But ... But ... It's Not Like It's Work! (Craft Freebies)

[purplerainbow]

Found another example.

There is a website called "Noteflight", on which one can arrange pieces of music as sheet music, be it one's own compositions, or arrangements of well-known pieces. Lots of people do arrangements of pop songs and the like. You can choose which instruments to write for, and how many, eg a solo clarinet/piano, or an entire orchestra.
It takes a fair amount of work to arrange a piece of music as sheet music, and I totally appreciate the efforts and skill that go into it - especially since I'm not so skilled myself.
Musicians, music-lovers, composers etc are sharing these arrangements for free on this site; they're not being paid for their efforts. In fact, many are paying for the premium membership to the site.
Yet still, in the comments section for any given piece, you will find various people requesting that the person who arranged x piece of music, write another arrangement for instruments xyz, in such and such a key. Some requests are things anyone could easily do - eg, "Can you put the lyrics in with this?"  Ummm... YOU could do that. Print out the music, find the lyrics on the internet, and write them in yourself.
Some people just don't seem to appreciate that these people are doing something that takes a fair amount of skill, and sharing it with the world for free. They're not your personal composer!

[Slartibartfast]

Found another example.

There is a website called "Noteflight", on which one can arrange pieces of music as sheet music, be it one's own compositions, or arrangements of well-known pieces. Lots of people do arrangements of pop songs and the like. You can choose which instruments to write for, and how many, eg a solo clarinet/piano, or an entire orchestra.
It takes a fair amount of work to arrange a piece of music as sheet music, and I totally appreciate the efforts and skill that go into it - especially since I'm not so skilled myself.
Musicians, music-lovers, composers etc are sharing these arrangements for free on this site; they're not being paid for their efforts. In fact, many are paying for the premium membership to the site.
Yet still, in the comments section for any given piece, you will find various people requesting that the person who arranged x piece of music, write another arrangement for instruments xyz, in such and such a key. Some requests are things anyone could easily do - eg, "Can you put the lyrics in with this?"  Ummm... YOU could do that. Print out the music, find the lyrics on the internet, and write them in yourself.
Some people just don't seem to appreciate that these people are doing something that takes a fair amount of skill, and sharing it with the world for free. They're not your personal composer!

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR POSTING THIS!  I lost my Finale registration code years ago, so even though I still have the discs, I can't use the (very expensive) notation program.  I don't write much anymore, but every once in a while I need to be able to churn out some sheet music for something and I don't have a way to do it - looks like this site will be a handy tool!

[purplerainbow]

Found another example.

There is a website called "Noteflight", on which one can arrange pieces of music as sheet music, be it one's own compositions, or arrangements of well-known pieces. Lots of people do arrangements of pop songs and the like. You can choose which instruments to write for, and how many, eg a solo clarinet/piano, or an entire orchestra.
It takes a fair amount of work to arrange a piece of music as sheet music, and I totally appreciate the efforts and skill that go into it - especially since I'm not so skilled myself.
Musicians, music-lovers, composers etc are sharing these arrangements for free on this site; they're not being paid for their efforts. In fact, many are paying for the premium membership to the site.
Yet still, in the comments section for any given piece, you will find various people requesting that the person who arranged x piece of music, write another arrangement for instruments xyz, in such and such a key. Some requests are things anyone could easily do - eg, "Can you put the lyrics in with this?"  Ummm... YOU could do that. Print out the music, find the lyrics on the internet, and write them in yourself.
Some people just don't seem to appreciate that these people are doing something that takes a fair amount of skill, and sharing it with the world for free. They're not your personal composer!

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR POSTING THIS!  I lost my Finale registration code years ago, so even though I still have the discs, I can't use the (very expensive) notation program.  I don't write much anymore, but every once in a while I need to be able to churn out some sheet music for something and I don't have a way to do it - looks like this site will be a handy tool!

You're welcome
The free membership limits your compositions to a maximum of 10, although you can "favourite" as many other pieces as you like. Otherwise, I think the paid membership is something like $50 a year.

[Doll Fiend]

Wasn't sure where to put this but I felt that you guys would be able to understand.

I am part of several groups on FB. Mostly for Crocheting. Sharing pictures and links to the patterns. Both free and paid for patterns. I have a huge problem with people who feel that the price of a paid pattern is too much and insists on a free version. It bugs me even more when the person tries to wheedle the pattern out of some one who did pay for it!

Yes I made this great item. Yes I paid for the pattern. I paid the person who invented the pattern. Who put in time and effort to create this wonderful pattern. It is work and they do deserve to get paid for it. 

I and others report the people who wrongfully spread paid patterns for free in the groups. There are people in the group who design patterns too and they deserve the income from the patterns.

[VorFemme]

I belonged to a group that kept passing around copies of their favorite patterns (counted cross stitch, not crochet or knitting) - "my copy" got shredded every time I got home and I didn't have a copier at home to make copies.  If asked for a copy of what I was doing - I'd tell them where I got it (or hand them a copy if it was a shop freebie for advertising) but for some reason, I was always forgetting to make copies at the library, didn't have change, forgot the original, etc.

I did make some copies - but they were for my own use as I highlighted the completed area on complicated designs (allowed) and not for handing out to other people so that they didn't have to buy a copy (not allowed).  But "rocking the boat" was not going to change them and it would have gotten me kicked out of what was otherwise a compatible group.

[Softly Spoken]

This is just something I stumbled across online, and I thought I might leave it here for all the knitters who have posted to the thread. It is truly one of the most unusual charity requests I have ever seen. I think if I knew how to knit, I would do it just to be able to say "I knitted a sweater for a penguin and it saved their life."
Just one more reason you craft people are awesome.

[perpetua]

Found another example.

There is a website called "Noteflight", on which one can arrange pieces of music as sheet music, be it one's own compositions, or arrangements of well-known pieces. Lots of people do arrangements of pop songs and the like. You can choose which instruments to write for, and how many, eg a solo clarinet/piano, or an entire orchestra.
It takes a fair amount of work to arrange a piece of music as sheet music, and I totally appreciate the efforts and skill that go into it - especially since I'm not so skilled myself.
Musicians, music-lovers, composers etc are sharing these arrangements for free on this site; they're not being paid for their efforts. In fact, many are paying for the premium membership to the site.
Yet still, in the comments section for any given piece, you will find various people requesting that the person who arranged x piece of music, write another arrangement for instruments xyz, in such and such a key. Some requests are things anyone could easily do - eg, "Can you put the lyrics in with this?"  Ummm... YOU could do that. Print out the music, find the lyrics on the internet, and write them in yourself.
Some people just don't seem to appreciate that these people are doing something that takes a fair amount of skill, and sharing it with the world for free. They're not your personal composer!

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR POSTING THIS!  I lost my Finale registration code years ago, so even though I still have the discs, I can't use the (very expensive) notation program.  I don't write much anymore, but every once in a while I need to be able to churn out some sheet music for something and I don't have a way to do it - looks like this site will be a handy tool!

You're welcome
The free membership limits your compositions to a maximum of 10, although you can "favourite" as many other pieces as you like. Otherwise, I think the paid membership is something like $50 a year.

Or if you'd rather not rely on an online service and/or pay a subscription fee, here's also a programme called MuseScore, which I use - it's rather good and totally free. It's available for both Windows and Mac.

[AfleetAlex]

I'm afraid to say I did this once but in my defense I was a kid and didn't know better.

For some reason I was big into zebras and my little brother was big into tigers, and I told my grandma that I wanted a zebra animal for me and a tiger stuffed animal for my brother. A friend of hers ended up knitting (or crocheting?) the zebra for me for Christmas, and when I opened it I liked it and then said, "But where's (brother's) tiger?"

Grandma laughed and said her friend had decided that doing one of these complicated patterns was enough. I think then it started to sink in that this was hard.

I still have that zebra. And he's awesome.

[Garden Goblin]

<background>I'm an IT person.  I have been doing technical support for years.  For the most part, I don't mind when friends ask me to take a look at something.  Often, it's a 5 minute max sort of fix and it would have cost them $100+ to take it into a local shop.  To me, they are my friends and often my hosts and it's well within the boundaries of our friendship.  If it's a serious thing that takes me more than ten minutes or so I usually get a bottle of wine or a nice lunch out of it.  They are always gracious when it's something I can't fix or something I can't fix right away (it needs a part or something).  Most follow my advice and take decent care of their machines so most fixes are one time only.  This has been going on for years.  </background>

My mother recently moved to the same state I am in and got together with a man with a large family, most of which is local to him.  He makes her happy and is a nice man.

My husband and I went over for Christmas.  It started with a quick 'would you look at my computer, I think Niece downloaded something again'.  She did, I fixed it.  Then 'would you take a look at Boyfriend's laptop, it's been slow'.  Two hours and three computers later, I find his kids are now bringing over their computers for me to look at.  They were nice about it, certainly, and apologetic when they realized they'd all had the same idea of 'oh, hey, GG is going to be there maybe I'll bring the laptop over and see if she can't take a quick look.'

But for the love of Pete, at one point, I had a stack of 8 laptops.

I ended up showing the tech savvy teen how to fix the most common issue and turned her loose, telling her it was absolutely okay to blackmail aunts and uncles with demands for jewelry before solving their 'way to many background programs running' issue, and watching her eyes light up with avarice.  The aforementioned aunts and uncles were a bit annoyed at the teen until I pointed out they could pay her in $5 charms for her bracelet, or cough up my '50% discounted for friends and family' rate of $40 an hour.

I'm getting paid for the one that actually requires professional attention, and the other that required professional attention belonged to my niece and is mine until she's no longer grounded due to me uncovering the reasons it required professional attention.  Once her grounding is done, it will be returned to her locked down with parental controls and a password that requires her to pay homage to her awesome aunt everytime she wants to log in.

[Mel the Redcap]

*cackle* Sounds like you've done a good job of making sure people will think twice about dog piling you with tech fix requests in the future, Garden Goblin! XD

[VorFemme]

<background>I'm an IT person.  I have been doing technical support for years.  For the most part, I don't mind when friends ask me to take a look at something.  Often, it's a 5 minute max sort of fix and it would have cost them $100+ to take it into a local shop.  To me, they are my friends and often my hosts and it's well within the boundaries of our friendship.  If it's a serious thing that takes me more than ten minutes or so I usually get a bottle of wine or a nice lunch out of it.  They are always gracious when it's something I can't fix or something I can't fix right away (it needs a part or something).  Most follow my advice and take decent care of their machines so most fixes are one time only.  This has been going on for years.  </background>

My mother recently moved to the same state I am in and got together with a man with a large family, most of which is local to him.  He makes her happy and is a nice man.

My husband and I went over for Christmas.  It started with a quick 'would you look at my computer, I think Niece downloaded something again'.  She did, I fixed it.  Then 'would you take a look at Boyfriend's laptop, it's been slow'.  Two hours and three computers later, I find his kids are now bringing over their computers for me to look at.  They were nice about it, certainly, and apologetic when they realized they'd all had the same idea of 'oh, hey, GG is going to be there maybe I'll bring the laptop over and see if she can't take a quick look.'

But for the love of Pete, at one point, I had a stack of 8 laptops.

I ended up showing the tech savvy teen how to fix the most common issue and turned her loose, telling her it was absolutely okay to blackmail aunts and uncles with demands for jewelry before solving their 'way to many background programs running' issue, and watching her eyes light up with avarice.  The aforementioned aunts and uncles were a bit annoyed at the teen until I pointed out they could pay her in $5 charms for her bracelet, or cough up my '50% discounted for friends and family' rate of $40 an hour.

I'm getting paid for the one that actually requires professional attention, and the other that required professional attention belonged to my niece and is mine until she's no longer grounded due to me uncovering the reasons it required professional attention.  Once her grounding is done, it will be returned to her locked down with parental controls and a password that requires her to pay homage to her awesome aunt everytime she wants to log in.

***snerk***

I think I just inhaled the whipped cream from my hot chocolate....

++++++++

I am not a trained tech support person nor do I play on in commercials.

I have learned how to change out RAM, hard drives, and a few other simple "fixes" as well as learned which freeware programs work for a LOT of quick fixes (update drivers - Driver Booster from Iobit.com; Malware Defender & a couple of other programs from the same site; CCleaner from Piriform.com; and a YouTube series of "fixes" from - dang that website is in the Favorites on my other computer - a guy with a business doing it and a series of videos on shareware or cheap fixes to keep your computer running well - the above list & MalwareBytes and a couple of others that don't come to mind at the moment).

I've even swapped out a screen on a laptop (overpowered graphics card burning it out from the middle out in vertical strips) and a cell phone (VorGuy dropped his two week old phone in the parking lot and it got run over - the only thing that quit working was the screen).  But when my graphics card died in a used laptop - I was extremely glad to find out that I could get the previous owner's registration data from the refurbisher, transfer the warranty & registration to my name, and qualified for a free repair under an extended warranty)....that involved a clean room & soldering equipment that I don't know how to use or have.

[MommyPenguin]

I ended up showing the tech savvy teen how to fix the most common issue and turned her loose, telling her it was absolutely okay to blackmail aunts and uncles with demands for jewelry before solving their 'way to many background programs running' issue, and watching her eyes light up with avarice.  The aforementioned aunts and uncles were a bit annoyed at the teen until I pointed out they could pay her in $5 charms for her bracelet, or cough up my '50% discounted for friends and family' rate of $40 an hour.

I'm getting paid for the one that actually requires professional attention, and the other that required professional attention belonged to my niece and is mine until she's no longer grounded due to me uncovering the reasons it required professional attention.  Once her grounding is done, it will be returned to her locked down with parental controls and a password that requires her to pay homage to her awesome aunt everytime she wants to log in.

lol, this is great!  I love how you trained a replacement.  And yes, helping other people with things, especially if the amount of help is likely to be frequent and take some time, is worth some sort of repayment!  Just like babysitting or anything else, unless the person *chooses* to offer the service for free occasionally.

And wow at the niece.  Sounds like at least the parents are taking charge there, which sounds like a good thing in that case!

[siamesecat2965]

I am not an IT person but I know enough to be dangerous. The only person I will help is my mom, mainly because she tries to learn, not simply let me show her. Her stuff is more along the lines if my limited Excel knowledge and help with Word. She takes notes and insists I show her so she can do it. Did I mention she's almost 79?

[LadyClaire]

One of my hobbies is metalsmithing. I make jewelry. Dragons are kind of my specialty, and I have a particular necklace that's very time consuming to make because it's a bunch of little pieces that have to be cut and carefully soldered together. I sell this necklace for $80 as a made-to-order piece.

Last year my sister-in-law (DH's half sister) contacted him and asked how much one of those would be for "a sister-in-law", and was told "the same price that they are for everyone". I was annoyed at the time that she'd ask for a discount, especially since we never see her. She lives in another state and I've met her exactly once, very briefly, but we're facebook friends. I was also irritated she asked my DH about it. He explained to her that the necklaces take several hours to make, plus the cost of materials, and no, they cannot be sold for any cheaper.

Yesterday she sent me a message asking if I had any of those necklaces already made. I told her no, since they're so time consuming it makes more sense financially to just make them when someone places an order for one. So then she said "I'd really like one but can only pay $50".

I took a while to respond and about half an hour later when I hadn't said anything, another message pops up "sorry if I offended or aggravated you I won't ask again".

I told her that I simply can't do a discount. The pieces take so long to make that it just wasn't possible.

I'm hoping that she has accepted that and won't come back again in a few months or another year to ask for a discount again.

[ladyknight1]

Oh, yes. The I'm special and should not have to pay the same rate as a stranger ploy.

Doesn't work on me either. I make very intricate beaded jewelry, and require half the payment up front before I will order the supplies. I used to make pieces as gifts, but stopped for my sisters and mother as I kept getting complaints. My best friend and I exchange jewelry pieces as she is more into wire work than beading.