Johanna

Thank you thank you thank you... it doesn't get any simpler than that! Johanna

We're working on it. We don't want to break the board. The last time that happened, all you people freaked out and went through withdrawal. It was horrible. Kate has been experimenting, and so has IPB. It's coming- we're just being on the cautious side. Johanna

Guitar, and I still sing my kids to sleep just about every night. They still want me to. Go figure? Johanna

Is this happening on all sites or just LW? If it is all sites- hold your control key down and scroll the wheel on your mouse if you have one. Or click "view" at the top of the page and click the text size to whatever you prefer. Johanna

Situation- adult stepson got pulled over and got his DL suspended for driving a car with no insurance. Got pulled over again two weeks later in one of our trucks, and the Ohio Trooper informed him that his DL was suspended because of the first charge, which is still pending in court. The very nice trooper did not impound our truck and he didn't charge me with "wrongful entrustment", which he could have done. We took the keys away and told him not to drive anything of ours. Neither case has been to court yet. Now he claims he has a valid license because he paid a reinstatement fee and he wants our permission to drive. He has a license in his wallet, but we don't know if it's valid. How do I check (am I allowed to check?) to see if he has driving privileges in Ohio? I don't want to give him keys (the truck is in MY name!) if he's lying to me, and I can't tell if he is or not. Is there any way of finding out for sure? Would the sheriff's office be able to confirm he's okay to drive or not? I want to give him the truck so he can go to WORK which he sorely needs to do. But I don't want to get in trouble. Johanna

In retail they say a happy customer will tell 4 others. An unhappy customer will tell eleven. When you are working retail, you appreciate "complaints" because they give you a chance to correct the problem, keeping the goodwill of the customer, and eliminate the problem for all the customers who didn't take the time to complain, just grumbled about the inconvenience. People who complained were actually doing us a favor. It's the same way at LW. If someone doesn't hit the "report a to a mod" button or send one of us a PM, we might not realize that there is a problem, whether it's a technical glitch or an individual computer issue. But from 15 years of doing custom leatherwork, I can say for certain there are some customers you do not want. Send them to your competitors. Send them to Wal-Mart. Send them away, or you will be out time and money, and kicking yourself for letting yourself be persuaded to do the job. These customers are different than the jobs we take because there are bills to pay and we don't like the work. I'm talking about customers who are not going to be happy with your work, or not pay you. Johanna PS-John, we need an update of your best creation- do you have more pics of your daughter to share?

OCD is really CDO with the letters in alphabetical order like they are supposed to be!!! I have to go wash my hands now. ~J

PS- I would make him buy the bible first. It is much easier to construct a bible cover to a specific book than to find a bible that fits in one we make. I was in a bookstore the other day looking at bibles (our 15 yr. old got confirmed yesterday!) and there were so many choices! I wasn't even looking at size. ~J

Holly- this job has a lot of red flags! If you decide to do it- triple whatever price you were going to ask, then see if he still wants it. I have learned there are some customers best turned away. When I didn't pay attention and listen to that little voice in my head saying "CAUTION!", I have wound up getting screwed. Johanna

The hover preview does not work with the "view new posts" or "view active topics", but it does work on every individual forum on the board. Some people subscribe to forums they are interested in and get an email notification of any new topics. They can then decide to follow that topic or not by clicking on the links in the choices in the email, or later, while reading the thread, by clicking "options". In My Controls all the email notifications can be adjusted to a member's preference. I agree, clear topic titles are easier for everyone. ~J

No. I don't want to have to decide where to draw the line, as I have needed to recently. That is why I asked you folks what you want out of YOUR forum. You folks are telling me that you don't want a forum for off-off topics, and that you don't want to read heated or hateful discussions that serve no purpose to leatherwork. That actually makes our jobs easier. We mods usually PM someone "You may not realize it, but in that post you sound like a jerk, and could be misunderstood as a fill-in-the-blank. Would you like to edit or modify your post?" Then when we get a response, we know what we need to do. In the last week or so there have been some posts that concerned the staff a great deal. No one here likes to censor or "invisible" posts by our members, but when they cross the line to "racist", for example, well, we can't have that on our forum. We don't want hateful ugly posts on our forum, and I'm glad you all agree. We are a friendly and helpful community of leatherworkers, cooperating for the advancement of education, entertainment & fellowship. I'm glad we have decided to keep it that way. Johanna

Lillian Chaudhary , who is a member here, is a noted sidesaddle expert, and a very nice lady. Her contact info is on her site. Johanna

This was written by the Admin of http://wilderssecurity.com Mike, aka "LowWaterMark" for his tech support forum. He gave me permission to post this here for our members to read. Have you ever noticed how easy it is to offend someone else online? Sometimes you are posting along having a great day and suddenly, out of no where, you get a reply to a post that tells you quite bluntly that you've just insulted another person. A short time later the thread has gone off-track and people are flaming each other, and then in steps a Moderator who ends up closing the thread and everyone is angry - mostly at you. Or, perhaps you've been on the other side on this situation. There you are trying to be helpful, posting your heart out when suddenly, for no apparent reason, someone makes a reply that appears to be down right rude and offensive, and it is aimed directly at you. If you haven't seen this or been involved in at least one of these situations yourself, then you probably haven't been posting very long, or perhaps you aren't posting in any controversial topics or places. I'm bringing this up for a couple reasons... First, to remind everyone that it is very easy to misunderstand what someone intends to say in a written post. It is much harder to be clearly and consistently understood in just a few written sentences then it is when you are speaking with someone face to face. Second, we all need to remember that the Internet spans around the world, and International Forums such as Leatherworker.net have quite a diverse group of participants. Leatherworker is an English lanuguage forum, but many of our members here do not have English as their primary language. Think about that and its implications. Try to imagine just how much translating is being done here and how people of different languages, cultures and backgrounds can so easily misunderstand what is written in a post. Imagine times when even a simple joke, which would be funny to people with similar backgrounds, causes insult to someone who has a completely different frame of reference. We all need to be mindful of this and try to use extra care in writing our posts, while also giving the benefit of the doubt to others, when reading what has been posted. It's best not to assume an insult and react to it when what was intended could be totally innocent. Of course, there really are people who simply intend to insult others and disrupt a forum. Their only purpose being to cause trouble and attempt to insight flame wars. Sometimes they post inflammatory remarks against individuals, or certain vendors or products, just so they can get other people to post flaming comments back at them. (We usually refer to these people as Trolls. Hence the expression "Please don't feed the trolls." ) Remember, there really is no good reason, nor any benefit to you or your overall well being, to take offense from things that are written online. If we all use a little care in choosing how we word our posts, and if we are generous in how we interpret what others post, then we'll all have a lot more fun (and a lot less stress) online. Please vote here to steer LW in the right direction concerning the heated topics that have come up lately. Thank you! Johanna

It has been suggested that we set up a special section for people to rant and rave about any subject they choose, excluding personal attacks. Some of you want to discuss world events and controversial subjects, and this would be the place to do it. Those of you who hate those conversations could ignore the section entirely. Please vote. Comments welcome. Johanna

If Pete or anyone else wants to discuss making something out of leather for the Queen of England, please start a new thread. If anyone has more political views they would like to express, perhaps another forum would be better as LW isn't the place to do that. No fistfights in the hallways either, please. Now, more than ever, we need to pull together. No matter if you eat meat or not, or what color/religion/orientation/ethnic group/kind of horse you ride/political party you belong to/ etc. et al you are, of course, welcome at LW. If you like leatherwork, you're in the right place. Thank you for your understanding. Johanna

I'm not gonna whack you, Pete. My husband just came home and let me know he got a 6.5% pay cut today. I think it's a neat idea to give the Queen something. How many people in the news have NO scandal associated with them? She's a gracious lady, and it would be a kind gesture to make a gift for her, with respect, from the USA. Johanna

This would have been a hard entry to beat even if there would have been any other entries! Randahl, it's gorgeous, I will treasure it forever, and thank you! Please PM me with your mailing address so I can send you the gift card. I know you wrote it on the back, but I don't want to make a mistake. You are doing awesome work, and I appreciate you taking the time to do this for LW! Johanna

Well, that is Artisan's OLD site, and I don't have anything to do with that. The manual you want is here , present and correct on their NEW site. Johanna

Compass or wing dividers work well. For circles, I have used glasses, plates, candle holders- whatever is handy. ~J

Hmmmm maybe I could remove the delete button. Then mail could be deleted from the inbox as desired instead of instantly. Let me think on that a bit. Johanna

Whenever possible, cut or punch shapes out at the same time. If something has to match, fold it if you can. If you are going to make a lot of something, and you want to have a good template to work from, invest the time in making one out of plastic, metal, wood or even heavy cardboard. Templates save time and help you get more consistent results. Johanna

I got a sweet piece of leather from Randahl. I'll post a pic of it tomorrow. Anybody wanna whip together some business cards tonight before deadline? Johanna

Yes. Unplug the external when not in use just to be safe. You can still get XP, but why??? It's going to be obsolete soon, and the support is not there from either MS or the software developers. I've been using Vista now for awhile, and I like it (ducks at the rocks thrown at me!) Seriously, I notice the differences when I use my laptop (old faithful XP Pro) and I like Vista better. I hear Windows 7 is even better. Yes. You can even buy a transfer cable for about $40 and use the files and settings transfer wizard in Vista to make your new computer pretty much what your old one was. I did that for my mom, and was amazed that her programs still worked, her file system remained intact and it didn't forget to move her address book, favorites, stored email, etc. It was easy, and it worked perfectly. If you decide to do this, you need to keep the old comp running until you have the new one out of the box. Probably not. If you have a downloads file with those programs, just make sure you transfer it and reinstall the programs. You may need to reenter keys, and if you don't remember them you can usually request them to be resent- those things are tied to email addresses, not the specific computer.Unsolicited advice: If you can, buy a computer that has a real cd/dvd of the OS (operating system) not a little recovery partition. If you have to repair the computer (or replace the hard drive) it's handy to have the disk. When people ask me for help picking out a computer, I go to www.tigerdirect.com . I have probably purchased 50 systems there in the past year, and only had one or two incidents where something needed returned. The customer service is outstanding, and the whole process was painless. I've never had a problem collecting a rebate from them either. If you buy a Vista computer, get enough memory (at least 2 gigs). You can always upgrade hard drive space and optical reader/writers in the future (cd/dvd drives). XP liked memory, Vista NEEDS it. HTH Johanna

Someone commented that this thread was like throwing a bleeding baby in a shark tank. I made a mental note to remember that line. I hope you got some good ideas, NoahL, and I hope you don't judge us all by a few. The time has come to close this topic now. Johanna

Vegetable tanned leather and chrome tanned leather will react to chemicals differently because of the chemicals that were used to produce the two different kinds of leathers. This isn't a very scientific experiment. Johanna