I was forced to stop pretending this past summer. It became painfully apparent that my 23 year marriage was over. The process of overcoming the shock, disappointment, pain, self pity, and anger slowly turned into determination, a new realization of what I want, and pride. “Pride” may seem like an odd outcome, but when you sacrifice everything for something you believe in, well in that case, I feel you should be proud.

Brunswick Harley made sure I could display my new Sportster 1200C Trike proudly! (Champion Trike conversion kit dealer installed.) Finally working towards getting my OWN motorcycle license, and owning my own Harley-Davidson is only ONE of the new developments in my life. 2011 was a year full of surprises, conflict, heartbreak, and stress. I've vowed to make sure that 2012 is all about healing, re-discovery, and true independence. If you're going to attack life as an adventure, you may as well do it on the back of your dream Harley, right? LOL! >;)

••••••≈∞♥∞≈••••••

I’m not saying it’s easy. Although I look forward to defining myself as a single mom, I do so while making these huge adjustments to every aspect of my life, and the lives of my 16 year old twins. I was lucky enough to be able to create a full time position with one of my contract clients, managing multi-business social media and web development. While this was nothing short of a miracle, and exactly what I needed to be happy (working in a job doing what I love to do so that I could support an entire household on my own)… my daily routine and lifestyle have changed completely.

It’s been four, almost five months… poetic really, considering that we dated for six months before getting married, and it looks like it will be 6 months by the time the papers are filed.

Again, I’m not saying it’s easy… I guess what I’m saying is that it simply “is”. I believe that everything happens for a reason, and even made a wallpaper for myself with some quotes that help me remember that fact. I’ve shared it below…

Click above to view full size Marilyn Monroe wallpaper

“I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they’re right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.”
~Marilyn Monroe~

I’m lucky enough to have clients (even though I work full time, I’ve kept my remaining design/hosting clients) and friends that are understanding. With my new schedule and work routine, balancing all of the web maintenance for others is a skill I’m working on. Patience is something I’ve grown to appreciate from others lately.

So, 2012, I greet you with open arms, hope, and determination. I know I will have moments of doubt, fear, and vulnerability… but again, I’m lucky enough to have a few good friends that I can count on to get me back on track. Thanks for that (you know who you are).

Maybe now that I have more time to myself, I’ll find a reason to post here more. Of course, if history is any indication, my next post will probably be welcoming 2013. You know, if the world doesn’t end in December lol.

I got to wear hubby’s heated gloves on the ride home, and I must admit, it made the cold ride much more enjoyable. I’m hoping for some clear, decent weather this weekend.

Regardless of the weather, it always feels great to get back out there. It’s the best attitude adjustment in the world!

The coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts doesn’t suck either.

I spent most of today trying to figure out why half the house was out of power. One of the breakers had tripped, but for whatever strange reason (much like when I take my car to the mechanic) I couldn’t fix it, and as soon as hubby got home, he touched one thing in the breaker box and all was working again.

What a lot of wasted time on a day when I had such plans to get so much done. Why does it seem like the busier my client schedule is, the more people want to hire me? Being a one person shop, I can only do so much without compromising the quality of work produced.

I’ve got a long day in front of me, and a working weekend. Of course, I’ll have to take a couple of mandatory Dunkin Donuts coffee breaks, but that goes without saying, right?

First, I made a screen cast highlighting a couple of the changes made to the new version, 3.1.

Posts from my design blog:

10 WordPress Plugins I Won’t Blog Without

Why I Launched a Shareletter instead of a Newsletter

Now I’m off to play some StarCraft 2 because that’s all I have the energy for at this point lol.

(Gotta practice those Zerg!)

The girls stayed over my mom’s yesterday for thanksgiving and they will be back home tomorrow for another home cooked turkey dinner. I always make us our own turkey when we go somewhere else for the holiday because the leftovers are the best part. I look forward to turkey sandwiches!

Getting on the laptop now so I can figure out the “my verizon” password issue because I need to track my Internet usage on the iPad. I can’t believe they didn’t tell me that they registered me on their site without giving me my password. Actually I can believe it, considering that it took well over an hour to buy the iPad with the mifi hotspot, but that’s another story all together.

Sounds of the keyboard clicks lol

Figured out the Verizon issue. They really didn’t prepare me for using their services at all. In order to view my current usage, I had to download a VZ Manager application on my laptop. They didn’t even give me my password for the “My Verizon” web site, so I had to figure out to download that app by asking Google how to view my usage lol.

I’m not impressed with the knowledge of the staff at my local Verizon store, but I will give them an A for effort. There was an issue with my being a new customer to Verizon, without a phone. I’m not to sure that they’ve had a lot of experience with the iPad setups. The data plan is a month to month plan, and for some reason, they wanted me to present my actual physical Social Security card for the credit application. Now, comparing prices, I didn’t even have to produce that card when I got a mortgage for my house!

Years ago, I wouldn’t have waited for them to figure out their issues. I’ve learned. The value of customer service. They did TRY.

We are raising prices for virtual goods today. I want to explain why we are raising prices.

1. To increase growth for IMVU and Creators.   Higher prices means more credits for you and us.
2. To make pricing more fair.  It is harder and more complex to create rooms and furniture products, so we want to ensure the reward for creating those products is higher.

How do we know that IMVU members will accept the higher prices?  Because we did pricing tests with IMVU members, and these tests showed that demand for goods in the catalog will stay the same at these prices.

In the forums, a staff member broke it down for us this way:

1) Base price for rooms will increase to 500 credits, if the current price is less than 500.
2) Base price for furniture items will increase to 350 credits, if the current price is less than 350.
3) Base price for all other items will increase by 10%.
4) Creator profit for the first direct IMVU Inc. derivation will increase automatically by the same percentage as the base price increase for that product – as long as it is derivable.
5) Profits for other items in the derivation chain will stay the same, and Creators can adjust them to suit their needs as necessary -but only if the item has not been derived from.
6) Creator profit for items that are non-derivable will not change automatically even if they are direct derivations of IMVU Inc products.

We cannot instantly change all the prices in the catalog, but they will all change within the next 2 days starting now

The laughable (and very predictable) thing is the community reaction. There are currently 58 pages of forum post replies to the announcement, and the posts just keep coming. Outrage, threats to strike, threats to leave the site for good, and a variety of other angry responses go on, page after page. I’ve seen maybe 3 members post realistic and non emotional replies (not counting moderators).

Welcome to 2010, folks. The US economy is, and has been in the toilet for some time now. Gasoline prices soar daily, food prices are astronomical, and heating your home this winter is going to be much more of a drag on your wallet. Why this increase to IMVU base pricing is a surprise to anyone is beyond me.

Personally, I think there are a few different reasons for this, none of which would be popular with the people trying to scratch together a few dollars from their virtual goods catalog income.

1. The infamous “credit sink” that a lot of members have been wanting. Be very careful what you ask for, because you’ll get the full blown out of proportion version when dealing with online companies.
2. The completely out of hand saturation of IMVU products in the catalog. Much like anyone with a computer pre-loaded with an HTML editing software thinking they’re web designers… every member of IMVU that’s downloaded the Chat software now has the same software necessary to create their very own virtual goods – artistic talent be damned! Raising the base pricing makes it a little more difficult for new “creators” to build a catalog on a whim, it’s going to take more of an investment than that now. (This is the bottom line that’s generating all the angry responses.)
3. Creators that undercut pricing to compete are going to find this whole “developing” gig a little less attractive now, and may even be forced to find a different marketing strategy.

Overall, I think IMVU is trying to minimize the number of creators adding products to the catalog. Increasing the cost of creating will no doubt decrease the number of new items submitted, and hopefully increase the quality of the products that do get submitted. Let’s hope so, there’s so much garbage in there now, shoppers really have to dig to find quality products.

Why am I not upset? I’ve always valued the work I put into creating products for IMVU, and have priced my items accordingly. Business is business, and as a creative professional, I’ve made sure to include a healthy profit on my items to compensate for my time and what I consider to be a reasonable amount of artistic talent. Truth be told, I’m considering raising my prices once the dust settles from this latest “catalog maintenance”.

Why would I raise my prices? First of all, because my items are well worth it, and second of all because I hope to prove that people will in fact pay for quality. My cost of living’s gone up, so economics being what it is… there ya have it.

However, (saw that coming huh?) I now understand why I’ve become so frustrated while trying to update the links on my About page here. The links wouldn’t “stick”. No matter how many times I edited the page, the text anchored links were not saving, so I resorted to using images with links instead, which seemed to work. That’s the thing about updated features, sometimes it takes a little time to work the bugs out… I should know this by now. Grr.

Anyway, to go along with the new winter season I figured it was time for a new theme too. There aren’t many that I like available here so I decided to go with the one inspired by an iPad app. I’ll be shopping for my iPad next weekend, so it seemed appropriate. I’m getting Hubby’s birthday present to me is the 16Gig WiFi +3G iPad with the mobile hotspot from Verizon. I can’t wait to get it, and will no doubt be blabbing about it here since riding season has ended yet again.

Tradition dictates our new bikes be rained on the first day

This was a great year for riding. Hubby got a new bike, the one he’s always wanted… a Springer SoftTail. I got to do a lot more riding than past summers because I was healthier than I’ve been in a while (passing a kidney stone will do that I suppose). The weather co-operated too, which helped a lot. We spent a few weekends in Lake George which I really enjoyed, and look forward to doing again.

As a congratulatory gift, I bought the matching LePara back seat, with “biker gel”. It’s deceivingly comfortable, and maintains the traditional “old school” look of the Springer. Eventually, he added hard bags (defeating the “old school” look) which were an absolute necessity considering the amount of riding we do. We still have the RoadGlide, but the Springer took most of the miles this summer.

We’re planning some longer trips for next season, at least one weekend get-away. Hubby wants to see the ocean, and I’m looking forward to that. I just hope we go somewhere cool, and don’t wind up in some tourist trap. We’ve pretty much decided to avoid the “biker events” if only to avoid the crowds and price gouging resorts. I’d be perfectly happy pointing the bike south, and seeing where we wind up!

With some of the apps available for the iPad, it should come in very handy during these road trips. One of the things that got me interested in the iPad was that it will fit in the Springer’s hard bags, since I need to keep up with client emails and related Internet tasks during the week. (I can rationalize ANYTHING lol)

Eh. There’s some drama over on IMVU about base product pricing being raised again, so I’m pretty much avoiding that whole mess. I recently added a few products to my catalog, but became disenchanted with the Creator Program as a result. Cute stuff, but the software does little to inspire creativity, to put it mildly.

One of the reasons I decided to post here tonight was Twitter related. Although I follow a lot of WordPress developers and web designers for work reasons, I tend to get really fed up with the self important posts made by some of them. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of the people I follow are really cool, funny, and even entertaining. Some, on the other hand, are the type that post just to see their own names on the web – if you know what I mean.

Eh. It’s to be expected, I suppose. I just get tired of the “I’m an expert because I say so” personalities, and the fact that it’s an accepted practice on the Internet. Personally, I post info that my clients need to be aware of and links that I want to be able to reference later. Twitter is more like a bookmark reservoir for me lol.

I’ve ranted enough for one night. Time to check on FarmVille (yeah I know, hush!) and get some sleep for a change. Tomorrow’s Friday, so there’s that to look forward to I suppose. Another night of listening to how bored everyone is because we can’t ride, or go to the park. I don’t get bored, so it kind of pisses me off that I have to listen to people complain about it. Is it my fault that you’re bored, or is it yours for being boring? Heh. Yep, it’s gonna be another long winter.

In order to prevent the catalog from being unavailable over the weekend, we are disabling new products and updates from being pushed to the catalog search engine while we resolve the problem. Users will still be able to purchase products and search the catalog as usual, but new products won’t be reflected in the results.

Source: IMVU Forums

Guess I can take my time submitting new products this weekend. Someone will have to let me know if new products are visable in our catalogs if the *search* isn’t used to get there (direct linkage).

Update 11-8-09
What they neglected to tell us is that new items submitted wouldn’t be accessible at all. Usually, I can submit items as “not visible in catalog”, then prepare my sales pages before submitting them to PR. I submitted 13 new hairstyles Friday night, and can’t get at them to add my sales page coding. Nice. One additional sentence in their lil announcement would have made that clear, and I would have waited to submit all together. *frustrated* I picked a really bad time to start making new items again.

When I sat down at my computer, graphic tablet pen in hand… I was so very disappointed to see this:

Of course, it was being discussed in the forums. I’m glad too, because DA5 gave us a tip on how to get to your items even if the catty is down:

Everyone can get to their products by using their Dev reports link on their hp’s and then going to your products list. Once there scroll and find the product you are looking for and click on it it will load the pp and from there you can do whatever you need to.

As far as I know, the downtime only lasted a couple of hours here on the East Coast… it’s working for me now, so I will get to enjoy some creating playtime tonight after all, whew!

Now Available… uh… Psych!

In other IMVU news, I received an email notice about an official IMVU Blog post about the added feature that will allow us to assign room moderators in our public rooms. When I went to the online blog so I could send out the page link to my Twitter friends, it just wasn’t there. Still isn’t!

I don’t know how the post got sent out through their RSS feed, without showing on the site (unless the post was hidden or deleted after it was published in error or too soon). I haven’t tried to create a room since getting that notification either, so don’t know if it’s actually in effect yet or not… but I am glad I signed up for email notices of their posts lol. Regardless, I hope this is something they do implement soon if it isn’t live yet, because it would be very helpful to the IMVU users that do host public rooms.

IMVU in the News

IMVU grew its revenue primarily by increasing the sale of virtual currency to its members, who use that currency to purchase virtual goods ranging from clothing for their avatars to furniture for their rooms. IMVU’s catalog of virtual goods is the largest in the world, with more than 3 million items created by IMVU members. The daily production of items sold is valued at about 175,000. It is not to my surprise that IMVU recently announced that the company has doubled its revenue in one year to a $25 million run rate and achieved profitability. At peak hours of game play and social network chats, the company estimates that there are close to 770,000 conversations and story lines being produced by members. Their virtual world and communities gain the marketing tools and technical support needed to support this 3D love fest.

dig that last sentence… anyone wanna comment?

It was time for me to pick a new sponsor to make sure we take advantage of the Corporations willing to donate to the cause simply by clicking on that widget. (You have clicked it by now, right? If not, go do it now, I’ll wait right here for ya.)

*waits*

Thanks! I chose the CoffeeMate sponsor because 1.) I love the Hazelnut creamer, it’s one of my addictions, and 2.) The “Dress for Success” theme made me remember something that my last boss in Banking told me as we shopped for “black tie event” outfits together…

Dress well, and they remember the woman. Dress poorly, and they remember the clothes. ~J.S.

Remembering that day put a smile on my face, so I gladly clicked through to make sure CoffeeMate will be donating to the cause on my behalf. I sincerely hope you choose to do the same, thanks! =o)