Friday, November 21, 2008

Late Autumn Ramblings

Well Thanksgiving is less than a week away. This has been an interesting week to say the week and it's ending very nicely with a nice weekend with my other half.

The week has gone well though. Tuesday I got a call from Dell - my nearly 1 year old laptop has more than a couple quirks and they are sending me a replacement. It didn't take a lot of ranting to get them to do it either. I am having a power cord issue and I did use the words "Fire Hazard"... but that is not the point! LOL

So off to Office Max I headed to get an external hard drive to back this baby up with. They happened to have them on sale in the same size I have in this machine but there were none on the shelf. I asked the manager and he came out with a pretty blue one. PERFECT! I peeked in clearance and found the Swiss Army brand computer bag I have been watching was on clearance for $15 - down from $59! I had gotten an interesting e-mail in the morning that there was a job opportunity available that would be perfect for me.

I have beaded 2 new bracelets and an ornament in the last week or so.

I spent the morning looking at free patterns on the net. I noticed some with just text and a couple with just diagrams and it made me wonder... Is it that there is more work to put both? I believe that there are 3 basic ways of learning and we all use one or more of them when we learn something new. There is words - pictures - demonstration. I am a total diagram learner, but when I make a tutorial or teach, I try my best to cover more than just my learning needs. When I make a tutorial, I like to sit in an empty room to make them because I like to talk out the text first, sort of like when I am teaching. It helps me be very detailed.

So I hope you all have a nice Thanksgiving. Stay safe and don't eat too much!

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Bead and Button gives local magazine buyers the shaft

Bead and Button Magazine says it supports the local bead shops that carry their magazine but do they really?

Did you know that people who choose not to have a label on the magazine and who don't choose to deal with magazines late and damaged in the mail don't count with the magazine as loyal readers?

I have purchased every issue of Bead and Button from the very beginning and I was recently told that I did not count as much as a person who subscribes to the magazine. I choose to purchase things in person and magazines are no exception. I choose to support the local businesses where I live and I don't care for labels on my magazines and yet I'm not welcome to subscriber content.

The current issue is labeled as a collector's edition and yet the subscribers got it not in a plastic sleeve and without the little extra cover piece that I got on mine when I bought it locally. Shouldn't a collectors edidtion be shipped in a condition that would make it valuable years later? It should have been shipped in a plazstic sleeve so that it would be collectable. The magazine I saw on a friend's coffee table came through the mail. The cover was damaged and it had a label on it.

I have a choice and I choose to purchase my bead magazines where I want. I choose not to have to have to call and request a new magazine when it shows up mangled in the mailing process. I like my pristine magazine without labels. I think magazines that come in the mail are ugly. All of them, not just Bead & Button. Also there are often little free pamphlets that don't always come in the subscribers issues. I know this because my friends who subscribe have to call when I show them what I got to get equality.

The part of this that really bugs me is that the customers of local bead shops who purchase their magazines in them are second class readers to Bead and Button Magazine. When I contacted them, the editor claimed that they did support the local bead shops. How can they claim that when the people who purchase their magazine in them is treated as a second class beader? How can they say that they support the local bead shops when they short change the customers who purchase their magazine in those shops? So the magazine's goal for the customers of local bead shops is only to snag them as subscribers. They only send those magazines to the local shops to get those subscription cards in the hands of the beaders which stops the beaders from visiting to purchase thier magazines and probably beads in the process. If you support a local business, you make it more enticing to shop in the local shops. People who come in to get a magazine will often also buy beads. If their goal is to get subscribers, then how is that supporting the bead shop? It's not like the bead shop makes a bundle on magazines and books. The wholesale discount is lower on books and magazines. The shops that carry them do so to serve their customers better. So the shop is a friend to the magazine but the magazine is not a real friend to the shop if they give less to the customers who purchase magazines from them.


If the magazine is catering to it's subscriber base only, then they need to be a subscriber only magazine. Thousands of magazines are sold in stores all over this country and all the customers who spend more for their issues are not as valued by the magazine and I think it stinks.

So if you agree that people who purchase the issue in a store should be equal to those who subscribe, contact B&B to let them know. Here is a link to the Letter to the Editor form on their web site.


http://tinyurl.com/BnBEditorForm