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Friday State of the Bill
Jun. 1st, 2012 13:40I think that just once I'd like to have a journal entry that I wouldn't be justified in starting with, "It was an interesting last several days."
My arms don't hurt much now. Last weekend they got quite a workout, destroying a 50 year old concrete-slab porch. I have to admit it was kind of fun, swinging the sledgehammer, watching the crack grow until a piece fell. It wasn't fun when shards, blown out of the impact like bullets, would tear across my shins, or a chunk would land on my ankle, but such happenings were rare.
The only thing left of the slab now is a couple of foot long piece sitting atop the front edge of concrete block foundation. The blocks below absorb the blow and distribute the force of it so it's slow work; however, it's a pretty small piece, relatively speaking, so I can slip a stick or something underneath it to provide a breaking point. Every day I fill a couple of five gallon buckets with rubble and discard them along an unused stretch of side-road on the way to work. It's not my favorite solution, but I haven't found anywhere to dump the stuff that doesn't want money to do so.
I want all the debris moved before I start building the porch, but if I wait till it's all gone the porch will never be built, so I've taken the "carpet" that the porch was covered in and dragged to a bare spot in the yard, and I'm moving the rubble there. It's slow going, and I'm okay with that.
Starting to face the idea that Seamlyne isn't making any money. The cost of fabric + the cost of labor makes the tights business no longer worth it. It takes about 4-1/2 hours to make one pair of tights, from cutting to laundering to dyeing to laundering again. After expenses it comes to just about $5 an hour. I haven't been able to find a reliable supplier of good pre-dyed fabric.
As a consequence, I've started to look at other things I can do as a sideline, and I may have landed on something that would work well. I do a lot of graphics when I make a DVD, for the kids school for instance. Menu backgrounds, the disc printing, DVD case and insert, all bits of the branding that go into the complete package, and - even if I do say so myself - I'm good at it.
I know that such libraries are on offer - Sony offers a complete catalog of menu backgrounds with their Vegas video editing and DVD creation software - and I've started working out how I might position myself and a product to take advantage of the market. I have a pretty good idea how it would work.
For the December Nights, December Lights video the menus used a blue background with snow falling, and last night I spent some time reacquainting myself with the software. Animating snow is pretty easy. Animating snow when you have about a hundred snowflakes to keep track of? That's hard. Thankfully, all I have to is specify start point (outside the frame, top) and end point (outside the frame, bottom) and the amount of "wander" and the software does the rest.
I'll admit, it's more fun than sewing.
My arms don't hurt much now. Last weekend they got quite a workout, destroying a 50 year old concrete-slab porch. I have to admit it was kind of fun, swinging the sledgehammer, watching the crack grow until a piece fell. It wasn't fun when shards, blown out of the impact like bullets, would tear across my shins, or a chunk would land on my ankle, but such happenings were rare.
The only thing left of the slab now is a couple of foot long piece sitting atop the front edge of concrete block foundation. The blocks below absorb the blow and distribute the force of it so it's slow work; however, it's a pretty small piece, relatively speaking, so I can slip a stick or something underneath it to provide a breaking point. Every day I fill a couple of five gallon buckets with rubble and discard them along an unused stretch of side-road on the way to work. It's not my favorite solution, but I haven't found anywhere to dump the stuff that doesn't want money to do so.
I want all the debris moved before I start building the porch, but if I wait till it's all gone the porch will never be built, so I've taken the "carpet" that the porch was covered in and dragged to a bare spot in the yard, and I'm moving the rubble there. It's slow going, and I'm okay with that.
Starting to face the idea that Seamlyne isn't making any money. The cost of fabric + the cost of labor makes the tights business no longer worth it. It takes about 4-1/2 hours to make one pair of tights, from cutting to laundering to dyeing to laundering again. After expenses it comes to just about $5 an hour. I haven't been able to find a reliable supplier of good pre-dyed fabric.
As a consequence, I've started to look at other things I can do as a sideline, and I may have landed on something that would work well. I do a lot of graphics when I make a DVD, for the kids school for instance. Menu backgrounds, the disc printing, DVD case and insert, all bits of the branding that go into the complete package, and - even if I do say so myself - I'm good at it.I know that such libraries are on offer - Sony offers a complete catalog of menu backgrounds with their Vegas video editing and DVD creation software - and I've started working out how I might position myself and a product to take advantage of the market. I have a pretty good idea how it would work.
For the December Nights, December Lights video the menus used a blue background with snow falling, and last night I spent some time reacquainting myself with the software. Animating snow is pretty easy. Animating snow when you have about a hundred snowflakes to keep track of? That's hard. Thankfully, all I have to is specify start point (outside the frame, top) and end point (outside the frame, bottom) and the amount of "wander" and the software does the rest.
I'll admit, it's more fun than sewing.