By the Numbers 9-26
over 3 years ago – Sun, Sep 27, 2020 at 11:43:38 AM

Another week has come and gone, and every week I think I should be further along. We are getting close here. I am in the process of finishing another 50 cards which *should* take care of the non-special orders. I hope. There always seems to be a card or two that doesn't make the to do list, so then I have to go back to square 1 with it. In any case, here are the numbers:

• 9 backers still have not finished their survey. I don't know what to do here. I've sent reminders every week. I sent a reminder yesterday. While I have no problem accepting donations  as part of a pledge, 9 people pledged for a tier reward. I'd love to get that out to you. If you have not filled out your survey please do so. There will come a time where I just shut things down and will stop sending reminders. Please take care of this.
• 20 backers are waiting for one or two items for their order.
• 146 backers either have received, or have just had their rewards shipped (about 10 of these will ship on Monday).

There are a few special orders in that 20 group that will still take an extra week or two. I'm focusing on all the normal orders first. There are 3 retailers in that group as well where I am putting together additional add-ons as well.

My goal right now is to have all non-special orders done by the 1st, quickly followed by the retailer levels and then the special orders. Then I go back and figure out what to do about those who haven't filled out their surveys yet.

Seriously, do this. If you don't remember if you did this or not, check your spam filter to see if you got a message from Backerkit.  Or go here: https://dnd-5e-character-cards.backerkit.com/

Put in your email address from KS and it should tell you if you have completed your survey or not.

In other news:

I tried Astrophotography for the first time the other night.  It was cloudy, so I didn't get the starfield that I wanted, but I think I did pretty well for my first attempt. Next cloudless night I'm going to give it another shot. Maybe for the holidays, I can get myself a lens that will let me do this better.

By the numbers....9/18/20
over 3 years ago – Fri, Sep 18, 2020 at 03:16:06 PM

Well, this week got off to a good start, but then degenerated quickly (see below if you want to see how a day in the life of Hrothgar normally goes).

This week's numbers:

• 9 people have not yet filled out their survey. I have sent another reminder.
• 38 backers have orders that I'm waiting for one or two items to finish. This includes backers at all levels.
• 127 people have had their shipments go out. About ten of these will be going out tomorrow morning.

If you are following the numbers, you may not think that this week was a lot of progress. On the good side of things is that I finished up about 110 cards this week and only have about 50 more to go before all the cards are done...then it is a matter of matching them with orders and getting them out the door.

A Day in the Life of Hrothgar

Monday and Tuesday started off great. I got a lot of things on the finishing table and I had my helper come on Tuesday to work on them as well. I figured that I could take Wednesday and do another home project with my helper. You see, I happen to live in the same town as the Cincinnati Bengal's Joe Burrow. My daughter was a few years behind him and we went to his high school games and even got to go to the OSU stadium to watch the State Finals (we lost). In any case, even though I'm not a big football fan, I like to see the hometown hero do some good. So I was determined to be able to watch the Browns/Bengals game on Thursday. Problem is that I don't have cable or satellite, and I'm about 60 miles away from the closest TV tower to get normal TV. So, I decided to get the antenna on the roof working so I could watch the game.

Me and the helper get up on the roof. I have a very steep roof, so helper has to hold the ladder against the slope of the roof so I can get up there. I get up there and pull up the TV cable and hook it up. We go down to check reception and aren't really getting anything. I put an app on my phone so I know where to point the antenna.  We point it towards Columbus. Go check the stations. We are getting a few, but not ABC, which will broadcast the game. I look at the phone and see that there are towers in Parkersburg, also about 60 miles away. I go back up on the roof. I put the phone on the antenna so that I get an accurate direction. I start to turn the antenna. The phone slides off the antenna.

Did I mention that the roof is steep?

The phone slides down the side of the roof, off the edge and about 2 seconds later I hear a *crash* as the phone hit the deck below. About 30' below since our house is built on the side of a hill and the place where it fell off goes WAY down. When we found the phone a couple hours later, it was completely wrecked. I would need a replacement.

All that and we never found a tower that carried ABC. I ended up having to sign up for a free trial of Fubo in order to watch the game, which, of course, I could have done from the beginning.

Trying to make good on a day where I have a helper, I decide to run a RJ45 cable from my internet router to my computer in the workshop...it just doesn't get a good wifi connection. I run the cable and have to drill a hole in the floor to run the cable through the basement. In the process of running that cable, I drill into the cable from Spectrum that is our service provider. So I spend the next half hour splicing that cable back together. The helper and I run the cable through the basement, outside, over into the garage and over to the laser room at which point we discover that the cable is about 5' too short to reach the computer. Rather than waiting a couple days to get a new cable, we re-arrange the laser room so that the computer is about 4.5' closer. We pull the cable tight and are able to hook it up. But I'm still going to have to extend the cable a few feet because it is about 6" off the ground strung across the sidewalk outside. It is going to trip me for sure. 

Next day I go in and get a new phone. I'm the second person in line at AT&T. I have to wait an hour and a half because they are only letting one person in the store at a time and there is only one person working and the first person in the store had no idea what he wanted, what he had, or what he was trying to replace. I finally get my new phone and basically just got the only one that would fit my needs that they had in stock even though it was about $40 more than the one I actually wanted. I have a doctor's appointment in the afternoon, so I go there. I put my phone on the counter as I sign in. I accidently knock it off the counter. The screen cracks in a dozen places. Phone wasn't more than 4 hours old.

I wish I could say that this was an abnormal couple days. 

But it is really just a regular Wednesday around here :-)

By the numbers: 9/11/2020
over 3 years ago – Sat, Sep 12, 2020 at 07:43:51 PM

I was actually able to get more out than I though I would this week, although there is still a ways to go.

Current numbers:

• 9 backers have not completed their surveys. I sent reminders. If you haven't completed your survey and don't see a reminder, please check your spam filter.
• 44 backers are in the staging area. Many of these have most of the order completed and are just waiting for one or two items to ship.
• 120 backers have shipped (about a dozen today).

I continue to work my way through some incomplete or incorrect shipments.

Something new in this week's shipment is that Etsy sent me a few rolls of packing tape. So the packages are covered with this nice white tape with Etsy promo stuff all over it. I used it because it was free...nothing here is getting shipped through the etsy system. It makes the packages look a little odd, but hey...free is free....

All cards have now been cut and assembled. I am going through the painting and finishing process now and with a little luck I'll have everything ready by next week, so I'll be able to get a good number of those 44 outstanding projects out. I'll probably need to go back and remake some things after that because I never seem to have 100% accurate counts. My goal is to still have everything out by the end of the month.

For those who haven't completed your surveys, please do so. I'd like to put the lid on this at the end of Sept.  With a little luck, I may run another project before the end of the year, so stay tuned.

As always, if you haven't signed up for my newsletter yet, please do so. You can join at:  https://mailchi.mp/e0bbeccdca92/facebooksignup

By the Numbers 9/4/20
over 3 years ago – Fri, Sep 04, 2020 at 10:18:16 AM

There isn't a whole lot to report today. I got a few orders out this week, but not a huge number. Here are the numbers:

• 12 backers have not yet completed their surveys. I have removed backers from this list who only pledged $1 and were likely not going to complete it at all.
• 57 backers have orders  that need filled.
• 2 backers are awaiting one or two items to be filled.
• 105 backers have had their orders shipped.

A note on people who filled out custom requests. When I come across these, what I'm basically doing now is putting that order aside until the end. Custom orders aren't just a matter of changing something and then letting it work its way into the queue. They are something that needs tracked every step of the way so that they don't get mixed in with the rest of the orders. For this reason, it generally involves an extra fee. I've contacted many people regarding this and heard back from most, but there are still a few people who haven't responded. I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but if you requested a customization and we have not spoken about it, then I'm not going to spend extra time trying to figure out what it is you want. This paragraph does not apply to 98% of you. But if you have requested a customization and aren't meeting me half way, I'm not going to spend extra time reaching out to you on the issue. My time is better spent working on the rewards for other backers.  Thank you for understanding.

Other News

I lost my worker this week who has returned to college (at least for now). Her replacement is only going to be able to put in one or two days a week, so production levels are likely going to drop. We were getting between $2000 and $3000 worth of rewards done a week and that number is going to drop to about half, I'd guess. But I still project having all orders for completed surveys done by the end of September. I have all of the I Want Them All level cut and 75% of the Retailer level cut. By mid next week, I should have all outstanding cards cut, so then it is a matter of finishing them. Next week I'll start processing orders for the I Want Them All level. I'm hoping to get about half of them out next week, and the rest out not long after that.

As always, I'd like to encourage people to sign up for my mailing list.  When you are on it, you'll get some inside info on upcoming events that Hrothgar's Hoard runs. There is a fall event that I'm working on that people may be interested in. To join, go here: https://mailchi.mp/e0bbeccdca92/facebooksignup

Friday update: By the Numbers
over 3 years ago – Fri, Aug 28, 2020 at 10:37:32 PM

We are in the final week of August and things are progressing well. Here's a numbers recap:

• 17 people have not yet finished the survey. If you have not received (or don't think you received) a survey, see below.
• 3 orders are awaiting one or two items to be completed.
• 54 orders are in the "staging" stage; I'll probably start in on those next week.
• 102 orders have been shipped.

By pledge levels:

• All orders in the Early-Bird level (except 2 with unanswered surveys) have been shipped.
• At the Single tracker level (both domestic and exotic), 7 orders are awaiting one or two items, and 41 have been shipped.
• At the Party Pack levels, 33 orders have been shipped, and 10 are waiting for items.
• No other pledge levels have been started.

Yesterday, I ran out of lacquer and will need to get more (I've gone through 8 gallons so far), so I doubt if things will get done over the weekend.

I am currently cutting the walnut cards at the I Want Them All level. Because I'm cutting by woodtype, and not by order, I may not be able to start shipping this level next week. It all depends on what types of wood are in the orders. I still have  the rest of walnut, bloodwood, some purpleheart and padauk to go at this level.

My plan for next week is to finish up the cutting in the I Want Them All level, as well as the International Backer level and at least get a good jump on the Retailer level. I'm losing my worker this week (back to college), but have trained a replacement who will only be available for 10 hours a week or so. I'm expecting production levels to fall during this time, but still hope to get a good number finished every day. My goal is to have the project completely done by the end of September.

There were a few shipping errors which are not included in the numbers above. I have them on my list, though, and hope to have a good turnaround on those.

Missing Surveys!

If you have not received a survey, it may be in your spam folder. But rather than go through a bunch of old spam messages, you can instead go to the survey recovery page here: https://dnd-5e-character-cards.backerkit.com/  Please do this soon so that you can get your reward soon.