Are there any real people who work at eBay?

I don't think so. If there are, they are a bit dim. And how do you get to talk to a real person at eBay?

Okay, so I've already written about buying a bootleg Star Trek Voyager dvd from a seller I don't believe knew that it was bootleg. And I was going to give the seller neutral feedback, but after talking to a few people it was decided that positive feedback was okay, as long as I still said that item was not as described and probably bootleg.

Here's what I wrote:
probably BOOTLEG, probably NOT seller's fault, offered refund, early shipping

It's hard to write what I'm trying to say in the limited less than one hundred characters we are given to write feedback, but I think that I got it all in this time, and still managed to say something nice about seller and that it really was supposed to be positive feedback.

This is a message that I got from eBay yesterday, after I had already told the seller that I would keep the item, and after I'd already left positive feedback.


MC015 Security notice: eBay listing removed
From: eBay
Sent: Jul-04-11 01:56 PM



eBay sent this message to (buyer).
Your registered name is included to show this message originated from eBay. Learn more.
MC015 Security notice: eBay listing removed




Hello buyer,

We're writing to let you know that this listing for an item you won or bid on is no longer available:

150621737804 - STAR TREK VOYAGER COMPLETE DVD SEASONS 1-7 NEW

We understand this may be disappointing, but occasionally we need to remove listings. In some cases, the item itself is fine, but was listed in a way that didn't follow eBay's guidelines.

Here's what you can do next:

-- If you already paid, received your item, and you're satisfied, please disregard this notice.
-- If you won the item but haven't paid, don't pay. Since eBay removed the listing, you're no longer obligated to go through with the transaction.
-- If you already paid for this item through eBay, and it's past the estimated delivery time, you can open a case in our Resolution Center. Click the link below, and select the "I haven't received it yet" option. This will guide you through the process of opening a case.
http://resolutioncenter.ebay.com

If the seller offers you the item outside of eBay, we strongly discourage you from accepting the offer. These types of transactions are extremely risky and aren't covered by eBay buyer protection programs.

If you didn't pay through eBay or PayPal, and:
-- You paid by Western Union or MoneyGram, contact the company directly (Western Union 800-325-6000 or MoneyGram 800- 926-9400).
-- You paid by check, contact your bank to stop payment.

Thanks,

eBay


To learn more about eBay Buyer Protection, please visit:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/buyer-protection.html



I can only guess that I set some automated thing in motion when I checked a box that said counterfeit item, or whatever it was. But shouldn't there be some real person somewhere reading the feedback before sending out this stuff?

Wonder if I should write seller an apology?

Great Minds Think Alike

On Buddy's first birthday, I was invited to a party. They made a big deal of it. He was surrounded by just about everyone he knew as the traditional picture of trying to eat cake was taken. He was presented with every age appropriate toy on the market.

The following Christmas, there seemed no point in getting him anything, as he received just about everything I could think of already for his birthday. Still, his grandparents managed to find a few toys that he didn't already have. I don't remember getting him anything.

For his second birthday, I don't remember them doing much of anything, and I don't remember getting him anything. As it turns out, his birthday was celebrated in combination with some other event, to which I was not invited. So that explains why I don't remember it.

The following Christmas, I didn't think that he needed anymore toys, even if I could have found something not already given to him by one of his grandparents. I knit hats for both him and his little sister. I was surprised that he seemed happy with it and wore it the rest of the day in the house.

For his third birthday, I did not expect to be invited to a party, but I thought that I would get him something anyway, if I found something I thought that he'd like. While shopping on eBay, I found just the thing. Benji. I used to like that movie when I was younger. And I found a dvd with three other stories that I don't remember seeing. It sounded like a good deal, and I ordered it.

The week before Buddy's birthday, while I was waiting for the dvd to come in the mail, I get invited to a party put together at the last minute. It isn't going to be the big deal that the first one was, and I would have to miss out on something else that I'd already planned. But, I decided not to miss Buddy's birthday. He doesn't speak a lot of complete sentences, but he does know everyone's name, and he knows who is missing and asks about them. It is usually men who are missing, and we usually tell him "he's at work." I have no such excuse.

The day before the party, the dvd had not yet appeared, and might still not come in the mail for another week. That didn't matter before, when he either wasn't having a party, or wasn't celebrating with a bunch of adults. I'd just give him the gift later.

But now that there was a party, I'd rather be there with something for him to unwrap. And it was too late for me to go in with someone else and buy something nice. Not that I'd know what that should be anyway. He sort of has five grandparents, and they buy him a lot of stuff.

While at a nearby store buying groceries, I found a slip and slide. Okay, not really a slip and slide, some rival company, but you get the idea. Also there were small blow-up pools made to look like turtles and such. I called his mother, and she said that she did not really want a pool that looked like a turtle. They already had something similar, and they didn't use it much because it was such a hassle to empty the pool later, and you can't leave even a small pool with water unattended. But the slip and slide sounded like a good idea.

So I gave him a slip and slide. Just after that was all wrapped up and ready to go, the Benji dvd arrived in the mail. Oh, well. Benji can be a Christmas present.

Yesterday, we all went to dinner. I asked if Buddy'd had a chance to try out the slip and slide.

Out comes his dad's phone, with pictures. "He ended up with two of them, but we decided to keep them both. Everything breaks eventually, and he'll already have a spare."

Okay.

"It's broke," Buddy said.

"Yes," his dad said. "He gets stuff handed down from cousins who don't need it anymore. Both the other kids used stuff for years, but he gets it and it's broke a week or two later."

Okay.

His mother then tells me that the thought of the Benji dvd was appreciated, but it turns out that they already have that one. His Aunt K already got it for him.

I think Aunt K must have also got him the other slip and slide. She wasn't at the party, and they were planning to see her somewhere else the next day.

I hope that Aunt K doesn't knit.

Moral dilemmas on eBay

Okay, if you've been reading, you know that I've spent too much money on eBay in the past two or three months, and you know I've had some problems with plants being shipping too late in the season, or just being shipped bad plants, or whatever.

Okay, I'm having another problem and would like to hear opinions from others. I bid on Star Trek Voyager seasons 1 and 7. Not seasons 1 thru 7, but just the first one and the last one. I thought that was an odd combination to have in an auction, but I bid on it anyway. I stopped bidding at seventeen dollars, and someone else won.

I guess the someone else didn't really want it, and I got a second chance offer. So I bought two seasons of Voyager for seventeen dollars plus three dollars shipping. And it arrived two or three days later, sooner than I expected.

The package was smaller than I expected. I've seen Voyager seasons before, and they are in plastic things that take up space. These were in cardboard boxes that had the same artwork.

So that was odd. Either I got really nice looking bootlegs, or there's some sort of new "green" packaging that I wasn't aware of.

I asked the seller about it. Seller didn't know.

I did stuff like Google--Star Trek Voyager cardboard box. I found a lot of unhappy people talking about bootleg copies of Voyager. Not bootleg copies in general, bootleg copies of Voyager in particular, mostly on Amazon. Like, most, if not all, Voyager for sale on Amazon turn out to be fake.

I thought at first I had somehow lucked out and either got a really good fake, or maybe the real disks in a fake box? The first disk was just fine.

Only the second disk, not so much.

Third, fourth, and fifth disks also have problems.

But, I have this used divx player, and I can still watch most of them.

So now I have to decide what to do about feedback on eBay.

Now, I don't really think that this particular seller is a crook. I don't think that seller has boxes and boxes of fake dvds to sell. I haven't seen anything else like this in the past month or so, and I didn't find anything like that listed now. Also, seller would refund my money (shipping was not discussed).

I don't really think that I'll take the refund. Someone, probably me or the seller, is going to get stuck with this copy. I don't think that either of us deserves to be out money, much less any more money for return postage. I at least have the divx player so that I can watch most of the disks.

Still, I think that I should report the bootleg dvds, at least in feedback. I think, just in case I'm wrong and seller has more bootleg Voyager to sell later, I should warn buyers. I don't want to leave negative feedback for someone who a.) probably didn't do this on purpose, and b.) would offer a refund. But I'm also thinking that no one reads the positive feedback, except the seller. Buyers just look at the number of positive feedback and then go read the negative and maybe the neutral.

I'm thinking of leaving neutral feedback, saying it is bootleg, but then giving seller high marks and a nice comment about the shipping.

What do you think I should do?

More drama about the trees

Okay, I've now cut down most of two trees and a large bush. To finish cutting down the two trees I either need a chain saw or an axe. I have access to a chain saw, but I'm afraid to use it, and I do not have the clothing made to protect myself from accidentally sawing through an arm or a leg, and I'm not sure that there is proper safety equipment for protecting fingers. So I think that the chain saw is out, and I should acquire a big axe. Or, at least, a normal sized axe, as opposed to the current small axe with the twelve inch handle.

I'm getting warnings that I should not be much safer with an axe, but I would feel safer. My plan is to first try to borrow one, but if that doesn't work by next week I will probably end up buying one.

But I'm not really that worried about those trees now. Most of the current hassles are about the little fruit trees I bought on eBay.

As I have mentioned earlier, I saw a five-in-one pear on eBay. After I won that bid, I also bought two Stella cherries and a five-in-one apple from the same seller, to make good use of the combined shipping discount. So I ended up spending about thirty-five dollars on the plants themselves, plus shipping, which then came to about fifty-two dollars.

The trees were all supposed to be dormant. They weren't. The cherries were dormant. The cherries were thin little twigs that arrived dormant and have now grown into healthy little plants. I think that they are to small to be of much help to me, and after next winter they may decide that Texas is not to their liking and not bloom and never have fruit. If they do fruit it will be years and years from now, as they are just too small, and not a season or two away from having fruit as in the plant description. But I really have no serious complaints about the cherries. For an extra five bucks and two dollar shipping, I thought that it was worth trying.

The other two trees were different. It's odd to get such different quality stuff from the same seller. Again, the trees were smaller than I expected. Not really smaller than described, but the smaller than I had pictures in my head from buying bare root trees in local stores. They were just thinner than I had imagined, and I wonder how you can have a healthy graft on something as small as the pear. The pear had leaves all up and down the plant, in about twelve places. It didn't look like I'd expected a five-in-one pear to look like. I wondered if I got a single variety pear by mistake. And plants that already have leaves usually don't like being sent in the mail, and they especially don't like it in May or June in Texas, it's just too hot. So the plant looked quite limp and sick. The apple looked a bit better, but it only had three sets of leaves at the top. Again, not the dormant plant described, and not what I expected a five-in-one apple tree to look like. And while the roots of the cherries were still moist, the apple and pear were maybe just a bit damp.

I gave all the plants water, and having almost no planting instructions (other than to plant with the burlap on), I kept the trees inside for three days, thinking that water and air-conditioning would help the plants recover, as I'd been instructed to do that with some other plants I'd bought from someone else.

In three days the cherries were starting to grow, and you could tell that they were in fact dormant trees instead of dead sticks. The apple looked about the same. The pear had lost leaves and the remaining leaves were turning black.

I suspected that in it's weakened condition the pear had caught fire blight. I wasn't sure if there was anything wrong with the apple, just that it wasn't thriving like the cherries. I put all four trees outside in part shade. I worried that it might be too hot for them, but I knew that other plants I've kept inside for more than three days suffer.

The cherries immediately improved and started to grow leaves. The pear turned even more black. The apple did not appear to change at all.

I gave up after a few days of this and complained to the seller. The seller said this was all normal, and that the leaves would grow back.

Another week went by, and the pear was totally leafless and black. The apple was starting to dry out. Again I sent a message to the seller, who again said this was normal and that the leaves would be replaced. If I would do a scratch test I'd be able to see that the plants were still alive.

Okay, the plants were still a bit green on the inside. But I still think that they are dying, and that if they don't actually die at least parts of the plants I wanted are probably dead. The rootstock might still be alive, it might grow more leaves at some point, but the leaves weren't going to grow back where they had been. The grafted parts were probably dead, and I'd never get five kinds of pears or five kinds of apples.

I sent another message to the seller, asking that I not be required to mail back dead plants for my refund. Proof of death could be provided with photographs. I just wanted my money back, and if I got it that day or the next day I'd still leave positive feedback. I thought if I worded it just right, that I'd get my money (except for the cherries, which were still small but healthy), and that would be the end of it. Otherwise I'd file a complaint.

Instead I got an offer of new plants. According to the seller, the new plants had been kept in a cooler and were just starting to have buds. And I would get them soon, possibly Tuesday.

Okay.

I did not get the plants Tuesday, and I did not get the plants Wednesday, but they did arrive Thursday. And they came in a big tube, and I imagined that they had sent me bigger plants to make up for the hassle.

The apple was about the same as the first one, only this one has four sets of leaves. Leaves. Not dormant, not just budding out, leaves.

The pear was just budding out, and it was a bit larger than the first pear, but it already had blight, right there in the tube. At least, I think it is fire blight, cause it's a pear. My husband thinks that it is freezer-burn, cause it's been in a cooler. Whatever it is, it's making the leaves black and curled up.

I sent the seller another message, and again the seller says this is normal. Trees just look like that when they start to bud out.

Well, that has not been my experience before. My experience is that if it looks like blight then it's probably blight.

Anyway, on my eBay account I noticed something about the deadline for dispute resolution being on the twenty-seventh. There's no way that I'd have healthy plants by then. I've thinking that I should complain, just to get an extension. So I started doing that, though I'm supposed to be checking little boxes, and the little boxes don't really fit my situation. I finally settle for "item not as described" as I think that is the main problem, that the seller didn't originally send dormant plants, and now it is just too late and too hot to have healthy plants sent in the mail. And I would never have started this whole thing if the ad wasn't for dormant plants.

Then there are more boxes, and a place to describe the problem in more detail, and at the end you are asked if you want a full refund, if you want a replacement item, or other. I check other, and write that I want a refund if the plants die.

To be on the safe side I send two complaints, one for the pear and one for the apple. And eBay says someone will contact me by July 2. And I figure that will be good, because that will give me another week to see if the plants are going to die, and then I can say for sure that I want a refund, or maybe they really will get better and I'll just keep them.

Except I guess that at least part of this process is automatic, and the seller says I can have a refund if I send the plants back by the June 28. Only now I have to send back four plants instead of two. And while I just found it annoying and an unnecessary expense to ship back dead plants, sending back live plants is a problem for me. This will probably kill the plants. I don't really like to kill plants.

On the other hand, if I pack them well enough and they don't die, I'm now thinking they'll probably be sold to someone else.

This sucks that I'm supposed to do this by the 28th. I was thinking that I'd complain and get an extension. From the 27th to the 28th isn't much of an extension.

But most of the time I think that mailing the plants back and getting some of my money would be better than keeping these two plants, as I can't imagine that either one would actually grow into five-in-one fruit trees, and one of them has fire blight or something that looks like fire blight.

I just feel bad.

Confusion and Disappointment

Before anybody gets really excited, this post is mainly about eBay purchases, and mainly purchases of plants.

And to answer an earlier question, the seller in Michigan was not the Michigan Bulb Company. This was someone on eBay, I'm guessing that they only or mainly sell from eBay. They have high positive marks, and have been in business for a while, though I've learned this doesn't always mean what it seems, as sellers can buy their high positive marks and such from someone else.

I don't know why that was such a surprise to me. People can buy and sell eBay businesses. Just as people buy and sell regular businesses.

Anyway, I have no reason to suspect that the business has been sold, and that I didn't buy my plants from the same person who actually received the high marks, just that it is possible.

Okay, so I ordered two Stella cherry trees, a 5-in-1 pear tree, and a 5-in-1 apple tree. I have always wanted a 5-in-1 pear tree, and when I saw one on eBay that no one else was bidding on, I bought it, maybe without really thinking it through. Having bought that tree, I thought I'd take advantage of the discounted postage and also buy the cherry trees (at the time I noticed them no one else was bidding, but I ended up paying five dollars), and then I noticed the 5-in-1 apple tree (people were bidding on them, so it took three tries and about twenty dollars for that). So instead of the one tree for ten dollars plus about twelve dollar postage, I bought four trees for about thirty-five dollars and another sixteen in postage.

Now, I have bought plants online before, mostly recent purchases from eBay, and they arrive in different conditions, mostly I think depending on the type of plant more than care given by the seller. I have had great success with daylilies from three different sellers, but I've had trouble with about half of the other plants I bought this year, mostly from the same people who sold me the daylilies. So I think that it's just that daylilies and other bulbs don't mind the shipping process and other non-bulb type flowers and such aren't too happy about it.

So I think that bare-root trees are one of the things that don't mind being sent through the mail, if it is the right time of year. But May and June probably aren't the right time of year, at least it doesn't sound like a good idea to ship something from here, as we should all be done with most of our planting here and a lot of the plants left in the stores are on clearance. But the seller was from Michigan, and I know that things start growing a lot later in the season there. So the seller claimed that the trees were sent still dormant, and I thought that it might be true, and if so it was probably okay for them to keep sending plants.

I also know that dormant bare root trees pretty much look like dead sticks. This has always been a bit of a problem for me. How do you know if you've bought a healthy plant or a dead stick, if they all equally look like dead sticks? For example, asparagus really looks dead right out of the package, but if you buy it at the right time it rarely is. Usually you follow the directions and plant them at the right time, and they emerge, though this is weeks or even months later. However, this year I bought two packages, maybe a bit too late (though not late enough that they were on clearance), and one package was fine and more than half of the other package was dead. I have no idea if they were dead when I bought them or if I did something wrong when planting or what. They all looked the same.

So the description says that what I will get in the mail will be dormant, and that it will look like a stick, but not to worry because it will sprout leaves after planting and will probably have fruit in two or three years. So I have a picture in my mind that I will be getting four sticks in the mail, and that maybe they will have some greenish buds on them, or that they might really look dead, or that they might have leaves already and that would probably be bad. And I thought that two of the sticks would be five-pronged at the top, because they were supposed to be grafted with five different varieties.

Well, I got a mixed bag (or rather the products in the box were mixed), and nothing was quite what I expected. They came Thursday afternoon, a day later than the predicted "between May 25 and June 1." Not sure why those dates were predicted, since I bought the items on May 17th, but they weren't sent out till May 28th. Obviously the package cannot be delivered on the 25th if it isn't sent out before then.

I was expecting the trees to be one or two feet long, which they were. I just didn't expect them to be so thin. The apple is the thickest, and almost what I expected, but not quite. The pear is much thinner than I expected, and the cherries are just little twigs.

However, the cherry twigs did arrive mostly dormant, and now that I've put them in pots one of them is starting to show signs of life. Or maybe it is just my imagination.

The apple tree has leaves coming out of the top of the tree in three places. Not five places like I would think. I suppose other leaves could appear later, as there are bumps lower where there could be growth, but I wouldn't think so, not if all five varieties are supposed to bloom together to cross-pollinate. I'm wondering if I got a 3-in-1 tree by mistake, but I didn't see any of those advertised.

The pear tree is just the opposite. Unfortunately, it has leaves growing almost the entire length of the tree, in about thirteen places. Not at all the five-pronged stick I was expecting. I suppose each variety could have been tiny little grafts two or three places each, but my first thought is that I got a single variety by mistake. If so I've paid way too much, and I don't even know what variety it is. And of course the leaves are dying, though I don't think the whole thing is dying, maybe just the leaves.

I've got all four in small pots in the living room, thinking that it is too hot for the poor trees to go outside after their traumatic trip.

Well, I don't quite know what to do. First, I think that I've spent my money unwisely. With shipping and everything, I spent less than fifty-five dollars, but I'm thinking I could have done better with it. I might have found something around here on clearance. Or, I might have saved the money til next year and ordered trees in March or something. I am worried that the pear tree was a bad idea. Half of the varieties are good for this area, but the other half will probably get blight. I don't know if the blight will just kill half of the pears or kill the whole tree. And that's if I actually have a 5-in-1 pear tree and not just a mystery one variety tree. The cherry trees are just tiny twigs, and I might have been better off buying one larger tree. And I didn't really need an apple tree, I hadn't originally planned on it, but it just suddenly seemed like a good idea after buying the other stuff and qualifying for the discounted shipping.

So I might just be having some regular buyer's remorse, and not really have a reason to complain. I don't want to complain. I don't want to give someone bad marks if they don't actually deserve bad marks. But I was supposed to get dormant 5-in-1 trees, and they were not dormant, and it now occurs to me that it will be years before I have any idea if they are actually 5-in-1 trees.

Anyway, I haven't yet contacted the seller, and I haven't yet left feedback.

In other news about eBay, I lucked into some dvds, and I'm now looking into buying more. No one was bidding on Surface, which wasn't my favorite show, but no one bidding and the starting bid was two dollars and the shipping was a reasonable three dollars. No one bid against me, so I paid a total of five dollars. After that, I decided to look at other dvds. While looking for Invasion of the Body Snatchers, I found Invasion the series (again not my favorite show, but a good deal) and the same seller had Invasion: Earth, which I did really like when I saw it the first time and I wouldn't mind seeing it again. The dvds were Buy Now under four dollars each, reasonable shipping, with discounts for multiple purchases. So I bought both for just under twelve dollars.

All three are coming media mail, which means that I might have to wait a while, but I noticed that both sellers sent the packages the next day, and there are tracking numbers. I am now worried that Surface is lost. Yesterday it said out for delivery, which could not have been possible, from Missouri. Today is says status not updated. I'm wondering if this is just what happens with media mail, or if maybe the shipping label was lost. If my address is lost and the seller's address is still readable, they should just send the package back to the seller to try again, and it should all be okay. If both addresses are missing, I don't know what happens. Should I try to contact the post office in Missouri, or should I ask the seller to do that, or is just hopeless? I have bought from this seller before, and I'm sure they would do something, but I think they'd just do the easy thing and refund some of my money, if not all. But I don't want the five dollars back (and I certainly don't want just the two dollars back), I want the dvds.

Anyway, is it stupid to think about doing anything so soon?

My other dvds are now being sorting in Greensboro and are probably fine.

Today is the day of our little election. We had some discussions about absentee voting, and we were told that we could not do that. There's an exception for the disabled, sort of, but the disabled still have to be in their homes at the time of the election. I'm told that we cannot have absentee voting because of a by-law that says you cannot vote by proxy or by email, though in some cases if the member is out of town a spouse can vote for him or her if the election officers are told in advance.

I am thinking that does not totally cancel out the possibility of absentee voting, and if arrangements are being made for the disabled a similar arrangement cold be made for other people who are going to be out of town. For the disabled person(s), a form is taken to the home and filled out, and the ballot is placed in a sealed envelope and taken by an office employee to the election officer and put in the ballot box. So it isn't a proxy, and it wasn't by US mail, and technically the disabled person wasn't absent on the day of the election, just unable to leave the home.

I would think that the same sort of thing could be done for people going out of town. Prior to the election, they could go to the office, vote, place the ballot in a sealed envelope, put the envelope in the locked ballot box, and put the ballot box in the safe. And that would not be a proxy or a ballot delivered by mail, and we could have absentee voting without changing the by-laws.

But no one listens to me now, and I doubt that my health is up to being on the board on top of dealing with my personal situation. Besides which, I never know when I might get the chance to go out of town, and would not like to take into account meetings and other board obligations when I go on trips.

I have received flyers from all nominees except D, one strange letter of general complaints about board members and nominees and pizza and too many kids at our one meeting which kids are invited to, and one additional flyer begging people to go out and vote (though the author neglected to mention if he or/she was for any particular nominees). Off the top of my head, I'm saying yes to A, will probably vote for R, and my third vote will probably go to that other guy's son, cause he did later come around and campaign for himself. My brother suggested the third vote go to the other R, who did later send out a small flyer (and with very small print to keep costs down, but at least it was sent out), because he was the least liked person mentioned in the complaint letter, and we don't agree with much said in the complaint letter.

We had a similar complaint letter last year, but we are not sure it was the same author (both were anonymous), because most of the complaints were about different people (unless maybe the author has switched sides?).

So voting for A, probably R, probably the other guy's son, or maybe J. Not D because he didn't send a flyer and I don't know him. Definitely not S, cause she needs to mind her own business. And definitely not T. Even if I liked T, it would probably be a wasted vote. She is odd, and I doubt she will get enough votes to be a serious threat to anyone else.

Really, I wish I could just somehow vote against S three times without having to think too hard about who to vote for.

Next year we get to vote again M.

An eBay dilemma, and glow in the dark stuff

Okay, so I had this brilliant idea that I should get some glow in the dark yarn. I had seen some on sale at Michael's last year, but by the time I got to the store they were all sold out. So I didn't get any last Halloween, but I didn't think that was my only chance at getting the stuff. I thought that either it was just a new product and I would see it later, or maybe it was a seasonal thing that they only sold at Halloween.

Turns out that I was wrong on both counts, and that Michael's probably got that yarn at a discount because Bernat was discontinuing the product. So there was no glow in the dark yarn for sale later in the year, and it did not re-appear on the shelves in October like I had thought. A few online places still had some, but I didn't have the money for all the yarn I wanted and the shipping.

While I was waiting for there to be more money available, the online place sold out of half the colors, mostly the half that I wanted to buy.

Then I found some on eBay. I didn't want to get in a big bidding war over a product I hadn't even tried yet, but I did get a little bit for a reasonable price, and then the shipping wasn't bad (though not as good as just being able to pick it up at the store and not pay shipping).

So I have nice things to say about the eBay merchant, but the yarn itself was a total disappointment. There was a reason the stuff was discontinued. It doesn't work. Or at least, it doesn't work very well. I bought yellow, and it was more like yellow with an off-white streak. Only the off-white streak glows, not the whole piece of yarn. And then it doesn't glow for very long, maybe about five minutes.

Of course, it says that it will glow five minutes right on the label, so maybe if I had bought it at a store I would have noticed that. And maybe if I had bought it at a store last year I would have taken the stuff back for a refund. As it is I am keeping the stuff, cause it isn't worth the postage to send it back if I could get a refund.

A few other companies sell glow in the dark yarn, but most of them sell to sports stores for stuff like catching fish, and I have heard that it doesn't smell wonderful. And there is one company that sells directly to clothing manufacturers, but unless someone has leftover stock to put on eBay, I don't see how I'm going to get any of that either.

So before I totally gave up on the idea of having glow in the dark yarn, I decided to try getting some glow in the dark paint from Michael's and trying to make my own glow in the dark yarn. Not that I was going to make a lot of it. Not like I was going to make a whole glow in the dark sweater or scarf, but I might want some glow in the dark letters or glow in the dark cat eyes or something like that.

Okay, so I can make tiny bits of glow in the dark yarn with paint from Michael's. Except that it is very stiff when I get done making it, so it isn't going to be easy to knit with. And it isn't especially pretty in the daylight. And it lasts longer than five minutes, though maybe not as long as I might have liked.

So, I tried ordering some glow in dark paint on eBay. This was supposed to be some great new stuff that would glow much longer than the stuff from Michael's. And it came in more colors, and I would really like blue, and Michael's didn't have blue. So, I bid on a few things.

Now, if you buy something on eBay (or from anyone else online or from a catalog) you have to pay shipping and handling. Now, this might just mean whatever the actual postage is. Or, more likely, this is the actual postage plus the cost of the box (or envelope) and the packing materials. And sometimes it means the actual postage plus the cost of the box and the packing materials, and something for the time of the person having to pack the stuff, cause they don't work for free.

Here's where it gets interesting (and really, really upsetting if you bid on something before you read everything). On eBay, eBay gets paid (by the seller) fees for listing the item and for having pictures of the item, etc...and maybe there's also a percentage of the final sell price. The listing fees are smaller for items with lower opening bids. So, there are items with opening bids of one cent or ninety-nine cents, and while the bidding usually goes higher, sometimes the items actually sell at the opening bid.

Okay, for the most part, sellers on eBay are not running charities. They don't want to pay thirty cents in listing fees so that you can buy something for a nickel. They don't want to sell stuff for a dollar and not make any profit. And they for sure don't want to lose money at the end of the day, even if you are a really nice person and just love whatever they are selling.

So, maybe, that silver ring that you won for a bid of fifty cents has a shipping fee of six dollars. That means that you just bought a silver ring for six dollars and fifty cents. A silver ring for six dollars and fifty cents doesn't sound too bad. If it sounds like a good deal to you, that's great. If that isn't what you wanted to pay, too bad, you should have read that stuff before you bid on the ring.

Of course, the actual postage for the ring was less than a dollar. The box and/or envelope and packaging materials were also less than a dollar. Maybe the seller actual paid a dollar or so for the ring. So if the seller's expenses were about three dollars, then the seller made a profit of three dollars and fifty cents from your winning bid of fifty cents.

I don't think that is so bad. I don't think the seller is evil. The seller is just trying to make some money, and that is probably not an unreasonable amount of money.

If the shipping was fifty dollars, that would have been an unreasonable amount of money. But you should have read what the shipping was before you bid on it. If you bid on things first and then try to negotiate less shipping afterward, it is probably you who is being unreasonable.

Sometimes a seller will do combined shipping. Maybe the first silver ring is shipped for six dollars, and up to three more rings could be shipped for an additional four dollars each. The seller is probably going to make an additional three dollars profit each on those. But that is the limit. The seller really wants that three dollars profit. You can't assume that the seller is going to get you a better deal than that, even if you buy more stuff.

And if you really think that the seller is going to put two dozen silver rings (especially silver rings that you had winning bids of about fifty cents) in a flat rate box that would only cost six dollars to ship and then only actually charge you that same six dollars for the shipping...are you really that dumb? Why would anyone send you a box of two dozen silver rings for eighteen dollars? Did you think someone really had a business set up to give away jewelry like that? Did the seller suddenly decide that silver rings were so unpleasant to have around that he would rather pay to have them sent away than to have them around anymore?

Several years ago I bought a lot of jewelry from this one seller. Opening bids were usually a penny or a nickel, and I usually stopped bidding between a dollar or two. Shipping was five dollars. They would combine shipping for up to three items at no extra cost. If I won something that I really wanted for two dollars or less, I would then put minimum bids on other things until I had won two more items, so then I usually got three items for six or seven dollars. So I usually got the items for an average of two dollars and twenty-five cents. Most of them I wanted, but once in a while I bought either something that I already had or a ring that didn't fit me. I figured that I could either sell it myself or give it to a friend. I got a lot of my Christmas shopping done early that way.

I was probably not that seller's favorite buyer, at an average of two twenty-five per item they were not making much money from me. But I usually got what I wanted and it was delivered in a reasonable amount of time and all of that. I left them positive feedback, and they did the same for me. Unfortunately, after years of mostly positive feedback from people who either had a brain and read the listings, or else didn't mind paying five dollars shipping, the seller got a lot of negative feedback and they don't sell on eBay anymore. I hope that they got a new name and tried again. I really liked them. Not that I need any jewelry at the moment, but it would be nice if they were around if I wanted something later.

Back to the glow in the dark stuff.

I had seen a few sellers on eBay with this glow in the dark paint that is supposed to be much better than the stuff I was buying from Michael's. I noticed one seller a while back, and I planned to buy stuff from them as soon as I got some money. Most of their stuff started with a ninety-nine cent opening bid, and they wanted six dollars shipping for the first item, and three dollars for each additional item, up to whatever you might buy for the next fourteen days.

By the time I actually bid on anything, the shipping had gone up a bit. Six ninety-five for the first item and three fifty-five for the additional items. Still, not too bad if the product actually does what I want it to do.

I started biding. I bid too much for the purple, but at the time, I really thought I wanted it. After that I would bid a bit more than the opening bid, and if I didn't get it, no big deal, there was something else to bid on tomorrow.

I didn't win something, but I got a second chance offer to buy it for just under three dollars. I probably didn't think about that too much before I agreed. Then I won three more. So I won five colors for about eleven or twelve dollars, and the shipping I had agreed to was like nineteen dollars, so I actually spent just over thirty-one dollars. The actually cost of postage is under three dollars, a bit more for the bubble-wrap envelope, and about fifteen dollars went into the seller's pocket. The seller is not really interested in my artistic efforts, the seller is trying to make some money.

So that was a bit more than I wanted to pay, but if the paint does what I want it to do, it would be worth that.

So the items came yesterday, and I am supposed to leave feedback. The seller has already left me positive feedback for prompt payment and so forth.

I am not sure what I am going to do.

The clear-day/green-night paint, which I bought as an afterthought due to the second chance offer, is excellent. It might actually glow all night as advertised. I meant to test it, but I forgot and turned on the bathroom light this morning, and now it is slightly recharged. Anyway, even if it doesn't glow fourteen hours as promised, it does glow quite a lot, and I think that it will work very well for me. I want more of this stuff.

The other colors aren't what I had hoped for.

Still in the tube, the other colors don't do much of anything. I am trying not to rush to judgement, and I have read that the colors glow better once they are actually painted on something rather than just in the tube, and that they glow better after the paint has dried for a few days, and that the paint is best over something white and doesn't work very well on something black, and that the painted item might need a thicker coat of paint or a second coat, and that if I want it to stay looking really good I should put a clear coat over it.

So I have done a test strip with the blue and the aqua. They do seem to glow better after they have dried, though they do not look as good as the test strips from the stuff I got from Michael's. They will probably need a second coat, which will mean that I will only have about half as much finished yarn to work with, or I will have to buy twice as much paint. And while the yarn isn't as stiff now as the other test strips, it will be stiffer after a second coat. As for putting a clear coat on top, that might make the yarn mostly unusable.

But my problems with painting yarn are my problems, not the seller's. The seller didn't tell me to try to paint yarn.

Anyway, I think that I'm going to have to test all of the paint, two coats each, and let them thoroughly dry for about a week before I can really see what I am getting. But here is what I can tell from the two test strips so far. The blue and the aqua do not glow blue and aqua. They glow that same greenish yellow that I got from the clear-day/green-night color, and it just looks like most every other glow in the dark thing that I have. So that is very disappointing, even if it does eventually glow for a long time as promised.

But they do look very blue and aqua under black light. But I wasn't really planning to carry a black light around with my knitting projects, and I doubt that the people I might give the finished projects to would carry a black light around with them either.

Okay, I am not returning the items. That is not even an option. If I had bought them in a store, I would probably take them all back except for the green and exchange them for more green. But I didn't buy them at a store, I bought them online, and if I asked for a refund I wouldn't get back the shipping, plus I would have to pay three dollars to have the items shipped back, plus I would probably be charged a restocking fee. So that would eat almost half of what I would get back anyway.

And I really think the green is pretty good, and I might want to buy more of it later. I don't want to leave really negative feedback, or they won't want to sell me anymore paint. And I'm not going to complain about the shipping, because I'm not an idiot, and I get that the shipping was really for the profit that they should have made from the paint itself. I just don't know what to put about the item being as described. One of the items does seem to be exactly as described, but I'm just not sure about the rest.

The Bionic Woman and random things

The first fourteen episodes of The Bionic Woman are on Hulu. That is, the first fourteen episodes of the real The Bionic Woman are on Hulu, not the recently "re imagined" thing done by those people who "re imagined" Battlestar Galactica. The re imagined thing was removed months ago, and now there are fourteen hours of "The Bionic Woman Classic."

If you are not a big fan of either The Bionic Woman or The Six Million Dollar Man, you might not think this is a big deal. Except that The Bionic Woman was on thirty-three years ago (and The Six Million Dollar Man was on a couple of years before that), and we haven't been able to (legally) buy or rent either series on video or DVD in the years since then. The reruns were on The Sci Fi Channel (now SyFy) about ten years ago, and I saw some of them then, but I didn't actually have cable, I was just in a lot of motel rooms where I could sometimes watch on Thursday and Friday afternoons. But mostly, I haven't seen them since I was a kid.

Now when someone makes a movie or a TV show, the subject of DVDs is just part of the deal. It is decided ahead of time what everyone's cut will be if there is a DVD and all of that, and if you don't like your cut or you flat out don't want your work to be on a DVD, then you can go and look for another job. But in the seventies the contracts weren't written like that, and if you want to release a DVD of something from that time you have to go back and get everyone to sign another contract and figure out what everyone's cut is, etc....

And some people can't be reached, and some people just don't want to play, and some people hold out for more money.

And while this sort of thing drags on, those of us who really want to see the show again look for illegal copies, and when the people holding out for more money finally do sign on, there are fewer customers wanting to buy, and there is less money to be made anyway.

Better to have a smaller cut of a bigger pie than to wait til there is no pie left.

So maybe there will be more of The Bionic Woman on Hulu, and maybe some of The Six Million Dollar Man will make an appearance, and maybe they will both be available on DVD now. Not that I actually have proof of any of that, but it does seem a step in the right direction.

Back to my usual moaning about the money situation.

So we made a car payment on both cars, which means that we are now currently only one payment behind on each car, and I doubt that anyone is going to try and take my car over one late payment. And I hope that we will be caught up on that next month anyway.

But that didn't leave us much money, as there is still a missing expense check out there, as we changed our direct deposit to a different bank so that we could close one of our accounts.

My husband is going to middle of nowhere Texas for three days next week, and while I was sitting here debating on where or not I should go with him, I realized that I already have plans for that weekend. So that settles that. Now if we could actually get paid for that expense check, he would actually have enough money to go on the trip, just he will be going alone because of my prior commitment.

It was just middle of nowhere Texas, and not even a long drive, and the main point of my going would have been knitting anyway.

About the knitting....

I should have started that months ago. In fact, I should have started it in January and been done with it. But I usually save some of the knitting for when I go on these little trips, but there haven't been many of these little trips, and of the few that there have been I ended up not going on most of them, mainly due to the money situation but occasionally because of my prior commitments.

So, basically, I haven't done any of the knitting that needs to be done before Christmas, and here it is already October.

I may be handing out IOUs for Christmas.

And then there is always this confusion about who is doing what for Christmas anyway.

After having worked with the round looms for more than four years and having had The Ultimate Sweater Machine for almost three years, I have yet to knit any sweaters. I am mainly knitting scarves, though there have been a few hats and the odd assortment of leg warmers and such. At some point I thought that I should learn regular knitting before attempting to knit a sweater. Not that I had any intention of knitting a whole sweater by hand, but I had thought that there might be some little thing that needed to be done with a sweater that just wouldn't be practical on the machine. Like I thought that I might need to do some regular knitting around the neck or at the waist or maybe on the sleeves, that the pieces of the sweater might not match up the way I imagine while working on the machine, and I would have some hand knitting to do before joining the pieces. So I attempted to learn regular knitting, but I didn't get very far with it. Regular knitting just isn't my thing.

Anyway, you would think that knitting scarves all the time would get dull, but I seem to get new ideas for them now and then. But even with the machine, they do seem to take so long.

And then there are these little tools that come with the machine. One of them is called the latch hook tool, which looks like the latch hook tool that comes with a rug kit, except that is a smaller hook. And the other is the transfer tool, which rather looks like a giant sewing needle, except that the pointy end is buried in the handle as it is the big eye of the needle that is used on the knitting machine. If you aren't doing anything fancy, you don't use these tools very often, but you do need them once in a while, especially if you've made a mistake.

On the other hand, if you are doing something fancy, you need these tools all of the time. And, if you are doing something fancy, it is helpful to have double or triple pronged transfer tools, and double or triple latch hooks.

The problem is that I have never seen double or triple latch hooks, so if I want those I will have to find a way to make them myself, and I have seen that other knitters have done just that. As for the double and triple pronged transfer tools, they used to just come with the machine, but now they don't, and if you want them you have to pay extra and have them sent, which means that you also have to pay shipping.

It seems to me that the charge for the tools is more than they should be, even before you have to add for shipping.

By contrast, the tool that goes with the round loom is easily found at any craft store, usually for a dollar. I have bought several sets of looms, and still I lose the little tool and have to go to the store and buy more. But it is no big deal. The tools are at the store and they only cost a dollar.

The cheapest transfer tool for the knitting machine is three dollars, and it is not available at the store, and so in addition to the three dollars you have to pay for shipping and you have to wait for the mail to arrive.

So to get the transfer tool and the latch hook that came with the kit (cause I am always losing things and need them replaced, or maybe something breaks once in a while), that would cost me about fifteen dollars with the shipping. And that's not counting if I would like a double pronged or triple pronged transfer tool, and they are only sold two at a time, so another ten dollars if I want the one and another twenty dollars if I want them both.

And that's if they even have them in stock, which doesn't seem to be the case at the moment.

About a year ago we found another knitting machine at a thrift store for forty dollars, and we decided to buy it, just for the tools and such, not cause I wanted another machine. So I had another transfer tool and another latch hook, which would have cost me about fifteen dollars to buy online. Unfortunately, this kit did not come with the desired additional two and three pronged transfer tools, but now I also have a spare of just about everything else, and I think this is good to have just in case I should break a key plate or tear the thing that holds the weights onto the machine.

But now I have lost both latch hook tools and all but one of my transfer tools. It is time to buy some more tools, or look into buying another machine to get more tools.

That has lead to some interesting eBay searches. There just all of a sudden seem to be a lot of people selling old knitting machines. And some of them aren't selling for that much, so I am tempted to buy another one. I imagine all of the tools and spare parts that I might get for somewhere in the twenty to forty dollar range.

Now I just have to figure out which one I should bid on.

(I probably just missed bidding on the one I should have tried to get, but I had it in my head that it was over tomorrow, and I wanted to think more about the money situation before I bid on anything.)

Unfortunately, I can't bid very much. In addition to the usual money problems, there is that still missing expense check, and the fact that my husband just realized that his car inspection sticker lapsed three months ago.

Still, I do have to wonder what is up with all of these knitting machines on eBay. Is it just an odd coincidence? Are desperate people raiding there craft rooms and finding knitting machines they have decided they will never use? Are that many knitters all dying and having estate sales?

I just don't know what the deal is. Another odd thing is when someone is selling the machine and knows nothing about it. One ad for a machine turns out to just be for the carriage, and there are no hooks. But there are other spare parts, so maybe no one else will want that one and I will be able to get it.

Of course, I have no money left in the Paypal account, so if I decide to buy anything I will have to come up with some money from somewhere else and remember to transfer it before the bill is due.

Anyway, it really ticks me off that I have to think about any of this right now. If I am going to make those Christmas presents, I have to have those tools. If I am not going to make any Christmas presents, I certainly do not have the money to buy Christmas presents instead, and I'm going to have to tell people to count me out this year. And it shouldn't be this much trouble. The tools should just be in the craft stores with the other knitting stuff. Even overpriced at five dollars each, I would buy them, if they would just put them in the stores.

And while I am worrying about the knitting, I still haven't finished my Halloween shopping. I have an idea for a costume, but not all of the parts. I may have to give up and go as a witch, but since I have gained weight since last time, I would still have to go shopping. I had hoped to get a flu shot before the party, but I doubt that I will have enough money left for one shot, and of course this year there are two. Great.

Monday Morons--these numbers don't seem right to me

Okay, so when you go to check your email, all this news stuff pops up. Like, wouldn't you rather read one of these stories before you read your email. Actually, no. If came here to read my email, then I want to read my email. If I had wanted to watch the news, I would be in the other room watching the news, or maybe I would have Googled a particular news story when I came in here.

But once in a while I do go back and click on one of the stories. Yesterday, there was something about making money in your spare time, and I like money just as much as the next person, so I looked. I have looked at this sort of thing before, and it usually turns out to be nothing that is useful to me.The particular thing I read yesterday is here. And I got a little annoyed, because I happen to know a little bit about a few of these things.

The first item suggested that if you become a part-time baker that you could sell cupcakes for $2 each, and that if the business was successful that you could make an extra 40K a year for working ten to twenty hours a week, and that if you really wanted to get into that sort of thing you should consider renting space in a professional kitchen.

It doesn't say anything about actually needing a professional kitchen, because the Health Department probably won't give you a permit to work out of your house. I've never wanted to be a professional baker, but I do happen to know about that because the Health Department came and canceled our little community bake sale, even a month after we asked for a temporary permit and we were originally told it would be okay. And I doubt that the ten or twenty hours per week includes the time it actually takes to sell the baked goods, or the time it would take to transport the items to someone who would sell the stuff for you, and then of course you would have to split the profits with other people. So an average of ten to twenty hours a week making an average 40K sounds a bit unreasonable, even if you do happen to have a professional kitchen and have permits and such.

The second item suggested becoming a professional blogger. Even after saying that few bloggers make enough to earn a living and that most earn nothing at all, it then suggests that writing for a few hours everyday you could earn an average of 24K a year. What numbers are used to come up with this average? All bloggers, or just those that consider themselves "professional", or all those that happen to make any money at all? My husband tried to make money blogging. He had a couple of blogs that he spent a lot of time on, and he ended up with about five hundred dollars a year. One year he really put some extra effort into it, had five blogs going, and wrote about not what he cared about but whatever dumb thing was on Google Trends, usually something about "naked pictures of ___________" to get more people to look at his blog. And it sort of worked, even though he didn't even have the "naked pictures of __________", he just mentioned that people were talking about it. So more people came to his blog, and he made about a thousand dollars that year. He's now back down to five hundred, and only working regularly on the one blog.

So we know from experience that writing a few hours a day is unlikely to result in making 24K a year, and I suspect we are not in the minority.

The third item was also something that we have tried. The article suggests that for several hours a week you could sell stuff on eBay and have average sales of 22K a year. At least it did say average sales and not average profit. At one point the eBay stuff was taking almost as much time as our regular jobs, and the profit never got much over four thousand dollars a year.

I know nothing of being a professional flower arranger, but the article suggested that for three to twenty hours a week an average of 21K in sales was possible.

At home jewelry making on evenings and weekends and spending between five hundred and two thousand dollars on materials and tools was said to result in an average sales of 30K per year. I know someone who does this sort of thing and doesn't do anything near that. Also, I used to have a reader in England who had a degree in art and had planned jewelry making as a career, and last I heard she had no luck with it.

Pet sitters were mentioned as making an average of 22K a year, mostly on weekends and holidays and some evenings. While I do know that some people are paid a lot of money to do this, the people who make the big bucks are practically nurses. You usually don't get paid a living wage to go and play with someone else's dog, but you could make some money if you were able to give shots to diabetic cats and such.

Then we come to part-time photographers who make 26K a year, mostly on weekends and evenings. Now that is something we really know something about, as my husband has been a full-time photographer for more than ten years now. Until about three years ago, he made less than 26K a year, and that was for between 40 and 70 hours a week. You're probably not going to make that much money in addition to your regular job. And of course, if your regular job is as a photographer, your probably already working evenings and weekends for somebody else.

Interpreters and translators were said to make an extra 21K. I always thought that people who spoke a second language would have cool jobs and/or make extra money. But most of what I see are a lot of people who speak Spanish who have the same dumb job that I have or they work at Walmart or something. And they usually don't get paid extra to translate, they are just expected to drop what they are doing and come and talk to other people who can't be bothered to learn English. Lately some of the jobs I would have wanted have started listing Spanish preferred or even Spanish required, but the pay rate has not gone up, just with the new requirement I am no longer qualified for the job.

T-shirt vendors were said to make 48K a year after an investment of about a thousand dollars. I've never tried this, but again it sounds too easy, and I wonder how many people lost money trying to start a business so that the average ends up being 48K.

Web designers were also said to make an average of 42K. I know some people who do this, but nowhere near that kind of money or they would quit their regular jobs.

I think the people who are really making money from these part-time business are the people who sell the thousand dollars or so of start-up materials and equipment.

BBC says no more knitting

Looks like I missed a bit of excitement about two months ago, both in the world of fandom and the world of craft-related websites.

For a while now, my husband has been saying that I need to start a new blog, one that is entirely about knitting. I haven't done it yet, for several reasons. One, the husband has a bunch of blogs that he tries to make money from, and he thinks that I should do the same, while I think the idea of making money from blogs is mostly a boat that has already sailed and don't really want to bother with it. Two, there are already a lot of other knitting blogs out there written by people who are really good at it. Three, if I did ever do such a thing, I would want to do a good job of it, and that would take a lot of time and maybe a lot of work, and I hate to put that much work into something on the remote chance that I might make a few bucks. If it was something that I enjoyed doing and could create something that I was proud of, and then it happened to make some money, that would be different.

Anyway, I got to thinking that I could set up another blog and start writing stuff on it, but for now just not publish any posts. So I've done that. I created a new blog that doesn't have any published posts. I started writing a few things, but they are only drafts at the moment and only I can read them.

So I haven't embarrassed myself yet, see?

Okay, so while I was working on the thing I thought that I might as well have some links, and that I would want to link to doctorwhoscarf.com, just as I have a link to the site on this blog. And I haven't visited the site in several months. Probably I haven't looked at it since before Christmas. But yesterday I went there, just cause I was about to add this link to the new blog. And there was this message from about six weeks ago saying that the guy was afraid that the BBC was going to order him to shut the site down, and that we should all make copies of any patterns we wanted, just in case.

The reason he was afraid of being shut down was this story. Apparently the BBC saw that someone was making these little knitted things that looked like aliens from Dr. Who and then selling them on eBay. So eBay pulled the listings for the items. The BBC then went to the website where a fan had posted the knitting patterns for the alien things and told her to stop. She wasn't selling the patterns, she had created the patterns herself and was giving them away for free to anyone who wanted to try to make them. Someone else was trying to sell stuff on eBay. Not quite sure if they just politely asked her to stop, or if the BBC did some legal thing, but either way the woman pulled the patterns off of her website.

Anyway, fans have been making their own Dr. Who scarves for about thirty years now. There was an "official" scarf many years ago, but they only made it that once and they didn't make enough to match the demand. So if you know how to knit or you are friends with someone who knits, you make your own or you have someone else make one for you. Sometimes someone makes a lot of them and sells them on eBay or even on their own websites.

Which is not saying that the people making these scarves are getting rich. I've seen the scarves sell for about a hundred dollars. Even if you have a machine to do a lot of the work, for the most part a knitting machine isn't something that you push a few buttons and then go to lunch and come back to find a completed scarf. So even if you have a machine you still spend a lot of time on it. And of course yarn isn't free either. If I wanted to sell a scarf, and I wanted to make a reasonable ten dollars an hour for my time, I would need to sell the scarves for at least $175. (That's for season 12. Other seasons are longer or more complicated and would cost more.) So I figure that the people who sell the scarves on eBay are a bit better at this than I am, but they are still working for about five dollars an hour.

Anyway, while there are copyright laws and all of that, and the BBC probably has the legal right to make someone stop selling things that came from the show, and they might even have the right to ask someone to stop telling people how to make their own toys and/or costumes, for the most part you're supposed to know not to enforce this particular right on fans who are not getting rich from knitting and who are not in direct competition with anything they are selling. Fan made stuff is free advertising, so the fans are usually left alone.

All of this was almost two months ago, and the Doctor Who Scarf website is still there, so I'm guessing that they are not going to do anything about it.

So why all the drama over some knitted toys now, while we've been knitting scarves for decades without anyone bothering anybody about it? My husband thinks that it's because the alien knitting patterns were designed on something from the new show, and the people in charge are more serious about such things now than decades ago when the old show was on. My theory is that the recent toys are the image of characters, while the scarves are just scarves. We try to copy the pattern of the scarves, but there's not anything like a Dr. Who logo on them and the don't say Dr. Who on them or anything like that.

Anyway, I had a look yesterday, and Dr. Who type scarves are still available on eBay. So I guess for now only the toys are forbidden, and maybe that will be the end of it.

Sorry I haven't been around much lately

Let's see. I was busy with school stuff until about Thursday afternoon. Then, after a bit of a rest, I was busy with club stuff until Monday. Friday we went to see I Am Legend, and Monday we went to see The Golden Compass. I haven't been able to blog about either, because my husband has two weeks off and spends all of his time on the computer. I have started several posts about other things, but I never get to finish them.

The club charity thing went okay. I'll have to post about that later too.

Despite making a serious effort to clean and straighten things up around here, a day and a half later, the Halloween stuff is still out in the hallway.

However, the mini outlet center of Bath & Body Works is a bit more organized. Or, at least, there are no more bags of the stuff in the bedroom. Three items went into the official club gift exchange, two items so far went into the unofficial gift exchange, and several more items have been wrapped or bagged to be given out later. That leaves one item that still needs to be wrapped, about ten items that need to be moved to a better looking bag, and a number of leftover items that have been moved to the back room. We might have a clearance sale on eBay after Christmas.

Do to a lot of misunderstandings and supply problems at school, the teacher decided to just drop everyone's lowest grade. Therefore, I ended up getting an A instead of the earlier agreed on B, despite the fact that I missed an entire project while I went out of town for two weeks. Also, my second glass project has probably been fired by now, though I don't expect to see it until sometime in January. I've decided to not even ask about it. I have other things that I should be doing.

The family dinner thing was supposed to be earlier this month, but I told my mom that the best day for me was the 8th. By the time everyone else checked to see if the 8th was good for them, my husband had to go out of town that week and would have been driving back home late on the 8th. So the 8th was dropped. Most of the other weekend dates meant that I would have to drop some club thing. The 9th might have worked, but I guess that didn't work for someone else. So the next date was the 16th, which meant I'd have to cancel something important, but not as important as the 15th or the 31st, so okay. After thinking about it some, mom decided that it did not absolutely have to be on a weekend, as long as my husband and my brother-in-law were not going out of town then, and they weren't, so the 17th was scheduled. My sister got sick on the 17th. Mom suggested maybe waiting til after Christmas, and I suggested the 27th. The dinner has been rescheduled again and is now partially replacing the Christmas Eve plans. That works for me, as long as my sister hasn't already ordered the other food for that evening.

So far as I know, the 23rd is still planned with the only one of my in-laws that my husband still speaks to, and there are no real plans for the 25th itself.

I should blog about all that other stuff later. But that mostly gets me caught up. This last week before Christmas, when I don't have any shopping to do and I should be just wrapping gifts and enjoying the lights and such, I am instead planning to clean house. But I have planned to clean house before, and it rarely gets done.

Monday Morons--a bit of this and that

Well, not much to say really. The person that would most qualify for this week's Monday Moron would be my husband. And I really don't want to get into it about my husband.

Okay, maybe I'll just say this one thing. We keep having fights. Before all this stuff happened, I had mostly stopped fighting with him because I just got tired of being his mommy. I got tired of worrying about the bills and such. I just ignored it. If he wants to run up his credit cards on pizza and junk, I can't stop him, so I decided to mostly keep my mouth shut about it. Eventually, he'd have to stop doing that sort of thing. Credit card companies eventually want their money. Only while I was being such a nice person about the whole thing, he took my credit card. And then he did a bunch of other stuff that I won't get into right now. And then he borrowed three thousand dollars from my mother because he didn't want to file for unemployment. I yelled a lot when I discovered that he'd used my credit card, but other than that I didn't say much. I had school and my health to think about, and I couldn't deal with his problems too. I just made it clear that he made the mess and he'd clean it up, and I wasn't going to help.

But that was only money, and I'd somehow convinced myself that it didn't matter, that we had the important stuff, etc... And I was mostly okay, and we didn't fight much. But after all that stuff that happened, I can't just look the other way and say that's it's only money. And maybe it isn't only the money. I can't trust him with anything now.

So we got some good news last week, and we were happy about it. And then yesterday he was talking about getting a new computer. And he knows how I feel about it and that I will not agree to buying a new computer until he has paid my mother back and paid off my credit card. I really don't want to talk about the computer, and I hate that he already spends so much time on this one. I wouldn't want a new computer even if we could afford one. But he still has to bring it up. And most of the time I don't bug him about the bills and about the money he owes my mother, but if he's going to bring up the computer, I guess that I have to remind him that we will not be getting a computer until he pays off my mom and takes care of that credit card.

His response was to say "Screw you and screw your mom."

He did not speak that way before he met certain undesirable people online. Whatever might have been going on in his head, he didn't say things like that. But he I guess that he did always have this confused way of thinking, and I just didn't want to see it before. He does this stuff, and somehow it's not a problem, but if you remind him that he's done something, then that's a problem.

Anyway, usually he does this stupid stuff, and then he apologizes. I keep hoping that it will someday sink in that I don't want to have fights and then kiss and make-up. I want him to quit doing the stuff in the first place. But, no, there gets to be more and more stuff, and then we fight and he apologizes.

Only this time he didn't apologize. He doesn't think that he's done anything wrong. He didn't even apologize for "Screw you and screw your mom."

Well, I didn't think that he could still make me feel bad. I mean physically feel bad. I'd felt pretty good for a few months, and I thought that I was done with that. But I couldn't get to sleep much last night because my skin hurts.

Well, I didn't mean to talk that much about him. I was going to talk about a few other odd things that happened this week, mostly with the eBay stuff.

In case you didn't catch it before, I posted here and here about someone tampering with my husband's blog and his eBay account. Basically, I think that the Homewrecking-slut or some friend of hers did it. So Saturday I noticed another silly bit of business. Someone had changed our listed location to Ireland. Not a big deal, and it was something that most have been done last year. I had even thought that maybe he'd done that himself as a joke. But apparently he'd never seen that before Saturday, so I guess that he didn't do that either.

The other thing that is annoying about the eBay stuff is that so far I don't have any bids. Sometimes, I can't even find all of the listings. If I can't find them, and I know they are there, how is anyone else supposed to find them. And if the customers can't find them, then I won't get any bids.

And yesterday I checked on one of my listings, and I clicked on the thing that is supposed to show you everything that is being sold by the person that listed the item you're looking at, and only four of my listings popped up. I have six listings, not four. It seems to be working now, and I see all six listings.

EBay just cannot deal with the word Jack'O'Lantern. If you search for Jack'O'Lantern, it becomes Jackolantern, and then tells you there are not any listings for Jackolantern. So sometimes people can't find my soaps that are listed under Pumpkin, and now they can't find them listed under Jack'O'Lantern at all.

The other thing that's annoying is while I haven't got any bids on my set of three soaps, someone else will probably end up buying two soaps for the same price that I wanted for my three. Or maybe they'll end up spending more than that. I've seen people bid on stuff that was a good deal when they started bidding, but at the end of the auction they didn't get much of a deal. People are buying $10 Starbucks gift cards for $9.33 or maybe $8.50 plus shipping. I just want to go "hey, look, my stuff is a better deal" or "my stuff is more interesting" or whatever.

I noticed that people are selling coupons on eBay. I thought selling coupons was illegal. Some people are selling "a Christmas card with free coupons" or they make a big deal about the coupons being free but they need to be paid for their time. I think that the Christmas card thing might keep a person from getting arrested, but not the bit about needed to be paid for time. And you would think that either way eBay would know it's illegal and get rid of that stuff, even the people who are selling Christmas cards.

Okay, now that's sorted out

The eBay stuff has been listed now. I have no idea what's wrong with Turbo Lister or whatever, but even with the proper passwords and such it still didn't seem to work. The regular stuff seems to work now, but not on Explorer. So we used FireFox instead.

So now everything is listed for a fair price, but no bids yet. And one of the listings seems really hard to find. So if I can't find it, and I know that it's there, I don't think that the customer will find it. So that's bad. I tried to edit the listing a couple of times, but that didn't seem to help.

Oh, well. It's just a bit of an experiment. Sometimes they don't go the way you would hope.

With the delay I had to set up five day auctions instead of seven day auctions. At least I have that option now. Last time that I tried to sell anything all the auctions were exactly one week.

They were having a bit of a special, so all six listings only cost me about three dollars in fees. So that's not too bad. The worst thing that will happen now is that I'll be out three bucks and I'll have a lot of pumpkin scented soaps and stuff to use myself. Which was the original idea anyway.

More thoughts about eBay

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you might have noticed that I shop at Bath & Body Works a lot. I like going to sales, and I like getting a good deal, and I think that the store is a pleasant place to spend a bit of my free time. And they give away tons of coupons. So I can go in and get a couple of things that are buy one get one free, and then I usually have a coupon to get something else for free.

If you do this from time to time throughout the year, you have accumulated a lot of stuff before everyone else gets into the Christmas shopping frenzy.

Anyway, I already have more stuff than I thought, and I still have coupons left and will possibly buy more stuff. But that's okay, cause I like the stuff myself and whatever I don't end up giving to someone in December will still get used, by me.

But, still, I have a lot of stuff. Last year I bought a lot of pumpkin stuff when it was on sale. I was wondering if maybe it would be a good idea to sell some of this stuff on eBay. I looked and there were over two thousand Bath & Body Works products for sale on eBay. There's almost a hundred items that are just pumpkin scented.

A lot of it seems to be selling. It is a total mystery to me. I suppose that there are people who like shopping on eBay just as much as I like shopping at Bath & Body Works. But mostly I think that the reason people buy things on eBay is that they want to get a good price, but most of the time the added cost of the shipping makes the good price not such a good deal.

Some of it is such a good price that it is still a good deal with the added shipping costs. So then I have to wonder why the seller is pricing the stuff so low.

Anyway, I have this pumpkin stuff that I really got a good deal on last year, so I'm thinking that I'll try to sell some of it. I'm going to list about seven things, and if I could get like seven dollars profit on each, then I'd make about fifty dollars. Not bad, but nothing to get really excited about either.

On the other hand, if I did make fifty dollars or more, I could invest it in the next sale, and sell more stuff on eBay later....

Bath & Body Works and other stuff

Friday we went out shopping for a bit.

Okay, I thought some of you might want one of these http://f.e.bathandbodyworks.com/i/34/528207786/090507_butter3.html
Actually, three of you are in the UK, and I don't even know if there are Bath & Body Works stores in the UK. And several of you are men, so the coupon probably doesn't help you either.

Anyway, with this coupon you can get a free body butter worth $14 if you spend $15 or more on other stuff. And, right now there is also a deal where if you buy a body butter you get a free body wash. So I bought a body butter, got a free body wash, and I also bought a Halloween nail file that costs $1.50, so that brought the total to $15.50, and then I used the coupon to get another body butter for free. So that's two body butters and a body wash and a nail file for $15.50 plus tax. The regular price of all that stuff is like $38.

Next week I will probably take the coupon to the other store, only I'll probably get one body butter and two wallflowers and a trail size of 3-in-1 soap for the same $15.50.

Besides the Bath & Body Works stuff we did a bit more shopping. I got a book about knitting sweaters at Half Price Books. I've never attempted to make a sweater. Maybe if I look at the book long enough I'll be inspired to try it.

Then we went to lunch at Jason's Deli. My husband had never eaten inside the place before, but the people he works with are always going to get him sandwiches and such. He says he gives them five bucks and tells them to get whatever looks good. You can't get a sandwich from Jason's Deli for five bucks. I guess they just like him and didn't want to embarrass him by telling him he didn't have enough money. Just two specials and two sodas cost us seventeen something. I took one of the menus and put it in his car, so next time the group wants to order lunch there he'll have a clue what to order and how much money he owes.

After that I did I bit of Halloween shopping. I didn't quite find anything I was looking for, but I bought a few wig caps just in case. Someone is always going to need stuff like wig caps.

My husband bought a couple of books and what looks like a Chanel purse. I don't even look at the stuff anymore. It all pretty much looks the same to me. But he was joking around about the genuine imitation Chanel bag, and then he looked at it and decided to get it just in case it was a Chanel bag. So then we went and looked on ebay and found a similar one that's going to start at one hundred that is supposed to be worth about three hundred. Except that one was brown and this one is either black or a very dark blue with gold trim.

So that would be cool if we ended up getting a hundred dollars for some silly purse because I was looking for Halloween stuff.

Then I went home and bid on something on ebay. And it looks like I won. So I did end up getting part of my Halloween costume, I just don't have the item in my possession yet.

It was not a bad day, and my eyes didn't bother me much. This encouraged me to spend most of the rest of the day being lazy, so as not to do anything that might bother my eyes. But then I was thinking that it is time to deal with that last bit of floor in the hall. While I was waiting for the first layer of glue to dry, my brother called to invite me over to try some BBQ. The meat had too much fat on it, so it was really good.

After I came home from my brother's place, I put down the second layer of glue and then looked at stuff on the Internet while I waited for the glue to dry. And as often happens, I forgot what I was doing and what time it was and all of that. Someone sent me a link for Dr. Who music remixes. I wasted a lot of time playing around with that. So then it was getting late, and I thought that if I started working on the floor, my husband would probably get home right about the time I got finished. But if I waited another hour or two, he would be home, and I could finish the floor with him safely out of the way back here, and the floor could dry while we were sleeping.

But he came home and wanted to go to Whataburger, and by the time we got back I decided it was too late for me to finish the floor.

So now I'm waiting for the floor to dry. It doesn't look great in spots, but that's okay. It's not like the stuff looks pretty anyway.

So that's all of the carpet gone except for the living room, which I have decided to leave for now.

My left eye is killing me. It was fine when I went to bed last night, so I didn't do anything special. It was fine when I woke up after midnight and went back to sleep. It was fine when I got sick about three in the morning. At about six in the morning I woke up in terrible pain, but I managed to get back to sleep for another hour. It's not so bad now that I can't move around the house and do stuff, but it is still damned annoying.

I do not like to go to the mall and such on a Saturday with all the crowds, but I think I'm going to see a movie later anyway.

Attempting to get rich on eBay

My husband sold stuff on eBay until just recently, and before that he sold used books on amazon. And I was never sure we were actually making any money. I can see he made money on individual items, but I'm not sure we made money over all. He does the taxes, and there's usually profit of a few thousand dollars, but I just have to believe that he's put in the right numbers. Sometime, I don't think he did.

One year he did the taxes, and he came up with a profit of only five hundred dollars or so, when it had been like five thousand the year before. So I said he should stop if he did all that work and invested all that money for a five hundred dollar profit. So he went back and looked at the thing again, decided he hadn't filled out the forms right, and came back with a three thousand dollar profit. Sometimes I think he lied to me and paid taxes on a profit he didn't make rather than admit it wasn't going to work out and give up the business. And even if he didn't do that deliberately, I still think that he didn't count every little thing and that he'didn't really make all that money like he thought he did. I don't think he has any way of figuring in the gas, and I don't think he has figured out how much time it takes him to do all that or if the profit is enough compensation for that amount of work.

Some people have suggested that I sell scarves on eBay. It's not really a good idea if I'm trying to make money. I'd need to charge too much money for the ones I'm doing now. I need more than two skeins of yarn at 2.29 each, so to be on the safe side I get four. I could do two scarves with six skeins of yarn, so let's say that it takes six dollars of yarn for one scarf. It takes about two hours for me to knit a stripe, and there's fifteen stripes, and then I have to do the fringe. So for more than thirty hours work I'd want like three hundred dollars per scarf. Obviously, I wouldn't get that much for them. I donated one to an auction with a couple of dollars worth of candy and some nice wrapping stuff, and the winning bid was $43. So, that would work out to about a dollar an hour. I'm going to eventually try a machine scarf, but I haven't done it yet so I don't know if that will work out either.

But, let's say that I could come up with something that took me an hour or so to make, and that with the cost of supplies and everything I made a few things that I sold to friends for twenty dollars and thought that was adequate compensation. If I start trying to sell the same item on eBay for the same $20, I'm not going to have the same profit margin, if I make a profit at all. Now, if I've spent about six dollars in supplies and sold the thing for $20, I'd have $14 left. But now if I put the thing on eBay, I have to pay all sorts of fees. Now there are different fees depending on what you want to do, but my husband usually spent about a dollar to list each item. There are fees depending on how many pictures you have of the item and other things that you do to make your listing look nice. There are different fees depending on how much the starting bid is. If you have a low starting bid, you have a lower fee for that, but then someone might actually have a winning bid that is lower than what you wanted to sell the item for. There's a reserve bid thing, but I don't really know how that works and there's probably a fee for that too. So you'd probably start off with an opening bid of $20 (or $19.99 is probably going to save you some money on the fee). Maybe there's another fee depending on the winning bid, but I don't remember. So now maybe the week has gone by and you didn't get any bids, so you lost your dollar or so in fees. Or maybe you got one bid, but the buyer changed his mind, and you're still out the fees. Or maybe you sold the thing for $19.99, and the buyer pays, and you are happy. Or maybe the thing sold for more than the opening bid, and then you are really happy.

But let's say that it sold for $20 and you spent $6 on supplies and $1 on fees. Now you have to ship the thing. You should have already figured out how much that was going to be and had a way to add that to the bill. If, for some reason, you added a shipping amount that was too low, you are stuck with it anyway. You can explain to the buyer that you need more money, but he's really not obligated to send it to you. If you agreed to sell for $20 plus $5 shipping and the postage is $7, then you're out the extra $2. There are probably some exceptions, like if you only listed domestic postage and the buyer lives somewhere else, but probably you'll just mutually agree to cancel the sale rather than pay international shipping, and again you are out $1 in eBay fees for an item that did not sell.

There is also such a thing as an eBay store, but I do not know what is involved with that or what kind of fees that would require. But if you have a store you don't necessarily have to have things that people bid on and the items can be for sell for as long as you want rather than be on auction for a week.

Then there are the other costs of shipping not included in the actual postage, and if you didn't raise the shipping fee yourself to include that, again, you're not going to get paid for it. For instance, you need a box to send the thing in. If you deal exclusively in priority mail, that comes with a free box, but it may not come in a size that you like. Also, there are a couple of priority boxes that have a set price for the box, and you need to be aware of those. So you might have to spend some money on a box if maybe your item is really big or an odd shape. But other than that, you can get a couple of different size boxes and ship the items in those, but you will still have to buy packing tape and perhaps buy plastic bags or bubble wrap or tissue paper, and those you will have to provide yourself. Then, there is the time and gas money that you spent going to get the packing tape and bubble wrap and such, and the time you spent actually packing the item.

There is also the time spent at the post office. We always went to the post office, but you can make arrangements to have packages picked up. We would have needed to buy special equipment to do that, so we never tried it that way. If you are only selling a few specific items, and you know exactly how much each thing weighs after it has been packaged, that shouldn't be as much of a problem. You could make a trip to the post office once a year or so to make sure what the postage is for one of item A to be sent to different regions, and then what is the postage for two of item A, and what is the postage for one of item A and one of item B, etc....And then you'd only have to make special trips to the post office when there's a change in postage rates or an unusual order or when you've agreed to international shipping.

Now, assuming that you already have a computer and a printer, you are going to have more wear and tear on the machines, and need extra paper and ink to print labels and receipts and such.

Now, I have no idea how much all of that would really add to the cost of the item, but let's say you now want $25 for the item that you used to sell for $20. So now maybe it doesn't seem like such a good deal to the buyers, and they stop buying. And now maybe you are stuck with a lot of packing tape and such that you'll never use and you're out some fees before you gave up on the idea. I think you have to decide ahead of time what is a reasonable amount of money and time to risk and then be willing to just throw that away if it doesn't work out. If you don't decide that first, you'll always be trying to do it a little bit longer and maybe it would still work out but maybe not. You'd just never know when to quit if you didn't decide that sort of thing a head of time.

There is also the eBay rating system to deal with. Everyone who buys something from you is supposed to rate you as positive, neutral, or negative, and you are supposed to do the same for all of your buyers. You would think that neutral would be okay, but somehow when the numbers are added up, neutral is bad, and negative is doubly bad. If you do not get straight positive feedback, your rating will not be good, and without a good rating the smart customers will not buy from you. And there are a lot of people out there that will buy once or twice but don't use eBay enough to know this, and you could get a bad rating through no fault of your own.

But, all of that being said, if I could make something in an hour with $6 of materials that I think I could get $20 to $25 for on eBay, I'm probably still going to try it. But I won't waste too much time trying to make it work, and I have the added benefit of already having someone who knows all this stuff and could initially do some of the work for me.

I don't know if any of that helped, especially since I wasn't the one actually doing all of this stuff and I don't specially know what any of the fees are. But a friend asked about it, and I thought I should post it here as well just in case it could help someone else.