Ramblings, rumblings, grumblings, and rambling grumbly rumblings.

Need the heat to break. I hate to whine about it, but it's starting to affect my overall attitude. I'm fatalistic by nature, and the constant, unrelenting heat and dry is adding a measure of apathy that is really dangerous. It's started to bleed into my overall attitude - home and work. Not good.

I discovered last weekend that the dry conditions have exacerbated all the problems in our foundation: the blocks on the North end of the house are literally being shifted apart from one another. There are gaps in some places wide enough to stick a pencil into. I'm not panicked about it: it's on a gable end, thus non-load bearing, and there is a second foundation (actually a first foundation, to be technical) just three feet inside it, so having the outer foundation crumbling won't cause the house to collapse, but it's just One More Thing.

The yard is dead - I don't think it's just dormant. I've never seen it as dry as it is; even the crabgrass couldn't survive. The only things living are the carpet weed and scraggly mulberry bushes trying to gain a foothold. We've kept the vegetable garden and the herbs watered, but other than that I am content to let the lawn languish. I've put a lot of work into the lawn over the last several years, but...as I said, apathy.


Seamlyne has more paid orders in its queue at this moment that it has ever had in its history, and most of them came in within a few days of each other, and a variety of regions are represented. The only scary part is that several of them have deadlines within a few days or weeks of each other, so keeping up with them will be a challenge. We can do it, though, I've no doubt of that.


The day job hasn't changed much. For one of our projects - adding a data push from our system to a third party - I am at the mercy of the third party, and they are notoriously slow and unhelpful. A fair chunk of money depends upon the completion of the project, and I've no confidence that it will happen in a timely fashion.


Several weeks ago I committed to some fence repair for a friend who is putting her present home on the market. I'm replacing about a hundred pickets. I made this commitment while the temperatures were still reasonable and like an idiot put off the work, little reckoning that the temps would rise and stay above a hundred degrees. I'm about half done, working last Saturday and Sunday morning. The fence is in shade and it wasn't actually that bad.

It has been a while since I put that kind of effort into that kind of activity, and my hands - even now, three days later - are sore and don't want to make a fist. I feel the strain deep into my wrists and forearms. It's a good ache, because it means that I did something.

Actually, the United States Postal Service.

A big announcement was made in March that their shipping APIs were changing*, going from version 2 to version 4. I've no idea what happened to version 3 and why we skipped that one, but I want to be a good customer, so I'm going along with it.

In the email, the Postmaster General and/or his minions made it absolutely clear that upgrading to version 4 was completely mandatory: you don't have a choice, the email roared. Under no circumstances will version 2 work after May, 2011. You must upgrade your code or die!

Okay, sure. 

The Seamlyne shopping cart - a heavily modified version of Candypress which I have written about before - uses the version 2 API, and is written in classic ASP, a place where everybody knows my name. No biggie. I open the requisite files to have them ready to edit, and I click the link in the USPS email that gets me to the documentation for the version 4 API.

The page opens. I begin reading, looking for example code. The example code is ... drumroll please ... for version 2 ... AND - with instructions that say, "works only in Internet Explorer" does not, in fact, work in Internet Explorer.

Thankfully, the actual API docs are the correct version. Thanks for that at least, Mr. Postmaster. 

I'm glad for this change, believe it or not. Candypress is very poorly written by 2011 standards, and this will give me an opportunity to improve at least a small piece of it. Upgrade? Hell no. It's only gotten worse as it's aged. Supposedly there's a new version out for Web 2.0 - but that sort of terminology was passé two years ago. The version I have works, and I'm not going to mess with it.



* "API" stands for "application programming interface", and means, very simply, the means by which to computer programs talk to one another and exchange information. In this case, my program says, "1 pound package to Omaha", and their program replies, "Right. That'll cost you $6. Thanks, now fuck off." I pass on the $6 to the customer as "shipping." 

Quite a mixed bag of a weekend, but ultimately it ended up on a good note.

Side Work is a bitch, sometimes.

I'll try to keep this story brief. I've been doing the website for The Stage Coffee House & Deli. It's not a huge money maker - hell, neither is the coffee house - but it's a few extra dollars here and there in cash. Grocery stores don't mind cash. 

( Actually, yeah, it got kinda long. )

Seamlyne

It's been very quiet, and I'm kinda glad. Flu-B (yep, officially) makes it tough to keep up on orders, so I'm heartily glad there haven't been any. There were two to finish up, and they're a few days further out for shipping than I'd prefer, so I finished both up today.

( More general update-y stuff... )

It was quite a weekend.

Seamlyne

I made the promise of having a doublet built by the end of the weekend, giving me Friday night and the weekend to do so. Thirty two yards of piping, five yards of corduroy, and four yards of coat lining later, it's done. I sincerely miss my industrial straight stitch. Working on the domestic was fine - it's a damn good machine, after all - but it is all for all a domestic, lacking the power and speed that would have pushed the job at least marginally faster.

In total, it took about twelve hours. 

Through the project, though, two things came to light: if I'm going to continue the business - and there's every reason to think I will - I have to re-populate my shop with commercial machines. The small serger is starting to struggle a bit, so a serger will be the first purchase - that, or a new foot for the 5-thread that will allow me to use it for tights making.

Family

For the first time in a long time, Katie is really sick. 102º fever, chills, aches, cough. Jami is showing symptoms. It's only a matter of time, I'm guessing, before Michelle and/or I get it. 

I hate this: having been exposed, I'm acutely aware of every little ache and pain, every tickle in the throat, wondering if it's the first signs coming down sick myself. That pain in my shoulder? Could be from having to struggle with the fabric in that particularly difficult section around the sleeve cap, or it could be the beginnings of muscle aches. That mild nausea? Could be the fact that I'm on week three of bad sleep, or could be The Bug. You just don't know.

Citrus the hamster died overnight. She'd been suffering from a cold, which for an animal with a respiratory system no larger than the last joint of my index finger is frequently fatal. Katie was crushed and called me at work to tell me, though within an hour she was on the Club Penguin website playing a game. Aspergers is a weird thing.

Music

Had a concert Saturday night. Not much of a crowd; I'm starting to wonder if it's me, the venue, or the time of year. The concert itself was okay, but by the second half I was playing for the usual suspects, about a half dozen people. It's a little disheartening, but probably just as well: I have been so profoundly tired lately, and it showed up in my playing. Many small mistakes, verbal gaffes as well as flubs on the guitar.

In Other News

So, I've taken on the website for The Stage Coffee House (formerly Munchies, formerly Stone Bridge), and as a part of that project, I created a new logo. That logo is now on the front of the building. As a result, I've got leads on at least two other websites. Side work, for the win.

We finished four orders of tights today: white, wine, camel, hunter green, and mink, and we shipped to Chicago, Ft. Lauderdale, Minneapolis, and Rancho Cucamonga (no, really.)  We've got three orders from Kansas City so far, and one from Oklahoma (ya'll know who you are.)

It was a busy, frustrating (day job stuff), productive day. Seamlyne is doing better than I expected it to.

We'll be adding Mastercard and Visa in the next couple of days, as soon as PayQuake decides we're worthy. I wanted to put it off so we wouldn't have more fees to pay, but if some of my customers are any indication, PayPal is so complex as to be impossible to use. Hopefully, plugging into a different gateway will make a difference.

( Day-job whining. )

And now, I'm going to bed. This is a conscious choice: I just don't want to stay up tonight. I have heard the bells at midnight too many nights recently, and I'm ready to get my body and brain back on schedule.

It was a weird morning. I woke before the alarm clock - kittens have no concept of human sleep schedules - and was awake enough that I went ahead and rose for the day.

The response we've gotten from the Seamlyne re-launch has been gratifying, but has generated only one order so far. I'm sure the market will pick back up - just need to gain the momentum.

We got our first order from the new Seamlyne site last night, two pair of black tights. Now we get to see how our new dyeing methodology works in actual practice. Of course it's a rush order, in spite of the warnings on the site, and Michelle and I, being the normally conscientious people that we are, resolved without questioning to fill it, social engagement notwithstanding. We'll just make a party of the dyeing.

So I got up this morning, went immediately to the shop and started building the tights. I didn't get them done, but I got a good start on it, and we'll be able to start dyeing that much sooner. Black takes a long time.

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As a person who likes - no, more than that, depends upon routine, I drove to work with the nagging feeling I'd forgotten something. I don't think I actually did, though.

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Last night we took a quantity of Early Girl and Roma tomatoes that I can only describe as "a hell of a lot" and started at least a gallon and a half of sauce. Fresh marjoram, oregano, and basil from our garden; fresh onion and garlic; white wine; brown sugar. It's going to be yummy.

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I'm in the market for a new web host. My current host's recent changes have made things so complicated that I can't tell what's going on with my account any more. It's too bad. They've been a good host. It just isn't worth the trouble.

It was quite the day: busy, tiring, dusty, hard, sweaty, good. I'm ready for bed now, waiting for Katie and Michelle to get their showers. Last night Michelle and I were up until 2:00am dyeing, washing, rinsing fabric. Tonight, I think I'll be in bed by 11:00. It's worth hoping.

I spent most of the day - except for an all too brief afternoon nap - in the basement, working on making the shop once again, a shop. After we closed Seamlyne at the end of 2006 I re-purposed the space to computer consulting. Now that we're reopening (and my principle computer is now upstairs) it's time to re-purpose again.

Today, I finished carpeting the space - I did about half of it somewhere around 2005 and never made the time to do the other half. It's cheap carpet, but it warms the space adequately, makes it a little more barefoot-friendly down there. Rolled and folded for all these years, it's a bit wrinkly, but in just the few hours it's been down - taped into place using heavy duty double sided carpet tape - it's already starting to relax into place.

Now that the kids are old enough to join us down there as they wish, the goal is to make the environment down there as pleasant as possible. We got an old loveseat from Michelle's parents - it has a twin sized Hide-A-Bed that I can think of a few uses for - that will provide comfortable seating. A TV and DVD player provide entertainment; we'll get a converter box so the old TV can pick up the new digital TV signal; we have an old PC downstairs as well.

Probably the biggest step for me was taking my Old Computer Desk apart to its components with the intent of turning the two legs of the "L" into sewing tables. They're precisely the right height, and I'll be cutting at least one hole so I can recess the domestic straight-stitch and put the deck flush with the desktop - something like the picture on the left, there. (If you sew, and you've never sewn on a sewing machine with a working surface two feet square, you're really missing out.) I'll probably do the same with my small serger. It just makes the work go easier if the working surface of the machine isn't raised above the surface of the table: easier to maneuver the garment; easier to see what you're doing; much much easier on the back.

If anyone has a small computer desk and/or TV stand they'd like to see hauled away, please let me know. Those are the two pieces we're missing.

Michelle, thinking ahead, God bless her, made a terrific soup for our supper, so we wouldn't have to order-pizza-or-starve. She also made garlic-cheddar biscuits. Supper was very good.

There's more, I'm sure, but my brain is turning to mush. Time for shower and bed.

I surprised myself a little last night. For the first time in about a year, I sat down to make a pair of tights.  Well, actually, four pairs of tights, but I was only concerned with finishing one. I'll do the other three tonight.

Except for being a lot slower - the big serger is in storage downstairs so I'm on a small, domestic Juki - the tights went together just the way they used to. Like riding a bike, to put more wear on a threadbare old analogy. Once I got back into the groove of it, it was kind of fun, like revisiting an old haunt and finding it more or less the way you remembered it.

I've reopened the Seamlyne website to new tights orders. My motivation is two-fold: I've got fabric to clean out of the basement, and we could use the extra money just now. My selection of colors is limited, but that's really the only limitation. My patterns were right where I left them.

Lots of green, lots of brown, a little wine, a little navy. Notty, there's purple in there too that I'm holding back you you :)

I've also got a box of tights that were cut out but never assembled that can go in the off-the-rack section. That ought to be fun tracking down the pieces that are missing.

I've also put the design site back online, hoping to generate some traffic there. As I've read back over it, I've found some items I'd like to change - most notably in the footwear section - and probably will over time. For the time being, it's just good to see it again.

So, spread the word, my friends. I'd appreciate all the publicity I can get.

An update, with (apologies, but it's MY journal) some marketing stuck in here and there.

It's done: I closed the Seamlyne site to new tights orders. You can still get Ready-To-Wear tights, though, and there are a dozen or so pair at home that are cut and not yet made. There'll be inventory for a while yet, and the prices have been dropped to 2004 levels.

All of my fabric is for sale, and just to get rid of it quick I've priced it at my cost. I'm also offering my patterns for sale, so if you've ever wanted to try to make your own tights, now's your chance. I'd appreciate any help in spreading that news, like to a.f.r and other online groups.

It's a weird feeling, seeing the end of that particular tunnel after, what, ten years? But it's also a relief. There are six pairs of tights sitting, waiting to be built for orders placed and paid for and I'm going to have to force myself to work on them. I just don't want to. Mentally, I've moved on, and it was easier than I thought it would be.

I attended my first IFC meeting, and had a good time. The Mercers went with me, and it was like old times. We fell into our old, easy friendship like high school was yesterday instead of twenty-five years ago.

The IFC meeting, and the new path I'm starting down, are a post for later. Suffice it to say, I left the meeting encouraged and caffeinated, a dangerous combination.

The summary thought: I can do that.

Thanks to my wife, who is supporting me in this journey. Dearest, you were right. I'm seeing the new path a little differently after the meeting than before. I'm also looking forward to seeing what you can do with the gardens.

joegoda, you were right too. Possible career change? We'll see. :)

Seamlyne has taken on a very interesting job. I really don't feel like I should provide many details as to the WHOs and the WHATs, but this I can say: in terms of scale it is by far the largest project we've ever taken on. ( Sewing, geeky stuff... )