Ready for the week.
Aug. 8th, 2010 22:27![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mapsedgeAutism is a funny thing, legally speaking. It can be as debilitating as any physical injury, and yet the insurance companies treat it like something so minor as to need little to no treatment. If you can walk and you can talk, the feeling goes, there's nothing wrong with you that needs covering.
Katie is high-functioning autistic. She suffers from, among other things, Asperger's syndrome, ADHD, and generalized anxiety disorder. These are disorders without cures: you can only treat symptomatically and hope for the best. Chronologically, she's nine. Emotionally, more like five or six.
Insurances covers a portion of most meds, and nothing of other treatments. Any doctor that we take her to we have to pay out of pocket. We have to pay for therapies out of pocket. It's an expensive proposition, but as conscientious parents we can't just sit back and *not* treat her to, and sometimes past, the limits of our finances.
So, last night (8/7), in addition to my performance, the coffee house had a BBQ special and a door prize raffle, with all the proceeds to help with Katie's medical bills. The money raised, while modest, is still a great blessing, and we are very grateful and humbled by the offering.
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Work continues on Seamlyne. I've been in the website every evening, tweaking the code for better search engine optimization and "user experience", whatever that ultimately means. I have a love/hate relationship with Candypress*, my cart of choice. The version I have is more than five years old, written originally for the lowest-common-denominator database, and ever so slowly I'm bringing it into the light. While the code is the worst kind of 1999, old-school ASP, the administrative tools and ease of use as an interface make it worth keeping. I've folded in Prototype and Scriptaculous, added a lot of Ajax features, and started generally moving it toward an MVC model.
The hardest part about re-opening the business is changing our expectations as to the colors we offer. Our navy blue now is not the same navy blue we were selling then. I'm having to learn to be okay with that: this isn't to say that I don't like the new colors. The new navy blue is bee-yoo-tee-full. So is the hunter green, and the dark brown? Gorgeous. Never thought of brown as a "jewel tone" but it almost is. It's just a changing of expectations, is all. I still have sample of all the old colors so I know what I'm shooting for, but I've come to grips with the idea that we're not going to get very many bulls-eyes.
Dyeing fabric after the fact produces a much different product. Yarn-dyed fabric has a very consistent color across the surface, while our process yields a very subtle, and very rich texture. It's not heathering, not exactly; it's much more subtle. It's velvety: that could just be the fact that we're putting the materials through two launderings before it becomes a finished product, so that the feel of the fabric influences how one thinks it looks, but it's still very nice.
The biggest challenge is red. In the dye catalog there are at least a dozen variations on the theme of red. There is a particular dark red that we used to sell as "wine", and there are folks out there that want that particular color. Everything we've tried so far has given us a dark red with a strong purple flavor - not even close to the color we want. We have several dyes on order just for this one color so we can experiment until we find it.
It's been fun experimenting, though. We've got it down to a science now, and working together Michelle and I (mostly Michelle, she's the brains here) can produce a 1oz sample of dyed fabric in about an hour an a half, three 1oz samples in two hours. Most of that is spent not actively engaged in doing anything. You mix and stir your materials a total of fifteen minutes, tops, for that hour and a half. Most of a dyer's life is spent waiting.
I've more to write, but I'm swiftly running out of steam. To sum up:
It felt like a sinus infection, it acted like a sinus infection, but - overnight it seems like - it's gone away. My throat is still sore at this late hour, but I felt mostly normal all day. The concert went well, though the high notes gave me some trouble. I took Sudafed and ibuprofen and capo'd down a fret on most of the songs.
The kitten is proving to be a huge pain in the ass because she's such a ... a... kitten. Love her to pieces, though, in spite of the weird schedule. At least we don't have to breast feed her.
* Before you run out and buy a copy for your website, don't. The newest versions are shit. Better to get the old version from me and never, ever upgrade.
Katie is high-functioning autistic. She suffers from, among other things, Asperger's syndrome, ADHD, and generalized anxiety disorder. These are disorders without cures: you can only treat symptomatically and hope for the best. Chronologically, she's nine. Emotionally, more like five or six.
Insurances covers a portion of most meds, and nothing of other treatments. Any doctor that we take her to we have to pay out of pocket. We have to pay for therapies out of pocket. It's an expensive proposition, but as conscientious parents we can't just sit back and *not* treat her to, and sometimes past, the limits of our finances.
So, last night (8/7), in addition to my performance, the coffee house had a BBQ special and a door prize raffle, with all the proceeds to help with Katie's medical bills. The money raised, while modest, is still a great blessing, and we are very grateful and humbled by the offering.
------------------------------------------------------------
Work continues on Seamlyne. I've been in the website every evening, tweaking the code for better search engine optimization and "user experience", whatever that ultimately means. I have a love/hate relationship with Candypress*, my cart of choice. The version I have is more than five years old, written originally for the lowest-common-denominator database, and ever so slowly I'm bringing it into the light. While the code is the worst kind of 1999, old-school ASP, the administrative tools and ease of use as an interface make it worth keeping. I've folded in Prototype and Scriptaculous, added a lot of Ajax features, and started generally moving it toward an MVC model.
The hardest part about re-opening the business is changing our expectations as to the colors we offer. Our navy blue now is not the same navy blue we were selling then. I'm having to learn to be okay with that: this isn't to say that I don't like the new colors. The new navy blue is bee-yoo-tee-full. So is the hunter green, and the dark brown? Gorgeous. Never thought of brown as a "jewel tone" but it almost is. It's just a changing of expectations, is all. I still have sample of all the old colors so I know what I'm shooting for, but I've come to grips with the idea that we're not going to get very many bulls-eyes.
Dyeing fabric after the fact produces a much different product. Yarn-dyed fabric has a very consistent color across the surface, while our process yields a very subtle, and very rich texture. It's not heathering, not exactly; it's much more subtle. It's velvety: that could just be the fact that we're putting the materials through two launderings before it becomes a finished product, so that the feel of the fabric influences how one thinks it looks, but it's still very nice.
The biggest challenge is red. In the dye catalog there are at least a dozen variations on the theme of red. There is a particular dark red that we used to sell as "wine", and there are folks out there that want that particular color. Everything we've tried so far has given us a dark red with a strong purple flavor - not even close to the color we want. We have several dyes on order just for this one color so we can experiment until we find it.
It's been fun experimenting, though. We've got it down to a science now, and working together Michelle and I (mostly Michelle, she's the brains here) can produce a 1oz sample of dyed fabric in about an hour an a half, three 1oz samples in two hours. Most of that is spent not actively engaged in doing anything. You mix and stir your materials a total of fifteen minutes, tops, for that hour and a half. Most of a dyer's life is spent waiting.
I've more to write, but I'm swiftly running out of steam. To sum up:
It felt like a sinus infection, it acted like a sinus infection, but - overnight it seems like - it's gone away. My throat is still sore at this late hour, but I felt mostly normal all day. The concert went well, though the high notes gave me some trouble. I took Sudafed and ibuprofen and capo'd down a fret on most of the songs.
The kitten is proving to be a huge pain in the ass because she's such a ... a... kitten. Love her to pieces, though, in spite of the weird schedule. At least we don't have to breast feed her.
* Before you run out and buy a copy for your website, don't. The newest versions are shit. Better to get the old version from me and never, ever upgrade.