Nodtveidt

I think Yankme got cheap over the years. Their candles used to be super-strong, but the last time I had my hands on a Yankme candle (about 4 months ago), it was the pansiest candle I'd smelled since those cheapass ones from Betty Crocker.

myspace.com/nodtveidt Plain old boring myspace default setting.

They ripped you off. They're supposed to refund the difference if they ship it for a lower price. I would take it up with the BBB, if it were me.

When I was a web developer fulltime, I would charge $25 per static page, $40 per script, and $100 for database design. All costs included graphic design, you could also hire me for custom graphic work by itself at a cost of $50/hour. This all was amazingly cheap at the time, but my work was top-notch and I had clients booked for months. Nowadays, you can get websites done for a fraction of the cost, but usually from some newbie in India with a second grade level understanding of English and a Frontpage fetish.

Some people are naturals at it, like anything else. Two months is more than enough time to get up to speed and test a small selection of candles. jenrfailla, you could always decorate the tarp with artwork, or use a tapestry underneath it. I'd go for the tapestry myself...

There was a Yankme store in the city I used to live in, so I bought many a candle when I lived there. It happens.

Ain't that the truth! For me, it's anything vanilla, or any one of the many perfumy/sensual fragrances. Oh, and Pourette's Starlight Grove or Balance...when I can actually get them. I make yin/yang candles with Balance (white) and Nag Champa (black), so addictive.

For awhile I used Pourette exclusively, until they started mysteriously running out of stock. Their Baby Powder is exceptionally strong and works very well in soy wax. I agree on the Colombian Roast, it smells like columbian crap. The French Vanilla seems very weak compared to some of their others, although by itself it smells wonderful. I've used at least 20 of their FOs, the best one by far in terms of both hot and cold throw in soy has got to be Flower Shop...a very strong lilacy scent that you can smell twenty feet away. Their Chocolate is very good, I made a test candle with it in pure soy and gave it to a friend of mine for testing...she said the scent filled her house. Their Orange Creamsicle is delicious but works better in soy, in paraffin it has the nasty fuel smell when burning. Other notables are Sinful Pleasure (which I've had a hell of a time trying to get again), Baked Apple, Starlight Grove, Balance (this one is GREAT!), and Lemon Meringue. Pumpkin Spice smells great on its own but seems to have little hot or cold throw in paraffin, haven't tried it in soy yet. I have a sampler of their Strawberry Shortcake but I haven't tried it yet but it smells absolutely delicious. I'm getting candle nose just thinking about some of these FOs, and they're all at my other house. Oh, almost forgot...I made two apple candles using the Apple FO...VERY convincing, and the Apple FO smells very, very natural and real. I got the apple mould from them as well...some of their 3D moulds are great, but sometimes you have to modify them to align correctly, which is kind of a pain in the butt.

Hey, printmythings (Century Marketing) has a free catalog (actually a few of them). I ordered one. Their site seems to have some glitches though...ah well, most sites involved with eporia seem to get bugged with eporia's erm...bugs.

For testing, always start with small quantities. The initial investment may seem higher, but if you buy a huge amount of a FO, for example, and it simply doesn't work out, you've actually invested far more money, and now have a resource that is useless. When test marketing after quality testing, go with medium amounts; that way you're striking a balance between quantity and cost. If you're stuck with a huge inventory of a particular product that doesn't sell, that's just wasted space. If your particular configuration is highly marketable, then obtain the materials at the lowest cost possible by buying as much as you can at once. That way you can max your profit margin. It's a pretty simple process, but one that a lot of newcomers in every industry overlook.

I've never had any problems with them. They're kinda picky about the artwork you send them though (if you don't know anything about CMYK then you're stuffed). I guess you might consider that "rudeness". They expect you to know what you're talking about, maybe they get frustrated when they have to decipher what you're saying...not the best way to handle a situation but their work is top-notch and I wouldn't go anywhere else for digital labels.

The reason I use soy as opposed to paraffin is that soy is renewable and oil is not. Other than that, it's just personal preference (and an unhealthy desire for pain...soy is rather difficult to work with).

I hope you get it all worked out, Heather.

You could always use (*gulp*) Frontpage...lol not! Try this list of programs: http://www.thefreecountry.com/webmaster/htmleditors.shtml

Never used their software before but it's probably some configuration detail. You could change each document manually though with a search-and-replace in Notepad...but that might take awhile and I don't know if it would make the page suddenly incompatible with their program. You could try contacting them and see what they say, that's a good first step. If you don't get far with them, maybe someone could help you manually modify the pages to make them safer (I could do it, but I'm out all day tomorrow). Basically, the way it works is someone with a brute force login program enters your username, then the program tries passwords at random until it figures out your password. If the server is set up to reject multiple password failures, the IP can be banned (my server is set up this way, it really helps) but if not, then they can just keep running the program until they figure it out. Once they have your username and password, they have the same level of access as you do...or perhaps more, depending on how secure the server is (if they get in in the first place, the server's probably not very secure anyways). They can then use that access to erase your website or upload a different index page (called "defacing") or worse...in the case of a badly secured server, they can use your access to do crazy stuff like heightening user permissions which could allow them to cause damage to the actual server software (this happened to us once). Of note...this kind of stuff happens ALL THE TIME all over the Internet. Of course, if you're a small site that doesn't have a lot of exposure yet, it's likely to be awhile before someone discovers the security flaw, so you probably have a little time to get things fixed before you become a target. I'm not trying to scare you, just telling you what could happen (and has happened to many others). So much to learn, so little time.

I could resave the image as a GIF but the fact that the program you're using doesn't allow you to use PNGs shows its age...might be time to ditch it. PNG has been the standard for non-photographic images for a long time now. Anyways, here ya go: http://www.nodtveidt.net/dcwlogo.gif Feel free to use it if you'd like. I noticed you were using one of those website cheat programs...that's probably why the PNG doesn't work with it. You could always manually change the web code...that's what I'd do. What I meant by exposing your account name is this... http://72.29.83.110/~camoflau/index.php that kind of address shows up in ALL of your image links on the side. It's probably a result of the program you're using as well. That's a security risk, it exposes your account name which can allow an attacker to brute-force your account to gain access. Again, if the program doesn't allow you to change this, you could do it manually.

About the only issue I see with your website is exposing the IP and hence exposing your account name. That's a major security risk. Other than that, the design is good and cohesive, has a real "homey" feel to it. If I were to critique anything else though, it'd be the logo...it's a bit rough. Take it out of GIF format and give it a slight smoothing, then save it as a PNG instead...something like this: http://www.nodtveidt.net/dcwlogo.png

I also have a myspace blog but I don't really use it...blogging just ain't my thing, it's rather boring and self-indulgent, imo.

But did you apply for a trademark as well? You should have if you didn't...it's always best to trademark your name so it can't be subject to these kinds of baseless attacks.

Mars Candle Co?

Generally speaking, you can legally use your location in your business name. However, a lot of business experts recommend you NOT use your location in your business name for one simple reason: what if your business moves? (For the record, I found this information when my wife and I were going to set up a PC repair shop in Pen Argyl, PA...we were going to call it "Pen Argyl PC")

BG 415. Excellent scent and dye retention (works great with pigments especially) but tends to frost horribly when used by itself. I add a little Vybar 103 to smooth it out and eliminate the frosting by 70-95%, depending on the application.

Once that lil bloodsucker latches on, there's no stopping it except by buying more and more and more FOs.

I remember when Angelfire was a completely free webhost...wow it seems like many years ago. I had a site with them for my radio show at college.

A LOT of people fall for this scam, or at least used to. It's not a very common practice anymore but when the domain price drop took place due to Internic's loss of absolute control, this scam came about and people fell for it left and right. Another common scam (I was a victim of this one) is to offer a low introductory price...but don't SAY it's an introductory price until renewal time comes along...then slam the customer with a hefty $35/yr fee, and refuse to let them transfer to another registrar. A rather shady practice happening now is domain search squatting...on some registrars' pages, they maintain a "recently searched" list, and there are scumbags who watch these pages for new searches...then buy them up as quick as possible to rob you of the opportunity of buying the domain at a decent price.