No Strings Attached

Posted By Kathleen David on October 2, 2012

I have seen a pattern out here on the Internet that both puzzles and disturbs me. And I am honestly trying to find a delicate way of putting it. It boils down, for me, to one can’t be emotional in a business transaction. I learned this lesson at a relatively young age but I am seeing more and more emotions leading to bad business decisions.

I know a number of artists that have what they term a nuisance tax for clients that they know are going to be a royal pain to work with. And I am OK with that and have charged it on very rare occasions. One knows that the client is going to be one that is going to take extra time for the project to be done so one factors in the time and extra materials cost into the final price. Also if the client is willing to pay that amount for the project, then it is worth one’s time to get it done well and in a timely fashion.

This does not excuse a trend I am seeing of “No Refunds No Matter What” which includes if the artist decides that the client is too much to handle so they keep the money to “teach” the client a lesson about the client’s behavior. That is out and out theft and, I am pretty sure, is illegal just about all over the world. I know artists that have been burned by charge backs after the good are received or checks that are no good. That does not excuse taking money for goods not delivered.

Another thing that bothers me is people who create companies to sell their goods to clients and then use the monies paid for that project on other projects or on themselves before delivering the good. I am not talking about purchasing the materials for a project; I am talking about creating what almost seems like a pyramid scheme. They take on too much and create a problem for themselves because they find themselves in over their heads. So the client either receives quickly made shoddy goods or it takes an incredible long time to get their product. So some owners start changing their terms of service that they have all the time that they want to do the project and the client just has to sit tight and wait. (Again I know about the obsessive client that thinks once they plunk down their money, they own the artist. That’s another column entirely). If one has a queue for custom work, then list it so that prospective clients can see how long it is going to take for one to get to the top of the list and give them some ballpark figure so they know how long it might be before they are gotten to.

Once one has entered a contract, both parties have things that they are responsible for. Getting in over one’s head and then adding more clients is not sound business sense.

Leading with one’s emotions when things go wrong is not the best way to go for either party. I try hard to take the emotions out of the situation. This is work and it is a job. One needs to look at it from that point of view rather than flying off the handle when someone comes to the artist and asks for an update or a refund because it is taking too long.

Then there are the artists who go into these projects totally gung-ho. They have a skill and they are going to make money off it. However once they get started they find that something that they enjoyed doing as a hobby is not something they want to do as a job. And that is one heck of a wake-up call. Some rise to the occasion and others just drop the ball and go onto something else leaving people hanging who have paid them money for the artist’s skills.

I am grateful for those people who do rise to the occasion and become good business people.

Category: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Tags:

Posted By Kathleen David on September 30, 2012

After much thinking, I know what I want in an app but I can’t quite find the right one. I want one that I can input what I do in a day with tags that I can create and get a graph of how I spent my day. And then create a schedule based on the data. I want to see where my unproductive time sinks are and when I am getting the most done in a day. And where it just doesn’t make sense to schedule anything. Also it would be nice if there were a way of putting repeating activities into a calendar.

Right now I am writing it down on paper and transferring it to Microsoft word. Then at the end of the day I break it down into how much of what I did when.

Interruptions do eat into time that I have set aside for other things but I only call myself off task if it takes more than 10 minutes to get back on task. Which happened this morning a couple of times while I was working through this.

So today I am starting work on Caroline’s costume and continuing the great house pick-up. At some point I am locking the cats up so I can put the suitcases back into the attic.

Tomorrow is a busy day. I have a meeting with Caroline’s teacher and the school librarian. Then take Peter to the train since he has a couple of meeting in the city. I am stocking the larder and a few other errands.

I am grateful for things that go the way I need them to.

Category: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Tags:

Posted By Kathleen David on September 28, 2012

I think everyone thinks that their brain is not a normal brain at sometime or another for a variety of reasons. It is those variations in our brains that allows us to do all kinds of things and be good at things that others might not be as good at.

We can train and expand our brains to a point and we do by learning and living.

I have a couple of things that I can do which I know not everyone can do with ease. One of those things is what has become to be called multitasking. I can do two things at once and have pretty much total focus on both. I can’t explain how I do it since I have been doing it all my life. It is not perfect but it has proved very useful over the years. I also have some serious retention skills which I have work on to keep them up and going. I have a problem solving brain. My hand/eye coordination is for spit but give me a problem that has to be thought through and I am good. I think that is one of the reasons I love math so much.

I learned yesterday that Caroline has inherited my multitasking skills because she did two tasks at once and doing both of them rather well. She was also making intuitive leaps that allowed her to solve problems as she went along. I thought that she had these skills but I had evidence presented to me that she can do these skills and do them well.

I know that my mother has these skills as well so that’s three generations of multitaskers. We also have excellent skills in spatial relations, which has served me very well in packing. I have received compliments for bell-men for it.

Someone once told me that I should teach how I do two things at once and make it so effortless. I informed them that I can’t because I am not sure how I do it, I just do. Caroline is the same way. She can’t explain it, but she sure as heck can do it. And yes, I am proud of her to being able to do it.

I am grateful for my mental skills that allow me to do all kinds of nifty things.

Category: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Tags:

Posted By Kathleen David on September 27, 2012

Just couldn’t get it together this morning to write something. My brain was in a fog where it stayed most of the day. I am hoping allergies and praying not con crud.

So the referees are back in the NFL. It took something that boneheadedly wrong as the last play of the Packers/Seahawks game to wake up the owners that the American view public was not pleased. There were complaints before this but they were dismissed out of hand. But the game was getting away from the Refs. The players and the coaches were creating a situation of anarchy which was leading to someone getting seriously hurt. Thankfully that did not happen. The outrage would have been rather loud if it had.

Congratulations and thank you to RA Dickey for a wonderful season. One of the few highlights of a rather dismal season. I enjoyed watching you pitch this afternoon. I hope you are in a Mets uniform next year as well and good luck for the Cy Young award this year. If I could vote for you, I would.

Still dealing with unpacking from FenCon. I swear I spend about a quarter of my life either packing or unpacking. Not complaining more noting.

I got the new JK Rowling book today. Plan on reading it soon since I am betting that there are already people talking about it on the internet. The cover copy makes it sound interesting and I did like her style with the Potter novels.

Catching up on Homeland so Peter and I can watch it together. I am up to episode 10 and I have heard that you can’t see 11 without wanted to see 12 immediately. But I am stopping at 9 to see Elementary.

Got Caroline some winter leggings today. I found one in a leopard print that I know she is going to love. She does love her animal prints. And she has some dresses that she can wear them with. Now we need to get her flats that fit properly.

The cats are trying to kill us. They have been underfoot since we got back. I have stepped on more tails this past week than I have in the past year. Right now I have one at my right hip, one at my left, one at my feet and Fig has her head on top of my shoulders. I think they missed us.

It is going to be nice to be home for a weekend. October is going to be busy too. November is kind of up in the air but it is starting to solidify. December has travel involved too. But that is the life I have chosen. Sometimes I am reminded how different it is. Today was one of those days. It is not a bad thing more a reminder to me of how lucky I am.

I have a crazy idea that I have to execute before NYCC. Let’s see if I can get it done. I need to work on my tailoring skills.

I am grateful for a fertile imagination.

Category: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Tags:

Posted By Kathleen David on September 25, 2012

Can be a small one indeed.

Someone asked me if I had seen some puppets someone else had done that looked like my Phluzzies. I went and looked and thought the person had done a good job of building those puppets. Yes, they basically look the same as mine but there are slight differences and they aren’t calling them Phluzzies. My puppets look like how some other puppeteers do their puppets but there are, like in doll making, a limited number of ways to create the shapes. There are ways that we make these shapes our own so one can tell who made which.

There are these things out there called shoulder dragons (the generic term I believe). You see them at many a Renaissance faire and science fiction conventions. Some are made entirely of cloth and wire and others are made of fur and feathers and Sculpy or another polymer clay and still others combinations of all three. One of the cleverest one I ever saw was cloth and it was a really neat beanbag that just sat on your shoulder. Now some of these shoulder dragons have mechanisms in them that allow you to puppeteer the dragon. Wings flap, heads move, and tails wag among other things. The mechanism to do all this is based on a very old puppetry trick using cables. I learned it from an older puppeteer when I was in my early 20s so we are talking about 30 years ago and the context had nothing to do with shoulder dragons but the moment I first saw one, I knew that was how they were doing them.

Now one can’t trademark or copyright shoulder dragon because there are too many out there so it has become what is known as a common term for the critters. You can trademark words like “drabbit” and the creator of the drabbits has which is why in the Sir Apropos books Peter gives credit to him and a link to his website in the book. They worked it out at a Ren Faire and all parties know that the other is using the name, which is why if I made a shoulder dragon I would make sure it was NOT called a drabbit.

Now there was a recent dust up over someone who makes shoulder dragons that they call something else. They did use the term drabbit as a search term among a couple of other terms that are used by various makers of shoulder dragons. If you look at their TOS, they clearly state that the dragons they make are not drabbits and a simple search will bring you to the originator of the term.

Someone who “works” for one of the other maker of shoulder dragons took umbrage and apparently sent some pretty nasty and threating e-mails and instant messages to this young artist. The young artist blocked them because they felt harassed by someone who has no authority in the matter what so ever. The “employee” then went on the net and, with an insincere as it could be apology, created a drama storm because their company’s term had been used as a tag by this young artist. Now I am not absolving young artist of being rather inconsiderate for using terms that are not theirs to increase the traffic for their shoulder dragons. That is not polite or a good business practice. The employee came after Young Artist for copying sculpts and mechanisms of their companies in a forum where art issues are talked about. I looked at all the evidence that they provided and at the gallery of the young artist and the more I look the more is that they look similar but they are not exact copies and, as I stated at the top of all this, the mechanism is not copyrightable because it is based on puppetry things that Jim Henson was doing back in the 50s and 60s.

However the “employee” now seems to have the bit in their teeth and they think that the group has given them cart blanch to vilify the young artist all over the net. The young artist has removed the tags from their galleries and that should be the end of it however the “employee” isn’t letting that be the end of it and unfortunately has gotten other people to attack the young artist. I honestly think this person has blinders on to what others are saying unless it is what they want to hear because they have their crusade. And honestly the owner of the business that they work for should be the one address these issues not worker #7.

Also after an extensive search of the trademark and copyright database, I can’t find anything either trademarked or copyrighted under the term that the employee is getting so hot under the collar. I even took the time to go under the pending list to see if it was there which it isn’t. So legally they really don’t have a leg to stand on and harassing is all that this employee can do. And it is doing its work, the young artist has pulled down most of her work including her examples. I do find it interesting that “employee” is coming great guns down on this kid but dismisses the used of My Little Pony as not as big an issue because Hasbro allows fan art to exist in fact they have seen Hasbro employees buy fan art work so it is OK. So this person has a double standard that they can justify in their head.

So what young artist was doing was tacky but it was not illegal. If the company owner wanted to give the kid a cease and desist, that would be one thing and hard to prove. However one employee deciding to be the police force for this company does not reflect well on the company and I really hope that the owner takes a careful look at this.

I am grateful for people who use the forum properly. There has been a lot of good to come out of the forum and problems solved when it is used properly.

Category: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Tags: