Kept you waiting huh?

Justin, where were the blogs that people definitely read?!

Long story short? I usually write these at work. Work has been super busy! Even now I am home with nothing better to do so I am writing it. That is not true, I need to do laundry and dishes but I really wanted to do one and I hate chores.

The other major issue is that, for whatever reason, an automatic firmware update to our work router started giving us DNS Errors with like, no lie, every other link we clicked. It was really irritating. It made it so I basically could not update the website at work or really do anything with it. My solution was to roll back the firmware and disable automatic updates. Not ideal, but hey we can work again.

On top of that the website itself had some issues. I was trying to update critical stuff from home and even then it would load so slowly that it would just time itself out with simple stuff like a calendar entry. I am not even close to a web developer, so explaining it to Dreamhost’s tech support gave me a couple of solutions and it actually worked! I think, I dunno, it could break at any moment.

you own a card store, how can you be busy?

First off, ouch, second, lots of ways. We’ve had a lot of big releases and events going on. Dominaria United was a big launch and led us to have our biggest attendance since the pandemic. Sales, in general, have returned to our pre-pandemic levels. We’re having to order more accessories, more board games, more Warhammer models, literally everything.

We’re not immune to inflation, sadly. To be very reductive about it some big company that makes paper decides they need to charge more for their product. Then the company who prints cards has to charge more for their products, then its more expensive for Wizards to produce cards, they charge me more money to buy them, and then sadly I have to charge more to sell them to the end user. I am not an economist but where it all starts, I don’t know. I know corporations don’t want smaller margins so they can buy another beach house, meanwhile I’m trying to pay for a regular house that is no where near a beach.

But, people have been very understanding and I greatly appreciate that. We have been trying to schedule and run more events and its been going great. We have run our first Regional Qualifying Championship for Magic and I think it was a big success. We’ll be running a few other Commander tournaments as sort of, “one-shots” that have been put on by a community member and one that will benefit a cat rescue. Who doesn’t love kitties? If you say you don’t, get outta my website. That is literally a picture of my cat, right next to me as I write this.

What else?

Well, to be totally honest I’m going to have a less fun post coming up, possibly tomorrow. No we’re not closing or anything, like I said, sales are up to their old levels and we’ll likely start experience the growth we had earlier. We’ve had some behavior in the store that absolutely needs to be addressed and I’m going to make sure that it is in as many places as possible that I have a voice.

For most people, it won’t be a big deal, so don’t worry about that. Just another part of owning a business where the people who come in, come often, and become a little too comfortable there. That is not an inherently bad thing. I saw a post that said something along the lines of, “Home is lonely, outside is scary, we need a third place.” I just want to sweep my hands open and go, “Parallax!” like a carnival barker. With that being said, we still do not allow certain behaviors at all. I will be specific about it soon.