benjamindunbar

I've occupied a bunch of time still setting some things up around the home for home business. Even though I've been at this for more than a year, I'm always finding new things I can fold into the operation to make things easier, while dealing with some it-works-for-now items (such as Apple's Pages for label making–hello can we just raze that to the ground) and still managing to make some pretty cool things.

Today, enabled by a very helpful celeloriel, I bought a Kitchen Aid stand mixer...for making body and beard butters. I haven't gotten around to making whipped soap yet, which will come up later, and saved the next bit in the long run. Previously, I had purchased a Farberware stand mixer due to it being $100 less. It's a fine machine, except for a few things. Shea butter is a mulish substance in some ways, while the products it makes are superlative. The FW machine lacked the bump in the bottom of the bowl I was familiar with on KA, along with lower horsepower and some lower end materials, particularly plastic connections on the whisk attachment. This creates a perfect storm for future breakability and the real killer: the flat space where the KA bump is collected shea butter that did not whip. Chunks of shea butter would be found in products, with the ultimate result being the need to slowly (did I mention shea butter is stubborn?) melt everything, let it solidify, and then whip it again. Thus, having run into Kitchen Aids on sale at Walmart for $189, I got one. A couple batches sold will pay for it, to be honest. I should have done this to begin with; lessons learned. Having not made soap in it, I can use it later in the kitchen with food due to its lack of acquaintance with HAZMAT.

Another piece of setup is moving from making labels on my stalwart MacBook Air from 2k13 to my iMac my dad guilt-bought me in early 2017 (which is a 2016 model year). At the time, I was trying to re-boot artistry and my old Mac no longer wanted to move with anything resembling haste after updating it off Snow Leopard. So I got this new one to accommodate Painter 2017 and my Wacom tablet and...haven't used it for nearly two years since. Depression makes for marvelous decision making and honestly, I got my MacBook for doing Not Much Work and more Typing, while most of nearly any of my other computing needs were met with iPhone and iPad.

Yesterday, I decluttered (which is such a mild word for what I did) my desk and dusted it heavily. I moved the old computer off the desk to cut sunk costs and centered this new one, attaching the second monitor, speakers, and the corded keyboard which... suddenly stopped working? Crap. The keyboard it shipped with is a short Magic Keyboard. I'd be fine wireless but for purposes of setting this up for bookkeeping and label making and SAPONIFYING CALCULATIONS, I was going to need a numeric keypad on a full sized keyboard. Enter an equally helpful seventhe later in the Walmart when I went in search of finding said keyboard. The assortment they had there did not include a standard Apple keyboard, and what the rest were in the here-are-some-keys variety were just–to be delicate–fugly. I then spotted an Razer Cynosa Chroma keyboard, and oh was this thing ever homosexual. "BEM if I still had a job I would own twelve of those keyboards. I would decorate my porch with them for Christmas," she says to me. You see, typically I am her Professional Enabler, but today was her day in the sun.

So I got the gay keyboard. I even navigated my way to Razer's very helpful website with a driver to make the gay lights work, gayly. Honestly, this thing was $60 and an Apple keyboard would have been $120. I saved money! My friend Taylor puts it as such: "You saved money AND you made it gay. So you saved double money...in your heart." It's really a lovely keyboard, too. I've typed this whole post on it with no discomfort and wonderful key response, with low key noise. You really can't beat practical AND homosexual.

In testing some other products, I decided that among my line of products I was going to offer a pomade. Naturally, the response to this was to cut my hair. For the last year and a half, I've used my hair to show off how wonderfully my shampoo bars work (which, in all honesty, they left my hair sleek and shiny and soft, so I am a winner), but in the name of overhauling my look, I decided to give it a go with something new. I've never been one to stay in one haircut too long, anyway. I've had twenty looks over the last twenty years, so this will ultimately surprise nobody. Before and after, if you're curious.

I still haven't launched a store front. I need to set up a business account at a local branch bank here pretty soon, if I don't choose a bank online (which I am unsure which I'd like to do). Ahead of this, if I don't do it in a timely fashion, I'm going to be shipping a few orders, among which some belong to celeloriel and seventhe, which is pretty full circle. Part of this is deciding to do this in the worst time of year to also be working at a grocery store, as I'm pretty low on energy funds when I get home. The making is catharsis, as creativity is powerful, but the front-end items to business have been wearing me out on the smaller screens; ultimately the goal of dusting off a barely used beautiful desktop computer.

And here we are.