiting for me. Cue flurry of me rapidly shifting the last few boxes so that pallets could take up that floor space. Thirty out-of-breath minutes later the delivery was done and the truck drove off.

Since then I’ve been making lists and scrambling to get things done. These are things I am tracking right now:

Preparations for the first shipping day: including finishing the errata document, getting 800 books triple signed, ordering the necessary shipping supplies, and mentally pre-organizing the backers into batches.

Preparations for ongoing shipping: I’m going to have to do many shipping days across several weeks. My kids are going to get tired of working and so I may need to hire neighborhood teens and organize that. I don’t know what will be needed. I’ll have to figure it out as I go.

Combining Deluxe Handbrain screen orders with Planet Mercenary orders: The first rush of emails is done, but responses are still coming in. At least now I have a practiced system for handling them so nothing gets lost. (Creating that system was a source of some stress as I used my brain as a bridge between three incompatible systems.)

Fulfilling on the last Planet Mercenary Kickstarter items: The Planet Mercenary backers will be getting their packages soon, which only leaves the Game Chief Secrets PDF which we promised. So I’ll be trying to squeeze in writing and editing time around the shipments. If anything slides it will be finishing up this, but I’d really like to end July with having delivered everything. I want August to be fully focused on the big events scheduled there. And in September I’d really like to shift gears into doing something new.

Fulfilling on the Handbrain Screen Kickstarter: The pressing of the screens themselves has been scheduled. I’ll need to approve them, pay the bill, and then wait for a truck. Then a second wave of shipping hits. Also there is the Adventure PDF that needs to be written and sent out.

Preparing for GenCon: This one is made so much easier by the crew I have in Indianapolis. They’re such amazing people and make running the booth possible. However much of my work for GenCon happens before we even get to the event. I’ve already done the hotel booking, flight purchasing, insurance purchasing, and arranged for electricity at the booth. Our official convention schedules are done thanks to the amazing folks at the GenCon writer’s symposium. Yet to do: make a new banner that features Planet Mercenary, ship Planet Mercenary books so we can sell them at the booth, double check on-site inventory and ship to fill any gaps, prep the cash register with new products, get the GenCon adventure ready for players, assist in lining up GCs to run games at GenCon, communicate with booth partners to make sure they have everything they need, prepare two solo presentations to give at the convention, and make up flyers and other promotional materials for the show. I’m sure I’m forgetting something. There is always something.

Preparing for the Writing Excuses Cruise:
It is in Europe this year. I’ve never been to Europe. There are packing preparations to make, power adapters to buy, flights to fret over, and planning for the adult kids who will be staying with the teen kids. The actual planning for this is not that hard, but the emotional footprint is big. Particularly since it has to be squeezed in between all of the other things.

Completing the next Schlock Mercenary book:
It can’t fall through the cracks. I really want to send it to print by early September so that I can have books on sale for Christmas. This means I have to finish writing the bonus story ASAP. I have to work with an artist to get the bonus story drawn. I have to get an introduction written. And Howard needs to do the cover and marginalia. Howard also needs to get way ahead on the buffer because of the upcoming travel.

Household stuff:
Apparently we’re out of groceries and this is a problem.

Thing I am really looking forward to: being able to complete things in the list above and not have to worry about them anymore. I’ve been pre-planning the Planet Mercenary shipping for the last eighteen months and I finally get to do the thing.

Warehouse Day at Hypernode Headquarters

By / June 6, 2017


I showed you this photo the other day. It is how the warehouse looked before we put in hours of work today. Here is what it looked like after:

It is a little hard to see, but from the floor the difference is significant. I now have space for up to ten pallets of books. Or I will once I haul off that stack of old pallets. With the shifting done, we got to work bagging components:

One of the secrets to an efficient shipping is to bundle things in advance. Every single order at the Company Commander and Commodore levels get a little white bag containing 4 pins, 1 coin, 1 set of dice, and 1 deck of cards. They also get a padded envelope containing their Seventy Maxims book and Game chief screen. So when time comes to box orders, instead of needing to grab ten different things for each package, we only have to grab three: book, padded envelope, little white bag. Additionally, the bundling also provides some useful padding making it less likely that things will get damaged in transit. Today we assembled almost 800 little bags. We need to assemble 1200 more exactly like these. Then we’ll assemble a pile of bags for the backers who included RiPP tokens in their order. The RiPP tokens fit into the little bag too. The bag itself is a bonus that we didn’t tell backers they are getting. It is a small thank you from us for supporting the project and being patient while we got everything done.

Lots of work still remains. I’ve only got a few weeks until the books arrive.

Preparing for a Big Shipping

By / June 3, 2017 / 2 Comments


Today I walked the warehouse planning the work for our “warehouse day” next week when I haul my four kids over and pay them to help me reorganize. There are boxes of books to re-stack, garbage to haul to the dump, recycling to haul out, and various other related chores. All of this is preparatory to receiving the Planet Mercenary books in a few weeks. I have to physically make space on the floor for an as yet unknown number of pallets. I’ve paced it off and I’m confident I can make space for up to 10 pallets, which should be sufficient. I always have pre-delivery anxiety about not having enough space.

Another task which needs doing is pre-bundling components that will go into packages. Many of the packages have the same contents. It is much easier to grab a single bag that contains 4 pins, 1 coin, 1 dice set, and a deck of cards than it is to grab each of those things individually for each package. However it does mean that we have to sit down and make up the bags containing all the things. That work needs to happen before we can begin shipping in earnest, and I hope to get it done before the books arrive.

A related pair of tasks: The GC screens arrived flat and they need to be folded in order to fit into the shipping boxes. The Deluxe Handbrain screens will arrive as individual units and will need to be assembled into 3 screen sets with matching pins.

Invoices need to be printed and sorted as well. That process will begin first for the Handbrain Screen Kickstarter, because that is where I have the information about who might want to combine their orders. I have to collate that information before I can ship any of the orders. However I can’t get rolling on that quite yet. People need more time to fill out their surveys. I don’t know yet whether the Handbrain Screens or the books will arrive first. Ideally I’ll have a couple of weeks between the arrivals. Most likely they’ll arrive within a week of each other because those were the timelines I was given. Once both shipments arrive, all that remains is for me to ship things out.

I did preparatory accounting yesterday. I’ve got lots of shipping bills incoming, so the accounts need to be as prepared as the physical spaces. I’m tempted to run a sale to clear out some inventory and create more wiggle room in both the accounts and the warehouse. Yet running a big sale and triggering more shipping right in the middle of preparing for a massive shipping seems a bit crazy. The truth is that I have enough space in both places to get the job done, even if it will be a little tight for a while.

Time to get back to work.

Post Shipping Clean Up

By / December 9, 2014 / 4 Comments

Let me show you my piles of boxes in the wake of the Massively Parallel shipping.
First the front office where we did the complicated shipping.
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You can see the pile where we tossed boxes because we didn’t have time to collapse them. There is also a pile of collapsed boxes as well.

Out in the warehouse we have two box piles. One between the pallets of books.
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Another where we’ve also stashed bags full of garbage. The garbage backs are mostly full of the plastic wrapping which came around all the pallets.
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We did collapse some of the boxes and made a stack. It helped that we immediately re-purposed many boxes and sent them out with the contents of large orders, like the eleven book sets.
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You can also see my stack of wooden pallets. There are at least a dozen of them.
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This is my shipping space in the front office. This is where I assembled complex orders. It looks relatively neat now. Earlier it had boxes full of sketched books sitting open all over the floor.
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Here is a before and after comparison of the stacks of slipcases. You can see that we’ve used up almost eight pallets worth of slipcases. You can also see that we have another row behind them.
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Some time next week Kiki and I will collapse all the boxes, donate the cardboard to worthy causes, haul off the garbage, figure out what to do with the pallets, and if we have any energy left, sweep.

Shipment Delivery: Complete

By / November 27, 2014

It was all lined up. Delivery of books and slipcases on Monday. I had a crew to help. Tuesday I’d help Howard sign book covers and then fetch Kiki home for Thanksgiving in the afternoon. Wednesday would be shipping prep and Thanksgiving prep. I’d done my necessary advance preparation. I’d done some preliminary sorting of invoices. Our cat “helped.”
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I also ordered shipping supplies so I could begin mailing as soon as my delivery arrived.
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It went sideways on Monday morning at 9am, when the trucking company called to tell me that their lift gate truck was broken. They were hoping to borrow one for the afternoon. This sent me scrambling to reschedule my volunteers. The company wasn’t able to borrow a truck, so Monday was spent waiting for a truck that did not come. This meant Tuesday was delivery day and fetch Kiki from college day. I was told the truck would be there around 11:30. I pulled up to the warehouse a comfortable 45 minutes early, just as the truck also pulled up. So I had to ping my helpers saying “Truck is here!” Fortunately some of them were able to jump and come right away. The truck had 22 pallets, double stacked.
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As the stacks came off the truck, we organized and put things where they went. Books in one place, slipcases sorted according to type. Fortunately the slipcases are very light. This meant that four people could easily lift and entire pallet.
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Stacking was important because there wasn’t enough floor space for everything side by side. I’m very grateful to my helpers who willingly stacked slipcases three pallets high.
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They also hefted a load of books over to my house where Howard could sign and sketch them. Once the truck was unloaded it headed out to go and fetch the remaining twelve pallets. We were told it would be back in about 90 minutes. I was glad. It meant we could be done unloading by about 2, which would give me comfortable driving hours to go fetch Kiki. (Three hours there, three hours back. She doesn’t have a car and the bus schedule is really inconvenient.) So my crew waited with me for 90 minutes, which is when we got a call letting us know the truck would be another hour. So we went out to lunch, came back and waited some more. The truck finally arrived at 3:30. We were done unloading in about 30 minutes. I finally had all of my shipment.

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I went home to take care of some family things. Because family things do not always wait conveniently for business things. Link had had a rough day. I took him with me for the six hour trek to Cedar City and back. We stopped at the warehouse so that Kiki could see the things she will be helping me ship.
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We have a lot of work ahead of us in the next few days. I still haven’t had a chance to form a new schedule. We need to get shipments to customers as quickly as we can. But first, Thanksgiving.

LOTA shipping day 2

By / June 5, 2014

LOTA shipping is complete. We have about three odds-and-ends packages to take care of when Howard gets back from his trip, but everything else is in the mail.

I’m still sick. I started being sick the day before the first shipping. Muscled through on medicine. Slept and lay around for most of the day in between. Then sort of zombie walked my way through today making sure that I did not contaminate any of the shipping crew or packages.

This is where I must sing the praises of my shipping crew. They show up smiling. They work cheerfully. They lend me energy when I have none. They’ve come so often that they know how things work, so I can zombie walk with confidence because they have my back. Had I been a hair or two more sick, I would have called in Janci. She would have come and saved me, even though I know how insanely busy her schedule is this month. Or I maybe I would have just put Kiki in charge, she’s proving to be highly competent. Fortunately its all done.

Then I came home where the kids cleaned up the kitchen, fed me dinner, and sent me to bed.

I am so grateful for the good people who surround me.

LOTA shipping day 1

By / June 3, 2014

We sent out two thirds of the preordered LOTA books today. All of the unsketched and sketched with LOTA, Artist Choice, Ebby, TAG, Pi, and Para are in the mail. Thursday will be the final shipping day. All the rest of the orders will go out then.

This means my brain is fried. On top of the usual shipping brain fry, I’m also sick. So I don’t have a whole lot of complex thoughts right now. I do have a small smugness, to which Howard tells me I am entitled. Yesterday when I was printing postage there was a moment where I stared at the box and wondered if I’d printed enough. I looked at the stack, thought about the hours allotted, thought about who was coming to help, and realized it felt about right. My instinct was almost perfectly accurate. I used to have to stress and do math to figure out how much work to stage for a shipping day. I’ve now internalized the processes enough that I can eyeball it. Strange that my life had let me to a place where I have this expertise, but useful all things considered.

So I’m taking my small smugness to bed where we will sleep until tomorrow when I’ll begin lining up work for Thursday.