The Farmer's Market is new to Mineral Wells and has really taken off due to the amazing work of its board of directors. But the vendors deserve some credit as well. In some ways a family, the collection of small and local businesses that setup each weekend at the FM are everything you hope to find when you hear the term "Farmer's Market."

I've been a vendor at the MWTXFM twice. The first time was a testing of the waters. This last time I was better prepared. These are my observations and comments as a small business trying to sell at the FM.
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Up until yesterday (12 Oct 2018) I did not own a smartphone and had no desire to do so. My little flip phone did all I needed it to do and did so reliably and inexpensively.

On Saturday, 6 Oct 2018, I joined the Mineral Wells, TX Farmer's Market and attempted to sell some of my upcycles and my POD (print on demand) samples. It was a very difficult 5 hours for me and not terribly rewarding. One of the reasons I lost a few sales was my inability to take credit/debit cards. I thus resolved to remedy that prior to going back to the market.

So, I got a relatively inexpensive reconditioned smartphone and signed up for their cheapest monthly plan. I also ordered a credit card reader from PayPal which I have yet to install.

In addition, I got a "free" Galaxy Tab E 8.0 that can function as a smartphone but only if I have smartphone service. There's a process called NumberSync. Anyway, this larger tablet and the Android graphic design software will allow me to do some design work during those hours at the market when sales are slow, make+receive calls and messages, and take credit card payments on a single device. The smartphone alone doesn't have a large enough screen for the graphic design portion of all that. AND, I like my fonts a bit larger now that I've crossed the threshold into seniorhood. 

To recap:

• a smartphone for day to day use which, even at the cheapest plan available, is going to cost me more than I really wanted to spend
• a larger tablet for market days which is costing me an additional fee but can serve as a proxy for the smartphone

The smartphone took a while to arrive because I wanted to keep my old phone number. I had a very long customer support call to prove that it was my number because it was with another carrier. (Note: I was speaking to customer support using this phone number!) Then it took another few days for the two carriers to iron all this out.

Now, the real battle was getting all this tech to work. This is not exactly new technology, as far as I know, but the software that allows you to set this up is buggy beyond belief. What should have taken 5 or 10 minutes took hours. Because:

• many of the error messages simply said, "Error. Try again."
• many errors weren't flagged until the end of the lengthy process rather than at the moment of the error
• errors flagged at the end of the process sent me back to the beginning of the process to start all over again
• when restarting the process, the ID entered last time was no longer available for use this nth time around -- Zeus only knows how many IDs I left hanging out there

No. I did not call customer service / tech support. A week earlier when I was trying to set up the tablet, I called tech support and was on the line for over 2 hours before I was told that the tablet alone would not be a smartphone even though it has been assigned a phone number and I'd have to get another device -- a smartphone -- to link it to. BTW: there was no indication of this prior to my purchasing the "free" tablet and the tech took TWO HOURS to finally get around to telling me this bit of bad news. That and the call to port my number had left a bit of a sour taste in my throat for "service" calls.

But, PERSISTENCE is my middle name. When I want something, when I want to do something, I don't give up easily.

I did finally get this technological nightmare working the way it is apparently intended to work. But, if you ask me, and you didn't, the way it is intended to work is not such a good thing.

The result:

• ​shorter development times
• less need for highly educated and experienced code writers
• faster and easier debugging as well as less need for debugging when components have been thoroughly vetted in advance
• standardization in the architecture of the end product
• standardization in the "look and feel" of the end product

This last is what concerns me most. Standardization. Standardization is often synonymous with lack of creativity, lack of innovation.

I once worked for someone who was well known for saying that the last thing he wanted on his staff was a "creative" software developer. I think he equated creative with undisciplined. I equate creative with innovative and skilled.

I'm sure that my web site looks very much like other Weebly web sites in structure if not in content. How could it not? The building tools constrain what I am able to do. On the other hand, I once built 3 web sites over the course of one night when insomnia was nagging at me and my bipolar disorder had me in a manic episode. Twenty years ago, the only way to build a web page (we didn't so much talk about sites then) was to write hundreds or thousands of lines of html, upload to the web server, check it out, and begin endless repetitions of debugging and altering. Yes. We could all do it. But few thought it was really fun. It was comparable to writing in assembly language (which we all did 20 years prior to that) and we were all simply delighted when it worked (picture Tom Hanks dancing around his first fire in Castaway). So if progress in software development means better systems more quickly with less need for digging into the guts of the process, then these web site building tools are indeed progress.

But at what cost? Where is the innovation? Where is the creativity?

I admit at this point that I haven't looked into the literature in some time. But, has anyone studied the effects of these tools on creativity?

The academic communities of computer science, specifically software engineering, and psychology (specifically creative cognition) have a great opportunity here to study the effects of this relatively new type of software reuse on innovation in software engineering. Remember, within subjects design with counterbalancing to offset presentation order effects! (Because people are different but they all learn.)

As for my limited anecdotal evidence, I think I make up for in speed of build and reliability of end product what I lose in innovation. And I do check out those new components that come available so perhaps that's where the innovation lies.

First was a tall tropical looking lamp without a shade and a pile of plastic dinosaurs. Later, a tired shade and some camo fabric caused me to search for some special fringe. Then I cobbled together a very special finial that is really dramatic when the room lights are out and the lamp is on. ROAR!!!

If you wanted to fish the jewelry out of the jar, it too could still be worn.
I did, however, have to drill a rather large hole in the lid of the gallon jar... Oh Well!