Zathras' Great Machine

Plans for the day

Oddizm very kindly made a post to AutAdvo last night, giving some supportive comments about Knight Scents and ordering some candles -- which, in turn, led to a couple of other folks ordering candles as well. So I've got seven batches of candles to make, in total, by Wednesday (three business days is my self-imposed shipping deadline). The plan for today is to make at least four batches and also to list some small jars on eBay, once I take photos of them.

So, if I can keep up the EF (and get my emotional state under control, since I've been having a rough day), today should be pretty productive. I just wish it weren't so hot today... making candles in warmer weather is rather unpleasant. Still, definitely better that than to have no sales at all.

Idle speculation... I wonder whether I should register a .com domain and move the business to that. Some months after I had registered knightscents.biz, I learned that .biz is used almost exclusively by spammers, which can be problematic in a variety of ways (I'm not positive, for example, but I think that I've had some of my emails blocked by spam filters because of the .biz TLD that I use). I'll decide on that when I decide on the new host.

Excellent Quote

I'm currently engaged in a minor disagreement on the Autistic_Spectrum Yahoo! group. One person there believes a few things that I disagree with. First, she says that Asperger Syndrome is distinct from autism (which was once a widely held view, but has now largely fallen into disfavor). More importantly, she believes that those with AS are "less disabled" than autistics. I disagreed, and someone else posted an excellent quote in support of what I was saying. I'm reproducing it here, from "Reweaving the Autistic Tapestry; Autism, Aspergers Syndrome, and ADHD" authored by Lisa Blakemore-Brown wherein she quotes Patricia Howlin:

Although often described as a 'mild' variant of autism, the symptoms of Asperger Syndrome are, in many cases, just as pervasive and as devastating as those of less able children.  However, because of their relatively high cognitive ability, and their apparently competent use of language, this group of children is often least well served or understood.  In fact, many have extensive linguistic and comprehension difficulties (especially involving abstract or complex concepts); their understanding of the more subtle aspects of social interaction is often profoundly limited, and their obsessional interests and behaviors also prove a barrier to social integration.  However, only a minority receives any specialist provision.  Most have to cope in mainstream with little or no help.  The children's good vocabulary; and their well-developed obsessional interests, frequently give the impression that they are capable of far higher levels of achievement than is actually the case.  Others' expectations of their social and academic potential tend to be unrealistically high, and when these expectations are not met the children are viewed as negative, unco-operative, unmotivated, or rude and manipulative.  Seemingly so close to 'normality' there is constant pressure for them to 'fit in' in ways that would never be demanded of a less able autistic child.  This can lead to enormous pressure, resulting in extreme levels of anxiety and stress, which in turn further impede social and educational progress.  Because of their very uneven profile of skills and deficits, these children may require even more highly specialized help than those with global learning difficulties.

Worst. Review. Ever.

So I was watching an ep of M*A*S*H. A soldier has lost use of his right hand due to an injury and is playing a piano concerto that was written by Ravel solely for the left hand. Just out of curiosity, I went to look it up on Amazon. I found the album, and this review: "I never listened to this, so I have no idea if it is any good."

...boing?

I don't know what's weirder, the fact that someone wrote a review for an album they never listened to, or that someone actually voted that they had found the review helpful.

Amusing subject line

Subject line from a marketing email (non-spam) that I just received: "Tools for the Perfect Turkey from Williams-Sonoma".

I don't even know where to start with that one...

Progress on Knight Scents

So the next project for Knight Scents is to put up a fragrance list, including a description of the fragrance and saying whether it's in stock (and, if it isn't, how long it will be before I can get it). I have a page under construction for that, but a minor annoyance has cropped up that I can't quite pin down: the gray bars along the left and right sides don't quite line up properly with the banner along the top of the page, as they do on all the other pages. Moggy knows what the problem is, but she's having trouble explaining it to me. *grumble* If I don't get this straightened out pretty soon, I'm going to run out of "spoons" pretty fast. I'm glad I've already gotten as much accomplished today (in this area as well as others) as I have.

A less controversial entry

I weigh myself every Saturday morning. For some time now, I've been 178 pounds, and it doesn't seem to make that much difference what I eat or how much. If I have a week where I eat, say, three or four unusually heavy/fattening meals (such as pizza), I may gain three or four pounds, but it always comes back off again in another week or so.

I'd like to drop about another nine or ten pounds, but 178 is OK for my height (five foot eleven). it's certainly better than where I was a while back... in the late Spring or so of 2002, I was a lot heavier. I remember weighing in at 220 at one point, and I may have weighed even more than that. That was bad in a lot of ways... apart from being unsightly and unhealthy, it's also uncomfortable.

Courtesy of Bruce Tinsley

These days, of course, we see a lot of PSAs in the various media outlets urging people (especially twentysomethings) to vote on Election Day. The PSAs say it doesn't matter whom you vote for, or whether you have any strong feelings about any of the candidates, or anything else. They state over and again that it is absolutely vital for everyone to vote, no matter what, and they exhort us to do so. My view is different.

From a comic strip called "Mallard Fillmore". This came out in the Fall of 2000, but it's just as pertinent now as it was then.

If you spent more time following "Survivor"
Than keeping up with issues in the news,
Or you prefer old reruns of "MacGyver"
To watching the debates and interviews...

If you think taxes, schools and stuff are boring;
You'd rather hit the mall? Then please take note:
Don't pick Election Day to stop ignoring.
No matter what the ads say, PLEASE DON'T VOTE!!

Domain hosting?

Anyone know of any good domain hosts? I'd prefer one that's free, but a moderately-priced one is also acceptable if their service is good. Right now, Knight Scents is hosted with DotEasy, and their service leaves a lot to be desired, in more ways than one.

My hosting requirements are pretty modest. My only big requirement is that the site must be ad-free; I think that having someone else's ads all over my site would make it look too unprofessional. Other than that, my needs are pretty modest. I don't need more than ten or twenty megs of space and maybe ten e-mail addresses. My site doesn't use a database or any scripts, and it probably won't for the foreseeable future. Thank you in advance for any suggestions.

Revisions to Knight Scents web site

Ugh... I've got to find a new host for Knight Scents. Their servers keep having timeouts and other junk. Today, while I was working on the site, they even lost one of my HTML files. Fortunately, I've been working with computers long enough to be prepared for this kind of thing, and I had a backup on my notebook computer. If by any chance anyone reading this is looking for free (or cheap) web hosting, please make a note to yourself that Doteasy is definitely to be avoided. If you go with their basic page, they're free, but you get what you pay for. I've had all kinds of trouble with them and am going to be moving the site to another host once I work up the EF to deal with the hassle (moving a domain is a drag).

Anyway. I went thru the images folder and renamed all the images to a standard naming convention. I then replaced some of the images with some newer, better images that Moggy very kindly made for me -- the new images for the medium jars and small jars look much better than the ones we had before, for various reasons. I don't know what I'd do without all her help on the graphics. Actually, yes, I do. I'd be buying "teach yourself PhotoShop" books on Amazon, then watching them sit unread gathering dust on my bookshelf. :-)

I have one more photograph to put up, which is a "group photo" of four different candles (one of each size). That's going to go on the "Welcome" page. I also got a few new fragrances in a couple of days ago, and those need to go up for sale as well. I'm hoping to get both of those projects done tonight. Once they're finished, that will be it for the short term projects. The next items on the agenda are to start offering those round tin container candles, and also to reorganize the fragrances so that they're in categories and have scent descriptions. I'd like to get those two things done within the next couple of weeks or so.

The Incredible Melting Plot? The Incredible Melting Brain Cells?

Back in '77, a horror film called "The Incredible Melting Man" hit the theaters. I wanted to see it but was too young at the time. Everyone said that it was really, really, really bad (it's been spoofed on MST3K). For some reason, lately, I started perseverating on it, and I finally gave in to temptation and got a copy of it off of eBay.

It's dreadful, all right. Man, it is terrible. It is, in fact, so bad that, at one point, one of the characters actually delivers a line pointing out a major plot hole. I have got to get the MST3K sendup of this... I'll bet they ripped it to shreds. :-)

Anyway. As of yesterday, my curiosity about this film from when I was nine years old, which was the talk of the fifth-grade classroom for weeks, has finally been sated.

Knight Scents updates

OK, so I've added an "unscented" option to all types of candles (something that I've been meaning to do for a while but kept forgetting about, until Amanda asked about it this morning), updated shipping prices for Priority Mail instead of the much slower and much less reliable, but not much less expensive, Parcel Post, and made a note on the FAQ page that shipping is by Priority Mail.

Tomorrow's projects for Knight Scents: standardize the file names for all the images, put up the new images for the medium jar candle, and place an order for more fragrances, as well as for those small round tins that people like to use for travel candles (kudos to my mother for the suggestion and to Moggy for seconding it). Adding the tins to our line will be a pretty simple matter, so I'm looking forward to it... the only thing we'll really have to fool around with is deciding how to label them.

Something else I want to experiment with (suggested by Moggy) is trying to make a candle that smells like the pumpkin spice bread that I enjoy so much. I've got some ideas about how to do that... and once I do, I'll start selling it as a "Knight Scents Signature Fragrance" or something like that. That will be neat. :-)

Update: Oooh. And make two more candles from the orders I just got. *bounce bounce*

Candle photos

Here are a couple of photos from an order from Knight Scents that I recently finished for one of my new customers. The "Cinnamon Stick" is a ten-ounce jar, and the "Log Cabin" (which you can't quite read because the label wraps around the jar quite a ways) is a five-ounce jar. "Log Cabin" is a pine-type scent, in case you were wondering.

Just felt like sharing.

Spoof of Joe Cocker's "The Letter"

There's a fairly famous classic rock tune by Joe Cocker called "The Letter". Many of you have probably heard it. Sample lyrics:

Give me a ticket for an aeroplane
I ain't got time to take a fast train
Lonely days are gone, I'm a-goin' home,
My baby wrote me a letter.

Back around 1986 or thereabouts, I heard a spoof of this song on the radio. It was funny as hell. Sample lyrics (as best I can remember them):

Give me a ticket for an aeroplane
I gonna be on the Wheel of Fortune game
I won't throw in the towel, 'til I buy a vowel,
Oh, Vanna, pick me a letter!

I don't know who sang it -- it sounded like Paul Rodriguez, but I wouldn't swear to that. I've been searching off and on thru Google to try to find it, and thus far, I haven't been able to. So I'm posting this here to see whether anyone knows anything about the song (artist, title, anything) because I'd really like to add it to my MP3 collection. Thanks in advance for any help anyone is able to give.

Amusing spam subject line

As we all know, many spammers use random words (both in the text of an email and in the subject line) in an attempt to defeat spam filters. I assume that the words are chosen randomly by some kind of app with a dictionary, and usually they come out sounding as random as they are... but once in a while, the effect is unintentionally amusing. From just a moment ago:

"Eggplant Philosophers Beyond 2683"

Sounds like a surreal science fiction film. Possibly a sequel to Solaris.