Our changing world

So, today I needed to write a check for a credit card payment.  I looked, and looked and looked for the proper entity to which to assign the check, found two invitations to pay my bill on line; and a box to fill in with the amount I was paying, but no MAKE CHECK PAYABLE TO...

...finally, I made the check payable to the name of the card, with some misgiving, and then! saw! in no more than three point type -- tiny enough, yes, to be a Design Element, in a single line, right at the break where the payment coupon separates from the bill --

make check payable to Card Services

OK, fine.  I added Card Services to the payment line, and then bethought to write a note, which I did, asking that the check payable instructions be made visible.

It was only after I had folded the note with the check and the coupon into the envelope that I realized that the children -- by which I mean people who were students at the college when I worked there in 2011, who could have reasonably been expected to graduate by now -- did not read, or write, cursive.

So, my note may arrive on the desk of someone who cannot read it, and who may have to call for a manager or a vice president, or. . .someone. . .to translate it for them.

Does this open up a new line of work?  Cursive Reader?

Maybe I can get a job.

In the meantime, back to work I go.

Market Research: T-shirts and denim

Steve says:

We may have finally found a place capable of doing a new round of quality Liaden related shirts and t-shirts, including some embroidered items.  We're due to talk in depth with these folks RSN -- as in after our book tour.

In our as yet very preliminary discussions a question of quantity comes up, because while embroidered items can be done on an "each" basis (we've got several samples on hand of the embroidery quality), the screen-printing process works best for larger quantities. So, without specifying colors/special wording or the like, we need to figure out if there's a current market for Liaden-themed t-shirts as well as denim embroidered. Yes, there's a minimum practical number, but we're not sure yet where that will turn out to be.

What do you think? Would you want one t-shirt? Three? One for every day of the week? Multiple colors? We'll be asking on our Facebook groups and while we're on tour.

This is preliminary interest, these are surveys and not order-taking. Nothing firm will happen until later in the summer or early fall.

Thanks!

God DAMN it

It's a Tale of the Modern Age, that, when I hear the neighbor firing his shotgun in his back yard (which he's not supposed to do, being X feet from the nearest neighbor. Who would be us.), I now think:  "Oh, ghod, I hope he's not killing the family," when I used to think, "Oh, ghod, drunk again and after the rabbits."

Either way, I wish he'd stop.