The spirit of Christmas is alive and well on eBay

I listed a beautiful Reuge music box on eBay on December 1. It ran for 7 days and didn't get a bid. So I lowered the price and ran it again.

I got a question from an eBay member asking me if the song was the one that they were looking for. She gave me the lyrics. Since it's a music box, I couldn't tell if it was the song she was looking for or not. The woman explained that her mother's health is failing and that the song she is interested in is the song that their father sang to her on their wedding day and before making a bid on the item, she wanted to make sure it was the right song. It reminded me of when my mom's health was failing and I would have done anything to sweeten her remaining days.

So I got my digital camera out, took a video of the box and posted it on youtube.com. I sent the link to the interested bidder. She informed me that indeed, that was the right song. So she put a bid on the music box. Then she wrote again a couple of days ago asking if I thought it would arrive in time for Christmas. I told her I wasn't sure and agreed to stop the auction so we could ship it sooner and hopefully her mother would get it for Christmas. I stopped the auction. I don't like to end auctions early because it isn't fair to other bidders but I had already run the music box for an entire week without a bid and besides, I wanted to help the woman. I imagined her mother's smile while her health is failing would be a sweet one.

After I ended the auction, another ebayer wrote and asked me what happened to the music box. He said he had been waiting to bid on it and that he wanted to complete his collection. I felt bad about it but I also wondered why he didn't bid on it when I ran it two weeks ago. I wrote back and explained about the woman's sick mother and apologized for stopping the auction. I suppose I should have lied and told him it got broken or lied and told him it got lost but for some idiotic reason, I told him the truth and thought he would understand.

Here is what he wrote back to me:

"This box was not listed just a couple weeks ago as I've been looking for these for two months straight every day 4 to 5 times a day. It had a bid on it as well which I was watching to outbid before bidding was over. My bid would have been higher as I really wanted this box. I've just outbid 5 others on 5 boxes in the last 3 weeks so I know this was not out there or I would've given you a bid & won. I was not given the chance to bid which is a violation of eBay policy. One is not allowed to pull an item with bid(s) to sell to the only bidder before the time is over. I sell here as well so I know sellers can see how many bid as well as how many are watching. As I was watching this, it would have shown you that fact. This woman you pulled this for is responsible to wait until bidding is over, so she canceled her bid against eBay rules, too. I'm sorry to say, I've reported this to eBay as required.

- 281gem"

So Merry Christmas to me. I tried to do something nice for someone and this is what happens. The guy is wrong of course. I listed the box on December 1 and sent him a link to it so he could see for himself.

'Tis the season.

Ebay condones blackmail

I sold 3 pamphlets to a buyer in Italy. We sent him an invoice but he didn't pay. He said he never got the invoice and wanted another one. We made up another invoice and after a few days, he paid.

Then he wrote and said he would "vote for me" if I left him positive feedback. I wasn't sure what he meant by that but I didn't feel I needed to leave positive feedback for him. It wasn't a positive experience but eBay doesn't allow sellers the privilege of leaving truthful feedback. As a seller, you can only leave a buyer positive feedback or no feedback. So I didn't leave him any feedback.

Then I got an email from him telling me he was going to leave me negative feedback because I didn't leave him feedback. He blackmailed me. I should have left him positive feedback even though the experience of selling to him wasn't positive. He left me 3 negative feedbacks because I didn't leave him feedback and because I issued a non-paying bidder alert on him.

I wrote to eBay and told them that he had blackmailed me and when I didn't comply, he retaliated by leaving me negative feedback and they told me that their rules don't allow them to remove feedback for blackmail or retaliatory reasons unless you're a buyer.

So there you go, eBay does it once again. Screws as many people as it can. No wonder they are losing business.

First they take away the ability for a seller to say that they accept money orders and checks from buyers. We've lost a lot of buyers who refuse to use PayPal.

Ebay did this for one reason and one reason only: GREED. Ebay is double-dipping. First they get fees from the seller through their fee structure on eBay when an item is sold. Then when they force the buyer to pay through PayPal which they own, they get paid even more in fees.

Now that Ebay all but has a monopoly on the internet auction business, it's easy for them to do whatever the hell they want to do without anybody being able to do a thing about it.

A few years ago, Yahoo and Amazon both had auctions that were not as lively as eBay's site at the time but were doing reasonably okay. Now neither of those sites, sites with the ability to compete with Ebay is offering auction services. It's a shame. Because eBay is running its own customers off.

Big Love

Spoiler Alert: If you haven't watched the latest episode of Big Love, you might not want to read this because it gives away plot, etc.

I watched the latest episode of Big Love tonight and was really struck by what a powerful story they spun into one hour. The family goes on a vacation together. Bill has planned a sort of holy pilgrimage of sorts for his family, going from one Mormon monument to another across the nation. Everything about the trip, from the station wagon to the afternoon sun slanting into the windows, to the cheap wood paneling on hotel or motel walls evokes what many of us, especially those of us with large families have experienced at least once before: the sacred family vacation.

The whole trip is planned to bring the family closer together by sharing an adventure on the road, and bonding along the way.

But like most perfectly planned family vacations, the Hendricks family vacation is full of disappointments, things gone awry and family not cooperating with the ideal family adventure.

First Margene announces to Bill that she wants to take a side trip to restore her mother's ashes held in an urn to her mother's relatives in Illinois. It's a 300 miles jag out of the way. And Margene discovers that Bill is taking Viagra. She promises that his secret is safe with her.

Barb thinks that Nicki and Margene are mad at her and insists on accompanying the on their side trip to Illinois to take Margene's mothers' ashes to relatives. On the drive, Barb is trying to suss what the other two are mad at her about and Nicki reveals that she (Nicki) isn't mad at Barb but at Margene. In defense, Margene accidentally tells the other wives that Bill is on Viagra.

By the time the wives reunite with the rest of the family, all three women are mad at Bill for taking Viagra and not telling them.

Nicki's crush on her boss continues as she buys a cardigan like the one he wears and gets Bill to wear it. Ben's crush from last season on Margene comes out again when they accidentally see each other nude.

Every stop along the way brings some new disappointment and Barb is upset because Sarah isn't including her in her plans for going to college. Of course Sarah can't tell Barb she's pregnant.

At one point, Bill gets angry because one of the children has left a sticky wrapper on top of the time capsule which is integral to his idea of the ideal family vacation.

Margene accidentally leaves her mother's ashes on top of the car and it falls off and breaks on the sun beaten boardwalk and Margene watches as the ashes simply blow away.

Barb is talking to Nicki and comes across Nicki's birth control pills. Barb thinks they're Sarah's. Nicki doesn't want to admit the truth but finally does to the other two wives and Bill. But this is the night of the special show they've come across the country to see together as a family, a Mormon re-enactment that Bill had hoped would be a special bonding experience for the entire family where they would bury a time capsule that their descendants would open some day to discover what their own ancestors were like.

But nothing has gone right on the perfectly planned vacation from the beginning. Bill is finally at his wits end and sends the others off to watch the re-enactment show without him. He kneels in the grass where he has buried the time capsule and talks to the lord. He tells him that he has looked for him all along the way and hasn't seen him anywhere. He expresses his doubts about keeping his family strong and safe and we see him in a vulnerable state as he mourns for the control he knows he has lost.

You can't help but feel bad for Bill in this scene. We've all had those vacations where nothing went right and we are left questioning how strong and close our families really are. It leaves us vulnerable. I thought this would be the end of the episode.

But then in the next scene, Nicki wakes up and looks to see that the other bed in her hotel room is empty. She hears weeping coming from the bathroom. It is Sarah. Nicki knocks and the door opens. We see Sarah sitting on the toilet in obvious distress and she says, "I'm losing my baby."

The next scene shows a distraught Sarah riding with Nicki in the car and Nicki trying to persuade her that they need to tell the others. Like any other 18 years old, Sarah is reluctant but finally agrees. It's the sort of catastrophe that is a blow to any family but especially one so steeped in religion.

They stop and Barb goes to her daughter and hugs her and Sarah clings to her weeping. She finally looks at her father and shrugs as if to say, 'it is what it is, I can't change it...' and her father goes to her and she really clings to him weeping and he comforts her.

So this is a little synopsis and I really hadn't meant to write one. But without it what I have to say wouldn't make any sense. The episode was powerful because of the nearly hour long tale of a woeful disappointing family vacation that leaves Bill doubting the bonds and closeness of his family. And it takes a tragedy, the tragedy that is Sarah, the young and innocent, being pregnant and having a miscarriage, to bring the family close again. It's really a story for the ages. It's been told before, but maybe not even as one story, but a series of vignettes that are disconnected and maybe you never reach the conclusion so expertly as this episode of Big Love did.

Will the end of the world be on December 12, 2012?

I don't think so though I've heard some people say that if Sarah Palin wins the presidential election that year, it will.

The Mayan calendar was only calculated until December 21, 2012. Conspiracy theorists are delighted about it. The same people who stored bottles of water and bought generators in anticipation of Y2K, the millennium are just as excited about the idea of the world ending in 2012 as they were about a world wide blackout and chaos in 2000.

The Mayans developed a 5,126 year calendar cycle. The Mayans were rather clever but not clever enough to predict the end of their own civilization which disappeared sometime around the year 900. But the Mayans weren't predicting the end of their own civilization, much less the end of the universe. They were ingenious when it came to astronomy and they were proficient in preparing their calendar to account for centuries to come. If the Mayans had accurately predicted the end of the world, it is much more likely they would have predicted what to them would have been the end of the world, their world, the Mayans, which disappeared around 1100 years ago.

If Microsoft had been as far thinking as the Mayan scholars, it would have prepared its computers for a calendar year beginning with a 2. It wouldn't have been that hard. They were still building computers in 1995 that weren't programmed in anticipation of the year 2000. That they weren't thinking five years ahead doesn't mean they weren't capable of doing so, it simply illustrates that in our consumer driven society, it was expected that computers would be obsolete in three years.

According to some Doomsday theorists, there will be solar storms that will trigger volcanoes. Since there are solar storms in almost any given year, it's likely that there will be solar storms in 2012. Solar storms occur in 11 year cycles. Sometimes they cause brief power outages. Since there are 50-60 volcano eruptions every year, it is likely that there will indeed by volcano eruptions in 2012. If there were no volcano eruptions in a year, that would indeed be remarkable.

Some doomsayers predict that there will be a reversal of poles that will make the Earth spin in the opposite direction. There is geological evidence that shows that polar reversals have occurred in the Earth's history. But polar reversals don't happen in a year or even ten years. Polar reversals occur over a span of about a thousand years or more. The reigning theory on polar reversals is that the inner molten core of the earth's chaotic motion changes through time which causes the poles to reverse.

Scholars who have made the Mayan civilization their life's work dispute the claims that the world will end in 2012. Scientists dismiss the 2012 doomsday conspiracy theories with facts. But seemingly ordinary people completely dismiss scientific evidence and cultural knowledge of the Mayans in favor of a doomsday scenario.

So the question then becomes, what is it about disaster, catastrophe and doom that so fascinate people who are otherwise rational people? I suspect that it is derived from the apparent human desire for drama and excitement. Humans love a mystery. The Mayans are mysterious because their civilization was so advanced. It's often hard for people to put people from ancient civilizations into any real context. The people who lived 2000 years ago had the same brain capacity that we have and they did remarkable things. They built pyramids. Even 200 years ago people built magnificent bridges and dams while today it is easy to think of the crumbling infrastructure of our country and be unable to conceive of how such engineering can be replaced. We built canals and railroads without the aid of computers and those remarkable feats seem long ago in a dim and mysterious past already. In a thousand years, our descendants will deem it remarkable that we built skyscrapers and roads with the limited technology we have.

Yes, the Mayan civilization was remarkable. They were clever enough to create a 5000 year calendar. Our own civilization has been remarkable too. The ancient Egyptians were remarkable too. They built pyramids. Ancient people in Britain created Stonehenge, managing to move tons of rocks and manipulate them into a circle without the aid of cranes and trucks. The Roman empire was remarkable too. To date, none of the great civilizations have been able to predict the end of our own civilizations, much less the end of the world. The Mayans had to stop somewhere in their calendar calculation. That it happens to be in 2012 means they felt comfortable enough about their own civilization to predict that their descendants, 5000 years later, would be able to continue their calculations. They had to stop somewhere. Even if one brilliant Mayan mathematician and astronomer spent his or her whole life calculating a calendar, it would have ended sometime.

Top Chef this week

Spoiler alert: If you haven't watched Top chef this week, and don't want to know who had to pack their knives, don't read!

I was glad to see Carla finally win one. I like her but she definitely hasn't really shown her talents in the season so far. Last week, she was the team member that had the worst food but Rhadica got sent home because she was the leader of the Restaurant Wars team. I think Rhadica is a much better chef than some of the people still in the running. In fact, I think that Rhadica, Stefan and Jamie are this season's best chefs.

Even so, Rhadica made a terrible mistake in not choosing Stefan to be on her team just because she didn't like working with him. He's the best chef this season whether we like him or not. Personally I don't think he's shown himself to be too much of an ass really even though the other chefs all seem to hate him. This season's chefs are much nicer overall than in many seasons past. No one stands out this season as being the one we love to hate.

I think Stefan will win the season. He could have been cut tonight but wasn't. The judges chose to send Jeff home. They didn't particularly care for his dish, but in the cook off wars between previous season chefs, one of the judges chose his food over the previous season chef. None of the judges chose Fabio's dish over the other guys dish so I can't understand how they didn't send him home.

Two episodes ago, they made it clear that they don't consider what the chefs have done in the past in choosing who will go home that night. That is when they sent Ariane home even though she had won several challenges. She had been the team "leader" for the night and Leah and Hosea threw her under the bus. In that episode, Leah should have been sent home.

But I don't believe for a minute that they don't consider previous cooking challenges before choosing who to send home. Everyone agreed that Fabio's dish was the worst but when they got ready to send someone home, they sent home Jeff. Jeff hasn't won too many challenges if any this season while Fabio has won at least one. I like Fabio and they probably do too. He's the consummate entertainer so they probably want to keep him on board for as long as they can.

But the most thrilling thing that happened tonight is that Andrea from a previous season beat Stefan across the board. I happen to think Stefan is the most talented chef this season...well he or Jamie is anyway. But I always liked Andrea and think she was underestimated tonight. Stefan thought she would be easy to win and he referred to her as the vegetarian chef. That she tries to incorporate healthy cooking into her recipes doesn't mean she's not a strong chef. She is one of my favorites from all the seasons. Go Andrea!

Cheney swears in a new congress in the epitome of irony

Did anybody besides me find Cheney swearing in the new Congress just a little bit ironic? Part of the oath is to "uphold the United States Constitution." To have Dick Cheney swearing in the new Congress is protocol, he is still the vice-president. But after his blatant willingness to set aside the United States Constitution during the Bush presidency and his eagerness to accept responsibility for condoning and okaying the use of torture of prisoners just makes the whole swearing in ceremony a tad bit ridiculous.

So-called Apple tax the latest ploy by Microsoft but it won't work

I read an article on ZDnet today by Ed Bott discussing the latest Redmond ploy to criticize Apple by calling the higher price of Apple machines the "apple tax".

Bott details his experience using a MacBook for a couple of weeks and then delves into the cost of hardware and software for the Mac compared to a typical Windows machine.

I made the switch from Windows to an iMac last year. I am not the typical power user, just an ordinary end user. I switched because I went through two long-labored processes of removing viruses that my anti-virus software didn't prevent. I spent about 5 weeks posting what was going on with my pc (made by Dell incidentally) to a virus help website, getting instructions, following them and then posting the results and going through subsequent instructions, step by step until I got rid of the virus.

It would have been bad enough on its own but it was the second time I had gone through the process. The first time I got a virus I was using Norton Anti-virus software that was updated daily. The second time I was using Trend Micro's PC-cillin that was updated daily.

I am an average user. I have never visited a porn site and have been around long enough not to click on any link without trusting the purveyor of the link implicitly.

Add to that experience the fact that I used a friends laptop in the interim that had Windows Vista and I made the switch to the iMac. I know the TV commercials show some ostensibly clueless people using the Vista software and saying how much they like it before knowing it's really Windows Vista but I'm not buying it, figuratively or literally.

My experience using Windows Vista reminded me of the experience I had when I had to upgrade my 3.1 Windows to Windows 95. The problems seemed to outweigh any neglible improvements.

I bought the iMac thinking I could get Windows and run it on my iMac for programs I missed or needed. As it turned out, I never loaded Windows on my iMac. I found out I didn't need to. The only program I would like to use that is Windows based is my Family Tree software and I didn't see the point in getting Windows for one program. Instead I put the program on my husband's PC. I only use it once in a while anyway.

At this point, it would take a lot to get me to go back to using a Windows machine. For me, it's worth the extra cost to have a reliable operating system that doesn't freeze and isn't nearly so susceptible to viruses.

It took me about a month to truly get used to using an iMac after 20 years of using MS DOS and then MS Windows OS software.

I am not one of those people who feels any particular loyalty to some giant nameless corporation or the CEO of such a corporation (read Gates vs Jobs here). I buy what I think is best for me and at this point, the Mac is best for me, not because I think it's cool and not because I for some arcane reason dislike Bill Gates. I like the iMac because I never have any trouble with it. You wouldn't believe the cartwheels and backbends it took to get the Gateway PC sitting next to my iMac to run wirelessly. And yes, I called the Linksys help desk. What a joke. The four or five phone calls I made to them were a waste of time and I finally figured out how to get the wireless card working through dumb luck and trial and error.

But getting back to my point, the iMac is easy to use. And like I said earlier, I am not a power user, I'm your average computer user. I shop online. I email. I play Boggle online. I check Facebook. I research information online for my blog.

My husband and I own our own small business (used book store) that is online. Slowly but surely all of the business stuff that we do on a computer is shifting to my iMac because everything we do is easier on the iMac. And that is surprising because we always had the impression that the Mac was supposed to be for hip artsy types while the PC is for working class slobs like us.

We have found that it's easier to print out a Delivery Confirmation label on my iMac. It's a whole lot faster and we can modify what is being printed because the label is on the local machine as opposed to being on the post office website (the only way to do it on a PC).

What I'm beginning to notice is that every program for the PC that we use for business that is made by Microsoft is huge, unwieldly, cumbersome and is probably perfect for huge corporations but much more than what we need for a used book business.

The only thing left on my husband's PC at this point is the credit card processing software (that we have been told is being discontinued) and a text in tabs file in Microsoft Excel that contains our inventory data. Since my iMac can reproduce the text in tabs inventory file we have on Excel, after the credit card software is obsolete, I can see no reason to have a PC for our small business.

Ed Bott wrote about the cost of upgrading the RAM. The thing to do is what I've been doing for years with my Windows machines - upgrade the Ram yourself. It's easy to do. And a whole lot cheaper.

Interestingly, I've noticed that my iMac runs a whole lot faster with 2g of ram than my husband's PC does with 4g of ram. To be fair, his machine is older than mine by a year.

The number one reason the Apple iMac is worth paying more for than a Windows machine is reliability. For me, it was worth the extra cost. The article referred to at the beginning of this column doesn't take into account the costs associated with downtime, virus software, and the ensuing panic attacks. I will stick with Mac to avoid those costs.

Madoff mails $ millions to friends and family

Madoff's bail should be revoked and he should stay behind bars. Republicans don't want more regulations for SEC even though Madoff swindled investors to the tune of $50 billion.

read more | digg story

Mitch McConnell could be a shape shifter

Has anybody else noticed that Mitch McConnell (R) of Kentucky has no smile wrinkles? He could have played the part of Odo on Deep Space 9 without any makeup.

I'm beginning to think he is an alien sent here to investigate the human species on our planet.

All joking aside, McConnell could be said to be the ranking Republican in the Senate. Yesterday, when President-elect Barack Obama talked about some of the details of his stimulus plan, McConnell posited that he (McConnell) and other Republicans had pressured Barack Obama and that as a result, part of Obama's economic stimulus package contained tax cuts for the middle class. Excuse me, shapeshifter McConnell, but this is the plan that Obama touted all during his campaign in the last two years. But if it makes you feel better to think that you have had something to do with the attempts to raise our nation's economy out of the quagmire that you and your fellow Republicans have sunk us into, go ahead and think it. But for God's sake, don't say it out loud. We, well, those of us who have been paying attention, are well aware that Obama has had the middle class tax cut in his economic plans for about two years now.

McConnell is taking credit for Obama's economic stimulus plan but when asked about the election counts showing that Al Franken would be the new senator from Minnesota, McConnell was quick to return to his usual persona of Senator "NO" saying that Franken will not be senator until he is certified.



If McConnell is the ranking Republican, we Democrats are in good shape. Between McConnell and Chip Saltsman, famous now for sending RNC members a CD with offensive Christmas songs like, "Barack the Magic Negro" for Christmas presents, the Republicans are imploding.