Changes

Last night I spent four hours with my computer guy trying to set up my new computer. I knew getting this thing up and running would be a nightmare, which was why I delayed it almost a year. Turns out he could have easily cleaned up my old computer and got it running fast and clean much easier than setting up this new one - I'll have to remember that next time! So between the $50 software I bought to move the old computer programs & files (fail), the $99 I spent on the Geek Squad to do the same (fail), and now this guy (thank God he didn't charge me! He is also the MC of my event and felt bad about having to stand me up one of the nights because of a friend's medical emergency) - what a royal pain in the ass! I would like to point out that I still have almost no workable programs - most of mine were so old they're not compatible with the new computer; he will come back later and install Photoshop, a DVD creator, and all my office programs. Well, at least I have email, Internet, and a working printer now, which I have not had for weeks and which had caused me a tremendous amount of stress. 

One very positive and interesting outcome of his visit last night was his suggestion that I hire a professional ticket processor for my event ticketing. I always shied away from this before because they charge fees - and it may still be prohibitively expensive, since they tend to do a percentage of your ticket price and many of my tickets are $200+. But he suggested I just make the customers pay the fees. When I looked at my PayPal account and saw that on average I eat $3000-$4500 in fees each year...it made me realize that yeah, they may not like it, but it's time to pass those fees on to the customer. Most events do. And as usual if I present an alternative - mail in this form and bypass the fees - people should be ok with it. Or if not, they'll get used to it. This year's dismal financial rewards showed me I need to stop being so freaking generous. 

The upside of working with a pro ticket company is it would completely change the way I do everything - no more paperwork, period. People could check in with barcodes, I could use their database instead of creating my own, there would be no more mistakes or people swearing they paid when they didn't. Oh, it would be awesome. And it would save me tons of work right when I need it the most, with a new baby. The sucky part would be negotiating a good rate and getting everything up and running in the next three months. I hate the idea of starting over. But as with everything, change must happen. All we can do is embrace it, even if initially it's a huge pain in the ass.

In other news, B's new 6:00 bedtime is AWESOME. He sleeps to the same time (7:30 AM typically), and that extra hour at night for me is huge - I usually leave for gigs around 7:30 so having that extra time to eat dinner/get dressed etc is going to be a huge help. So, yay for that. 

Here is a rare picture of us taken last weekend by someone else: