So. Friday evening was fun - I am slowly getting better at fencing again.  Attempted a basic play and got clocked for it repeatedly, but also focused on my form and cleaning it up further.  Have a tendency to fight too 'high', being too lazy to bend my knees properly. So focused on staying down low and tucking myself behind the sword.  It worked pretty well, though I still need to get my timing back to speed.

Talked to Devon about the options for getting paid for instructing - the basic look of it seems to be there's not going to be any availablity for at least a year or so, and in between that they want me to basically instruct for free. Not thrilled, but they did say this was vague for now and they'll be working on full details later. We will see.

Saturday was insane - we ran to 5 different stores looking for shoes for me, none of which had shoes that actually fit me.  Grrr.... after that we bought stuff for the Wifes bike and then went to Costco and came home. And made mussels for dinner.  And then off out again.

On theo ther hand, not that tired, which is good. Had a nice sleep but tired.

Oh and Red Cliff looks GOOD.

Poo. I've bee doing too much work lately I think, my hands are truly beginning to ache from all the typing.  Thankfully I'm driving down to the Statees tomorrow so I won't be near the computer.

Looks like we're only going for about a 30% rise in revenue from last year for Oct.  That is, if everything holds the same.  Not great.  I'd hoped for something along the lines of 50% - but a lot of hte increases in traffic we've bee getting has been from US and other countries.  The number of Canadians actually finding our site has only increased a measly 3% it seems. At least we're converting better though.

If this holds true on the 30% rise in sales, then we're going to do okay for November and reasonable for December.  If we can keep it at at about 30% for the rest of the next year, I'll be able to pay myself a minimal salary at last.  It won't be much, but it'll at least mean I won't have to tap into my savings constantly.

Damn.

I guess I seriously need to consider how to make more cash from my other biz's while this one takes the slow growth phase.  Either that or grow this one faster - but I'm quite out of ideas by now.

The world over, we're sniffling. Damn.

Getting over cold myself.  I'd hoped to get back to fencing since my Dad's gone, but I'm just about able to breathe without coughing for 15 minutes at a go now.  So I figure I'll wait till breathing and phlegm production is a bit further down.

See! I do learn.  I don't always push myself to bad levels.

In other news, we seem on track to actually have our best non-Nov / Dec month ever.  Between the really, really good convention and the on-going sales this month, we should be pretty sweet.  I might actually be able to pay myself!

The really, really interesting bit is now I'm beginning to face problem no.2 - what's our next growth phase?  I have a few biz ideas bouncing about, one half-started that is slowly creeping along.  It's about 70% ready, just need to get the full site redesign complete, bring in more products and add the last few products and we're good to go.  Beyond adding the products, the rest isn't really a rush - I'm not really looking at this biz to generate revenue till next year.  Heck I ain't even ready to set it up till next year.

I'm also considering getting a new / added on space for the biz.  It's just a tad cozy in here, and the place I'm in has a ton of space.  The only problem is that any other place in here is rather far away from the emergency exit - which is how I bring the stock in.  No loading docks and the main entrance is a  full flight of stairs down.  Hmmm...

Thought about writing a long, long post. Decided meh!

So.... meme

The problem with LJ: We all think we are so close, but really we know nothing about one another. So I want you to ask me something you think you should know about me. Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about. Ask away.

Nicked from lithiumdoll .

Is that sometimes, you forget that people actually care for small things like Tea Ceremonies and the like.  And as much as I consider them small little things, others actually consider them quite important.  Heee.  I didn't really think about it / realise it till I realised an aunt of mine was tearing up - it's their first tea ceremony since the others have always been in M'sia.  It's nice for them... and I prefer doing it here anyway since most of those people who are here are people I actually like. 

Anyway, it went okay.  Some minor hiccups.  Like way too much food.  And forgetting to order a vegetarian meal for the only vegetarian - fixed that fast, but was slightly embarrassing.  And the woman having a panic attack. *Sighs* Why do women get worked up all the time? Small things... and they have panic attacks. Bah!

It went well, it's over, people seemed happy enough. Now we have sufficient food to feed an army. And once my dad leaves on Thursday, we'll be free. Free!!!!

Just went to see the Vancouver Symphony Ochestra playing Broadway tunes.  The male singer was... okay.  Not great.  The female singer was good, not excellent, but definitely better than the male singer.  The Ochestra was incredible

They did Phantom among others, and they did the entire 'Music of the Night' with the full Ochestra; instrumental only.  Oh. My. God.  It's amazing how much of a difference having a full Ochestra makes.  Just frigging incredible - the arrangement was so good and how they switched between various instruments and how they came in... wow. Just wow.

Also heard a ton of older musicals like Miss Saigon and West Side Story... overall, well worth it.  Must make it out to more VSO stuff...

So. We've had an incredible start for the biz for the October period - with sales equal to nearly 70% of what we did last year already.  Of course, its going to take a huge slump in the next 4 days as people take time off to enjoy time with family/etc over Thanksgiving.  Damn people.  Not spending money on me.

Dad is here. Weird.  I feel the need to play host, but work and all that.. and he seems happy enough to wander around by himself.  In fact, I thik sometimes he does't want to be shown around too much - being tired and all.  Can't read him that well - damn Chinese politeness and inscrutability.

Tea ceremony on Sunday.  Heee.  It'll be a disaster.  Just have to remember to breathe.

Tendinits better now that I have put the keyboard rest.  Still hurts,  but that's likely the stress points flaring up.

Not that I have anything to stress about.  At all. Nope.

Thinking I should find time to visit the UK next year. Hmmm...

Bah. I am so going to have spend some money and get myself some of those light therapy device s- I'm such a solar powered creature.  The momet it gets cloudy agai, I get dark and depressed.

The next couple of weks ra egoig to be insane - have Maggie dropping by for a visit. Actually waiting for her now.... don't know if she wants/needs a guide.  Then after that, at the end of this week we have VCon, our most profitable convention. And I'm going to see if I can hit up a vendor there for a job...

And then, i have my dad arriving on Monday. And for 2 weeks I'll have to take care of him. During which we will have the tea ceremony.  And of course, it being October, I can expect an uptick in sales slowly.

So yeah, just a little frazzled.

So. I've been running a fever for the last few days, only recently broke.  The biggest problem about being a 1 man operation for all itents and purposes, is that I just don't have a fallback position.  If I don't ship, it doesn't ship.  So tired, sick, reeling from a high fever and exhausted,  I still have to walk to work, ship everything out, wait for customers, drag our new stock from the US and unpack it and the rest....

Yeah, I'm just a little tired.  Doesn't help that the wife has been a little frazzled.  Getting tired of wife always being frazzled... I'm hoping that after this tea ceremony, well, she'll calm down. I doubt it though... she seems to like being frazzled. And then stressing me out.  Normally I'm chill but when I'm sick and tired... blargh.

Beyond that... nothing much going on.  Just trying to sort it out, for the time, looking towards this Christmas. GOds,  I can't wait for it to be over. I need to start paying myself soon, I'm nearly out of all savings.  In fact, I've got to pull out a significant amount to cover the damn wedding.

Sigh.

The economy around here is not doing that great.  The signs are all there - the lack of people in restaurants, the sudden appearance of a ton of retail stores on the market.  Heck, the fact that the wife's business has picked up is another good indicator (she does bankruptcies).

On the other hand, we have the media and the governments telling us that the worst is over, that we're going back to growth.  except... 0.1% growth isn't growth - especially when you realise that that isn't taking into account price inflation.

There's been a lot of truly horrendous statistics out there if you know where to look and are willing to look.  The S&P's P/E ratio using normalised (i.e. financial statements for the previous year; not the forecast profit) is at staggering 1,400! That's for the S&P 500.  The highest it hit during the peak bubble years were in the 40's!!!

And yet the market continues to rally.

If you're thinking this is a good thing, it's not.  It's all sentiment and belief, with no real fundamentals behind it.   Credit card default rates are at 1930's levels - over 10% depending on companies.  Unemployment looks to hit over 10% in the US by end of the year - blowing the 'worst case scenarios' of the Fed out of the water and then some. Commercial real estate has only really gotten started going bust this year.  And residential real estate is coming back with 2nd wave of defaults now.

And all these people buying houses at the lowest rates in years aren't considering what happens when the government has to put rates up again.  If rates double (easy when your base rate is 0.5%!!!) can they still afford their payments.

It's frightening out there, and the scariest thing is, a lot of smart people I know don't even see it.

Had a really lazy weekend that consisted of sleeping, reading David Weber and some socialising.  I finished the first 3 books of David Weber's Honor Harrington series and I must say, I've forgotten how much fun they are.  Good, well written military sci-fi.

Now on to more reading. having a hard time getting into the swing of work agai after the long weekend.  Too much ineertia built up.  Hee.

Yup, I screwed something else up.  This time, scarily enough, it's my back.  Now, I've had this before once ) or was it twice) but it's never lasted 5 days before.  This is worrying since my back is the one thing that has never given me trouble before.  Right now, it feels like the muscles stretching along both sides of the back have been set on-fire.  It was getting better, but now it's worst andd I'm not sure why.  I think it's just over-strained muscles, but I can't be certain.

In other news, I want to kill Samsung.  They have lost my business forever and ever.  Not only because they are idiots, but badly managed idiots as well.  I have a Samsung Printer.  It ran out of ink. So i had my toner refilled so that I could print again.  Lost a few days but since Staples (their main supplier) didn't have it in-stock, I had no choice.  Stuck newly filled catridge in - still not working!

What the hell?  

After an hour of talking to a completely brain dead customer service rep (sounded American down south), they put me through to what I presume is the tech guy (Who btw sounded like he was from India)  I was told I had to buy real printer toner catridges from Samsung 'cause their printer actually had a page print counter and would not print till I had done that.  You can tell how pleased I am by that especially when I point out that their suppliers rae all out-of-stock.  

All the idiot can repeat to me (and yes, unfair since he can't fix this) is that I have to buy Samsung branded catridges.  Even if NONE of their official suppliers have it in stock.

This is what pisses me off - they want to play monopoly but can't even get the frigging supply chain right!!!

And btw - in the age of the Internet it took me all of 20 minutes to work out how I could get around this.  I just need some wire and soldering equipment.  Or spend $20 for some equipment.

Unfortunately, this means that orders aren't shipping and I'm losing cash and annoying customers.  Grrr.... so I'm dragging my HP printer from home to work tomorrow to finish up my work.  And leaving it there since it seems to actually work without being an ass.

Let's see... what else.  Oh yeah, I worked on the set of 'V' as my last Extra job.  Couldn't pass that one up - met Morena Baccarin and had a talk with her (brief, very, very brief).  Also saw the young lady who played Supergirl.  Both gorgeous.  Morenna really, really jumpps out in the lens compared to everyone else.  Still prefer her older haircut as Inara.

Things have been busyish since my last post. Just getting some last minutes stuff sorted for the wedding which is this Sat. Mostly trying to figure out what to do about the few days that I'm not at work shipping. Luckily my sort-of partner is going to be able to do it. Going to Las Vegas for the first time, this should be interesting...

Still confuzzled what her role is now. Need to sit down and talk to her. She was on the way out, ow she doesn't want to pull her cash out, so I'm ot sure if she wants to stay in or what. Gah!

Have new business idea. Selling products again, but this time, looks like minimum mark-up is 100% at least, easily 200% if I manage to get the volumes to go direct. So a lot more space to go with the business, and with fewer SKUs, initial investment in stock will be much more limited. Thank God.

There's even a local (as in Vancouver) distributor, so I should really get around to contacting them. But worst case scenario, already found a US distributor that does it pretty cheap.

Only thing is, I'm wondering if I'm splitting my time / resources up too much. Set-up cost is going to be a minimum of $1500. Not including design time, etc. And then I'll have to market it, which could be at least another 1-2k. Of course, I could set it up to slow-growth via SEO practices (probably the best idea) which means my monthly cost would be low - like $20-30 only. That would however mean that I'd get little from it for at least 6 months, but long-term wise, it'd be relatively cheap. And since Starlit is doing well enough to suubsidise this, it'd be a good secondary revenue stream.

On the other hand, if I toss all my time into Starlit, would I be able to get the same level of revenue (if not profit)? Maybe - but the problem is that getting the initial growth is always easy, the next step is the tough bit. Which is where I'm at. And while I'll still be devoting a large chunk of my time to Starlit, it might be worthwhile already launching the higher margin one to get the 'incremental sales' and profits. After all, much of my 'fixed' costs are paid for already. And the higher margin meas dollar for dollar, I need to generate much less sales. Something to consider, but I'm leaning towards doing it. *sighs* Owww.... my savings are going to be REALLY hard hit if I do it though. As in, no holidays for me for a LONG while.

Also, decided that PDB Sales is going to be shifted from a marketing company to an e-commerce consultancy. It's what I do after all, and it makes more sense anyway since I'd rather not consult if it's not in that realm.

I think I have to stop playing Eve. It's Evil.

I just started on Sunday and my writs are already killing me.

Might have to do something with the fact that my old computer keyboard tray is borked. I need to fix that. Like now.

In other news - I need to teach myself Flash. Crap.

Yup, things have gone nice and cool again, or at least not at the levels where even I'm complaining. Look - I don't bitch much about heat, but when it starts going over your body temperature and passes 40C every day, that's not fun.

So, I stopped fencing at the Acadamie. It's been rather strange having all this free time. I'm finally able to catch up with people and things I've been meaning to do so. August should be fun... I might start in Sept Tai Chi or wait till Oct.

Wedding has finally (after numerous, numerous date changes) settled on the 20th of August for trip to Vegas and actual ceremony on 22nd. Still not really talking about it much; it's kind of mention it in passing.

Debating if I should just put the entire site on hold for the few days I'm gone or find someone to help out and ship. Considering, considering...

In other bad news - I've been a really, really bad boy when it comes to my budget. Add the unexpected wedding plans and expenses and I'm staring at a sudden blackhole of cash. Ugh. Going to have to tap into somewhat-emergency funds and even then, I might still be short before end of the year. Damnations.

On the other hand, we've been doing really good with constant growth in the biz. In fact, we've been rather beating my own expectations on growth. Let's hopefully keep it up.

No pictures taken since my camera is broke and I was too cheap to buy another one.

Hmmm... c&p'ing note from Facebook 'cause, well, it explains much.

So, Clinton was fun. Quite a change of pace, and certainly feel like I should look into better garb if I ever go back. There were a ton of great people there... but damn it was far. And overall while not truly expensive, it wasn't exactly cheap either. Especially if I have to get garb.

My main goal for Clinton was to have fun fighting people, and I had a ton of chances to do that. The wars and tavern brawls were quite different and I'm rather crap at that (the fighting style is different I find and requires a change of pace from 1 on 1 dueling) but overall quite fun. And there was a castle! Which I got to fight in. Really cool.

The 1 on 1 dueling was a ton of fun and I had a chance to fight a number of new individuals. It was great fun fighting with them all, with the different styles and format that these fighters use compared to what we see at Duello all the time.

The best part was seeing in practice how many of the things we learnt like tempo, measure and lines worked so well against others. Amusingly enough, I was asked more than once if I had Olympic Fencing training (I don't) as I fought in such a straight line most of the time with such long lunges. Having fought other Olympic fencers at Duello, it kind of amuses me since their style to my eyes are so different from ours.

Of course, there were other things that didn't seem to work as well - giratta's were hard to pull off because most attacks came in stretta and since fights were outdoors, voiding and reverse lunges took extra time. In fact, balance and footwork became so much more important. Oh and committing to an attack so that once you took a line that was good, you just ran them down.

Overall, tons of fun. And it was made better because there were some great people like Lee and Rick who showed a newbie around. Thanks!

Now, for the interesting stuff not in the note. I was dumb enough to actually throw out a generic invitation to people to go to Clinton with me from the Acadamie and an idiot asked to come. So okay, sure, he could come.

Except, I realised soon after that it was the wrong 'G' named person, and the one coming was one I had bad feelings about. I was certainly right. Beyond the fact that he had never done camping before, he was a lazy, lazy idiot who just never helped out at anything and was a bit of a slob.

An example... on the last day, I wanted to leave by 2pm. Latest 3pm. So I informed him, get your stuff ready before we go to the tavern brawl at Noon 'cause once it's done, I want us gone. I told him 3 times. He didn't do it and went to the brawl which finished at 1.20pm. I talked to him right after that and sent him back to camp to pack up and then grab the others of us once he was done since we might as well get some fighting done.

An hour and 40 minutes later, he isn't done and we walk down from the Tavern to find him just finishing up. So fine, I go grab the car while they pull down the tents. While I'm finishing up my tent when I start getting back, I tell them that they can take one last walk down the streets (I can't drive faster than walking pace anyway and I still had a tent to finish quickly). I figured by the time I reached the gate, they'd be there or soon afterwards.

Instead, when I do reach the gate, the other passenger who left later is there, but he isn't. I wait for 5 minutes, nothing so I go in, browse a bit and then start walking deeper in. I find him, 3/4 of the way into the camp, SEATED DOWN talking to someone. At that point, I shout at him. He is not apologetic.

And on the way back, I tell him, 'please inform me where you need to turn off to get to your house'. I ask him 3 times during the next 10 minutes if we should turn off. He refuses. It's not until we are in North Vancouver (nearly 15km past his house and the turn off) that he realises we need to turn around. He barely apologises.

Gods, what a fucking idiot. And you know what gets me? He bummed off $12 from me and still hasn't paid me for gas. Note to self, if you're 36, living with your mother and BITCHING about her and how she controls your life, you are a LOSER.

So, headed off this Friday to a place called Clinton. It's a big Ren/SCA event that is not formally authorised by the SCA this year. It'll be interesting to play... just going up to see what it's like and also to fence. It might be one of the last 2 years it is there, so I'm definitely going this year.

Otherwise, life goes along.

Going down tomorrow to the US to do a stock run and look for rings. Stranger and stranger this event is.... and expensive. Thank god the young lady decided against the $2100 ring. Even if it was nice.

Interesting discussion we had yesterday with a friend from gaming group. Said friend decided to state that 'everybody should be nice, since I, the worst scum of humanity who contributes nothing to the good of the world can be nice, so everyone else who is better should be able to'.

Me being me,and noting that I am fast getting tired of playing diplomacy (look, 30 minutes of stupid shit like that and I will drop my diplomatic stance) called it like it is - an arrogant statement and utterly pointless. Firstly 'cause no one has an 'obligation' or defined 'need' or 'requirement' to do good for humanity ('cause people are scum) and secondly, 'cause she isn't. But since she continued to repeat that assertion for the next hour, I pretty much left.

I'm realising more and more that I just like doing diplomacy or politics anymore, at least not the way most people. I'm more Johnathan Masters; not Dram. I avoid it when I can, when I can't, I play from a position of power and misdirection, rather than behind the throne or courteous.

It's probably why, even when I was trying quite hard, I didn't do that well in the CCS. I'm just tired of dealing with fools.

Kind of good thing I'm running my own biz. At least the one fool I have to deal with is someone I can kick in the head. Though he has a rather hard head.