Thursday, 19 January 2012

It's all going upside down!

   I'm having a terribly hectic time at the moment. Well, I say hectic, what I really mean is hectic to me. I suppose for some people it would be the equivalent of an average or slightly bad day. First I get contacted by someone who wanted an alteration to an already existing necklace. I said I could do it, so she purchased it, but asked for two in the note to seller. Fortunately I had a spare jar but it meant I had to deactivate one of my best selling listings. Then she only pays for one of them, so I had to wait a few days for her to pay the invoice I sent. Then I get contacted by someone else about a similar piece and alter that too, which was fine, I don't mind altering pieces at all (I'm not complaining about the people, not at all, I'm just stating the problems I'm having on my end). But the problem with that is that one of the parts of the necklace is taking longer than usual to dry, so obviously I can't send it out until it's dry. So now I'm out of vials, though I ordered more two and a half weeks ago and they're still not here (I sold my vials faster than I expected to!). Then I tried to make a ring for a friend last night, only to find that my adhesive has dried up, and before I got a chance to alter any listings to say there might be a wait time on the rings, I sold one. So I had to contact them to say it might be a day or two before I can ship out.

   I'm also trying to work on some valentine cards for my new shop. It seems almost impossible to find small and decent number stamps, and then I finally found some, but when they arrived they were extremely half-arsed. So I've had to search again (found some, from this country fortunately!) and pay a little more than I wanted to. I was so pleased when they arrived too, but now I have to wait a little longer :(

   I know all of this hardly seems like the end of the world, but I don't get many sales so I wanted to get them all shipped out ASAP to keep my customers happy, but it hasn't been as easy as it usually is, and I'm so excited about opening my new shop but I can't do that yet, either.
   I supposed I'm just a little disappointed at the moment with the way things are mapping out - not with my sales, though, god no, I'm so grateful for each one I get! I'm doing quite well at the moment!

   But I'll be happy when I get some more jars, number stamps and glue.

   Otherwise things are fine. My new shop should hopefully be open in a few days (I'm sure I've just jinxed it), and I'm trying to come up with some valentine stuff for the blog from the 1st of February, but I'm drawing up a bit of a blank. I'm also juggling so many things right now that I'm still not quite back on my schedule. It would be nice to have some guest bloggers to come over and offer some tutorials to help me along but I'm not sure how to find people to do it! Nevermind, I'll find a way! :D

   I also got my PC fixed. It's a terribly story. For about three months, whenever I opened World of Warcraft, my frames would drop from 50 to 3. It started off fine, It would be between 40 to 60 for most of the time, then drop to about 3 for five minutes, then go back to normal. Sometimes it would happen 5 times a day, others it wouldn't happen at all. I thought it was a problem on Blizzard's end so I contacted them many times about it, but they couldn't give me any real help.
   It ended up getting worse so I lowered my graphics, which meant while it behaved it would be at 60, and when it was misbehaving it would be 7, which was more bearable. But still Blizzard could offer me no help.
   Then I installed Spore, and found the same problem there, so evidently it was my computer. But the problem was, by the end of it, a week or so ago, it would behave at 60 for about 4 minutes, and it would run at 7 for about 25 minutes or more before returning to 60 for another 4 minutes.
   Well, I spoke to a few people, some said it was the graphics card, others said it could be other hardware or software. So I decided to take it to a PC shop. I would have done it sooner, but I didn't have the money to spend on it. I had about £120 in my account when I did take it in...only to walk back out with it two minutes later, still with £120 in my account. See, my PC is a small bodied one. They took one look and said they couldn't help. Didn't even open it up to look.
   So my dad suggested we try a new graphics card. We went out and got one for about £50 - not too much, not too little - and took it home.
   It was a NVIDIA GeForce GT 520. It had a big fan. And, as I said, my PC is small. So it wouldn't fit into it. So the next day I took it back and exchanged the card for a smaller one of the same value. Took it home, got it in, and while the problem was gone, a new one had developed where I couldn't turn the camera in the game, which I do a lot.
   So the next morning I took it out from the PC myself and put it away, deciding to get a refund this Friday and to try some other options, if we could think of any.
   Well, my dad cleaned the dust from the fan that night. We've only had the PC for just over a year so we didn't expect it to have built up much, so we didn't think that that would have affected it.

   The pc worked perfectly the next day. Never underestimate the power of a good clean.

   I hope everyone else is ok, I have little to report on at the moment! :P as you might be able to tell.


  1. I hate it when the simplest things become overwhelming and out of hand. Take a deep breath and focus on the big picture. You are selling stuff and you are amazing!!!! (insert happy dance) I am quite guilty of this same thing! When the little things add up, frustration levels rise and time is fleeting, makes me want to explode! In the end you will be the one kicking arse with style and grace! ;)

    1. My dear that was so eloquently put :D and thank you for the advice, I suppose I do need to look at the bigger picture and the plus sides.

