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.

California may be the next Alabama

I've been reading about the voters in California voting in favor of Proposition 8, banning gay marriage in the state.

The feelings this news evokes in me are paradoxical. On the one hand, I'm outraged that voters in California want to take rights away from gay people. I live way across the country in Alabama, one of the reddest states in the country, the state in which the fewest number of white people voted for Barack Obama. I was one of those 10% and am proud of it but I am used to being in the minority (a liberal in Alabama).

But I am also the mother of a 21 year old gay man. My best hope for him is that he will find someone to love who will love him back, so that they can cherish each other and share their lives as my husband and I have done, by getting married. And in my day dreams about this parents' dream, I always saw my son moving to California so he could do just that.

Alas, now that California has voted to abandon some of its best citizens, by voting for proposition 8, my dream has faded into outrage. Who are these people who think they deserve more rights than other people?

And now for the paradox. The only good thing about California's faux pas on this issue is the fact that for once some other state besides Alabama or Mississippi is in the media's attention for being bigoted and provincial. Thanks for that, California, but I liked you better when you were the liberal hippie state of my dreams.

Yes, we did!

I was glued to the television Tuesday night. My husband was too nervous to watch and went to his computer and played Scramble on Facebook. My 21 year old son sat with me in the den. While I constantly changed the channels between BBC America, MSNBC and CNN, Ryan had his macbook open and was cruising the New York Times, CNN, Facebook and other sites. We were elated but extremely nervous. When I saw Kentucky had voted for McCain I was upset. Silly, I know but I was afraid that we were about to watch a repeat of 2000 and or 2004. As the night went on however, I realized Kentucky wasn't going to decide the election.

We also started flipping back and forth to Comedy Central so we could watch Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert covering the election live.

It was an electrifying night. My two cats knew something was amiss and they were on the alert just as we were. They sauntered between the kitchen and the den, presumably thinking with all the excitement that we would surely soon give them treats. After all, the kind of excitement their humans were feeling is usually reserved for Thanksgiving or Christmas and they always get to eat turkey on those days.

The relief in the room was palpable when Pennsylvania was declared for Obama. We discovered that Ohio had gone for Obama while on the BBC network. They were a few minutes ahead of MSNBC which we then changed to.

First we got to hear Jon Stewart say the magic words.

Ryan sat up very tall on the sofa and I saw his face turn red. He turned his beautiful little macbook towards me where Safari revealed the BBC website showing California and the rest of the west coming in and we watched as the number of electoral votes started rising exponentially. Then I heard Keith Olbermann say, "Barack Obama is going to be the next president of the United States."

I wept. I screamed. Ryan wept too and Jim finally quit pacing and joined us. We were laughing and crying at the same time. When MSNBC switched to the crowd at Grant Park in Chicago, we knew, along with the crowd, that we had changed the world for the better.

Yes, we did!

Vice Presidential Debate

I've been looking forward to the vice-presidential debate for weeks now. I confess that I was more interested in this debate than the presidential debates.

I was very disappointed. First, I was disappointed with Governor Palin. She didn't answer a single question posed to her. Secondly, I was disappointed with Gwen Ifill as moderator because she didn't seem to notice that Palin didn't answer any questions.

Tonight's debate wasn't really a debate. What I saw was Joe Biden answering the questions Ifill asked of him and Sarah Palin nattering on and on in a sadly obvious attempt to seem like someone who would be married to Joe Six-Pack and how she and McCain are mavericks. What is Joe Six-Pack? Is she talking about the guy who drinks a six pack of beer every night? Why is she reaching out to Joe Six-Pack? Is Joe Six-Pack supposed to represent the average American? She says she's a maverick, shouldn't she be reaching out to mavericks? I'm confused. Maybe Katie Couric should ask Palin who Joe Six-Pack is and if he's a maverick too.

Governor Palin's way of talking grates on my nerves. She seems to add random words to overly long rambling sentences in what seems like an attempt to sound homey, or Joe Six-Packy. The way she speaks reminds me of the way the Pillsbury doughboy or Aunt Jemimah speaks. Maybe she should be doing commercials. She could probably sell insurance if this job doesn't work out.

For me the best thing that came out of the vice-presidential debate is that I no longer feel sorry for Sarah Palin. Let me explain. After watching Katie Couric's interviews with Sarah Palin I had found myself feeling sorry for Palin as she was so clearly out of her depth. I had been feeling genuinely angry with John McCain for putting a simple woman through an ordeal she clearly has no business being involved in. Palin showed tonight, however, that she can memorize a script as well as any soap opera actress. And more importantly she showed that she can dodge a question as well as any of the Washington insiders she seems to hold in such contempt. So I no longer feel sorry for her. I realize she will survive all this and she can always do commercials instead.

Amazon Buys ABE: Antiquarian Books Sellers Beware

We just had official word today that Amazon has bought ABE or American Book Exchange. ABE's CEO sent us an email today telling us that Amazon has acquired ABE. President and CEO Hannes Blum assures ABE sellers that Amazon is dedicated to maintaining ABE as a "stand-alone business" and that all things will remain the same for ABE sellers and buyers.

Don't believe it for a minute. The last time Amazon bought out one of the major venues for selling out of print, rare, antiquarian, and used books, they gave the same speech. They said they would maintain Bibliofind.com as a separate stand-alone business and that nothing would change. We believed it then. Maybe it was because it was the 90s and we were giddy with the potential of the internet.

The first thing Amazon did was incorporate Bibliofind.com into the Amazon website. It then came up with Amazon Z shops and put all the Bibliofind listings in there. We sold a lot of books through Z shops the first year it was open. But then Amazon decided to open "Marketplace". Anyone with an Amazon account could now list any book with an ISBN there simply by putting in the ISBN for the book in a drop down box from a link on the Amazon home page. This way everybody who read a John Grisham novel and wanted to sell it could then sell it on Amazon as a used book. Soon there were so many individuals selling a few of their previously read books on Amazon that Amazon buried Z shops where all the fine and rare books were listed.

Remember Z shops? That is where the professional used books sellers who had listed their books on Bibliofind had listed their fine and rare books. Z shops disappeared. First Amazon took Z Shops off of its home page. It became more difficult to find rare and antique books. Then Z shops disappeared altogether. Most of the books in Z shops (originally Bibliofind) were rare books, first editions, antique books that were published before an international book numbering system was incorporated in the last quarter of the 20th century and so had no ISBN.

Z shops disappeared and so did the rare and antiquarian books including rare editions of books because Amazon's marketplace didn't (and still doesn't) differentiate between a first edition of "To Kill a Mockingbird" and a ratty torn up underlined paperback edition that is three years old. If you are really determined, you can put in some work to find one of these rare or first edition books but then there is no description. Book collectors want to know details. Amazon is not about the details. It's about the numbers.

Amazon's decision to have a Marketplace where anyone can sell any books has been great for the millions of people who decided to resell their Nicholas Sparks books. And it has worked out great for the thousands who wanted to buy them for a dollar or two on Amazon and didn't care what condition the book was in or what edition it was.

Amazon decided they were making more money or could make more money from the people who were reselling their Jan Karon books than actual professional booksellers so they started encouraging anyone who sold a book on Amazon to price it lower than anyone else. As a result, you can now buy books for a penny on Amazon (minus shipping of course).

Strangely enough, Amazon's marketplace venue spawned a whole new breed of book sellers. These are the people who come to used book sales armed with ISBN scanners who scan a number from a book directly in to Amazon's website to see whether or not it worth buying to resell on Amazon. These aggressive and irritating scavengers don't know anything about books. They don't love books and they don't care about books. They are Amazon people and like Amazon, all they care about are the numbers.

Amazon is all about the numbers; it cares about the masses of people who buy and sell a few books a year, books that have been assigned numbers (ISBNs). If you are a professional used, out of print and antiquarian books seller, the chances of someone buying your rare first edition "Carrie" on Amazon is very slim. Any collector wanting the rare first edition will want full details about the book and Amazon doesn't allow that. The book has an ISBN but it's the same number assigned to all editions of the book published since the original first limited run. As the bottom-feeders with scanners can tell you, Amazon promotes the lowest prices on its website.

For those of us who consider ourselves professional antiquarian books sellers, it is time to mourn ABE. If we are to learn from history then we should know that ABE is going to go the way that Bibliofind did. Amazon would be quick to point out that if you go to Bibliofind's website, you will see that it is indeed maintained by Amazon. But just try finding a rare book there. Put in a search for "To Kill a Mockingbird" published before 1970. There aren't any. And as any bookseller worth his salt knows, there are thousands of book club editions of the title to be found any day of the week. So technically, Amazon can still say they maintain the Bibliofind website but it's a farce.

Now we must look to Alibris, and Biblio.com (not to be confused with Amazon's closet skeleton, Bibliofind. ABE is surely going to drown in Amazon's ocean of marketplace items as Amazon slowly creeps closer to becoming the global flea market. And like flea markets, the old and rare and unusual stuff is fast being replaced by rows of socks, cheap knock-offs, poorly constructed imported furniture and horrible smelling incense. I salute you ABE and may you rest in peace.

GOP vs. DNC

Today I was asked by the AARP to send a note to both parties about health care insurance plans. Yes, I'm now old enough to be on the AARP's list.

I decided to go to both the GOP and DNC websites to see how easy it would be to contact the parties there in order to send each a personal note about my thoughts about health insurance instead of some mass campaign that's easier for them to ignore.

I went to the GOP website first, looking for a "contact" link. But that's not what I'm writing about. And here is why.

On the GOP site homepage, all I found were links to articles written about Obama and various smear campaigns about Obama and anyone he is connected with. I couldn't find a single bit of information on the Republican home page about their candidate for president.

Who is running for President on the Republican ticket? Honestly, if you didn't know and went there to find out, you still wouldn't know. You would know all about Obama though.

Like the years when Bush smeared John McCain, the Republicans are still very good at deflecting any attention to their lackluster below par candidate by their usual smear tactics against the opponent.

Remember how America used to abhor propaganda? Well the Cold War is over and apparently the Republicans have figured that propaganda wins them votes. I was very disappointed.

Even though information on McCain wasn't what I initially went to the website for, I was interested in what his thoughts were on several issues and wanted to check for myself instead of relying on word of mouth. But I couldn't find any information about John McCain on the GOP home page.

I did find a link to write to the GOP at the bottom of the page and wrote to them voicing my concerns. I got an impersonal canned reply instantly.

Then I went to the DNC website thinking that maybe they would have their whole website devoted to McCain the way the GOP has theirs devoted to Barack Obama. I was wrong. The DNC website is all about guess what? Barack Obama. Hmm. I was able to find out what he believes in and stands for on the issues that concern me.

I wrote to the DNC outlining my health care concerns. I haven't gotten a reply yet. I fully expect it, like the one from the GOP will be a canned message but I understand that both parties are busy.

After visiting both websites I spent some time thinking about the differences between the two. It really surprised me that the whole GOP (Republican) presidential campaign is based on smearing the opponent rather than talking about their candidate. I am basically an independent voter. The first year I was old enough to vote for president was 1980. I voted for John Anderson. Now if that made you laugh then you are at least as old as me and remember he was the independent running that year.

I voted Republican a couple of times over the years when I thought they had the best candidate for governor, president or whatever. I am not narrow minded. But today's Republican party is certainly not the one I grew up with. I find myself feeling that no matter who ran on their ticket today, I would have to vote for the opposition even if they were able to resurrect Abraham Lincoln. But of course if Lincoln were alive today, he wouldn't be a Republican, would he? If he had run against GW Bush, I'm quite sure Bush would have won.

My impressions from looking at both of the major party websites is that the Republicans are like the overgrown 6th graders on the playground who by sheer size and meanness do whatever they want to do and get away with it because everybody else is afraid of them. On the other hand, the Democrats appear reasonable and thoughtful about the issues and though they don't meet all of my concerns, they will at least talk about them and perhaps more importantly, they won't beat me up if I don't agree with them.

Germany, Bush, Neanderthal and Marx

I read an article on ZDnet today. The article reported that the Germans had been depicting Bush in editorial cartoons as a chimpanzee but just today, German officials had referred to Bush as a Neanderthal because of his lack of ehrm, well, judgement on environmental issues that face the entire globe.

The author remarked that he thought Neanderthal was further advanced than Chimpanzees.

I thought I would put my degree in anthropology to use for once and answer his question for him. So I went to the "Talk Back" portion of his article to reply and before replying started reading some of the things people had posted there.

I confess that I got completely caught up in answering the ignorantsia who had posted there. By the way, I just made up the word, 'ignorantsia' to combat the anti-intelligence, anti-science, anti-environment, etc., masses who call anyone that is smarter than them the intelligentsia. Please feel free to use it and pass it on.

I should know better than to get into online arguments with the ignorantsia but I couldn't help myself. One guy was equating Marxism and socialism with the issue of global warming. How could I not respond to that? He thinks that the environmentalist movement is all some evil plot hatched by anti-capitalists, anti-American Marxist types. Huh?

Another guy in California was posting six year old like arguments, basically if someone didn't agree with him, his answer was, "if you hate America so much why don't you leave?"

I wasted at least an entire hour posting replies. At first I attempted to use reason to make these crazy paranoid people realize that not everybody is out to get them. It didn't help that one of the people I agreed with was a British citizen with an inelegant fondness for the term, "fat-sucking Americans".

One reasonable and compassionate person was getting bombarded with hate replies because he used Al Gore in one of his posts. It makes me sick that the neo-conservative machine has somehow managed to make a Nobel prize winning American into a goon.

But back to the original content of the article. Apparently the Germans have regularly been depicting Bush in their cartoons as a chimpanzee like character. But after the frustrations of his unbending unrelenting policies or lack of policies on the enviroment, one German official was said to have referred to our little Texas president as a Neanderthal.

Now I take issue with that. Homo sapien neanderthalis was not the brute that science museums of the 60's created. HSN (or Neanderthal) was thoughtful, intelligent and this has been proven. HSN buried his dead. HSN took care of the elderly and the sick. Unfortunately by referring to Bush as a neanderthal, the Germans have once again relegated the hard working, caring HSN to uncaring brute and I for one, am mad about THAT.

Windows Vista made me switch to Mac

Actually that title is not wholly true because it was more than just Windows Vista that prompted the switch. There was also the troublesome fact that I spent about two months trying to remove a mutated virus that had invaded my Windows XP operating system despite my daily updated virus removal program. I was using Tred Microcillin's Internet Security program. When I got the virus, I had to go to a volunteer driven website that you post your problem to and when someone has time to answer (and they ARE volunteers after all), they would ask you to do something and post back your results. I went through this for two months and finally was able to remove the virus but my computer was never the same.

There were actually three factors involved in my decision to get the iMac. Number one reason: VIRUSES, number two reason: Windows VISTA, number three reason: my old hard drive was getting full and it was time to buy a new computer.

I don't regret the switch at all. I bought the iMac in February while I was out in Seattle visiting my sister who is a Mac Genius at a local Apple store. I was able to get the family discount which helped.

It has taken me a short while to get used to things but so far I love my Mac and can't imagine going back. My husband is using my old computer because his Windows XP machine's hard drive failed. Another sign that it's time to move on from Windows.

I've been using IBM compatibles since the early 1980s.

The only thing I miss about my Windows machine is a little program called Irfanview. But I've learned to live without it and have found a lot of great features about the Mac that I had no idea existed.

There is this cool workflow automator program that allows you to record frequently used actions so you can automate them. Okay, I admit, I haven't gotten this down to an exact science yet but I'm working on it. It's a lot of fun.

I am still of the same opinion I was earlier, that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have nothing to do with me and I could care less about who they are, their history, who did what, etc. In fact, I find the legendary Steve Jobs followers who hang on his every word with something akin to cult followers, well, just plain creepy. It's the only thing I don't like about having become a Mac owner. And I just try to distance myself from it. I bought this iMac because I felt it would better serve my needs as a computer owner and that is the only reason.

Is it finally time to switch to an Apple Mac ? YES

Nothing has more neatly divided the five siblings that make up my family than the old Mac/Mike debate (Mike being short for Microsoft). Over the years the political lines have been drawn, erased and redrawn, along with other issues that cause debate. But the division between those of us who own Mikes and those of us who own and swear by Macs has always been clear and unchanging.

The two oldest siblings, perhaps wiser, have been Mac owners and have, to ad nauseum degree, reminded the rest of us at every family gathering of the Mac's (and implicitly their own) superiority. I learned to tune them both out years ago when it came to the Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates history because, no matter how often I explained how little I cared about either man, I was regaled with the same old story of how poor Steve Jobs had been taken advantage of by Bill Gates way back when. Whatever. I didn't care.

My reasons for owning machines that operated Microsoft Windows had nothing to do with misguided loyalty to some huge corporation who could of course, care no less about me than they already do. For my purposes (let's be honest here...my purposes = inexpensive + capable of surfing the web and word processing), Mike machines comfortably fit my needs. Okay, I suppose we could assign the word cheap to this story somewhere.

And then as my children became teenagers, it actually almost became important to own the Mike version of personal computers available to us today because of gaming needs. What 17 year old wanted a Mac when they could immerse themselves in the World of Warcraft for 12 hours straight on a Toshiba laptop (except for all those times we had to send the Toshiba off to get the power fixed yet again).

For the first time in twenty years, the lines that divide my siblings and I most definitively are about to shift. As I said, I harbour no illusions that loyalty to any product will somehow be in my best interest.

Just recently it has become abundantly clear that my Mikes are more problematic than their cheapness, excuse me, their inexpensiveness warrants. That's right. I'm ready to switch to the Mac. What has finally pushed me over the line?

Microsoft, in their persistent lack of trust in their customers, has gone one step further in trying to weed out the unpaid for copies of their software and as they encourage, nay invasively push customers to constantly update their Microsoft software, ostensibly to keep Mike machines running properly because of the inherent system flaws, most Mike owners feel they should update to avoid the vulnerabilities that plague Mike machines. And so.....this shouldn't be a problem if you own a legitimate copy of Windows, right? WRONG.

My laptop has Windows XP on it that I installed from a properly paid for disk. But recently it was tagged by Microsoft as being an invalid version of Windows. Because of that, I was unable to update my virus software. Because of that my laptop has a virus. Go to Microsoft's website and you will be told that you need to purchase a "real" version of Windows. Ehrm, I have the legitimate copy of Windows XP that I paid for myself in person. I didn't go to the flea market and buy the Korean version. Too bad; according to Microsoft, I am not trustworthy. My laptop has been, for all intents and purposes rendered useless.

My brother (another Mike user) has the same problem with his computer and bless his heart (as we say in the south to soften the blow), he went out and bought a new version of Windows XP and still has the same problem.

So in order for me to keep running Mike machines, I am going to have to bend over backwards to get my legitimate copy of Windows to work. Since I first got a pc with Windows 3.1 on it, I have never loaded any copied Microsoft software on any of my computers. I have paid for Windows through 3.1, 3.11, Win95 (remember the headaches?), Win98, Win2K and finally Windows XP. I won't even go into the headaches of trying to load my office software on new computers, etc. That's another story. But suffice it to say that I am now officially fed up with Windows by Microsoft.

I can't help but wonder if this latest assault on Microsoft customers by Microsoft is an effort to get people to go ahead and move to Windows Vista. If so, I can only hope that I'm not the only one who has decided to say no.

When Apple asks me who they can thank for sending me, a new customer, to them to buy my new computer, I will be happy to tell them they can thank Microsoft.

Yellow Jackets at Moss Rock Nature Preserve

Yesterday Jim and I set out to hike our usual mile or so through the woods of the Moss Rock Nature Preserve with our dog Annabelle. Moss Rock is a lovely place and much more interesting than walking on the sidewalk in our neighborhood. Moss Rock Preserve is only a mile or so away from our house.

We were on the blue trail just off the power line when suddenly I was being attacked by a swarm of yellow jackets. I felt just like a scene out of one of those made for TV SciFi channel horror movies. I am not a girly girl but I started screaming nonetheless and Jim came rushing back and so did Annabelle. Jim took his hat off and started beating me with it...actually not beating me, but killing the yellow jackets that were on me. Annabelle got stung a couple of times too.

I had never been stung before so didn't know if I was allergic to them or not and we had to walk about a half mile back to the car or longer and I was hurting but trying not to panic because I had a ways to go before getting back to the car. I ended up with about six stings, two on my hand, three on my arm and one on my leg. As it turns out I am allergic to yellow jackets but not as allergic as some people. I've been up all night long with painful welts, throbbing and a low grade fever.

If this post isn't very literate, I have a good excuse.

Stay or Leave

I'm listening to Dave Matthews' "Some Devil" CD and the song, "Stay or Leave" is making me weep. I've always liked the song but today my sister is leaving the East, heading out to Seattle to live and even though I know the song is about lovers, I feel exactly like that...

My sister Suzanne is five years older than me. We grew up in the 60s and 70s in Nashville and Lexington, KY and later Nashville again. When we were moving to Kentucky from Nashville my friends gave me a surprise going away party (I was 12) and Suzanne took me all over our neighborhood that day to all the places she hung out with her friends. I was bewildered but very happy. She helped me put on makeup and get dressed up without ever hinting I was going to be fete'd by my own 12 year old friends. Funny but I remember very little about the party. What I remember is running around with my big sister.

One time she decided to teach me how to drive. When I ran into a drug store (with the car) it was Suzanne's car and I felt guilty for the next twenty years. It became one of those family stories, you know the kind....the story that seems to get dragged out at every family gathering for all the rest of eternity.

Suzanne was the big sister who did things with me and taught me how to survive the world. Funny, my other big sister who was a year older than Suzanne was the oldest in the family but our relationship is completely different. Suzanne is the one who was my big sister, the one I could tell all my secrets to, the one who could tell me when I was being stupid when nobody else could have.

And now she is leaving. Moving from Cincinnati to Seattle. I feel just like I'm 12 again and this time my sister isn't around to show me how to act. This is a day for weeping and joy because I am weeping for my own selfish reasons but somehow feeling joyous for her and only pray to whatever gods there might be that she will find the fulfillment that has so far eluded her. She is the only person I've ever known who has done all the things you are supposed to do, worked hard at everything and excelled in both art and teaching without being recognized for her accomplishments. Maybe Seattle will be more amenable to an artist than is Cincinnati.

Good luck Suzanne. I already miss you. My heart hurts.

Take me back take me back take me back in time

Dear Santa,

Please bring me a Cello.