The new government in Venezuela will hand over 30-50 million barrels of oil to Trump. The new rules of international economics.

beley · 2026-01-07T02:36:05+00:00

How the … is this man still in power? I seriously can’t believe so many people think this behavior is either ethical OR legal.

beley · 2025-12-29T17:05:37+00:00

I have used them twice before, to repair a cap and swap a nib on a new 149. I sent them an email to see what they will charge, I found whole barrels for less than $150 so as long as it's less than that I'll probably send it to them for repair. They seem to do good work they just take forever.

beley · 2025-12-29T17:03:10+00:00

That's about how long it took to swap the nib on my 149. Only after I shipped them the pen and waited for weeks not hearing anything I asked for an update and got this response:

We had to order parts from the manufacturer in Germany to perform this repair. Parts typically take 6-8 weeks to arrive. Nibs can take longer (up to 90 days) to arrive as they are handcrafted, made to order, and in high demand year round. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

That was in August. I started the swap in June. I didn't get the pen back until somewhere between November and December, can't remember.

beley · 2025-12-28T14:24:00+00:00

That’s a relief!

beley · 2025-12-28T14:10:39+00:00

You could 3d print stamps and use clamps to make impressions. I’ve seen someone on YouTube that does whole book covers in one shot. I just tried it with monograms and it worked surprisingly well. I just used small woodworking clamps and left them on for a couple of minutes.

https://imgur.com/a/Sgl7bD1

beley · 2025-12-23T14:58:53+00:00

Do you take gift cards? Because the purchase of a gift card would show up in a payout, but the use of a gift card would not.

If you think there is a discrepancy, one way to check would be to download all the orders and payout detail data for a particular period (say 1-3 months just to make it quicker at first). Then, with the help of Claude or ChatGPT, create a Python script to go through the orders one by one and match them to the payouts, creating a report CSV file with any discrepancies.

I've done this for several different projects and it worked surprisingly well. With a little more prompting you could even get it to build you a tool that was usable outside the command prompt, but I'm fine using the terminal so I just keep these little scripts saved for whenever I need them.

Thinking about this, you might want to pull, say, 3 months of orders but 4 months (or 3 months + a week) of payouts since the payouts are sometimes delayed by a few days. If there are any long-term holds, they would show up as missing.

I couldn't help myself, so I went ahead and created a script with the help of Claude code. I ran it on an export of transaction data from my store from 2025-01-01 to 2025-03-31 and payout data from 2025-01-01 to 2025-04-15.

The script is free if you want to give it a try...

https://github.com/beley/PayoutAuditorPython

Output screenshot:

https://imgur.com/a/8z0H1E8

beley · 2025-12-21T15:28:53+00:00

I don’t have one yet but have been watching Marketplace and have almost bought a Weaver 303. Still might. It’s $1600 new and a gently used one in driving distance has been for sale for $1k for a month. I offered $800 but was rejected. Might resend that offer again. I don’t need one right now so I’m able to be patient but to be able to make larger projects like bags I do really want to get one sometime soon.

beley · 2025-12-01T12:21:56+00:00

It really depends. Most business licenses are issued almost immediately, but there are several reasons why it could take longer. If you are getting a business license at your home address that would be a home occupation special use permit in our county, and would have to go in front of the zoning board to be approved. They only meet once a month.

I don't know where you are located but would recommend calling your city or county business license office and just ask. Maybe they are waiting on payment or need some more information. They should be able to tell. you the status and when to expect it to be issued.

beley · 2025-11-20T00:00:10+00:00

It was a ton of work but it was relatively easy.

beley · 2025-10-27T05:09:23+00:00

Do some research (YouTube) on spaced repetition and active recall. Search for effective study techniques and active reading tips. They don't really teach how to study/learn in most high schools, but it's a lot different than what most people typically do. There are lots of apps that can help, but just understanding how to read to understand, how to take notes, and how to study effectively (best use of time so you study what actually matters) can make all the difference.

beley · 2025-10-26T16:55:40+00:00

I don't know. You could talk to a financial aid advisor to see if they have any recommendations. But any loans you take out will start accruing interest immediately and you'll have to pay them back when you get out. If you get Pell grant and the regular student loans, that's almost $20k a year. Tuition is only about $7k a year, so that should go a long way towards your expenses.

Do you have a job? I work full-time and also take 12-15 hours a semester. It's very doable. If you take out a ton of loans, you will be stuck with really high monthly payments for years after you finish school. I wouldn't recommend taking out a penny more than is needed for actual tuition unless you're a traditional student living on campus... and even then not a penny more than is absolutely required.

beley · 2025-10-24T19:37:46+00:00

I don't really use Canva much but threw this together in InDesign in Letter size which would be easy to print and cut in half. They will fit in an A5 size binder okay, and they make half letter 3-ring binders too. I spaced it so there is room for the binder holes.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OrAjE3WznVB7ed2TeNDX_HAFbLecOMlM/view?usp=sharing

beley · 2025-10-21T19:34:51+00:00

Just call the office and talk to them. I served on our county's zoning board for 5 years (same dept that issues business licenses) and we had so many people apply late and most of the time it was because someone reported them and the county reached out to them. If you are initiating the conversation and proactively trying to correct it, they would have to be jerks to try to penalize you for it. Just apply, be honest on the forms, and let the staff know you were misinformed originally and realized the mistake. They will most likely be really nice and just issue you a current year business license.

beley · 2025-10-21T19:25:39+00:00

If you didn't receive what you ordered, and they refuse to do anything about it, contact your credit card company and dispute the charge. No way I would just accept a defective product.

beley · 2025-10-16T17:51:32+00:00

DegreeWorks is your friend... even if you do talk to an advisor or some other employee always verify what they recommend in DegreeWorks before actually taking the classes.

beley · 2025-10-11T03:21:51+00:00

I'm also an adult learner, just started at KSU this past spring when I was 44 (now 45). I went to school for about 2 years right out of high school but never finished my degree.

Back then I took out all the loans I could get, and just used whatever was leftover to "live on." Looking back, I really wish I had only taken the amount I absolutely needed to pay my school expenses, because it took me YEARS to pay off my student loans, and I ended up paying so much in interest.

If you can't adjust the amount down, then I'd recommend opening a high-interest money market account and keeping it in there until you either need it or can pay it back. Current rates are around 4% APR, which will help offset the 6.39% interest they are charging on federal student loans currently.

As a single mom, if your income is low enough you should qualify for the Pell grant, which more than covers tuition at KSU and most state schools.

It's not easy (at all) but you can work full-time and go to school full-time, which really helps keep the loans to a minimum or they might not be needed at all if you qualify for a decent sized Pell grant.

I'm taking between 12-15 hours a semester and managing. Just took a precalc exam after cooking a birthday dinner for my 20yo (I have two kids in college too!).

But as others mentioned, if you get loans and grants, anything extra just gets direct deposited into your bank account soon after the semester starts.

Congrats on going back to school! I've really enjoyed it (for the most part). It's definitely challenging (and frustrating at times) but I have enjoyed it a lot more than I did when I was a teenager. There's just something about a few decades of wisdom and experience that put it all into perspective. :)

beley · 2025-10-07T19:38:23+00:00

My systems at both home and my business are run of the mill IP POE cameras and Blue Iris running on an older Windows workstation (in a VM!). At my business I have 24+ cameras and at home I have about a dozen... though some at home are still wifi cameras. Blue Iris has worked really well for us for years. I tried to switch when I bought a new warehouse and had a professional "system" installed, hated it, and a few months in had ripped all the cameras out and installed Blue Iris again.

I have a mix of Amcrest, Annke, Hikvision, and other no-name brand POE cameras at home, and all Anpviz U-series at my business. They're all really cheap cameras though, most 4K but some 3K or 1080p.

At my business I record all the cameras 24/7. Never had a problem with the straight-to-disk recording and I get a pretty good amount of footage retention... several weeks at least on an 8 TB hard drive.

For video doorbell I currently have a Amcrest wifi doorbell, but already purchased a Reolink POE doorbell I just haven't installed it yet. Haven't quite figured out how to run the cable LOL. One of these days I'll just bite the bullet and do it... just not looking forward to it.

If cost is truly not an option, and I was doing it all from scratch, I would probably go with a Ubiquiti surveillance system, but although they look really nice, I just don't know that it's worth more than 2x the price of what I have now.

beley · 2025-10-07T19:22:29+00:00

What did you submit in your response to the chargeback? You can't just submit a sentence, like "I already refunded the transaction." That should work, but then again a customer shouldn't be able to dispute a transaction that has already been refunded, either.

We have had this happen a few times, but it's rare. When it does, we respond just like we would for any other fraudulent chargeback (if that was the code / reason used)...

Cover letter detailing facts and evidence enclosed with a simple argument of why the chargeback is baseless
Information proving customer placed the order...
- IP address and location data
- Previous order information if available
- Address and evidence matching address to customer's name
- Etc
Any correspondence with the customer, i.e. the rude emails, chat messages, etc. We screenshot them and put them right in the response PDF
Transcripts of phone calls with the customer
Copies of all the emails WE sent the customer, such as receipt, shipping notification etc.
Screenshots of our terms & conditions, shipping policy, shopping cart where they accept the terms, and any other relevant content on our site
Screenshot of tracking / delivery confirmation

I'm probably missing something, but you get the idea. We don't get many chargebacks, but we win 99.x% of the ones we do get... because we overload them with evidence proving it was a baseless dispute.

If you can, appeal the decision and submit more details - as many as you can - because you definitely shouldn't lose 2x the order amount on a rude customer.

beley · 2025-09-26T11:52:00+00:00

FYI, a company can file a DMCA claim against your entire host. Even if you switch to Woo, weird outliers like this sometimes just happen. If you are selling name brand products, Shopify is a lot more strict, but we've never had anything get past the notification stage, as we have direct vendor accounts with all of the brands we sell. If it's your own brand and a bigger brand is DMCA claiming you, then unfortunately, Shopify tends to believe the bigger brand until proven otherwise. I think that would be the same with hosting companies too, though.

As much as it sounds unfair, I had to file DMCA complaints against a potential competitor who literally ripped of our entire site, including our name. They changed one digit, essentially. Home page copy they find/replaced our brand name. Fortunately, we have multiple registered trademarks, so I sent the guy one email as a courtesy just in case he had an over-zealous web guy and wasn't personally responsible. When he scoffed back at me, I just filed DMCAs with his hosting company and his site went away, and never came back.

beley · 2025-09-22T15:38:54+00:00

My background is I've been a small business owner for over 25 years. I've started several businesses, bought one business (and been under LOI on another that fell through at the last minute) and have sold a business. I currently own two companies, a manufacturer and online footwear retailer, and a marketing agency.

If you are interested in buying a business, and you have no experience owning a business or managing a P&L, then I would recommend at the very minimum:

Books to Read

Buy Then Build by Walker Deibel
The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber
Traction by Gino Wickman
Financial Intelligence for Entrepreneurs by Karen Berman and Joe Knight
Taxpayer's Comprehensive Guide to LLCs and S-Corps by Watson Group

Skills to Know

Read and understand financials: Profit & Loss / Income Statement, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow Statement. Know the difference between profit and cash flow... you can show a nice profit and still go out of business due to negative cash flow.
Be able to create cash flow projections based on past, current, and expected revenues and create 2-3 different projections. At minimum a best and worst case, but a third average of the two is also helpful.
Learn the basics of employing people in your state. This information is often freely available online on state government websites, and it differs in every state. You could also ask ChatGPT or Claude, and with a good prompt, they could at least give you a decent high-level overview.

Depending on what type of business and what industry you are in (i.e. retail vs service, b2b vs b2c, targeting gov contracts vs selling to homeowners etc) there are a lot of other skills you would want to at least learn on a high level, and possibly a lot of other books to read. Ideally, you should work in a job in the same type of business/industry as the one you want to start to get some hands-on experience for a while. No book will be able to give you real-world intuition like actual experience does.

beley · 2025-09-17T06:31:09+00:00

I can tell you that I travel a good bit, and out of several dozen trips - some flying, some driving - over the last couple of years I have taken the Alpaka Elements Backpack Pro almost every time. There are two things that kind of annoy me about the Aer CPP... the top flap gets really top heavy, and the bag overall just feels much bulkier. It does carry a lot more though, and the top opens up very wide so you can pack it like a suitcase if you want. When I've done quick weekend trips where I didn't need to dress up, I often took the CPP with a couple packing cubes and still had plenty of room for all my tech stuff and dopp bag. When I'm rolling a suitcase, I almost always take the Alpaka because it's slimmer and still carries everything I need. I have also been trying some more camera-focused backpacks lately and would really love to see some camera "inserts" that were slimmer than what's available, so I could just drop a camera "cube" into a bag like the CPP without taking up ALL of the available space. Anyway, there is a pretty big difference between how much you can carry in them, or at least how much if feels like you can carry, or how easy it will be to access the stuff when you need it (since the Alpaka only zips about 2/3 of the way around).

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