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If you have a skeleton in your closet, take it out and dance with it.
-- Carolyn MacKenzie
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Here's a story problem: let's say that you have to devise a formula for shipping orders in such a way that several factors are considered, such as the printing of shipping labels, the cost of the shipping materials, the cost of each shipment for the order if there are multiple shipment dates, and the weight of each item as it adds to the cost of shipment. You need to do this in such a way that you don't lose money on orders taken, you include payment for the expense of time that it takes to prepare and ship the order, and you don't turn away the customer for the cost of shipping. I don't know what the right answer is, but mine is this: | Base Shipping Rate per Order | $2.00 | | Base Shipping Rate per Shipment Date | $1.00 | | Base Shipping Rate for Frames | $2.00 | | Shipping Rate per Frame | $0.25 | | Shipping Rate per Card | $0.15 |
How does that translate? If you buy one card from me with a single shipment date, then shipping would be $3.15. If you buy eight cards from me with a single shipment date, then shipping would be $4.20. If you buy two cards from me, each with its own shipment date, then shipping would be $4.30. If you buy one card from me with a frame and a single shipment date, then shipping would be $5.40. Does that work? Seems like it fits my criteria. I'll find out, I guess. Interesting stuff, business. ETC: The calculation of shipping is now built into the shopping cart.  Next, order processing. Then, the ability for customers to view their order status and duplicate previous orders. Then, the pages to manage order fulfillment. |
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I received my card rack today.  Ain't it purdee? Behind me on the white board is my development schedule for ArtByBrett this week. The web site needs to be done by the end of January. Of course, that's an arbitrary date, but psychologically important, nonetheless. If I slip, opening shop on April 1 is tougher. Back to coding... |
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Over the weekend, I went over to Erin's house and we painted for a few hours. And we laughed a lot. Which was very therapeutic for us both - not to say that we needed it, but the company and the whimsical atmosphere were delightful.  What is it? I don't know... and it doesn't matter. It's "Sunday," painted without thought and in joy. And this one...  Painting has become a favorite way to spend time with friends, just goofing around. It's color and kindergarten. Fun :) I hope to do more of this with those of you who browse the site and would be open to painting with me. Especially as I get into the breakneck pace of February, it will be great to offset the seriousness of producing cards with the fun of the brush while hanging with friends. ETC: "Skinny Jeff" stops by and leaves a comment overnight. He has a web site (I won't link to it, but he lists it and you can click into the comments to see it) and he asks me to visit it and link to it. Because his site is at least relevant (art), I won't consider it spam, but that's kind of what he's done. My trivia mechanism has curtailed all of the bot spam. So I go to his site and it's a lot of text (and Google ads) about learning to paint. Not much of it is really very helpful... nothing demonstrated in a step-by-step method or anything. He kind of talks around the subject without explaining how. And then the irony... in this post, which discusses how I just willy-nilly painted with Erin over the weekend, he posts a comment, when at his web site, he says this: "Often people with a certain artistic predisposition think that all they need is paper or a canvas, brushes, paints of different colors, and off they go to the path of artistdom!" Hmm... well, that's pretty much what Erin and I did. It was carefree painting with no artistic agenda other than to have a good and judgment-free time.I respect his desire to make a buck, and I wish him the best, but for anyone who wants to paint or draw, my favorite books are as follows: Those are my recommendations.On the other hand, if you just want to enjoy painting for the fun of it, with no real serious agenda, I recommend Life, Paint, and Passion. |
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Nick has learned how to use Windows Movie Maker and has strategically shot video to make a little movie of his own design.  Watch the movie... it will change your life. |
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 | Shopping Cart! |  |
The shopping cart can now display:  The links on the cart page and the Update Cart button don't work yet; that's tonight's work. But I'm closer! I've never built a shopping cart for a web site before, and having gone through the exercise with the customization that I wanted for my purposes, I can't imagine the frustration of being a web vendor and dealing with these things without a technical background. It has to often be a case of the technology defining business for them, rather than business defining the technology. I needed bundled items, and wanted a way to offset those to make it apparent that the items were "child items." The quantity of those items shouldn't be adjusted since each is a single-quantity item packaged with the card, and the shopper shouldn't be able to click into those items to edit them, but rather should click into the parent item to edit. Could I have achieved that with a third-party shopping cart? Nope. Had to build my own. And that's my point... I defined my own technology and didn't have to change the way that I wanted to do business to get my store online. I have 9 days to finish the web site since my self-imposed deadline is "web site in January." So I keep showing up to do my job and work to get it done. For what it's worth, I still haven't figured out how I'll handle the calculation of shipping, but I expect that the logic of that will emerge as I work through scenarios on the site. Each thing in its own time... |
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I was an English major in college, though I never graduated. I was making more money in business and computers, so I did that instead and dropped out. Kris found a little quiz to test what your major should be. Hers? Art. My results? | You scored as English. You should be an English major! Your passion lies in writing and expressing yourself creatively, and you hate it when you are inhibited from doing so. Pursue that interest of yours!
English | | 92% | Mathematics | | 83% | Psychology | | 83% | Philosophy | | 75% | Journalism | | 75% | Art | | 75% | Dance | | 67% | Theater | | 67% | Linguistics | | 67% | Engineering | | 58% | Sociology | | 50% | Anthropology | | 50% | Biology | | 42% | Chemistry | | 25% |
What is your Perfect Major?
created with QuizFarm.com |
I figured that English and Psychology would be up there, though I am surprised by Math's ranking. Perhaps because I answered so many questions affirming my analytical tendencies. Okay, back to programming... |
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Last night, my friend, Kelly, came over for dinner and being a former bandmate of mine, we goofed around on my crappy Fender acoustic guitar. Kelly is phenomenal; I'm passable. But my son, Jacob, really got into it. This morning when we got up, Cub wanted to jam with me, so he asked me to get him two pencils to use as drumsticks and I got out the guitar. You can hear what we did together until I hit a bad chord at the end, with me scatting along vocally. (None of my songs have any lyrics... I just never really got around to it.) Jacob did a great job on sticks. A big future in front of him, I think :) By the way, I recorded this on my Sony Cybershot and then converted the MPG to MP3. I have a Tascam US-122 USB device that should allow me to record straight into the computer, bu the Tascam driver is so godawful that it's virtually unusable with Windows XP Service Pack 2. I'm seriously thinking of getting a Mac. Recording shouldn't be this traumatic. |
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Success... I was able to add a greeting card to my shopping cart. A couple of fields of bad data, but the order was created and the items were added. Next: Fix the glitches that exist in adding a greeting card (done with this one...)Update all of the pages to work with the shopping cart (done, 1/21/2006)Create the frame page to add a frame, without a card (done, 1/24/2006)Add the ability to view the cart (done, 1/22/2006)Provide the ability to edit the cart (done, 1/23/2006)
I'm thinking all of that should be finished by sometime in the middle of next week.Then it's order processing and order management (viewing past orders, duplicating a previous order, etc) the following week. I'm still on track to have the site done by the end of January. Yayy!! |
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A friend sent this to me, and it took a while to wriggle the GIF file out of the email, but this is so very cool, as you can see.  Don't know who it is or I would attribute it, but that's awesome. Anybody know who did this? |
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