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Guide to Wunderland
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- News Archives
 
I'm in Jim Butler's office. He
sits at his desk, motioning with his hands and saying, "It
was big time smoke, down there by the break room..."
geek (gheek) n. a carnival
performer often billed as a wild man, whose act usually includes
biting the head off a live chicken or snake (prob. from English
dial. geek, geck: fool from Low German geck)
- A. I.: Artificial Intelligence :|
lost intelligence
and got more artificial
as it went along.
 The Hobbit
The Hobbit is my favorite of JRR Tolkein's books, and
I've always loved this animated version of the story, produced
by the Rankin/Bass animation team in 1977. The various songs
and ballads that we can read only as poems in the book are set
to catchy music (or in Rash-speak,
"Merry Tunes") and the animation is beautiful and stylish.
 
Origins '01:
Stalking the Booth Babe
Real Life
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- "We would clean the dirtiest bathrooms in the world
for twenty-three years if we could get blank Fluxx cards. You
guys rock." -- Ingrid of Nashville TN, in
comments accompanying an order
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We've Chosen a Fulfillment
Partner! |
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Although nothing feels different yet, this week marks a major
turning point for us. We have today finally signed a contract
with a company that will be taking over our order processing
and fulfillment, i.e. the job of warehousing our products and
shipping them out as orders come in.
The company is Associated Computers & Mailing Services,
inc. (ACMS) located in Lorton, Virginia. This is about a 45 minute
drive from our home - and in fact, their location was a key consideration
for us. We have been searching for a fulfillment partner for
many months, and all the good candidates seemed to be located
in North
Carolina and other more remote locations, and we really wanted
to be able to easily visit our warehouse in person. We were just
about to give up on finding someone within tolerable driving
distance, when Lauren
told us about this place in Northern Virginia. We also really
like the people... it's a family-owned business run by two brothers,
and we're very impressed with everything we have seen from them
so far. Although they will never print any of our card games,
like several of the other candidates could have, they have the
printing facilities to do our catalogs and posters and any other
mailings we might do, and they have far more to offer as far
as list and data management than all of our other candidates
combined.
So, they have started setting up a zone for our goods, and
on Monday a truck will show up to take our inventory away to
our new warehouse location, and the next time we fill orders,
it will be with their team! It's very exciting, and we will be
very busy indeed this weekend getting everything packed up and
moved out. But after that, we will actually start being less
busy (in theory), since packing and filling an ever-increasing
number of orders will no longer be something we have to do ourselves.
And then hopefully I'll have time to get caught up on things
like the overdue Origins
report and the rest of the SF
tour travelogue (not to mention Iceland's continuing "spring"
hiatus).
Of course, it all comes at a price, but Kristin negotiated
a deal we're very happy with and she is sure we can afford. (Meg even
looked over the numbers and gave a warm fuzzy thumbs up. Thanks
Meg!) Rather than a fixed monthly cost, we worked out a deal
that is based on a percentage of monthly sales, so our costs
will increase as our sales and our ability to afford to pay them
increase. Thanks ACMS for putting together a deal that we can
grow into. We are very excited about this new partnership, and
look forward to selling lots of games together in the years to
come!
Once the transition is complete, (although they will start
filling orders next week, it will be several months before all
the new software is up and running) we'll be able to focus our
attention on increasing sales without having to worry about finding
time to fill all the orders that pour in when those efforts bear
fruit. It's a turning point we've been building towards for a
very long time, and it feels great to have reached it.
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In other news:
- We went coastering for Kristin's birthday at HersheyPark,
and had a great time. This was our first time riding the newest
of their 8 roller coasters, the Lightning Racer, and it's like
the totally best coaster in the park! Gina tagged along with
the three of us, and you can read more about it on the GinohnNews.
Unfortunately, I lost my little camera (it slipped out of my
pocket during a ride on the Wildcat) and the ride attendants
sent it over to Lost and Found, where it was promptly lost. I
filled out a form; hopefully, they'll get back to me. But of
course this means I returned with no pictures
of that day.
- I've decided to change the scoring system I've been using
in Nanofictionary.
If you've gotten to try it under the thumbs-up/thumbs-down system,
forget what you know, because I'm changing it.
- Fluxx Blanxx is finally moving forward. We signed off on
the proofs this week, and with the help of our distributors (in
particular Alliance, our largest and most well connected hobby
distributor) we have launched a pre-order discount special to
retailers to help try to get them out into all the stores who
sell Fluxx.
Did you hear I won 2
Origins Awards? I'm so happy!
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Tomorrow is July 20th, anniversary of the first
moon landing. I think in 50 or 100 years, Moon Day will be a
national holiday. It will be a day to celebrate exploration,
and a good day for trying something new. Got any plans? |
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"Once upon a time, in 1773, a few brave
patriots painted their faces, converged upon Griffen's Wharf,
and hurled 342 crates of British tea into Boston Harbor. Paul
Revere was there. Samuel Adams organized it. John Hancock was
a tea smuggler, and actively supported it. Today, we venerate
these men as heroes. They all broke the law, because the law
was absurd, and deserved to be broken."
-- Jeff & Tracy,
in a full page ad they placed in their local newspaper, admitting
that they smoke pot and urging others to stand with them |
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- "It's nice arriving somewhere at night - night cloaks
the mundane with intrigue." -- Brian Eno,
on arriving in Egypt on Feb 23, in A Year with Swollen Appendices
(his diary of 1995)
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