Numbers

Since the beginning of February, I've gotten 1044 orders. Up until then, (since November) I'd gotten a total of 400-something.

Of those 1044, I have shipped 589, 229 would be shipped if I hadn't run out of mailer envelopes tonight, and 226 haven't yet been paid for (either they're sending in checks or they were just futzing around with my order system and left bogus orders; I'll delete any unpaid order 30 days after it was placed, so I'll find out then). I was able to catch up on some of the backlog because I got some help from some friends came over and worked like friggin machines to bag about 350 kits and package/ship over 100 orders all in 4 hours.

So.. yeah, I've made some money. More money in a week than I'd have made if I were bagging groceries instead of usb sockets. I'm trying my hardest not to freak out and buy a bunch of crap I don't need because I'm sure that as soon as the March issue of PopSci is off the shelves, things will be back to normal and the customers will wear thin and the orders will drop out.

I did break down and buy a computer when I was in Costco last Sunday. For a long time I've been working with just a laptop as my last attempt to build a computer had me swearing off the hobby, which has prevented me from enjoying some of the finer pc games lately. I needed an extra computer since I moved my kit-filling operation into a spare bedroom and moving the laptop back and forth with all the wires and such several times a day would have been a pain. I was surprised how inexpensive desktop computers have gotten. I got a very well-equipped Gateway with a 19" LCD for $800, about half of what I'd expect to pay for a 3.4+ Ghz AMD 64 with a gig of RAM, a 16x Dual Layer DVD-RW, and a 200GB hard drive. I would have kept waving my Dell banner and bought one of the Dells they had there, but the Gateway was better and cooler looking.

I still can't believe I bought an off-the-shelf PC. Feels like a small part of myself has died. A real dorky part. At least I got to open it up and install a video card I bought a year ago before I'd given up on hardware. So it's like I practically built the whole thing...

I'd kind of hoped that the first time I'd made an inordinate amount of money for doing something not wearing a uniform would have something to do with writing. I dunno, maybe I could write a really boring book about how I made a charger kit and bought a Gateway.